3dfx sent around the following on a recall of the few Voodoo5 5500's that shipped already, to minimize consumer returns. Here's the original story and this morning's follow-up.

After careful consideration, 3dfx has made the decision to bring back the Voodoo5 AGP products that have been shipped. 3dfx has a business model that allows us to maintain a limited number of direct customers, while still being able to maximize availability points to the end user. This means that the boards we have shipped were sent to less than a half dozen distributors, who we maintain a very close working relationship with. We are bringing the boards back to determine if those boards exhibit the same problem. We believe that the overwhelming majority of those boards will test out fine. We are taking this step to minimize any consumer returns through our retailers and to ensure that the products we ship will be of the highest quality.

A bit of follow-up for you guys on the surprise announcement by 3dfx that they are delaying the Voodoo5 cards at the last minute. Maarten dropped an email to Brian Burke of 3dfx. Here it is:

Shack: Why is this delay so sudden before the announced street date of the V5 5500 (May 26 if I'm not mistaken), shouldn't tests be done much earlier, this  seems rather last minute
3dfx: At this point, we are not certain that we do have a problem.  That will require more testing.  This is a very recent development that may be isolated to only a few chips and may not have existed in prior manufacturing runs.  It was discovered by quality assurance using their standard testing practices at our manufacturing facility. 

Shack: And what kind of pc hardware configurations are currently possible failing?
3dfx: If a problem exists, we will remedy the problem before it reaches the end user, so it is pointless to go in to that.

Thanks Redwood. 3dfx put out a press release stating that Voodoo5 is going to be delayed. They only mention the 5500 AGP in the press release, and I'm not sure if that's the only one they were going to roll out or something. Hopefully Maarten or Steve can get with someone at 3dfx to clarify.

3dfx Interactive® Inc. (Nasdaq: TDFX - news) today announced that it has temporarily delayed the release of its Voodoo5(TM) 5500 AGP. The company is taking this action to ensure that it meets its own high standards for product quality.

The company discovered that the Voodoo5 may be experiencing field failure rates at very low levels in certain configurations. The company is conducting further tests to determine whether a problem actually exists. 3dfx anticipates this action will delay product availability between seven and 14 days.

3dfx has announced their Q1 2001 results, ending April 30. While revenues grew from $40.4 million to $108.6 million, their net loss increased from $2.2 million last year to $12.4 million this year.

GamersDepot got a hold of the retail drivers and BIOS for the Voodoo5-5500 and puts it through the paces. Looks like the GeForce2 cards are still considerably faster.

Quantum3D has just announced that they will be putting out 8 chip, 16chip, and 32chip(holy fuck?)  VSA-100 Voodoo5 technology boards. Keep in mind the Voodoo5-5500 is just 2chips, and the 'monster' Voodoo5-6000 is a wimpy 4 chips.

Quantum3D focuses its development resources on building the most advanced configurations possible with 3dfx' technologies -including Quantum3D's new 8, 16 and 32-chip VSA-100 based AAlchemy systems- that target the most advanced segments of the VST market

After some digging, I came up with a PDF file which features a snapshot of the rackmount unit for you to look at (as compared to the Voodoo5-6000). Thanks JayZee

It looks like 3dfx is really getting frisky with their online battles with NVidia concerning the T&L and FSAA stuff. In fact there is a 4 page article on 3dfxgamers.com taking a long hard look at the GeForce/GeForce2 T&L stuff. Giving them all kinds of flack. Of course you also remember the 3dfx interview a couple of weeks ago which was pretty scrappy as well.

Even after a steady barrage of claims from NVIDIA regarding the importance of hardware T&L, the stated position of 3dfx Interactive, Inc., and other graphics companies is that T&L is still a future technology. Interviews with developers confirm that any appreciable implementation of T&L is still a couple of years away.

In the end the GeForce and GeForce2 are still running faster in the benchmarks in most cases than the V5-5500. The V5 is winning hands down though once you put on some of the FSAA action according to FiringSquad.

The guys at VoodooExtreme have gotten word via an email exchange from Bubba at 3dfx that we can expect to see the Voodoo5-5500 boards on shelves in less than a week. You can see some benchmarks of the card I did a couple of weeks ago here. It should be very interesting to see what happens with a V5 on the upcoming Thunderbird CPUs. Check it:

Relax bro. May 26th is all you need to know...

Beyond3D are the latest guys to take a close look at the V5-5500 image quality. They of course talk about the AA technology (heard of it?) and how you really need to see it in action to appreciate it.

One more testimony has popped up over at 3DHardware.net that the V5-6000 is really fast. 3dfx should actually be getting some press boards out in the near future so you can expect some benchmarks around here.

A little more coverage on the Voodoo5-6000 card. Super fast and super pricey, now we know it is both but when does the thing actually come out?

RivaStation (yeah, an nvidia fan page saying positive things about a 3dfx product!) SystemLogic, HotHardware, 3DSpeed, and HardOCP have some updated Voodoo5 benchmarks with the v1.0 retail drivers that will be shipping with the cards.

The CombatWorld guys have another look at the V5-6000 which was showing at E3 and causing quite a stir.

A number of people (Jake List being the first) pointed out this post by a E3 attendee with another eye witness to the speed of the V5-6000 boards from 3dfx (You can check out my impression, along with images here) . They are expensive as hell at $600 retail when they come out, but if you can afford it and happen to have the need for speed (and to burn cash) they look like the way to go:

I watched the GeForce 2 card at the Nvidia booth not a half an hour before run QUAKE (ick!) at 1024X768 about 45 FPS. Then I walked into the 3Dfx conference room and watched QUAKE (double ick!) running at 2048X1536 in FSAA X4 ... on a CPU over 200 MHz slower than the NVidia card was on ... running as fast - actually a little faster than the Nvidia.

Keep in mind though the 3dfx V5-5500 isnt even out for another couple of weeks. No telling when those 6000 boards will actually come out.

Here is probably the best example I've seen of what FSAA is capable of over at 3dfxgamers.com. It of course looks even better in person but this will at least give you an idea.

Voodoo Extreme has a new interview, talking with 3dfx's Peter Wicher about the whole GeForce GTS 2 vs. 3dfx's Voodoo5 "war".

Found this story on Yahoo News, where NVidia is saying they currently dont have plans for a Mac product of their new graphics technology "We are continuing to research the Mac/Apple market -- but at this time it does not look like we will be introducing a product to the Mac market". 3dfx will be releasing their Voodoo 4 & 5 for the Mac, just as ATI will release their Radeon256 products for that market.

Not really straight tech story, but related. Brokenpixel has reviewed a product of 3dfx. Not a Voodoo4 or 5 but rather an amazing..high tech..state of the art..Voodoo3 3500TV T-shirt. Yeah baby. This shirt comes with such amazing features as FSAA (Full-Side-Arm-Aeration) and T&L (T-shirt and Laundering).

Voodoo Extreme has a reply on an email sent to 3dfx on the possible use of DDR ram. 3dfx's Alf Covey explains that because the parallel running of multiple VSA-100 chips the memory bandwidth on the Voodoo5 with SDR is similar to that of a DDR GeForce. Be sure to go here for a far more indepth explanation.

3dfxgamers has new beta Win9x and Win2k drivers for the 3dfx Voodoo3 3500 TV videocard. The Win9x beta release is only for cards sold outside the US, the Win2000 release isn't.