3dfx fan reverse-engineers the legendary Voodoo 5 6000 GPU and builds a revamped model

3dfx is a legendary brand from the early age of 3D accelerators, offering a lot of innovative hardware across the 90s and into the early 2000s. While the company was dissolved as we moved into the GPU era, 3dfx and their popular Voodoo series of 3D accelerators still hold a place in the hearts of most PC gamers from that era. 

In their final push, 3dfx created their Voodoo 5 5000 and Voodoo 5 6000 series of accelerators, with the Voodoo 5 6000 failing to ever release at retailers. Only 1,000 Voodoo 5 6000 accelerators were ever produced, making them highly valuable collector’s items. 

A creator called “Anthony” has showcased an “Untitled Project” where he has recreated the 3dfx Voodoo 5 6000 using off-the-shelf VSA-100 processors, the same chips that were used with original 3dfx hardware. This project is a successful reverse-engineering of 3dfx’s Voodoo 5 6000, allowing gamers in 2021 to but a new 3dfx graphics card with the same performance (and bugs) and the company’s original (unreleased) product.

The Voodoo 5 6000 is a crazy 3D accelerator, using four of the VSA-100 chips that powered the Voodoo 5 4500. In the early 2000s, 3dfx created a 4-way multi-accelerator setup that fitted within a single PCI slot form factor, requiring crazy add-ons like an external power brick for supplemental power. 

Anthony’s recreation of this legendary 3D accelerator is not faithful to the original, it’s better. Instead of requiring an external power brick, this recreation uses a 4-pin Molex connector for supplemental power and updates the original’s AGP connector to a PCIe connector. Otherwise, the 3D accelerator offers the same hardware specifications and clock speeds as 3dfx’s original product and all of the same performance characteristics.