The Voodoo5 carries a wide range of 3D features. First of all, we're going to talk about the meatiest feature, the feature that places the Voodoo5 apart from the rest, the T-buffer.

A simple explanation is that 3dfx T-Buffer technology is borrowed and modified from an expensive real-time rendering technique, the Accumulation Buffer, that in turn was inspired by non-real-time techniques in ray tracing. With the Accumulation Buffer, each element is rendered and combined multiple times (usually 16 to 30 renderings of slightly different images) to get the layering of effects that creates the final composited image. With its use of multiple buffers, the T-Buffer will work in a very similar fashion to an accumulation buffer but in real time on your PC. As most of the dramatic visual effect is achieved in the first four to eight 'layers', a close approximation of the Accumulation Buffer technique can be achieved in real time by cutting down on the number of repetitions, bypassing the accumulation step and also by applying particular effects to only a selected portion of an image instead of re-rendering the whole image to add effects to only one part. That is just what 3dfx has done.