3DFX Voodoo Rush 1997  

Your intro was literally my childhood - Compaq Pentium 200MMX 🤣

Your channel is a true Alladin's cave when it comes to old hardware (and software).

Seeing and hearing Windows 98 doesn’t seem so 1997 to me. :-)

I had a Pentium 166 my parents got in late 95 early 96. Always tough it was an MMX machine, very surprised to find it didn't exist back then, so a 166 is. Even without the MMX revision, everything just checks out. When bought the machine did cost what will be 3000 euros without counting for inflation and came with 16mb of RAM default, Dos 6.22 and Windows 3.1 I always heard about the "magical Vodoo, which will let you play Tomb Raider at max settings and it looks real", but at 11 years old, there is no way I could afford that, or convince my parents to get something only used for videogames... It was so expensive! My first experience with 3D games was way back in 2006-2008 and by then it was a Linux machine (Because XP sp1 sucked for DOS games), an old Firend gave me an already old TNT Riva so at the time It was more about playing those weird free games preinstalled with Linux than anything else.... and Quake. So.Much.Quake 1 & 2

I've played computer games since 1980 and the 3dfx cards were the absolute watershed in 3d graphics. They were the start of what we have today. There was a competitor as I remember but can't recall, was it ATI?

Yes! That’s my first self bought video card in 1997. Before that card, I was constantly receiving slightly faster hand me downs from my fathers colleagues and friends, which helped me until that moment. I’ve been saving for about a year to eventually pay fl 139,00 (Dutch guilders) at the Dutch Computer Land in Nijmegen, to finally receive my Helios 3D Voodoo Rush 3D acceleration card. At this time, my 9 years old self, was completely blown away because of what my computer was able to do. Almost every game you’ve played in this video, and a lot more, has been played on my computer. You should’ve seen the look on my face. Those were the days! 🥰 Thanks for this lovely walk down memory lane. It was a blast! --------------------- To whom it may concern and think it’s interesting, my PC back then had the following history: My PC was based on an Intel Advanced/EV Socket 7 motherboard, with COAST (256KB) and the on-board SoundBlaster Vibra, which was able to play its sound through the PC speaker! This configuration eventually got to play with an AWE 64 Value that I got from my dad, after he’s upgraded his computer with a Soundblaster Live! My PC’s CPU has been upgraded a lot of times. From a Pentium 75MHz, to a 90MHz, 120MHz, 150MHz, to eventually end up with a 166MHz CPU. Man, that thing was blazing fast! Especially after the memory upgrades from 16MB to 64MB, and being “stuck” on 48MB for a long time in between. I had a few Buslogic and Adaptec SCSI cards cross the PCI bus. Just to be able to use with a Toshiba 4x) and Matsushita (8x) CD-ROM drive, 2x 1GB SCSI double height 3.5” disk drives (those things were noisy!). All of those components were hand me downs from computer and gaming enthousiasts.

"'Carmageddon', for example, is a game that we used to play A LOT when we were kids." Oh my :D

I had one of these cards. I used it for a while and then ended up getting a Voodoo 2 later. It was the first 3D card that actually worked for what I wanted.

I still have my Voodoo3 3000 AGP from my first computer in 1999. I recently rescued it from my dad’s lawnmower shed and now I want to rebuild my high school rig: 300 MHz AMD K6 64 MB of RAM. Motherboard (Can’t remember) The Voodoo 3 3000 with16 MB VRAM Windows 98 8 GB hard drive Soundblaster AWE64 CD Burner (somewhat expensive in 1999, but affordable) DVD ROM Drive with accelerator card for playing DVDs ZIP Drive to supplement 3.5” floppy Really loved that machine to play all kinds of games! It lasted me until 2003.

21:15 that would have spooked the crap out of me as a child.

Yakumo was a brand sold by the german KARSTADT enterprise - at least they sold their PCs under that name in the 90s. It seems that Yakumo was a reseller from Braunschweig Germany.

