While Falcon utilized both high quality components and extreme cooling with the SE Xentor, their Voodoo3 3500SE card employs only one of these methods. Compared to the SE Xentor's strip fans and active cooling, the Voodoo3 3500SE looks almost exactly like the standard 3dfx Voodoo3 3500. It's only by examining the board much closer that the differences become apparent. At 183 MHz, the standard Voodoo3 3500 is currently the highest clocked 3dfx card, and since its clock and memory speed are linked, 3dfx required fast 5.5 ns SDRAM to reach the corresponding 183 MHz memory speed. Where the Falcon Voodoo3 3500SE differs from the standard Voodoo3 3500 is both with its default speed and its selection of high-end card components.
The Falcon Voodoo3 3500SE ships at a default 200MHz speed, but still uses the standard 3dfx Voodoo3 3500 design and A/V hardware. The Voodoo3 3500SE's Voodoo3 chip is covered only by the standard heat sink, and I rapidly became a believer that the Voodoo3SE's chip is of a much higher grade than you'll find in a retail Voodoo3 3500. With our review Voodoo3 3500, the highest speed I could achieve (without active cooling) was 193 MHz. Conversely, this Falcon Voodoo3 3500SE whips along comfortably at the standard 200 MHz and does so without any special cooling. In order to achieve this speed, the card memory also needs to be of a higher grade than the 5.5 ns SDRAM used with the standard Voodoo3 3500. Again, Falcon does not disappoint and the ultra-fast 5 ns SDRAM of the Falcon Voodoo3 3500SE easily handles the 200 MHz memory speed.
Within the Voodoo3 product structure, Falcon's Voodoo3 3500SE might easily be categorized as a hypothetical Voodoo3 4000. The 3dfx Voodoo3 2000 clocks in at 143 MHz, the 3000 at 166 MHz and the 3500 at 183 MHz, and the Falcon Voodoo3 3500SE's 200 MHz speed represents more of a natural product evolution, rather than a drastic departure from the norm. The Voodoo3 chip is high-grade, the 5 ns SDRAM easily makes the cut, but I would have liked to see some sort of active cooling like the TennMax V3 Fighter included with the card. After asking Falcon Northwest about active cooling, I found that a TennMax cooler is indeed offered as a $29 upgrade to the Falcon Voodoo3 3500SE cards.
The 3dfx Voodoo3 3500 remains one of the fastest 16-bit cards, and Falcon's SE version simply takes these performance figures to the next level. The Voodoo3 3500SE can generate up to 9 million triangles, and has a 400 Mtexels/second fill rate. It should be noted that its fill rate is greater than that of the Falcon SE Xentor. In fact, Falcon's Voodoo3 3500SE joins the NVIDIA GeForce 256 as the first cards to hit the 400 Mtexels/second mark. Not only does the Voodoo3 3500SE offer the power of a 200 MHz Voodoo3, but it also has the entire audiovisual ensemble of the 3dfx Voodoo3 3500. These added features include the popular TV-tuner, enhanced A/V recording and editing capabilities, as well as the slightly eccentric A/V Pod. Add to this DVD hardware assist, TV-out, and full 128-bit 2D and you've got yourself a pretty mean multimedia device.