3Dfx

jcastill

I just write this down to the memory of a great company that because of the wrong vision they crushed...

Renegade[CSR]

I'm not to farmiliar with what happened to 3dfx. Think you could give me the lowdown?

jcastill

LOL, actually yeah they were

jcastill

They start to have red numbers in their accounts, cause the Voodoo 3 was not selling (no T&L or 32-bit support) so they took out the V4 and V5, but they didn't have T&L, and the GF2 was better (not the MX one) so they continued losing money until nVidia appeared and told them that they would buy them and the rest is history...

Lucien

ERRRRRRRRRRRR Not Quite.It was bas biz decsions.When 3dfx stopped selling their chips to diamond etc and decided to buy STB.The delay of the VooDoo 5 by almost a year.The Voodoo 5 was supposed to compete with the first GF1 sdr card.If it was released when is was supposed to they owould have kicked NVidia' ass.But to the credit of NVidia they executed flawslessly.3dfx did not.

jcastill

Well that's true, Actually it was a lot of issues around it...

Zardon

I loved 3dfx.... the voodoo2 in sli mode is something ill not forget... the nights I sat up playing tomb raider....

Mize

3dfx suffered a lack of vision death. The hardware business was a bad idea and drained the cash needed to push as hard as their competition on new technology.

Nvidia didn't buy 3dfx either. That would have carried all of 3dfx's liabilities. Instead they bought the "core technological assets" of 3dfx and the right to terminate 3dfx's lawsuits.

The only Voodoo I still have is the V5-5500 which runs in my kids' computer. I can't imagine the poor thing is content to run Reader Rabbit, but one of these days they'll be old enough to LAN with me

If this Matrox card actually uses 16x jittered AA I will be hard pressed not to buy one. Perhaps the fear of my wife finding the receipt will keep me in check

Mize

jcastill

I really miss the v2.... good stuff and could still play current games...

lunxer

hey voodoo 3 wasen't that bad, have one in my other box, and PII 350 , 192 ram and an voodoo 3 (2000?) PCI under winxp , and its running like an charm!
my bro plays sof2 on it with rather desen't fpsrates.
and in q3, i get 125 fps on some maps.

don't know if the 3rd party xp drivers have to do with it.

high_ping

Yep, I have a v5 5500 agp running "all" newer games with really good fps using wickedgl drivers.

Mize

I totally agree. At the time 3dfx's "22-bit" mode looked aweful close to the TNT2's 32-bit and was actually playable (whereas the TNT2 in 32-bit kinda chugged and its 16-bit mode looked downright ugly). Back then I had V3s in every computer in my department and we would Q3Test or Q2 the afternoons away Plus, the V3 ran everything I threw at it without problem.

I sorta wish I'd kept my V2 and V3...a 2xV2 SLI would be a fun add-on to a R8500 rig...breakout the Longbow disks...

Mize

Krusher

The experience and the technology 3dfx had will be of great help to nVIDIA. 3dfx' antialiasing was so well know before because of its speed and looks, now nVIDIA have used what they have bought the rights for, on their on chips.
The antialiasing the GeForce3 was wonderful, and more of the cards are to come. 3dfx will live on in nVIDIA's name I believe, and even if Glide from now on is dead (?), nVIDIA's OpenGL will live on.

I remember my brother had an ATI based 2d card, with an additional Voodoo2. grr.. I remember how I used to sneak into his room and play Blood2 with pwnd graphics when he wasn't home. Darn, those were the days...

..or something like that. Mkay? :P

3Dfx0r

the demise of 3Dfx started when they released the voodoo 3s and changed their name from 3Dfx to 3dfx. The voodoo 3's performance was about the same as voodoo2 in SLI mode, and the lack of 32bit mode was rather disappointing. I agree that "22bit" mode just about as nice on my banshee, but the feature sets made me feel like there wasn't any really innovation in the voodoo 3, nor for 4 or 5 for the matter. (Make a guess why some driver sets for voodoo3/4/5 were bundled together)
They didn't give us the features that gamers were clamouring for, but tried to hype and "impose" the features that they did implement on the market. Nvidia just satisfied the gamers' needs where the "new" 3dfx failed to do so. Also, buying STB and selling their own cards was a mistake.

Before anyone flames me, this is just my opinion of what happened during those times. Miss the heady days of 3Dfx voodoo1 and 2 (they did make good cards then, apart from the rush) but 3dfx was a different story.

3Dfx0r

catering to the OEM market, where all most of the money is made, actually.
Nvidia and 3Dfx were fighting in the enthusiast market space. Ati was busy establishing a strong foothold, having good relations with OEMs. This is why most laptops are shipped with an ATI card. At that time, ATI's other competitors included Imagine and S3. Matrox was catering to business/profesionals. 3d Labs (Promedia) to the professional OpenGL ppl. Cirrus Logic never really got into the 3d scene.

Imagine tried to fight in both the enthusiast and OEM space, and at one point, they were quite highly regarded and touted very highly for success. They've disappeared now, can't say I've seen that happening. I think they failed to release their products on time, overextended themselves? ( SOmeone pls correct me if I'm wrong )

S3 made crap cards, but very very cheap cards for OEMs, but nobody liked them. Their heyday peaked around the time of 2d cards (Still have a Diamond Stealth 2001 lying around somewhere) but their "3d" accelerator cards performed more like decelerators (hahahaha).

ATI thrived by creating cheap cards with adequate / good performance and visual quality.

Rigger

ATI just got into the serious gamers market with Radeon series of cards. The meat and potatoes of their business was OEMs. Pre Radeon ATI cards sucked for playing games. Their OpenGL support was rudimentary at best. Even now their cards are usually a generation or two behind Nvidia's. I like Radeon's. I even recommend them, but they can't push the horsepower the Nvidia can. Nvidia cards are high maintenance, though. I think that is what I miss most about 3dfx cards. Rock solid cards that worked. My V3 would play any game that came out whether it was D3D, OpenGL or Glide. I still have Voodoo5 5500 in my wifes computer. She loves "Black and White" and I could never get it to work well with any flavor Nvidia card. Out of sheer desperation I put the Voodoo 5 in and it ran beautifully with the drivers off the install CD. It blew me away when the company went down. It just goes to show that having a superior product doesn't always make you a winner.

vit0

he dont yell at me... but i got me a voodoo 4 running all my games on my AMD 1.3G and i cant complain.

IceCold

Of course it didn't. Compare the 32-bit color performance drop to that of a TNT.