Key Takeaways
- Oscar Barea’s ambitious project involves building a new Voodoo graphics card in 2024 Barea is using a 3dfx VSA-100 GPU from the 2000s as a base
- The card will also offer modern features like HDMI and DVI ports
Graphic cards have evolved quite a bit over the past ten years, but those that have been around for some time will remember the true glory days, when you had multiple brands of cards with strange-looking boxes that had pretty good performance and were actually affordable. And while times have changed quite a bit, it looks like some are still happily stuck in the past, working on passion projects that involve old school GPUs.
Related
Look at how unhinged GPU box art was in the 2000s
Just what were they thinking (and drinking)?
While we’re just shedding light on this project today, with the news coming via Tom’s Hardwareit’s actually one that’s been going on for quite some time, originally dating back to 2022. This is when Oscar Barea originally shared on X for the first time that he’d be working with Ash Evans on a new graphics card that would make use of a 3dfx VSA-100 GPU.
From vision to reality, this is quite an ambitious project
This GPU was a key part of many of Voodoo’s popular graphics cards, a 250nm chip that saw its debut in the year 2000, and was used in cards like the Voodoo4 and Voodoo5. Barea is utilizing this old GPU to build his own Voodoo card, dubbed VoodooX. And although it’s been a long road with a lot of ups and downs, he has managed to take an idea and produce an actual tangible product.
And if making your own graphics card wasn’t enough, Barea is also going a bit further with his creation by adding an HDMI and DVI port, along with a toggle that can change the memory allocation from 32MB to 64MB of memory. Of course, you’re not going to be using this kind of card in 2024, and this is purely just the labor of love.
But if interested in seeing how the project turns out, you can follow Oscar on X and enjoy the whole journey. Barea has shared a steady stream of updates with images and details like designing and making the board, programming the BIOS chip, testing it — and quite frankly, it’s fascinating to watch the progress. Of course, if you’re looking to get a new graphics card for your gaming rig, then we have some great recommendations too.