Speaking of the Voodoo graphics card, many young people probably don’t know it. It was the 3D acceleration chip with the highest market share in the world decades ago. However, due to lack of innovation, the company went bankrupt and was acquired by NVIDIA. For people of a certain age, this is a magical card with memories. Last year, there was a 3dfx Voodoo 5 6000 graphics card with an auction bidding price of more than 10,000 US dollars. This card has been launched for 23 years at most.
Recently, there is a YouTube channel in foreign countries, and even took out the Voodoo 1 graphics card launched 27 years ago, but it is not an auction, but a magic modification, which improves the original default memory, and finally it is really successful, and the game performance is instantly increased by 15. %, the game that was a bit slow immediately became smoother.
The foreign YT channel magically modified the Voodoo 1 graphics card 27 years ago, and the game performance instantly increased by 15%
A few days ago, the foreign YouTube channel Bits und Bolts shared a video of them increasing the memory of the 3dfx Voodoo 1 (MAXI Gamer 3D) graphics card to 6MB, which is generally equipped with 4MB of EDO DRAM, and in order to upgrade to 6MB, they make a clean PCB module and order it online:
The actual product received:
This MAXI Gamer 3D graphics card is equipped with 2 sets of 2 MB 50MHz display memory, which add up to 4MB, and their approach is to add 1 set of display memory above 1 set:
For a detailed explanation, you can watch the video at the end of the article to make it clearer:
The next step is to enter the welding process. This step is very cumbersome and requires careful attention. Look at the picture in the upper left corner, yes, the memory is Made Taiwan:
The final product, showing that the memory is actually a separate PCB version, is connected to the TMU with a connection, so that a total of 6MB of memory is obtained:
Then open Windows to check (this interface is really nostalgic), and it shows that the memory has indeed reached 6144KB:
The last is the actual game test. You can’t feel it when you look at the picture, but it’s obvious in the video. The 4MB picture is quite slow, and the 6MB becomes very smooth, but the improvement of 2MB is much worse. 6MB can maintain more than 15FPS throughout the game, what may this be to modern gamers? But more than 20 years ago, if it could run so smoothly, it can be said that many players would be excited:
And there is one more set of display memory on the top, and the bottom is still empty, so Bits und Bolts also mentioned that he is planning to build a second PCB module to upgrade the display memory, which means that he will finally get 8MB, performance There is a chance to increase to 30%.
However, it should be noted that for friends who also have old Voodoo graphics cards, the modules used by Bits und Bolts may not be compatible with other models, because the PCB was not standardized at that time, so the display memory layout of each Voodoo graphics card is not the same. , but at least knowing what to do might work.
Data reference source: HOTHARDWARE