We consider a Navier-Stokes-Voigt fluid model where the instantaneous kinematic viscosity has been completely replaced by a memory term incorporating hereditary effects, in presence of Ekman damping. The dissipative character of our model is weaker than the one where hereditary and instantaneous viscosity coexist, previously studied by Gal and Tachim-Medjo. Nevertheless, we prove the existence of a regular exponential attractor of finite fractal dimension under rather sharp assumptions on the memory kernel.