3Dfx Voodoo Memory Upgrade – 6MB Mod [video]
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However, as somebody who had a 6MB Voodoo (Pure3D from Canopus) back in the day I can tell you -- that extra memory is just about useless.
Found this article with some benchmarks. The initial batch of 3dfx games didn't target the extra memory of the 6MB cards, because they were a niche within a niche already. Some later titles apparently benefitted a bit, about 4% on average:
https://vintage3d.org/3dfx1.php
...although, unlike the author of the article, I'm not entirely sure it was due to the extra texture memory? IIRC some 3dfx Voodoo cards were clocked a bit higher than others by default? I know the Canopus Pure3D could be overclocked in software:
Same goes today, unless you're doing other things than just gaming. But top of the line cards come with 24GB VRAM, most games never come close to using that much VRAM.
It may take until the _next_ console generation for 24gb cards to get well and truly utilized, but the 12gb seen on Nvidia's current midrange cards may quickly feel anemic.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/dx12-optimization-cpu-gpu-...
That seems more because devs didn't do a good job in porting a 10 year old game (released in 2013) that ran perfectly fine on a PS3, which only had 256MB of system RAM and 256MB of VRAM. The PC TLOU port is not advancing the state-of-the-art in graphics, it should not be seen as a sign of the new normal.
It could have been avoided of course. But the difference still existed.
The pitfall is that if you're short on VRAM you can feel like you're moving through treacle near doors you don't even intend to open! All at 60fps...
In addition, undersized vram amounts is one of the ways in which Nvidia limits the usable life of their video cards.
I knew approximately 6 or 7 people with 3D graphics cards back then. And 2 of us had the 6MB Voodoo cards.
But then again it was just a very different time in 1997. Video games were already 20+ years old in the mainstream at that point. But the idea of buying a special "3D graphics card" for your PC was still pretty new. So if you were "crazy" enough to do that in the first place then spending another $50 on the "best" card was a fairly common decision.
Theoretically the extra VRAM on a 3Dfx Voodoo did that as well. But in reality not really. 3D accelerators were blossoming so quickly that old cards were obsoleted, fast.
Probably even more relevantly, games didn't have as many tweakable graphics options. Today's games are multiplatform and built to run on a wide variety of spec'd devices, from PS4/XBOne era hardware up to superpowered gaming PCs. If I've got an older card with lots of memory running a newer game I can keep everything else at medium and bump texture quality to high. Games in 1997 generally weren't really built quite that flexibly.
I consider it one of the everything changed moments. I played Quake a lot more than I probably should have. When I got my 3dfx voodoo daughter card, computer games pretty much changed overnight.
So was that pin left floating!? Bizarre!
I had a 16mb Voodoo 3 2000 back in the day which seemed like magic to me. It was tremendous; and paired with a single core 500mhz Pentium 3 it did what I remember in my head as 240 fps at native 4K on my 17" 1280x1024 CRT of the time without breaking a sweat.
...
I know. But I remember it like that, and that's what matters okay!?
dosdude1 upgrading the soldered on memory in a macbook air.
This article brought back memories of total regret in certain parts of my younger life. I wasted countless nights , endless hours. When I should of instead have been out parties and observing + inspecting as many female bodies, not just any female bodies but only the bodies that fit certain criterias such as they are my age or older and they fully consent actually almost desiring and demanding that I inspect their bodies. Last but not least 100 lbs and size 24 jeans waist. Maybe I wouldn't need to set these limts perhaps back in high school most fit within this limit as this was back in the 90s and people were generally thinner.
You have to understand back then being able to upgrade the memory or to overclock, essentially trying to max out the performance of your hardware, pushing it to the limit, was like the thing to do. Ok to start the frame buffer memory on a Voodoo graphics card was relatively simple. The card had a slot for a single 1MB or 2MB DRAM chip, and adding a larger chip would increase the frame buffer memory. However, upgrading the texture memory was more complicated.
The texture memory on the Voodoo graphics cards was actually stored on a separate card called a texture expansion card (TEC). The TEC connected to the Voodoo card via a ribbon cable and added an additional 2MB of texture memory.
What made the Voodoo memory upgrade interesting was that it required a fair amount of technical knowledge and skill. Upgrading the frame buffer memory was relatively easy, but upgrading the TEC required soldering and programming skills. It was not a easy task like I thought I had mad skills back then haha.
But think 3dfx was ruthless against modding like they won't try to answer any questions if it was touched