3dfx V5-6000 prototypes


The original Comdex '99 V5-6000 display board, with some fans & heatsinks added.

V5-6000 Intel A0 "0700"

V5-6000 "Intel 1500" with power brick 

V5-6000 "2600 A2" perfect operation.

V5-6000 "3400 A3"

Story on the fans- Someone at 3dfx wanted to make a V5-6000 with "eye fans." The board ended up in the hands of a 3dfx collector by the name of Elvis whereupon something unfortunate happened and the board was damaged. The board was sent back to V6K godfather Hank Semenec who was unable to effect repair and was set aside for parts. The above board was repaired by Hank and he mounted the fans which is now in my hands.

V5-6000 "3700-A"

This 3700-A has been fully reworked for proper operation and internal power connector. You can click here to see the V5-6000 display properties in a new window.

A revision 3900 V5-6000, this one is the first prototype in the 3900 series and 1 of 2 known to exist.


Prototype V5-6000 fan assembly.

Prototype fan & heatsink combo shown installed on reworked on 3700- I'm told that this is the very first time one of these heatsink was ever installed on a V5-6000. There was a handful of evaluation units made and none were ever mounted on a board till now. As a bonus, the "3700" board that this combo is mounted on is the "test board" used by Hank Semenec (ex-3dfx engineer) to develop the "PCI rework." The PCI rework allows the V6K to achieve full speed stable operation in all anti-aliasing modes. The term PCI in this case refers to the boards internal bus that the VSA-100 chips pass data back and forth.

A semi-blank V5-6000 "0700" PCB that looks like it was used for testing the power supply circuits. The first V5-6000 boards used a huge Intel bridge chip on the PCB for controlling the boards internal PCI bus linking the four chips. However testing showed that the Intel chip have very poor compatibility with Intel motherboard chipsets and it was dropped in favor of a Hint bridge chip on the next revision.

While not a VSA-100 based board it was used in the V5-6000 development program! You are looking at the worlds biggest Velocity 100 (V3 at 143 mhz with 8MB) that is configured for dynamic load testing of the V5-6000 external power supplies. This was strictly an internal board, never intended for sale in any shape or form and I'm damn lucky to own it.

The only V5-6000 ever spotted with the unique 4 pin mini-Molex connector location at the top left is the Comdex '99 board, which wasn't even a functional board but a mock up for the press.

An idea how much lead time there was for the V6K program this board is dated 36-99!

Comparison between the early & later Voodoo Volts power bricks. (Yes I own all three) 

The two bricks on the left are the early 4 pin units with the one on the right used on the later single pin boards. There was some difficulty with the original supplier so 3dfx actually pulled power supplies from Galileo dual screen monitors that were being built by STB when 3dfx took over!

V5-6000 in action, revision 3700 A, date code 37-00, PCB #210-0391-001-A


Click the V5-6000 to enter site through main page.