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Recap: 3Dfx was a pioneer in personal computer graphics. The San Jose-based company got its start in the mid-90s making hardware for arcade machines before turning its attention to personal computers and plotting a new course for PC games with its powerful Voodoo chipsets.
The rise was swift and brief. The first 3Dfx Voodoo cards arrived in late 1996 and just five years later, Nvidia scooped up most of the firm’s assets. As a result, several of 3Dfx’s late-stage offerings never made it to market including the legendary Voodoo 5 6000.
It is rumored that only around 1,000 examples of the Voodoo 5 6000 were produced for testing purposes. They occasionally pop up on third-party marketplaces or through other collectors channels, although that’s becoming a rarer occurrence as time passes.
If you’ve been looking to add this grail to your collection, now may be the time to do so. An active auction over on eBay from a reputable seller for a reworked Voodoo 5 6000 has a little over six days remaining as of this writing and has already garnered a ton of attention.
According to the item description, the card has been reworked by former 3Dfx engineer Hank Semenec and is fully stable at 8X FSAA. This example is said to be one of the later stage 6K prototypes and thus, many of the bugs present in earlier cards were ironed out before this one was created.
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The Voodoo 5 6000 remains a visual marvel to this day due to its sheer size. The hulking card packs four VSA-100 processors (each with its own cooler) and 128MB of total memory.
Owning this piece of history won’t come cheap. As of writing, the auction has amassed nearly 60 bids with the current high bid set at $12,600.
The winner will have a tough decision to make: risk it all and put the card to use as it was intended, or simply admire it sitting on a shelf? What would you do?
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