Sugestions for VooDoo based projects

[Komponent]

Great scouting job, Radu!
Do you have one of this router yourself allready?
So, one router has 4 memory chips (equals to 64Mb RAM)? That would be enough for a first step: the Voodoo4 4500 PCI with 64Mb of RAM...
Even 7ns chips would be good enough for a prototype; just to see if the work can be done.

[m14radu]

Hi Komponent,

Yeah, it will be a good starting point for the projekt.
Good enough for the first prototype, despite of 7 ns acces time.
I dont have the router; the ideea was to find a device that is using
this type of memory ( as donner ), and then to buy it. ( unfortunately this one that i found is very expensive )
I dont see now another possibility to obtain the memory.
Did you find two nvidia Quadro cards ( PCI version ) with SDRAM for this project ?
I only find some info about the AGP version. ( Why is the AGP version not suitable ? )

@All: There are some nvidia quadro cards with suitable sdram memory type. Did somebody have this cards ?
see the link :
http://www.falconfly-central.de/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=techtalk;action=display;num=1156155727;start=15#15

Greetings.
Radu.

[m14radu]

found this link:
http://www.ocworkbench.com/hardware/asus/v7100/v7100p1.htm
in this review the card use the same memory as the voodoo5 has.
Acces time in also 6 ns, and the card reach 210 MHZ memory clock.
So that means that the GPU is the limiting factor in our overclocking attemp.
The only possible upgrade remain imho a size memory upgrade.

Regards.
Radu

[rasz]

Originally posted by BFG3dfx

wow you posting mad man lol, ok in my post i stated the v3's ALIENWARE had running together lol, let the post begin.

Quietly tucked away inside the massive Eidos booth were three Alienware Area 51 high-end machines. While they didn't get as much attention as the games they were running (ION Storm's much-hyped Daikatana seemed to be attracting a crowd), each of these machines was being powered by dual Voodoo3 2000s, made possible by Wicked3D's Parallel Graphics Configuration (PGC) technology.

Prior to the showing, naysayers were quick to list possible flaws that included visual artifacts, images that weren't synced properly, or even a dividing line cutting across the monitor. That wasn't the case here - in fact, all three machines were running flawlessly, and although there was no benchmarking utility on hand, using the ol eye-balling technique, the manufacturer's claim of a frame rate between 50 and 60fps wouldn't be too far from the truth. And while a single 143MHz-clocked Voodoo3 2000 doesn't stand a chance against the likes of a TNT2, a pair does - especially considering how easily each overclocks to 166MHz. In fact, Alienware (currently the exclusive proprietors of PGC-enhanced video cards) has claimed to attain frame rates above and beyond 70fps while running Quake II at a blinding 1600x1200 resolution.

http://images.tomshardware.com/2004/05/28/alienware/alienware.zip

now combine something like http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/peripherals/matrox-vga-ysplitter-136081.php (but working other way arround) with mesa wrapper to split to 2 screens and bam

[rasz]

I'v got more
http://netjuggler.sourceforge.net/Download/SoftGenLock-HTML/SoftGenLock.html

>It should work with any graphics cards having VGA registers. It was successfully tested with NVIDIA
>and Voodoo cards.

This software lets you genlock synchro pulses between multiple cards in your computer/cluster of computers. So it does the same as those blue and red wires going of the Voodoo cards in http://images.tomshardware.com/2004/05/28/alienware/alienware.zip video.

Im starting to play with the idea of doing DYI SLI. With this software I'll be able to genlock 2 video cards. Next ill need a small cpld/fpga to count Hsync pulses, and switch after half the screen have been drawn to the second source, and after the other half was drawn back to the first one. Now this is exactly what alienware guys did. Nvidia has this circuit onboard, Ati only on "mother" cards.
Whats left is openGL/DirectX wrapper to split the incoming graphics into 2 halves.

Imagine 2 V5 PCI running in SLI . Heck, with such a soft/hardware package you could SLI together any 2 cards.

Is anyone interested in such a project?

[Hiero]

@m14 radu:
Some and 5,4ns 5,5ns memory is labeld down to 6ns due to poor quality. Also the quality of vsa-100 seem to differ. On Rev A 6Ks there is a good revision making it possible to overclock them at least to 190MHz and above. Sometimes gpu might be the limiting factor but that could be changed through special cooling. There are actually geforce cards that use 4ns sdram. That + a good 5500 and you might get up to 200.

Concerning V5 SLI though wiked3d drivers
It's a great idea. Theoretically it would work. What would have to be done ? how would the cards be connected.
Are there pictures of those systems running dual V3 ?

- Hiero

[raid93]

Hi ,I'm curious is there a way to bring texture compression in voodoo3
by modding the chip code or change it with napalm's one if there is
not big difference between the chips?

I know it sounds freaky but I'm curious if there is even small plausibility to be done.

[m14radu]

@Hiero:
I manage to bring my moded V5 5500 to 203Mhz with other coolers, and in winter with open Window. ( With the standard cooling 193Mhz was the max speed )
I was also good dresed for this challenge

My V56K run stable at max 194Mhz, with the original cooling.

Concerning V5 SLI though drivers, the possibility exist - theoreticaly.
I hear rumors about v3 running in SLI, long time ago, but there is no proove of that. ( regular cards connected, no aalchemy board )
If u have more information, pls post them here.

[ps47]

Originally posted by raid93

Hi ,I'm curious is there a way to bring texture compression in voodoo3
by modding the chip code or change it with napalm's one if there is
not big difference between the chips?

I know it sounds freaky but I'm curious if there is even small plausibility to be done.

yes,its possible,in fact,it has been done already.too bad the project (oglx) got scrapped before it was made public (code loss due to disk failures is a very unfortunate thing)..

[raid93]

It will be great if there is somebody who can revive the oglx project
,because our voodoo's(2&3) really need it to bring some life in them.

Edit: I have one more question. Is it plausible to emulate T&L or shaders on PhysX ppu.

[ps47]

well,nothing is impossible,but knowing that all sources have been lost,it would have to be coded again from scratch,and as the author has a full time job now,I would say the chances are pretty low.

what makes me really mad is the fact that the data loss occured essentially few days/hours before the first public release..I should have asked Doom for some of the betas when it was still time

Originally posted by m14radu

I hear rumors about v3 running in SLI, long time ago, but there is no proove of that. ( regular cards connected, no aalchemy board )
If u have more information, pls post them here.

metabyte was experimenting with this (v3 agp+v3 pci) and they had it working,but dropped the idea at the end.

[DaMulta]

I was looking at a 1GB stick of SDRAM, and I think it is do able....
http://www.provantage.com/kingston-technology-kvr133x72rc3-1024a~7KIN900F.htm
BUT I would need to hire A: my dad to help replace the chips, or B: I'm ok, and maybe I could do it after some good old practice first.

So with that mod(if passable) the card would have 256Megs of ram per core instead of 32megs per core.

That would open it up to programs that have a min limit of ram to be able to use. I know it could not use all the ram....maybe more than 64 megs tho.

I guess you have to hex the mem size on the bios. Don't know for sure, and I have looked for information and came up with no information.