I don't really understand why a Voodoo 5 6000 has been called a Voodoo 5 6000....  

This is why I question the naming....

1 VSA-100 chip = Voodoo 4 (4500)
2 VSA-100 chips = Voodoo 5 (5000 & 5500)

so shouldn't 4 VSA-100 chips = Voodoo 6

IE. shouldn't the Voodoo 5 6000 be called the Voodoo 6 6500 or Voodoo 6 6000?

No,

The Voodoo 4 is the odd one here, it was an afterthought. 3dfx realized they had no low-end product and decided to release a single-chip solution.

If I'm not mistaking.

What @NitroX means is that maybe it should have been... ;)

Voodoo 5 - 4500 [Voodoo 4]
Voodoo 5 - 5000 [V5 32MB]
Voodoo 5 - 5500 [V5 64MB]
Voodoo 5 - 6000 [V5 128MB]

...I think? :-?

That naming scheme wouldn't have made any sense. They would have gone from Voodoo 3 to Voodoo 5 :D

The 'oh we haven't got a budget card, let's make a single chip card' thing probably happened before the cards got their names.

=\  *sigh*

Just another nail in the coffin for 3dfx it seems.... confusing product line numbering for consumers.

Well I agree with razrx on this one. Same chip, same basic design. If V4 is single GPU and V5 is dual then V6k should be V6.

IMO

Well, I have a slighty different opinion on this. I think it should have been this way : V4 4500, V4 5500 and V4 6500, since they are all based on the same technology.

Anyway, the 3dfx naming can be explained because of the SLI onboard. Cards with one graphic chip (no SLI) are V4, while cards with more chips are V5.

I don't find it confusing at all,higher numbers mean more power,easy enough.can't say the same for the green goblin from santa clara-their numbers are one BIG mess,not mentioning all the renaming cr@p.

razrx wrote on 15.08.08 at 01:40:15:

=\  *sigh* Just another nail in the coffin for 3dfx it seems.... confusing product line numbering for consumers.

I highly doubt this would've been a contributing factor. I do think that V4 looked like a bit of an afterthought, but ignoring the V3/4/5 thing, simply looking at the model numbers give you a reasonable indication of what to expect when comparing them to each other.

I think it's a pretty ordered naming system in comparison to what has gone by over the years. Starting off, I know when AMD went with their PR-Rating style for their Athlon CPUs it confused a lot of people who weren't aware of the difference between the model and the clockspeed. Since intel changed their focus from raw MHz they too adopted what I think was an even more confusing model scheme. It took quite a while for me to get used to the new model numbers, and while relatively unavoidable, it was still a massive pain to get used to.

So comparitively, it's not so bad. I can't say that 3dfx's marking in the later years was any good, but as far as model names go, it's by far not the worst in my books ;)

Edit: The real question you need to ask is - why did they adopt those specific numbers in the first place?

---dens

Well for the VSA100 they named them all, but i was wondering about the VSA101 and what would the naming scheme for the cards would have been we can just speculate:

V4 4000 = 1xVSA100 16Mb SDRAM (143-166mhz)
V4 4200 = 1xVSA101 16MB DDR/SDRAM (166mhz-200mhz)
V4 4500 = 1xVSA100 32Mb SDRAM (166mhz)
V4 4600 = 1xVSA101 32Mb DDR/SDRAM (166-200mhz)
V4 4800 = 1xVSA100 64Mb SDRAM (166mhz)
V4 4900 = 1xVSA101 64Mb DDR/SDRAM (166-200mhz)
V5 5000 = 2xVSA100 32Mb SDRAM (100-166mhz)
V5 5200 = 2xVSA101 32Mb DDR/SDRAM (166-200mhz)
V5 5500 = 2xVSA100 64Mb SDRAM (166mhz)
V5 5600 = 2xVSA101 64Mb DDR/SDRAM (166-200mhz)
V5 5800 = 2xVSA100 128Mb SDRAM (166mhz)
V5 5900 = 2xVSA101 128Mb DDR/SDRAM (166-200mhz)
V5 6000 = 4xVSA100 128Mb SDRAM (166-183mhz)
V5 6500 = 4xVSA101 128Mb DDR/SDRAM (183-250mhz)
V5 6800 = 4xVSA101 256Mb DDR/SDRAM (183-250mhz)

What do you guys think?
I resembles the nvidia naming scheme starting with the GF4 series.
Just my 2 cents on the matter.