Compaq was never known as 100% IBM compatible, they were somekind of IBM compatible. Compaq was more popular for business and science applications than for gaming. But nice to see that you keep all these historic computers, I remember them very well, not all but many of them. Also your videos are a good reminder how quit computers evolved. I have started into IT in 1985, so I was somehow part of this process. Thank you for all these memories.

I don't remember much of 1997, I was too busy playing Diablo.

That Compaq is literally the same model that I borrowed from a friend in high school! He eventually asked for me to return it, though. Thankfully, a father of another friend gave me his IBM Aptiva with a Pentium 100MHz running Windows 95 for hauling their old water heater to the recycling center in the back of my 1970 Datsun PL521 (small pickup truck). I'm kicking myself for selling both of those things, but I still have the right front fender from the truck right now.

Oh wow, i remember how much i played Monster truck madness in demo

GPU JUNE!!!!! also on a pentium ditch the ISA sound card and get a PCI model, its nearly a 20% speed increase while its running

The machine I had from that time is sitting right next to me as I type this. The Compaq Presario 2240. I had to sell my custom built machine that I made because I needed the money (long story) and I couldn't afford another computer, but my step mother convinced my dad to buy it so I had a computer to do homework on. They let me do a payment plan to pay it back. I enjoyed that machine so much. 200MHz MMX AMD K6 which still is to this day incredibly fast, 32MB of RAM and a 4GB hard drive. Once I had saved up enough to build my next machine I sold it to my mother. It died long ago. About 5 years ago I started the search for another one to add to my collection. It was really slow going, but last Wednesday I finally got one again. Granted mine came from Italy because I couldn't find one here in the states. I'm still impressed with how quick the AMD K6 is. Now I'm trying to get a Creative Voodoo Blaster2 so the machine will be just like what I eventually had back then!

1997! This was one of the first computers I've ever had contact with, and the first Compaq I've used as a child at an Elementary School. My colleagues and I used to form queues to use this Deskpro back then. There were about 6 inside a room and 30 kids running like hell to sit in pairs (or even trios) in front of one. That was Sparta (and Brazilian public school's reality). Just ONE Deskpro had a multimedia kit (CD-ROM, soundboard and speakers), and I loved when I managed to sit on that one. Good old times!

Who would think just one card could handle both 2D & 3D graphics? Hehehe...

That empty socket seem to house an optional VGA to NTSC/PAL encoder like the Chrontel CH7002D. Some cards have it soldered.

I recently retrobrighted a Compaq keyboard like that for my Deskpro EP PC. They're nice keyboards, being semi-mechanical, having full-rollover anti-ghosting, and also being nice and heavy thanks to a thick steel plate under the membrane itself to make it more weighty and act as a stable base for the keys.

Wow, sure took me back. My journey to a 3DFX was a great one, and I stuck with the cards and the upgrades until they were no more.

Never ever tried Rush in my life. But I was quite happy with the banshee! Great video, thank you! Speaking about S3 and 2d cards, it would be interesting to see a video from you about the latest 2d acceleration cards and video games from 1992-1998 with textured 3d, but no 3d acceleration support. All those SVGA and VGA games that tried to fit their polygonal models with unfiltered textures into abilities of CPUs of the time, like Strike Commander, Tie Fighter CD, Terminator Future Shock, etc.

Recognize that mitsumi cd-rom any time

It was in early 1997 when collecting my P200 MMX with 64MB of RAM and SB AWE 64 from the store, when I had my first encounter with a 3Dfx Voodoo card. Moto Racer was the game showcasing the performance. From that moment, I knew I had to have one. The Madness games were all using the Direct3D API, so the 3D graphics seen in Motocross would have looked similar on any other card from the time, such as PowerVR's PCX2 and Rendition's V2200 (all of which I still own). Did you know that Moto Racer's D3D hardware acceleration features are those which are pre-DirectX 5.0? DirectX 3.0 was the latest API version at the time of the game's release.

Once i installed my first sound blaster sound card i cried , followed a couple of years later when i got my first 3D Card.. Good old days.

One of my favourite cards of all time, LOVE the Voodoo Rush!

