The Board
| The 3500 TV board most closely resembles the 3000, however the resemblance isn't carried much farther than sharing a similar heatsink, which is black on the 3500 and silver on the 3000. The 3500 features eight 2MB SDRAM chips, with six located on the front of the board and the remaining two on the back. The board features two voltage regulators, one near the AGP connector in the same place as the voltage regulator on the 3000 and another one on the opposite end of the board for the FM/TV tuner. | |
| Just south of the second voltage regulator is a Micronas MSP3430G sound processor for converting the FM/TV input sound signals. The Micronas chip also drives the two audio interface ports at the top of the card for interfacing with your sound card. | |
The 3500 makes use of a Phillips made FM/TV tuner that takes up the majority of the "real estate" on the 3500's PCB. The FM/TV tuner features both coaxial FM and TV inputs that connect directly to the shielded Phillips tuner. Because of the tuner the 3500's layout is more densely populated with capacitors than the 3000 and 2000, however 3dfx kept the length of the 3500 equal to that of the 3000, only increasing the height of the card by about an inch.
| The card features no VGA output, rather a 30-pin Plug & Display output port which has been used for Flat Panel displays in the past but now connects to the 3500's "break-out-box" which contains a split cable for an analog VGA input. | |
| The P&D port is powered by the Xilinx 9572XL controller that also functions as a sort of bridge between the video capture and the Voodoo3 chip itself therefore allowing 3dfx to leave the Voodoo3's current design unmodified while adding support for a FM/TV tuner and video capture. In theory the Xilinx 9572XL should be able to drive a Digital Flat Panel display off of the 30-pin P&D port on the board. | |
However nowhere in 3dfx's specifications does the 3500 boast support for the technology, and without the means to test compatibility you can only assume that it doesn't support it. One interesting thing to keep in mind is that the original 3500 spec called for support for the LCDfx digital flat panel connector that 3dfx was going to make use of, however the changing demands of the market forced 3dfx to forgo the flat panel support in the final production design.
Although the 3500 board we reviewed was an AGP version, the design could theoretically be put on a PCI card, whether or not 3dfx would think about something like that is another question. There are a number of factors that need to be taken into consideration if 3dfx is interested in pursuing such a venture. Designing a PCI 3500 would take engineering resources and time that would have to be more than justified by the demand for such a product, so 3dfx would have to investigate the demand for a $250+ PCI gaming card with support for video in/out. At the same time, a 5V PCI version would obviously generate more heat than a 3.3V AGP version, and with the already "toasty" nature of the 3500, a PCI version may pose some heat problems. It's up to 3dfx, but it is possible.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
1 Comments
View All Comments
Ashlee Wolf - Wednesday, August 5, 2020 - link
I have bought 2 Hyundai SDRAM for my PC and they are working pretty amazingly. But I have issue with the price because it is so much high. I always visit https://awriter.org/essaywriter-org-review/ website to read authentic reviews online. I was thinking to buy 4 but it was out of my budget.