Whatever happened to 3DFX?

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Back in '96, 3DFX ruled the computer gaming industry. People gobbled
up those old Voodoo cards, which had been the first true
commercial-level graphics accelerators. Voodoo cards enjoyed great
success, even though it wasn't a standalone card (you needed a
separate card to handle 2D applications). Anyway, lotsa people
thought that the competition, Direct3D-based graphics cards, were the
red-headed stepchild of the 3D gaming community.

Then came Voodoo2, and it was even more popular than the original
Voodoo cards. I *did* start having doubts though, when 3DFX started
peddling that whacky technology of hooking up two Voodoo 2's together
in the same computer. That was just plain dumb. Regardless, 3DFX
practically had a monopoly on the 3D videor cards for the computer
gaming industry. 3DFX was to computer graphics as much as Creative
Labs was to computer soundcards.

Then came Voodoo3, and that just fell flat on its face. It enjoyed
very mild success, but by then *everyone* knew that 3DFX was about to
fall off the face of the earth. By the time the much-hyped Voodoo3
came around, they were barely toe-to-toe with NVidia's Direct3D cards.
After Voodoo3, all subsequent releases from 3DFX became a
laughingstock in the industry.

So what went wrong? Was Microsoft's backing of Direct3D technology
simply too much for 3DFX to overcome? Or was it because 3DFX got too
comfortable sitting atop of its perch in 1997? Or perhaps the
management at 3DFX just made one horrendous decision after another,
resulting in a catastrophic downfall bigger than anything I've seen in
the computer industry? If you were to tell PC gamers in 1997 that
3DFX will be practically defunct in less than 5 years' time, they
would've laughed at your face.

 

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"Opticreep" <opticreep@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:9e1f277e.0408182035.22f77d5@posting.google.com...
> Back in '96, 3DFX ruled the computer gaming industry. People gobbled
> up those old Voodoo cards, which had been the first true
> commercial-level graphics accelerators. Voodoo cards enjoyed great
> success, even though it wasn't a standalone card (you needed a
> separate card to handle 2D applications). Anyway, lotsa people
> thought that the competition, Direct3D-based graphics cards, were the
> red-headed stepchild of the 3D gaming community.
>
> Then came Voodoo2, and it was even more popular than the original
> Voodoo cards. I *did* start having doubts though, when 3DFX started
> peddling that whacky technology of hooking up two Voodoo 2's together
> in the same computer. That was just plain dumb. Regardless, 3DFX
> practically had a monopoly on the 3D videor cards for the computer
> gaming industry. 3DFX was to computer graphics as much as Creative
> Labs was to computer soundcards.
>
> Then came Voodoo3, and that just fell flat on its face. It enjoyed
> very mild success, but by then *everyone* knew that 3DFX was about to
> fall off the face of the earth. By the time the much-hyped Voodoo3
> came around, they were barely toe-to-toe with NVidia's Direct3D cards.
> After Voodoo3, all subsequent releases from 3DFX became a
> laughingstock in the industry.
>
> So what went wrong? Was Microsoft's backing of Direct3D technology
> simply too much for 3DFX to overcome? Or was it because 3DFX got too
> comfortable sitting atop of its perch in 1997? Or perhaps the
> management at 3DFX just made one horrendous decision after another,
> resulting in a catastrophic downfall bigger than anything I've seen in
> the computer industry? If you were to tell PC gamers in 1997 that
> 3DFX will be practically defunct in less than 5 years' time, they
> would've laughed at your face.


Bad management making bad decisions. As simple as that...

 

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On 18 Aug 2004 21:35:09 -0700, opticreep@yahoo.com (Opticreep) wrote:

>Back in '96, 3DFX ruled the computer gaming industry. People gobbled
>up those old Voodoo cards, which had been the first true
>commercial-level graphics accelerators. Voodoo cards enjoyed great
>success, even though it wasn't a standalone card (you needed a
>separate card to handle 2D applications). Anyway, lotsa people
>thought that the competition, Direct3D-based graphics cards, were the
>red-headed stepchild of the 3D gaming community.
>
>Then came Voodoo2, and it was even more popular than the original
>Voodoo cards. I *did* start having doubts though, when 3DFX started
>peddling that whacky technology of hooking up two Voodoo 2's together
>in the same computer. That was just plain dumb. Regardless, 3DFX
>practically had a monopoly on the 3D videor cards for the computer
>gaming industry. 3DFX was to computer graphics as much as Creative
>Labs was to computer soundcards.
>
>Then came Voodoo3, and that just fell flat on its face. It enjoyed
>very mild success, but by then *everyone* knew that 3DFX was about to
>fall off the face of the earth. By the time the much-hyped Voodoo3
>came around, they were barely toe-to-toe with NVidia's Direct3D cards.
> After Voodoo3, all subsequent releases from 3DFX became a
>laughingstock in the industry.
>
>So what went wrong? Was Microsoft's backing of Direct3D technology
>simply too much for 3DFX to overcome? Or was it because 3DFX got too
>comfortable sitting atop of its perch in 1997? Or perhaps the
>management at 3DFX just made one horrendous decision after another,
>resulting in a catastrophic downfall bigger than anything I've seen in
>the computer industry? If you were to tell PC gamers in 1997 that
>3DFX will be practically defunct in less than 5 years' time, they
>would've laughed at your face.


Voodoo3 did not "fall flat on it's face". It sold very well to end
users, just not to the OEM system builders. Who for some reason
abandoned 3dfx and went with Nvidia's TNT line, despite it's lack of
Glide support. While 3dfx stuck with 16-bit color, the TNT line had
32-bit color support, but was not powerful enough to actually use it
in games. I never understood why a theoretical but useless 32-bit
color feature beat actual game compatibility in the minds of OEMs, but
it did.

SLI was not "wacky" technology, in fact it's coming back with the
advent of the PCI Express standard.

Voodoo5 was late, but was not a "laughingstock". It was out in front
of the competition in features like FSAA. It was not as fast as the
GeForce, but it was "fast enough" for games of the period. It did not
have hardware T&L support, but at that time T&L was just a marketing
feature.

The long-awaited "Rampage" series was virtually finished but 3dfx died
before it could be marketed.

Basically, the 3dfx story is one of horrible mismanagment combined
with cutthroat competition = doom. I personally consider 3dfx to be
more dishonest than Enron, as an investor who lost thousands in both.
3dfx management swore everything was okay, and they were not going to
sell out to Nvidia, about a month before they did exactly that. It
wasn't even a sell-out, it was a "take-under" where shareholders got
nothing. They ran the ship aground, scuttled it, and then got bonuses
and free jobs at Nvidia. How can it be legal to run a company into
the ground, get a severance bonus, and then go to work for the
competition? Alex Leupp = Trojan Horse?

 

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zmike6 <zmike6@*SPAMBLOCK*yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<k3f8i0hb60macf338ppoqqetval50f74ct@4ax.com>...
> Basically, the 3dfx story is one of horrible mismanagment combined
> with cutthroat competition = doom. I personally consider 3dfx to be
> more dishonest than Enron, as an investor who lost thousands in both.
> 3dfx management swore everything was okay, and they were not going to
> sell out to Nvidia, about a month before they did exactly that. It
> wasn't even a sell-out, it was a "take-under" where shareholders got
> nothing. They ran the ship aground, scuttled it, and then got bonuses
> and free jobs at Nvidia. How can it be legal to run a company into
> the ground, get a severance bonus, and then go to work for the
> competition? Alex Leupp = Trojan Horse?

Why would 3DFX want to buy a graphics card company and no longer allow
other graphics card companies to use their chips since Voodoo3, was
something that always interested me. I thought the downward spiral of
3DFX actually began at that point.

 

[mark]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia,comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (More info?)

zmike6 <zmike6@*SPAMBLOCK*yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<k3f8i0hb60macf338ppoqqetval50f74ct@4ax.com>...
> Voodoo3 did not "fall flat on it's face". It sold very well to end
> users, just not to the OEM system builders. Who for some reason
> abandoned 3dfx and went with Nvidia's TNT line, despite it's lack of
> Glide support.

Indeed. It was far more important to support Glide, a 3dfx-only API,
rather than standard APIs like D3D or OpenGL... not.

> While 3dfx stuck with 16-bit color, the TNT line had
> 32-bit color support, but was not powerful enough to actually use it
> in games.

That's news to me, given that I played many games on my TNT1 card in
32-bit. Sure, it was slower than 16-bit, but the vast majority of
games ran happily at 30+fps... some of us would rather have higher
quality graphics at 30fps than low quality at 100fps. Hell, at the
time I was playing at 1024x768 or 1280x1024 on my TNT1, the Voodoo-2
wouldn't even go about 800x600 unless you had a SLI setup!

