3dfx returns! NVIDIA Announces 233 Core Voodoo 590

Except in GeForce. The com on the official website with background image and LOGO logo to commemorate the loss of 3dfx, local time on April 1, NVIDIA also suddenly throw a blockbuster, announced the new card based on Voodoo architecture "Voodoo 590", with amazing With 233 cores, it is “absolutely ridiculous”. The two-core GeForce GTX 590 and Radeon HD 6990 are all floating clouds.

NVIDIA said that in the more than ten years since 3dfx was acquired, in fact, NVIDIA has always had a secret team with a team of former 3dfx experts. During the day, it is an NVIDIA employee who designs, manufactures, and promotes GeForce graphics cards. The acquiescence of the development of a revolutionary graphics card based on 3dfx technology. After a decade of double life, they are finally ready to show their achievements to the world.

Gary Tarolli, one of 3dfx's founders and chief scientists and still residing at NVIDIA, said: “We never intended to give up. Voodoo technology has infinite potential. The world has never recognized its true strength.”

He then showed "Voodoo 590" and explained: "We named it 590 because it is comparable to the GeForce GTX 590 in terms of fill rate, which is a key indicator of graphics performance. Both cards can be filled every second. At 7.77 million pixels, the only difference is that the Voodoo 590 was built using 3dfx technology a decade ago. This ancient architecture extends to the same height as the NVIDIA Fermi architecture. See how advanced 3dfx is!"

From the architecture diagram, Voodoo 590 integrates 233 VSA-100 chips (the last 3dfx Voodoo 5 5500 works only two), the core frequency is still 166MHz, each has two pixel pipeline, the whole card is also on Equipped with 7576MB of embedded SDRAM memory, each core 32MB, and a Tile Distributor.

Technically, the card does not have T&L, Shader, and other useless stuff. It fully supports the Glide API, 3dfx T-Buffer cache, 466x RGSS rotation grid supersampling anti-aliasing, and patented one-way single-loop multiple textures.

It even reintroduced the new SLI mechanism (different from the later named NVIDIA SLI), allowing two or even four cards to be connected in parallel, that is, having 932 VSA-100 cores at the same time, but the technical details are kept confidential.

Tony Tamasi, former director of 3dfx product marketing, revealed that Voodoo 590 also introduced some of NVIDIA's technologies. For example, the thermal solution originated from the NV30 and was appropriately expanded, but the power consumption situation is also not willing to say.

Tarolli declared: "The programmable shader is implemented in many ways. T-Buffer technology can achieve CGI-level depth of field, motion blur and anti-aliasing, and it only needs enough samples. The Voodoo 590 has 233 VSA-100 cores. There are 466 samples and the final quality of the graphics is enough to exceed Pixar's animation."

Do not believe? Take a look at Epic's DEMO – Samaritan with this Voodoo 590 and Glide API. Take it?

As for what is listed, it is initially expected to be April 1, 2012.