Rampage is Here!!! ***ENGLISH VERSION***
Hello to everybody!
If you are visiting this thread you already know that our lab is testing the unique model of the 3dfx Rampage video card and that very soon we will release all the tests.
But let start introducing the whole family of last 3DFX video cards!
3DFX Voodoo 5 6000 rev A e A3
http://www.nexthardware.com/rampage1/a1p.jpg
Some days ago, during an important news about the accelerator Spectre 1000, based on the well known Rampage processor, were announced a series of tests of the famous Voodoo 5 6000.
We finally come in possession of two different versions of this video card: the first one is a Voodoo 5 6000 rev. "A" video card, the second one is a Voodoo 5 6000 rev. "A3" video card.
The rev. "A" is the most “common” one and its differences from the rev. "A3" are that it’s equipped with SD-RAM of 6ns and is made in Mexico.
The rev. "A3" in our possession, on the contrary, was all assembled in the USA and is equipped with SD-RAM of 5.4ns (the fastest memory used on that kind of video card)! Moreover, we've more than a reason to think that the one in our possession is the only well working model in whole the world. Last but not the least, it represented the pre-seller version model of the powerful 3dfx graphic accelerator based on the VSA 100 graphic chip.
http://www.nexthardware.com/rampage1/a3p.jpg http://www.nexthardware.com/rampage1/a5p.jpg
3DFX Voodoo 5 6000 rev. "A" with SD-RAM V5-6000 "A": 6ns
http://www.nexthardware.com/rampage1/a2p.jpg http://www.nexthardware.com/rampage1/a4p.jpg
3DFX Voodoo 5 6000 rev. "A3" with SD-RAM V5-6000 "A3": 5.4ns
Looking at the four pictures above, made by our more and more famous Emanuele Chiocchio (aka "MAN") in the professional photographic lab of NextHardware, we can admire (I think it’s the better expression we can use) on the first line the rev. "A" and on the second line the rev. "A3" (we can notice a different PCB colour).
These cards, we know, have always had some small working problems, few stability and some other little flaws. This kind of bugs were fixed making on the rev. "A" all projectual modifications made up by 3dfx on the more stable and recent Voodoo 5 6000 "A3".
Who was able to do that ? What the secrets hidden behind these accelerators? What are the scores in the different benchmarks?
To discover the truth, stay tuned on NextHardware.com!
*A special thanks goes to our collaborator Francesco V. aka Amigamerlin and to 3DFXZONE. We invite you to visit 3DFXZONE forum: in which you can find more new pictures about the two video card.
3DFX Spectre 1000: NEWS !
http://www.nexthardware.com/rampage1/boardp.jpg
3DFX Spectre 1000: experimental board.
Here we are with other fresh news about the already well known RAMPAGE!
The picture, a world exclusive, shows the heat sink system and the chip aside taken off the Rampage board.
This board is provided with a real socket on which it is possible to change the Rampage processor in a very simple way.
Try and imagine to be able to purchase a modular accelerator on which you can change, whenever you want (or need), GPU/VPU, RAM having as a start base a simple 'raw' video board at a very cheap price to buy… Imagination or future reality? ;)
http://www.nexthardware.com/rampage1/dissyp.jpg http://www.nexthardware.com/rampage1/proc.jpg
3DFX Spectre 1000: heat sink and 3DFX Spectre 1000:Rampage chip.
Rampage amazing RGBA features & FSAA
One of the most-advertised feature for Matrox Parhelia offering is its 10-bit per RGBA component processing.
Well, Rampage would have smacked down Matrox since it was set to feature 13-bit per RGBA component, allowing it to have 52-bit internal color processing.
It still made use of 32-bit output, but the quality, and precision of colors would have been of a much higher standard than anything offered by today commercial video card products.
3dfx famous FSAA is implemented as well.
It would have still used RGMS (rotated grid multi sampling), but Rampage texturing abilities would have directly affected how anti-aliasing worked.
The M-Buffer (similar to the Voodoo5 T-Buffer), would have allowed for 4 sample AA per clock with no pixel rate loss, unlike the older T-Buffer, which took a 4x performance hit when AA is enabled.