Owners of the STB Velocity 4400 might actually scratch their heads and wonder what the difference between the Voodoo3 2000 is, in terms of appearance. Apart from the TV-Out chip on the Velocity 4400, the Voodoo3 2000's layout of memory chips etc… look remarkably similar (give or take a couple of capacitors). The final shipping version of the 2000 does NOT harbor an onboard fan, although a medium-sized heat sink sits firmly on top of the chip. Although there will be a TV-Out version shipping, the board we have here does not have this function.

After visiting STB's Dallas HQ in late February, we were told the yields were so strong at 143MHz that the original spec of 125MHz for the 2000 was going to be bumped up. With the graphics clock now set to 143Mhz and the eight on-board SDRAM memory chips set to 143MHz also, the board's theoretical maximum fill rate is 143Megapixels/283MegaTexels per second (a 'Texel' refers to a bilinear textured pixel) with a 6 million polygon/second throughput. Obviously with the clock speed being set to 143MHz, as opposed to 166Mhz and 183Mhz for the 3000 and 35000 respectively, the fill rate is still significantly lower as is the resultant performance. Then again for a 'low-end' and low-cost solution, the Voodoo3 2000 still boasts a fill rate performance way in excess of a single Voodoo2 or Voodoo Banshee (its predecessor). The 2000 also comes with a 300MHz RAMDAC, which isn't quite as nippy as the 350MHz found on the 3000 and 3500, but to be honest, the 2D is stellar enough (especially at this low price).

Voodoo3 - 3500 		366Mtexels/s
Voodoo3 - 3000 	 	333Mtexels/s
Voodoo3 - 2000 	 	286Mtexels/s
Voodoo2 SLI 	 	360Mtexels/s
Voodoo2 	 	180Mtexels/s
Banshee 	 	100Mtexels/s