Great video! Certainly don't seem the Rush covered much so that was awesome to see. Feeling the pain on games that didn't work or ran poorly I know the feeling of hunting drivers, settings and who knows what for hours hah.

I got a box of junk a couple weeks ago with a badly damaged Compaq socket 7 board. All connectors were ripped off along with a couple SMT components. It's up and running again after I put a few hours into it. I wasn't able to find any information on this board until something made me watch this video again. Turns out it is the exact board you have in your DeskPro 2000. I haven't yet figured out how to set up the harddisk to get a Bios setup though.

(slight tangent) oh yeah! Moto racer was lots of fun! My brothers and I have fond memories of trying to get the best times around the tracks. Played tons of it in the early 2000's on the old AMD athlon PCChips (possibly the pcchips M-863G?) family pc - I don't recall if that system had a discrete gpu in it - if not it may have been an SIS mirage onboard solution. It was the only system in the house at the time running windows - all the other boxes ran OS/2 WARP

I really like 3Dfx videos like this. Keep those videos comming 🙂

Oh man, thank you for this video! Because i finally remembered the brand of my first CRT-Monitor that i searched for so long and (and obviously never could remember the brand name). And yes, it was a YAKUMO 14-inch 800x600 :-) (Same brand as on your BIOS Chip on the Voodoo Rush). And great video as always, i love seeing these kind of machines in action. My Voodoo1 (no Rush) is a Digital Equipment Venturis FX-5166s (P166 noMMX with a Diamond Monster 3D) - I love that thing! :-)

Fiiirst!! I love 1997, mmx and 3dfx, just perfect time for pc gaming

Great rig! a 3dfx card and a MMX cpu is something that I want to try to put it together some day and also play CMcrae which is a really cool game, I played it some years ago. Great video and it is so cool that your videos are back :D

Love the DeskPro 2000!! I recently picked up 4 of these machines and have had a lot of fun restoring them.

Loved the video, very nice and detailed, thanks. For carmaggedon I am sure you will love it the banshee; it working very nice fast and zero issues, with nice graphics. Back in the days I played it too much on the banshee and in v3. Just try to find the required patches.

I repaired a Voodoo Rush for a friend the other day. And yea the OEM drivers are stupid for the Single Plane board. Took me a while to figure out that the drivers where factory overclocking the card. Single plane has the memory clock set to 72Mhz and the Dual Plane has it set to 58Mhz. The clocks can be changed in the Promtn.inf file before installing the drivers. Search for MCLKFrequency,, in it, in the single plane oem driver its sett to 72, in the dual plane it set to 58. Pretty nice so you can have any custom driver you want ready to install that works with your Rush card. You can also search for vrushtweak_1.13.zip on google, theirs a program that will change the 3 reg keys for the frequency's if you like to do that. But I cant understand why they factory overclocked the Memory to 72Mhz, as fare as I can tell its the Frame buffer memory shared with the Alliance ship and thats where the problem lies, it just cant take it. The only information I can find seems to suggest the AT25 ran memory at 45-50Mhz but not sure.

Those who are particularly good with hard modding the V Rush can be upgraded to 8mb (4mb+4mb on the Voodoo side) provided one can source the appropriate EDO chips and take care of the timings ect plus there is no traditional vbios to worry about. The 2D side of the card should be left alone as most only topped out at 2mb anyway and were often the source of the reduced performance as well the reduced clocks on the Voodoo side.

I remember my Pentium II with a VooDoo 2 that came with demo disks for Outlaws and Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II. Good times.

Excellent video! Definitely my kind of subject matter 😆 The Rush was an interesting in-between solution, just maybe not a great one. Also I had those exact speakers growing up! Man I wish I still had them. They were great!

Moto Racer was awesome! :D

I have a Voodoo Rush in a 486DX4 100 MHz PC 😁 and it works. The best thing I've dug out for the old thing. But not everyone has a configuration like that.😂

Excellent video and very thorough! The Voodoo Rush was the first 3D accelerator I ever had, and yeah, it was quite buggy back in the day with kinda not great performance.