> I never understood why a theoretical but useless 32-bit
> color feature

Probably because only 3dfx, 3dfx fans, and people who think you need
100+fps to play a game considered it 'useless'. The end result was
that nvidia introduced all those 'useless' features that 3dfx decided
weren't needed, like AGP support, textures of more than 256x256,
32-bit color, hardware T&L, etc, and the rest was history. 3dfx
committed suicide.

> beat actual game compatibility in the minds of OEMs, but
> it did.

Again, I had few problems with 'game compatibility' with my TNT1 card.
Bugs, yes, but any game that used a standard API like D3D and OpenGL
ran on it. Only those games from developers who wrote 3dfx-only code
with Glide were incompatible, and the few worth buying usually ran OK
in software mode.

> Basically, the 3dfx story is one of horrible mismanagment combined
> with cutthroat competition = doom.

But not supporting 32-bit color and other graphics quality features,
and relying on Glide to get good performance and to try to close the
game market to competitors, were two of those horrible decisions.

Mark

 

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zmike6 wrote:

> On 18 Aug 2004 21:35:09 -0700, opticreep@yahoo.com (Opticreep) wrote:
>
>>Back in '96, 3DFX ruled the computer gaming industry. People gobbled
>>up those old Voodoo cards, which had been the first true
>>commercial-level graphics accelerators. Voodoo cards enjoyed great
>>success, even though it wasn't a standalone card (you needed a
>>separate card to handle 2D applications). Anyway, lotsa people
>>thought that the competition, Direct3D-based graphics cards, were the
>>red-headed stepchild of the 3D gaming community.
>>
>>Then came Voodoo2, and it was even more popular than the original
>>Voodoo cards. I *did* start having doubts though, when 3DFX started
>>peddling that whacky technology of hooking up two Voodoo 2's together
>>in the same computer. That was just plain dumb. Regardless, 3DFX
>>practically had a monopoly on the 3D videor cards for the computer
>>gaming industry. 3DFX was to computer graphics as much as Creative
>>Labs was to computer soundcards.
>>
>>Then came Voodoo3, and that just fell flat on its face. It enjoyed
>>very mild success, but by then *everyone* knew that 3DFX was about to
>>fall off the face of the earth. By the time the much-hyped Voodoo3
>>came around, they were barely toe-to-toe with NVidia's Direct3D cards.
>> After Voodoo3, all subsequent releases from 3DFX became a
>>laughingstock in the industry.
>>
>>So what went wrong? Was Microsoft's backing of Direct3D technology
>>simply too much for 3DFX to overcome? Or was it because 3DFX got too
>>comfortable sitting atop of its perch in 1997? Or perhaps the
>>management at 3DFX just made one horrendous decision after another,
>>resulting in a catastrophic downfall bigger than anything I've seen in
>>the computer industry? If you were to tell PC gamers in 1997 that
>>3DFX will be practically defunct in less than 5 years' time, they
>>would've laughed at your face.
>
>
> Voodoo3 did not "fall flat on it's face". It sold very well to end
> users, just not to the OEM system builders. Who for some reason
> abandoned 3dfx and went with Nvidia's TNT line, despite it's lack of
> Glide support. While 3dfx stuck with 16-bit color, the TNT line had
> 32-bit color support, but was not powerful enough to actually use it
> in games. I never understood why a theoretical but useless 32-bit
> color feature beat actual game compatibility in the minds of OEMs, but
> it did.

Consider another possibility. Suppose the board manufacturers had contracts
with those OEMs to deliver boards. Suppose after 3DFX pulled the rug out
from under them they only way they could fulfill those contracts was to go
with a chip that they could get, of which the TNT was the best of the lot.
Seems to me that under that circumstance the OEMs would have the choice of
voiding a contract with the associated legal hassles and starting up with a
new vendor which had no track record as a board manufacturer or going with
the flow and accepting a product with less performance than one based on
3DFX.

> SLI was not "wacky" technology, in fact it's coming back with the
> advent of the PCI Express standard.

Dunno, personally the PCI Express version seems pretty whacky to me,
especially considering that it's not going to actually work until at least
one more generation of chipsets has shipped.

