Voodoo2

The Voodoo2 is a 1998 imagined 3D graphics chipset the Californian company 3dfx Interactive.

Compared with its predecessor, the Voodoo Graphics, the Voodoo2 chipset can make a double bar (chip 90 MHz: 90 MHz, memory ) primarily show, by a doubled output of about 180 million texels / s was achieved. Furthermore, the chipset has a larger amount of texture and image memory ( texture memory: 4 or 8 MB image memory: 4MB ) address.

The functionality of the Voodoo2 has also been expanded compared to the previous version: the first time were, among others, trilinear filtering and single-pass multitexturing on a 3dfx chipset available. Was subject to criticism on the lack of support for 32- bit color, which was to be found at that time in comparable competitive products already.

Like its predecessor, was also the Voodoo2 a pure 3D chipset, it became a separate 2D card is required. Only in 1999 a 2D/3D-Kombichipsatz was developed Voodoo Banshee based on the Voodoo2. However, it existed before with the Voodoo Rush a 2D/3D-Kombination based on a Voodoo Graphics chipset and separate 2D engine.

The special feature of the Voodoo2 however, was the possibility of two identical Voodoo2 cards equipped with a small ribbon cable to a map of association (SLI mode). Through this building on the method of scanline interleaving Working Group of the image memory has been doubled (but not the texture memory ), could be so played with a resolution of 1024x768 pixels and simultaneously activated Z-buffer and the power in the other resolutions rose dramatically.

In an SLI configuration, a map calculated while the straight and a map of the odd rows, so that both cards were similarly busy.

To make effective use of a based on the Voodoo2 chip card, is at least a Pentium with a clock speed of 200 MHz needed, including the performance difference is marginal in a manner based on the Voodoo 1 card. For an SLI configuration it should already be a Pentium II 400 MHz or higher. However, SLI combo scaled with the computing power of the processor, as Transform and Lighting needs to be completely calculated from this. So you can still find yourself with CPUs at 1 GHz performance gains, although these did not arrive until about three years later to the market.

An accelerator card with a Voodoo2 in 8- MB version cost at launch in 1998 about 450 DM, the 12 MB ​​version about 600 DM