Yeaaa!! I have oldy Deskpro-2000 with P166MMX cpu + 32ram + 3dfx voodoo)) Good machine)

The first S3 cards to offer some 3D acceleration features were dubbed 3D decellerators because some games run faster with software rendering, so goo to upgrade to a 3DFX card for this build

My dad got me the Intergraph version of this card for my 17th birthday in late 1997--the Intense3D Voodoo (Rush). It was paired with an IBM Aptiva with a Pentium MMX 200 and 48 MB of RAM (a lot of RAM for the time). It has the same Alliance AT25 2D chipset, and probably the same limitations as the card in your video. This should have 6 MB of VRAM (4 MB of frame buffer and 2 MB of texture RAM), and it should be able to play most of those early 3D accelerated games at both 640x480 and 800x600 with somewhat decent frame rates, even with a Pentium MMX 166. In my experience, the card worked perfectly, with almost everything I threw at it. 800x600 is hit or miss, depending on the game, but I could play both LucasArts' Jedi Knight (D3D) and GLQuake at 800x600 with this card. I still have this same video card and IBM machine to this day, still running Windows 95 flawlessly after 24 years. I ran into a couple of issues with the Intense3D Voodoo: the first was that the older drivers report only 4 MB of VRAM in the Display Properties dialog. Later drivers fix this, correctly reporting all 6 MB. The second issue was with system power management. As for the weird graphical anomalies you are experiencing with this video card, I had to disable power management in the IBM BIOS in order for the 3D chipset portion to work properly. Perhaps doing this with the Compaq machine may solve the problem, but I can't be sure--my IBM machine's power supply can only do 145 Watts, and I'm not sure about how that power is split between the rails. The card came with Turok 1, Moto Racer, and Jane's Longbow FX. Turok and Moto Racer ran great, but Longbow FX was a slide show. Keep the videos coming! If you can find the extremely rare Obsidian2 X24 (a 24MB Voodoo2 SLI combination in a single PCI slot), we'd love to see this! This was over $600 new in early 1998, though.

Incredible! 166MMX + Rush was my first very own personal PC, I had no idea about hardware or computers in general at the time so hunting those Rush patches in 1998 with no internet was something… else :) I later learned nothing and upgraded to a Banshee

Gotta love 3dfx for bringing 3D to the PC, but man those early gen cards were a mess. :-) I had a Mystique for a while, and aside from having next to no memory (2MB) and only token 3D support, I really liked it. I could play Mech Warrior II with _textures!_ What else could you want? First real 3D card was a Voodoo 3 3500 TV, and it rocked my world. By then, all the driver madness was sorted out, it was a proper 2D/3D card, and the MadOnion / 3DMark demos were just a total trip. It was incredible. I couldn’t believe what my computer could do! X-D

13:50 I can’t say I’ve ever encountered a PC with 82 MB of RAM. Is it some oddball combination 64 + 16 + 2?

New subscriber here :) I just finished watching the video on how to low level format older hard drives from the 1980's in case i get one

Got two Rush cards and pretty happy to have them despite the reduced performance vs the more preferable V1 or V2 setup as they are so different from the norm. The MX versions are indeed a bit slower than those with the Alliance chip.

Nice :D

I had an AGP Voodoo card back in the day, and I frickin LOVED that thing! I worked my butt off cutting the whole neighborhood's lawn for a summer and get it, and I have been a spoiled little brat ever since!

Nice video and I had one of those Deskpros in the 90s :) It doesn't come with those JBL speakers. Deskpros are targeting business customers and Presario is Compaq's multimedia line. Those speakers could be bundled with some Presario models but by memory most of them are mounted on the side of the monitor rather than 'standalone'.