> Voodoo5 was late, but was not a "laughingstock". It was out in front
> of the competition in features like FSAA. It was not as fast as the
> GeForce, but it was "fast enough" for games of the period. It did not
> have hardware T&L support, but at that time T&L was just a marketing
> feature.

If 3DFX was on top when Voodoo5 shipped then "fast enough" might have been
good enough. But when they were already in trouble it wasn't going to put
them back in the game.

> The long-awaited "Rampage" series was virtually finished but 3dfx died
> before it could be marketed.
>
> Basically, the 3dfx story is one of horrible mismanagment combined
> with cutthroat competition = doom. I personally consider 3dfx to be
> more dishonest than Enron, as an investor who lost thousands in both.
> 3dfx management swore everything was okay, and they were not going to
> sell out to Nvidia, about a month before they did exactly that. It
> wasn't even a sell-out, it was a "take-under" where shareholders got
> nothing. They ran the ship aground, scuttled it, and then got bonuses
> and free jobs at Nvidia. How can it be legal to run a company into
> the ground, get a severance bonus, and then go to work for the
> competition? Alex Leupp = Trojan Horse?

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

 

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Opticreep wrote:

> Back in '96, 3DFX ruled the computer gaming industry. People gobbled
> up those old Voodoo cards, which had been the first true
> commercial-level graphics accelerators. Voodoo cards enjoyed great
> success, even though it wasn't a standalone card (you needed a
> separate card to handle 2D applications). Anyway, lotsa people
> thought that the competition, Direct3D-based graphics cards, were the
> red-headed stepchild of the 3D gaming community.
>
> Then came Voodoo2, and it was even more popular than the original
> Voodoo cards. I *did* start having doubts though, when 3DFX started
> peddling that whacky technology of hooking up two Voodoo 2's together
> in the same computer. That was just plain dumb. Regardless, 3DFX
> practically had a monopoly on the 3D videor cards for the computer
> gaming industry. 3DFX was to computer graphics as much as Creative
> Labs was to computer soundcards.
>
> Then came Voodoo3, and that just fell flat on its face. It enjoyed
> very mild success, but by then *everyone* knew that 3DFX was about to
> fall off the face of the earth. By the time the much-hyped Voodoo3
> came around, they were barely toe-to-toe with NVidia's Direct3D cards.
> After Voodoo3, all subsequent releases from 3DFX became a
> laughingstock in the industry.
>
> So what went wrong? Was Microsoft's backing of Direct3D technology
> simply too much for 3DFX to overcome? Or was it because 3DFX got too
> comfortable sitting atop of its perch in 1997? Or perhaps the
> management at 3DFX just made one horrendous decision after another,
> resulting in a catastrophic downfall bigger than anything I've seen in
> the computer industry? If you were to tell PC gamers in 1997 that
> 3DFX will be practically defunct in less than 5 years' time, they
> would've laughed at your face.

Just so you know, 3DFX was not "practically defunct in 5 years time", it was
totally defunct in 3 years time--the remains were sold to nvidia in
December, 2000--it stuck around for a while as the various formalities
necessary to complete that deal were gone through, but as of that time it
was dead as a business.

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

 

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opticreep@yahoo.com (Opticreep) wrote in message news:<9e1f277e.0408182035.22f77d5@posting.google.com>...

*snip*

> Then came Voodoo2, and it was even more popular than the original
> Voodoo cards. I *did* start having doubts though, when 3DFX started
> peddling that whacky technology of hooking up two Voodoo 2's together
> in the same computer. That was just plain dumb.

*snip*

No way--Voodoo2 SLI rocked! Yeah, it was expensive, but it gave you
performance that couldn't be touched by anything else, and for some
time it was the only way to run Quake 2 at 1024x768 with an acceptable
framerate.

I can still remember firing up Quake 2 after I installed my first
Voodoo2. The difference was like night and day.

I still have both of my Diamond Voodoo2 12meg cards (not installed).
I'm saving them because someday they are going to be collector's
items.

 

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On 18 Aug 2004 21:35:09 -0700, opticreep@yahoo.com (Opticreep) wrote:

>That was just plain dumb. Regardless, 3DFX
>practically had a monopoly on the 3D videor cards for the computer
>gaming industry.

