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New Voodoo5 Drivers Released
6:00 AM | Lucian Fong | Comment on this story
After a long period of silence, 3dfx Interactive has finally released updated drivers for their Voodoo5 5500 PCI video card that was released last month. This update is available through the auto-update feature in the 3dfx MacTools control panel. According to posts by Brian Speece in the XLR8YourMac and 3dfxgamers forums, improvements include enhanced Quickdraw support and enabling both VSA-100 chips in "most legacy Macs". He also had this to say: Some sleep issues are fixed - but there are still others.
Not fully carbonized.
There are definitely some Quickdraw enhancements.
V3 is - for the first time - recognized by the 3dfx MacTools Control Panel. Therefore this is the first time the unified version recognizes V3's, V4's and/or V5's and presents the user with the appropriate options accordingly.
Frankly there's a lot more stuff we're working on but we didn't want to make you guys wait any longer for a release either. Figured you enjoy these enhancements while we work on the next rev. This is the light at the end of the tunnel that Voodoo5 owners were looking for. The Mac 3dfx team had been keeping a low profile after several of Speece's posts were modified by hackers in the 3dfxgamers forum. No mention of speed enhancements was made, but presumably research in this direction is being pursued as well as future Mac OS X-native support.
Voodoo3 owners can rejoice as well, as driver support has been unified (ala nVidia) and they can now take advantage of some features (2D and QuickTime acceleration) that have been missing in the beta drivers. However, some have experienced problems installing the new drivers over existing Voodoo3 drivers, and caution is urged -- always keep a backup of your ROM file when 'flashing' (updating) your V3 card.
You can also download these drivers from the link below. Make sure that you follow the instructions completely; it takes 2 reboots to fully update your V3 or V5 card.
Update: While the above comments are a direct quote from Bryan Speece, he has asked us to note that the 3dfx drivers are not being 'carbonized' but in fact re-written to be Mac OS X native. He was using 'carbonized' to explain this move in terms that a previous poster would understand.
 Download Mac V5 5500 Drivers 1.0.8 (1.8 MB)
 Voodoo5 5500 PCI Preview
3dfxgamers.com
3dfxgamers Forum Thread
XLR8YourMac Forum Thread
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