The Voodoo5 6000 was 3DFX's answer to the GeForce II GTS. Taking advantage of Voodoo Scalable Architecture, the Voodoo5 6000 was an enormous card, resembling Creative's original SoundBlaster AWE32 full-length card. Indeed, the sheer size of the Voodoo5 6000 made it impossible to use in a MicroATX case, and even then, it barely fit in a standard ATX case, potentially causing all sorts of problems with airflow.

Fortunately, the Voodoo5 6000 was never released. About 100 boards were made, mostly for reference and testing purposes, but the Voodoo5 6000 technology was sold off to Quantum3D when 3DFX was bought by NVIDIA. Occasionally, a Voodoo5 6000 will pop up on eBay - one sold for nearly $1,000.

Functionally, the Voodoo5 6000 is no different from its 5500 counterpart, with three exceptions:

  • Four chips instead of two were on the Voodoo5 6000, which necessitated its enormous size. As pointed out in this node, the VSA-100 chip is an extremely power-hungry chip; 4 of them require 100 watts of power which brings us to our next point:
  • It required a external power supply. No sir, a puny 250W ATX power supply could not satisfy the demands of this enormous monster. Instead, a seperate power brick called "Voodoo Volts" by 3DFX, was provided to the consumer to plug into the back of the card next to the VGA-OUT connector. At first glance, it looks deceptively similar to a TV-OUT socket.
  • 128MB of VRAM, as opposed to the 64 (or effective 32)that the Voodoo5 5500 had

Had the Voodoo5 6000 been released on schedule, it would have crushed the then-competing GeForce 256; in today's performance terms, it would have beat a GeForce2 GTS but lost to a GeForce3. Unfortunately, the Voodoo5 6000 was delayed again and again, all the way through the end of 3DFX's demise. One would expect the successor to the V5 6000 to have both a 4-pin power socket AND an external power supply.

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