The year is 1997 **boots up Windows 98**

Ordered one yesterday, hope it goes well with my pentium 133 :)

I had Voodoo Rush on my PC and i had the same issue when i tried to install updated drivers. And the newer versions always hang when logo popped up. After multiple tries i discovered, that GPU speed in INI file was set too high. I don't remember now what was the correct value, but decreasing the speed of GPU worked. Finally. And then i bought Banshee... ;-) Long live people without problems. :-) I hope that helps. Anyway - keep up the good work. :-) And don't try to prenounce my surname ;-) TK

The Rush and its successor were pretty successful as OEM cards though, allowed manufacturers to include something with the much-desired 3DFX name in their products while minimising cost. Wasn't a great card but it had name rep and at the time 3DFX was all that mattered, Rendition and Nvidia just didn't cut it there despite their product being better. Not sure they sold many of them as add-ons, Voodoo2 was the only card people wanted in that market.

I have an at&t desktop that is a little older than that, but the inside is laid out almost identical!

14:35 Wow! I bought one of those 233mmx cpus brand new back in the day and it was amazing! I think i was running a cyrix cpu before that and the difference was incredible!

That was my first video card circa '99, I have very fond memories of it. However, no review/overview of ANY 3DFX card is nearly complete without Unreal, Unreal Tournament or any other game, using Unreal engine. It really made a good use of 3DFX's own Glide API and visual difference was way beyond just framerate. So - a big red dot for you.

There were dark blue versions of the JBL Pros that weren't available retail - I bought a few pairs new in box for $27 back in 2005 on eBay.

Back in 1997 I still had to make do with a 33 MHz 486 with a Paradise SVGA card. I played Duke Nukem 3D on it at 320x200 resolution and it was almost playable with my 16 mb of ram in the system. The framerate was pretty poor but I had a lot of fun with it.

They were decent machines despite being under powered. I used to have the exact same machine and it always ran smoothly like a low end Pentium II rather than a Pentium Pro @ 166MHz, it was always faster and better than other models of around the same speeds. I had 128MB RAM in mine. The drive bay covers have a habit of falling off when the clips break. I had a 52x CD ROM Drive and then I upgraded it to a CD RW which was very cool at the time.

Quanti ricordi!

my favorite era of computers, perhaps due to the fact that just in these years I had my first computer

I literally just realized that modern laptops with dGPUs work the same as a voodoo card, just backwards, so instead of the dGPU being in front of the iGPU, the iGPU ports through the dGPU so it can save power when it's not needed by turning off the dGPU

Nice video :-). Though i think Tomb Raider was actually running in software rendering mode as you can see the square texels (TR on 3dfx uses bilinear filtering) and the light banding from the 8bit palette :-).

That was revolutionary at the time, whether Pentium 100-200 or k5, k6, Cyrix. You plugged in a Voodoo card, suddenly you had a new PC and the CPU was no longer so important. the Voodoo 1,2 add-on and 3 Banschee were good solutions. The Rush rather not

Played Diablo and Diablo II with the expansion on Voodoo Rush on Pentium MMX @ 200 MHz.

If you still have that LCD with display issues, check the LVDS cable inside that goes to the panel. I had very similar issue and cleaning, reseating that fixed it.

Awesome video as always. However, 82MB of RAM.. How would that work, devided over two sticks? Or is that after deducting 14MB of shared memory for the onboard videocard, which is also an odd number by the way :) (64+32-14)=82 ?

I had my “own” drivers for this card, which I had created by mixing the files from several different driver versions (since some games ran with one, others with the other - and I believe I took the 3dfx glide files and put them inside the driver which worked with OpenGL).

I had Voodoo Rush in early-mid 1998. Have no idea what manufacturer, shiny gloss blue pcb (no TV outs). It was very frustrating experience as it was artifacting in about 30% of the games, especially in EA FIFA 98 which was my little brother's favorite at that time, but we couldn't enjoy it with 3d acceleration. Very soon I had to beg my parents again🙈 to replace it with Voodoo2 card, and the problems were gone, and was noticeable boost in performance.

Oh man, what a Rush! /dad joke Also, there's a Demo for Monster Truck Madness 2 on the windows 98 installation cd! On the demo track I like to play chicken with the train and watch the truck get launched sky high lol. You'll have to browse the disc, I think it's in an extras folder. Few other demos too. Motocross madness I think.

