It’s no secret that collectors of various rare items can pay a lot of money for them, and the electronics segment is no exception. Someone gives hundreds of thousands of dollars for Apple technology, developed back in the days when Steve Jobs worked in the garage, and someone collects rare smartphones. The user Loeschzwerg_3DC with the nickname collects unique and extremely rare video cards, but he decided to sell one of them – so the 3dfx Voodoo 5 6000 3700A engineering prototype went to auction, where the model is already offered for $ 5,500. And this is just the beginning – the auction will last for another whole week.
The attractiveness of this video card lies in the fact that it was developed by an engineer at 3dfx Interactive, which was founded back in 1994, and at that time was the largest manufacturer of graphics cards in the world. However, the company gradually got worse and worse, so that in October 2002 the former market giant declared bankruptcy, and NVIDIA bought most of the assets of 3dfx Interactive. Actually, some developments of the former market leader allowed NVIDIA to win over the audience, breaking out on the pedestal in video card sales. And now the engineering sample, standing at the origins of these manufacturers, is sold among enthusiasts.
Of course, it’s not entirely correct to talk about the characteristics of a video card of the last century at the moment, but it’s still worth understanding what the models of that time could do. The 3dfx Voodoo 5 6000 3700A video card supports a maximum resolution of 1366×768 pixels, supports DirectX 6 and OpenGL 1.1, and the graphics chip is made using a 250 nanometer process technology. Yes, that’s right – just twenty-five years ago, no one even dreamed of 3-4 nanometers. Accordingly, the size of the graphics core chip is 112 mm2, and the amount of memory that operates on a 128-bit memory bus reaches 32 MB. As a result, the video card was able to transfer data at a speed of 2.656 GB / s – by modern standards, of course, these are ridiculous numbers.
But the most interesting thing is that this video card, which, of course, has very meager computing power by modern standards, consumed up to 60 W of energy and required a 250 W power supply. And the point is not only in a rather voracious chip, which, due to the technological process, consumed a lot of energy, but also in the use of a configuration of four VSA-100 graphics processors located on one board. As a result, the manufacturer received good performance for those times and as much as 128 MB of video memory, significantly ahead of competitors.
During the bidding process, one of the participants announced his desire to pay $ 10,000 for a video card, but soon after that he withdrew his bid – now the model is again valued at $ 5,500.
Source: Trash Box
I’m Meagan Diaz, a news writer and author at World Stock Market. My main focus is on technology and stock market trends, and I’m passionate about helping readers stay informed on the ever-changing landscape. I bring extensive knowledge of the industry to my work as well as a knack for storytelling that makes my articles both accessible and engaging.
