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3dfx Voodoo 4 video card in MXM format
- mouse_ 2y agolove this
- matthberg 2y agoMXM cards unfortunately seem to be incredibly niche and vendor locked with BIOs whitelists, but allowing for swapable GPUs on laptops would be amazing for e-waste reduction and upgradability. It's a shame the Framework laptops don't support them, it seems right up their alley. Cool to see a project messing with them though!
- matthberg 2y agoIf anyone knows of a guide or layman-accessible reference talking more about them (compatibility, bios hacks, part sourcing best practices) I'd love to hear about it.
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y agoMaybe but it doesn't matter because they're not using it directly. The card was AGP/PCI while MXM on the laptop is PCIe, so they had to create an adapter including a AGP/PCI-to-PCIe bridge. In this case, they shoved this graphics card with its adapter into a Dell Precision M4800 released in 2013 because they needed to run Windows XP. They also created another PCB as a PCIe 1x adapter to run it on desktops. The card was probably intended to work with a specific model of gaming or workstation laptop from 2000 but it's doubtful any made it past the prototype stage. Maybe Dell or Acer sold one or two models of it. (My Voodoo2's are jealous BTW.)
- mjg59 2y agoI think you're confused - this is a from-scratch new design, not an old prototype. There's no adapter other than the desktop mount, the VSA-100 is directly mounted to the board that plugs into the laptop.
- okasaki 2y agoI think as power consumption only gets worse for GPUs, external GPUs is the solution that makes the most sense...
- BizarroLand 2y agoIDK, we have all of the unused space behind the screen of a laptop. Why are there no attachable modules that take advantage of that? It would be ideal to have a PCIe Thunderbolt connector that allows you to attach a GPU that maglocks to the back of the screen while in use, and any manufacturer could make their own variations. Thunderbolt can easily send 100w of power. Wouldn't be on desktop scales but it would be enough to make me happy.
- okasaki 2y agoAdding weight to the screen makes it more awkward to handle, particularly on a lap. Same problem tablets with attached keyboards have.
- BizarroLand 2y agoThis is true to a point. In my mind this is ~4 oz. of extra weight, I feel like sufficiently strong hinges and just enough weight in the base would be fine for that little extra though.
- hulitu 2y agoOr better design ? /s
- MenhirMike 2y agoWill be interesting to see if AMD's Strix Point can perform. Basically, radically beef up the graphics unit in an APU. (Doesn't make it upgradable of course, but could offer a better choice for people that want a gaming laptop that's also an ultrabook)
- steelbrain 2y agoUnrelated to MXM but I've struggled with the same problem you described (swappable GPUs on laptops). The current solution I've settled with is to get a laptop with a pcie gen4x4 nvme slot, install an oculink adapter on it and connect my full size RTX 3090 to it. No performance diff far as I can see (oculink on pcie gen4x4 should have ~64GBps bw) and still super portable. and I can finally upgrade the CPU/display and GPU independently
- steelbrain 2y agoPosting a correction since I can no longer edit the original. It's actually 64Gbps (bits not bytes)
- windowsrookie 2y agoThe problem is it adds quite a bit of thickness to the device. The framework 16 solution where it slides into the back is better, but we will see how well upgrades are supported. Surprisingly the older iMacs are very upgradeable because of their socketed CPU and MXM GPU. I recently received a free 2010 iMac and was able to upgrade the dual core i3 CPU to a quad core i7, which then boosted the RAM limit to 32GB. I also grabbed an $8 FirePro M4000 MXM GPU from a dell laptop and flashed it for MacOS compatibility . This old 2010 iMac now has a quad core cpu, 32GB RAM, and a metal capable GPU running the current version of macOS Sonoma. It's running great, and I can essentially run every app on the machine without ever hitting swap, unlike my 8GB MacBook Air.
- msk-lywenn 2y agoWould you happen to have a breakdown on how to flash the gpu?
- windowsrookie 2y agoThis thread on MacRumors has everything you need to know. https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2011-imac-graphics-card-upgrade.1596614/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2011-imac-graphics-card...
- ce4 2y agoHa, I remember that thread! I did the same with a dumpster find in 2020. I saw the guy hauling and depositing it, so I asked and got it (2011 iMac 27" with maxed out specs at ordering time - radeon 9800, i7, 16gb ram, ssd+2tb hdd. Almost mint condition). It had of course 2 issues: - backlight was dead on one half of the screen - infamous radeon BGA soldering issue, intermittent glitches & os freezing when it had warmed up I resoldered the backlight connector (apparently broke off the pcb under mechanical stress) and swapped in a used $20 Nvidia Quadro that I had flashed with nick's hacked rom from the above thread. I did not want to do some hackintosh mods to the OS so i went with (iirc) mavericks and sold it on classifieds for $430 after noone in my circle wanted it. I was also able to sell off the mxm radeon 9800/2GB for $30, placed the ad just for curiosity about it's resale value in such a broken state. :) The money was just by-catch, the real joy always comes from resurrecting broken things (for me).