Actually, there is a V4 4000 prototype but it has a VSA-101 with SDR-SDRAM.

Daytona was meant as a low-cost oem chip so you probably wouldn't have seen high-end versions. (But if there would have been, they would most likely use SDR-SDRAM because of the bigger width of the memory bus. (DDR: 64bit, SDR: 128bit))

Regarding the daytona i read somewhere that they were going to make a quad chip model so i guess that would have been an intermediate flagship until specter would have replaced it.
Like i said we can all speculate on what would have been if 3dfx hadn't closed shop and if these products reached the shelves.

PS. Also something of curiosity for me is what would have they named the V5 5500 AGP4x (1.5v) models or just add the AGP4x spec on the box...

Where did you read that?

Quote from Gary's v56k faq
"V6K Trivia (Some from Hank Semenec, ex-3dfx troubleshooter and lab rat)

1) Daytona related - 3dfx had plans to make a V5-6000 utilizing Daytona chips. The Daytona chip was made with a smaller micron die process with lower power consumption and lower cooling requirements. The Daytona chips would run easily at 250+ mhz"

Don't if it's true but would make sense to use theese chips on all their line becasue of higher clocks and less production costs due to die shrink.
Also found i found something here http://www.3dfx.cz/3dfx.htm to support the VSA101 naming scheme.

NitroX infinity wrote on 15.08.08 at 01:26:06:

That naming scheme wouldn't have made any sense. They would have gone from Voodoo 3 to Voodoo 5

Well i think that was the whole idea from the begining. Why i say this because the V5 incorporates all the feature of V2 & V3 combined plus more. They took the two names 2+3=5
This happened in other cases previous with the Apocalypse 5D that was an Apocalypse 3Dx + the 2D part similar to a voodoo rush. No 4d or 6d would have made sense...
Also later on with a totally different type of product the well known Winamp they used all the best characteristics of Winamp 2.x and Winamp 3 when they created Winamp5. Also here no Winamp4.
Back on the Voodoo naming scheme the V4 being an later product they thought they'd fill two gaps: one of the low-end products in their new line-up and one in the generations of Voodoo's.
So i think. Please correct me if my chain of thought is out of order...

IMHO, going along with the Key Feature advertising they were focussing on, I'd say the Features the Voodoo5 offered over the Voodoo4 (SLI, all T-Buffer Effects,  "full" 4xFSAA) made them call it Voodoo5 instead of Voodoo4.

And since a Voodoo5 technically not only offered those Features over the Voodoo4, but also offered theoretically almost 100% more performance due to the 2nd VSA-100, the decision at that time IMHO made sense.

No other manufacturer ever released two Products inside a single Product line with ~100% performance difference, let alone with additional features from another.

Voodoo6 IMHO was out of the question (even for the -6000), since it relied on the same technology and just extended it (apart from 8x FSAA, no different feature set, just potentially double the performance)

They could have done it, but those were still Gamers creating cards for Gamers, unlike NVidia which (successfully) won many technically inferior setup battles with marketing alone.

I also think that Voodoo6 for the 6k would have no made sense for the same reasons. Plus if we look at the 3dfx naming scheme since it bought STB they started with V2 1000 then the V3 1k, 2k, 3k & 3500 then jumped to V5 5x00 so there was no 4xxx cards that is were the V4 came in.
Well if compared to nvidia then we find a lot of products with different core specs within the same generations take the gf4mx for instance i had none of the characteristics of it's big brother the gf4ti and but it was marketed within the same product line also if we look at the more recent nv marketing names you get a headache ( 8800gts with 320/640mb 80 core & then 512mb G92core) generations a year apart.  They release products faster then their marketing team has time to name them :) this IMHO is also one of the reasons it outpaced 3dfx and the bought them out.
Also if 3dfx would have made till they released the 6k i don't think it would have saw the success it has now-a-days. Why because of it's high cost, full length pcb, no dvi or tv-out feature (typical for high-end products) and of course poor performance. You have to take into account that a lot of people "play" 3dmark and the gf had better results.
Still 3dfx lives on in our hearts and minds...