Anyone can own the best graphics card, but not everyone can afford the iconic 3dfx Voodoo 5 6000 graphics card. However, this unreleased gem doesn’t come cheap. The card is currently listed on eBay for $12,600, with a few more days of bidding until the sale price is known. A few days ago, when it was “just” $5,500, I thought the price was remarkable.
The Voodoo 5 6000 was the last graphics card produced by 3dfx, so it’s a worthy artifact, but it never made it to market. This is on par with EVGA’s unannounced GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card and the Voodoo 5 6000 has more history and it will be interesting to see what the highest bidder offers. .
As a Twitter user discovered Rechwerg (opens in new tab)a graphics card enthusiast and collector has put up a prototype of the Voodoo 5 6000 at auction. Ebay (opens in new tab)Unlike the Voodoo 5 6000 Replicant we saw years ago, this is the real deal. With six days left in the auction, the coveted graphics card could end up selling for a pittance.
This is a Voodoo5 6000 revision 3700A prototype with a full PCI rework. According to the eBay listing, his Jindrich (Hank) Semenec, a 3dfx engineer, personally reworked the graphics card to work stably in FSAA 8x mode. The seller reportedly tested the graphics card and said it was “steady at 8x.” He also claims that this prototype is from the late stages of his 6K prototype project and that most of the bugs have been worked out as a result.
The graphics card utilized four VSA-100 processors at 166 MHz, each with 32MB 166 MHz SDRAM. Additionally, the Voodoo5 6000 is the first consumer gaming graphics card with 128MB of onboard memory. Unfortunately, the AGP slot was not able to provide enough power for his Voodoo5 6000 as the power requirements are so demanding. As a result, retail samples relied on an external power source plugged into an AC outlet. Nevertheless, some of his Voodoo5 6000 prototypes, such as those from eBay auctions, use his Molex adapters, others have Molex connectors soldered to the PCB.
The Voodoo5 6000 was a staggering graphics card for its time, but its high production costs thwarted its launch. Additionally, the graphics card used a multi-chip (four VSA-100 chips) design where his competing GeForce and Radeon models stuck to a single chip. Additionally, his 128MB of VRAM and external power brick was useless for the Voodoo5 6000’s purposes. In short, 3dfx eventually went bankrupt in his 2002, leaving only these precious unreleased relics of his Voodoo past.