Rendition Verite was the first to support Quake. It gave 3DFX a run
for their money, so there was no monopoly. I had a Verite (Sierra
"Screamin 3d", and then a Verite 2 (Diamond Viper s220) before going
to the Voodoo Banshee (never liked the inelegant two-card solution).
jw

 

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On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 05:54:15 GMT, zmike6 <zmike6@*SPAMBLOCK*yahoo.com>
wrote:

>in games. I never understood why a theoretical but useless 32-bit
>color feature beat actual game compatibility in the minds of OEMs, but
>it did.

Like OEMS are looking at those specs when building systems. nVidia
gave them a better price than 3DFX... that's all.

 

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On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 05:54:15 GMT, zmike6 <zmike6@*SPAMBLOCK*yahoo.com>
wrote:

> It was not as fast as the
>GeForce, but it was "fast enough" for games of the period.

Since when does *that* matter?

>It did not
>have hardware T&L support, but at that time T&L was just a marketing
>feature.

Like 512MB vid cards? Like Pixel Shaders? Etc, etc....

 

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# Opticreep
> Back in '96, 3DFX ruled the computer gaming industry. People gobbled
> up those old Voodoo cards, which had been the first true
> commercial-level graphics accelerators. Voodoo cards enjoyed great
> success, even though it wasn't a standalone card (you needed a
> separate card to handle 2D applications). Anyway, lotsa people
> thought that the competition, Direct3D-based graphics cards, were the
> red-headed stepchild of the 3D gaming community.
>
> Then came Voodoo2, and it was even more popular than the original
> Voodoo cards. I *did* start having doubts though, when 3DFX started
> peddling that whacky technology of hooking up two Voodoo 2's together
> in the same computer. That was just plain dumb. Regardless, 3DFX
> practically had a monopoly on the 3D videor cards for the computer
> gaming industry. 3DFX was to computer graphics as much as Creative
> Labs was to computer soundcards.
>
> Then came Voodoo3, and that just fell flat on its face. It enjoyed
> very mild success, but by then *everyone* knew that 3DFX was about to
> fall off the face of the earth. By the time the much-hyped Voodoo3
> came around, they were barely toe-to-toe with NVidia's Direct3D cards.
> After Voodoo3, all subsequent releases from 3DFX became a
> laughingstock in the industry.
>
> So what went wrong? Was Microsoft's backing of Direct3D technology
> simply too much for 3DFX to overcome? Or was it because 3DFX got too
> comfortable sitting atop of its perch in 1997? Or perhaps the
> management at 3DFX just made one horrendous decision after another,
> resulting in a catastrophic downfall bigger than anything I've seen in
> the computer industry? If you were to tell PC gamers in 1997 that
> 3DFX will be practically defunct in less than 5 years' time, they
> would've laughed at your face.
>

The voodoo 3 had a cool advertising campaign - "What if everything was
as powerful as Voodoo 3?" with a picture of a girl with her head blown
off by her hair dryer

--
Toby

 

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On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 08:23:44 +0100, Toby Newman <google@asktoby.com>
wrote:

>The voodoo 3 had a cool advertising campaign - "What if everything was
>as powerful as Voodoo 3?" with a picture of a girl with her head blown
>off by her hair dryer

I still have that old 3Dfx TV ad (video clip) of the scientists
working for a computer chip which will be used to make a better world
(environment etc.), when suddenly their boss announces "We'll drop
that environmental stuff and use the chip for video games instead.
Back to work.". That was a hilarious ad. Wonder where 3Dfx would be
today if they had stuck to the environmental stuff? The moon???



"Blast his freaking head off!"

 

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# N

> I still have that old 3Dfx TV ad (video clip) of the scientists
> working for a computer chip which will be used to make a better world
> (environment etc.), when suddenly their boss announces "We'll drop
> that environmental stuff and use the chip for video games instead.
> Back to work.". That was a hilarious ad. Wonder where 3Dfx would be
> today if they had stuck to the environmental stuff? The moon???

Hah! Yeah, forgot about that one - what's the filename so I can search
for it?

--
Toby

 

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ELVIS2000 wrote:
> On 18 Aug 2004 21:35:09 -0700, opticreep@yahoo.com (Opticreep) wrote:
>
>
>>That was just plain dumb. Regardless, 3DFX
>>practically had a monopoly on the 3D videor cards for the computer
>>gaming industry.
>
>
> Rendition Verite was the first to support Quake. It gave 3DFX a run
> for their money, so there was no monopoly. I had a Verite (Sierra
> "Screamin 3d", and then a Verite 2 (Diamond Viper s220) before going
> to the Voodoo Banshee (never liked the inelegant two-card solution).
> jw

Back in those days I had the ultimate gaming rig...a Diamond Stealth
S220 (Rendition 2200 2d/3d), and a Voodoo2 installed. I could play any
3dfx or Rendition optimized game and the Rendition took care of the 2d
duties. It was paradise...heh heh.

