Rare 3dfx Voodoo 5 6000 card for auction on Ebay right now for US $14,100

This storied quad-GPU prototype reportedly came from a later development batch that had the majority of the pre-production issues fixed but never achieved commercial distribution. Additionally, the seller states that 3dfx developer Hank Semenec redesigned this card to reliably handle FSAA X8. The gaming GPU industry was not as monopolized by two companies in 2000 as it is today. In addition to ATI (which would later become AMD's GPU business) and its recently released Radeon cards, Nvidia also had to contend with 3dfx's new Voodoo 4500 and 5500 cards, Matrox's G450, S3's Savage 2000, and the infamous BitBoys Oy's Glaze3D vaporware. Because of ongoing price wars, the competition was fiercer and consumers could find solutions for any budget. Photo Credit: AMD Sadly, 3dfx was one of the businesses that unable to adjust to the intense market competition and was eventually acquired by Nvidia. Before the takeover, 3dfx also intended to offer Voodoo 6 6000 cards with four GPUs in addition to its Voodoo 5 5500 cards with dual GPUs, but this never materialized. For the unreleased model, fewer than 1,000 prototype units were made; one of these is currently being auctioned off on Ebay. With 4 days left, the auction, which began on February 2 at US$0.01, is now at US$14,100. This, according to the vendor, is a very uncommon revision 3700A prototype that engineer Hank Semenec of 3dfx modified to support reliable FSAA X8. Additionally, this specific card is from a later development batch that has the majority of the flaws fixed. The SLI technology was invented by 3dfx, and the Voodoo 5 cards gained notoriety in their day for having several GPUs on the same board. Due to the GPUs being arranged next to one another, the cards were longer as a result, and the Voodoo 5 6000 were even longer. The card has eight memory chips for a total of 128 MB of VRAM on the top side of the GPUs. Naturally, the power demands exceeded what the AGP slot could provide, thus 3dfx intended to incorporate a separate power supply. In order to connect directly to a PC PSU, the card up for auction includes a "Voodoo volts" molex adaptor. Photo Credit: RetroTest: Voodoo Given the limited production run during the prototype stage, this model can be regarded as the holy grail by the majority of 3dfx lovers and enthusiasts. It will be fascinating to watch if the bid war can raise the value to more than US$20,000 in the ensuing days. The current bid may provide a rough approximation of the worth.