- nrp 2y agoWe had to develop a new interface for swappable GPUs to make the graphics card and mainboard co-planar. MXM requires the graphics card to be stacked above the mainboard, which results in really thick laptops. This is part of why MXM is largely dead for consumer usage and lives on mostly for industrial and embedded applications.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- sgerenser 2y agoWhy is this marked (2023) but the post is from May 30th 2024?
- userbinator 2y agoIt seems enthusiasts are quite interested in 3dfx GPUs for some reason --- lots of NOS parts with detailed documentation available? There was this not too long ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32960140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32960140
- blt 2y agoFor people of a certain age, 3dfx is iconic. As a teenager, you read a bunch of reviews about how great it was. This was before widespread broadband and there wasn't much PC gaming content on TV, so you didn't really know what it looked like. After months/years of saving you finally bought one, put it in your PC, started up Quake 2, and it was f**ing amazing. GeForce came along soon enough and made it obsolete, but never had the same mystique.
- sundvor 2y agoYup! And when V2 came out, I had two of them, if memory serves. The 3dfx Voodoo II was awesome for the longest time.
- dehrmann 2y agoI still remember being jealous of the kid at computer camp with the two SLI Voodoo 2s playing Unreal.
- dcanelhas 2y agoSLI being "scan-line interleaving" at the time. Not to be confused with today's "Serial Link Interface"
- theandrewbailey 2y ago> Not to be confused with today's "Serial Link Interface" Scalable Link Interface. And it's not available today either. The last cards that used it was the 1000 series. The 2000 and 3000 cards used NVLink, but that's disappeared from the 4000 series, too.
- SV_BubbleTime 2y agoI’m interested in that PCB. How many layers, min trace, and if it was blind/buried. Can’t seem to find any information on it. Looks like a nice layout.
- userbinator 2y agoThe pictures of the layout seem to have at least 4 layers I can see. Could be buried vias.
- SV_BubbleTime 2y agoHe wrote back, 12 layers with buried. You can tell right away it’s not 4 because it would REQUIRE at least 4 signal layers which means 8 layers with dedicated ground planes.
- sdz-mods 2y agoIt's a 12 layer board, 0.15mm vias, 0.05mm annular ring size, plugged and capped vias.
- SV_BubbleTime 2y agoYea ok, this is what u figured. Real small, pretty expensive. Looks great! I was getting concerned it was like 6 layer and I’m just awful at routing.
- mk_stjames 2y agoAmazing. Were the 3dfx chips just openly documented enough for this kind of thing to be possible with original information sources, or have these chips been reverse engineered to get to the point where a project like this is possible? I ask because in today's hardware, it's almost laughable to even expect a pinout of a GPU to be publicly disclosed.
- Rinzler89 2y ago>Were the 3dfx chips just openly documented enough All chips have always been documented well enough, since that's the only way for the board partners and system integrators to know how to build cards with them and write drivers for them as was common back then, so everything had to be well documented, same how we have datasheets today with all the low level registers, and application notes with PCB and code samples. The question is always how sticky the NDAs are for you to also get your hands on them, but since 3dfx went bust, the leaks are no longer a problem.
- mk_stjames 2y agoYes of course, hence my word 'openly'- I mean, at some point in the 90's designs started to get locked behind NDA's even just to get the docs. At the time of original manufacture (99/00?), if you were a company making cards, I assume the documentation of the Voodoo 4 was locked behind an OEM agreement? And then at some point that information has leaked out onto the web? Curious to when and how that went down. I fear that so many things now will never get to that point of seeing public light.
- dark-star 2y agoThis looks cool. Is there a list of what laptops have (or had) MXM slots?
- clausecker 2y agoI have a Dell Precision M4800 and would like to upgrade the GPU to an Intel Ark A370M, which is available in MXM format. Does anybody know how to add this card to the BIOS whitelist?
- jadbox 2y agoThis is the kind of high-quality niche posts that makes HN for me. This is really an incredible hobby project that someone has also taken time to share details about.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tamimio 2y agoI have a laptop with an MXM slot and video card, keeping an eye on this, I might be able to upgrade it sometime soon!