My first 3d card, the rush! My second, the banshee.

the first game I played 3d before having a 3d card was Sonic R, it had direct draw support, and direct 3d, the difference in performance from draw to 3d is night and day, same could be said for half life original, the 3d settings really made FPS count, but I was mostly used to the frame rate of Goldeneye and other Nintendo 64 titles

I still have my 1st 3D card, a S3 Savage 4 PCI, followed by a sidegrade to a Rage 128 on AGP, and forever kicking myself for not picking up a Voodoo 3 for £5 from a computer fair in the twilight of 3.3V AGP - as I still have the old wreck with 3.3V AGP somewhere. I really must get some retro-ing on my IBM PC330 P75 upgraded to P133 (I just happened to have a leftover P133 lurking). Thanks to a monitor the S3 Sav 4 didn't like, I thought it had died, so among a forest of 8MB Rage cards on ebay, I found a Quadro NVS 280 - a Geforce FX5500 on PCI - not sure if its super rare, or that great actually

Looking up the FCC ID seen on the PCB (I27MM-VI02A), it was registered by "Biostar Microtech Int'l Corp - I27 (Taiwan)" in 12/1997. fwiw :)

I can remember the Yakumo brand.

I tried carmageddon on my pentium 4 in high rez on win 98 using the 3dfx command even though I don't have a 3dfx card, runs perfect.

Like!

Awesome video. Does the Rush support 3d glide? I still run my VODOO 3 3000 these days. You should try UNREAL 99 game off the year edition.

19:40 could it be that Tomb Raider was running on the AT3D Direct3D core and not on the Voodoo side? Might explain it

I used to have the same computers, used the built-in 1Mb card for 2D and Rush as a 3D accelerator. was sufficient for games

I mean, I played MTM and MTM2 on a P233MMX Packard Bell back in the day, and this was the title that saw me buying an STB Velocity Riva 128 4MB card at my local Circuit City to get some pretty graphics. That said, the original onboard 2MB (S3 I think) video card was still able to play the game via software rendering, via the cpu, at well above 30fps... usually 60 or therein. This display of yours was some really bad performance for a 166MHz with MMX, being that it was a slideshow like that. I even played "online" via dial up peer to peer in software mode, and that was totally fine too... liquid smooth.

I loved MCM2

Glad I skipped the first couple of generations. Eventually got a Voodoo Banshee and it was very stable with excellent performance for the price.

I have a pair of JBL Pro 401508 001 🔊 that are yellowed and they need to be restored. 🫂 from 🇪🇨, my friend.

I have a Hercules stingray 128 in one of my rigs.

That Yakumo brand is a european thing, from germany, same place belinea monitors, and medion pc's originally came from.

When you are recording the screen, you should sync the camera to the refresh rate. If you can't do that, then you should use something like a Retro Tink to capture the feed directly. The amount of flickering is insane.

The combination of 2D and 3D was appealing to me back in the day - but the performance drawback made me shy away from it back in the day combined with the fact that my 2D card back then was pretty good. Better than the Rush.

Compacting the compaq?

🤗

My idiot friend, back then, he lived down "Tweed Grove". Which was funny, because back then we sold weed! So to us, it was "Weed Grove". And I had given him a PC, a frankenstein I'd hashed together, out of spare parts. Duron 900, 256Mb SD RAM and a VooDOo Rush! Or was it a Banshee? I can't remember! One of the two. It wasn't a real Voodoo, but it did 2D and 3D. Anyways, he was happy. He could play Half Life, Gp500, Soldier of Fortune, etc. But I remember thinking "it's not a good card!". As a guy with 100 PC's at the time, having V3's and TNT2's coming out my ass, I knew it wasn't cutting the mustard. But he was happy, which is all that counts, right? Hey it played the games! And thats all there is to it!

It seems this card really was... ...RUSH'd. YEEAAAAHH!

I nearly bought that exact same machine. By the time I decided I wanted it, the store was closing and they wouldn't sell it to me !

Try find out what that extra socket is for :)

Btw you can buy that Pentium badge new from eBay ;-)