The biggest problem with the Stealth S220 was that it only had 4MB of ram...

Ah...the good ole days.


(*>

 

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In alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia, zmike6 ordered an army of hamsters
to type:

>
> Voodoo3 did not "fall flat on it's face". It sold very well to end
> users, just not to the OEM system builders. Who for some reason
> abandoned 3dfx and went with Nvidia's TNT line, despite it's lack of
> Glide support. While 3dfx stuck with 16-bit color, the TNT line had
> 32-bit color support, but was not powerful enough to actually use it
> in games. I never understood why a theoretical but useless 32-bit
> color feature beat actual game compatibility in the minds of OEMs, but
> it did.
>
> SLI was not "wacky" technology, in fact it's coming back with the
> advent of the PCI Express standard.
>
> Voodoo5 was late, but was not a "laughingstock". It was out in front
> of the competition in features like FSAA. It was not as fast as the
> GeForce, but it was "fast enough" for games of the period. It did not
> have hardware T&L support, but at that time T&L was just a marketing
> feature.
>
> The long-awaited "Rampage" series was virtually finished but 3dfx died
> before it could be marketed.
>
> Basically, the 3dfx story is one of horrible mismanagment combined
> with cutthroat competition = doom. I personally consider 3dfx to be
> more dishonest than Enron, as an investor who lost thousands in both.
> 3dfx management swore everything was okay, and they were not going to
> sell out to Nvidia, about a month before they did exactly that. It
> wasn't even a sell-out, it was a "take-under" where shareholders got
> nothing. They ran the ship aground, scuttled it, and then got bonuses
> and free jobs at Nvidia. How can it be legal to run a company into
> the ground, get a severance bonus, and then go to work for the
> competition? Alex Leupp = Trojan Horse?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>




Brings tears to my eyes, poor 3DFX, my Voodoo3 soldiers on in my spare pc.
Long may it live. At one time i refused to buy anything else.

 

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Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia,comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (More info?)

In alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia, Toby Newman ordered an army of
hamsters to type:

> # N
>
>> I still have that old 3Dfx TV ad (video clip) of the scientists
>> working for a computer chip which will be used to make a better world
>> (environment etc.), when suddenly their boss announces "We'll drop
>> that environmental stuff and use the chip for video games instead.
>> Back to work.". That was a hilarious ad. Wonder where 3Dfx would be
>> today if they had stuck to the environmental stuff? The moon???
>
> Hah! Yeah, forgot about that one - what's the filename so I can search
> for it?
>



If you find it online, please post a link to the channel

 

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Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia,comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (More info?)

Hawk wrote:
> Back in those days I had the ultimate gaming rig...a Diamond Stealth
> S220 (Rendition 2200 2d/3d), and a Voodoo2 installed. I could play
> any 3dfx or Rendition optimized game and the Rendition took care of
> the 2d duties. It was paradise...heh heh.
>
> The biggest problem with the Stealth S220 was that it only had 4MB of
> ram...
>
> Ah...the good ole days.
>
>
> (*>

That sounds a lot like my setup of the era, but I became tired of chasing
rabbits a long time ago.

--
chainbreaker

If you need to email, then chainbreaker (naturally) at comcast dot
net--that's "net" not "com"--should do it.

 

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Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia,comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (More info?)

IIRC, they had some problems with drivers too. I couldn't one the cards, like Vodoo3 or 5, to work
on my system because of the drivers.

 

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Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia,comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (More info?)

On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 08:17:28 -0400, ELVIS2000
<elvis2000@ElvisLives.com> wrote:

>On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 05:54:15 GMT, zmike6 <zmike6@*SPAMBLOCK*yahoo.com>
>wrote:
>
>>in games. I never understood why a theoretical but useless 32-bit
>>color feature beat actual game compatibility in the minds of OEMs, but
>>it did.
>
>Like OEMS are looking at those specs when building systems. nVidia
>gave them a better price than 3DFX... that's all.

Sure they are... THey also gave the OEMs a bulletpoint for marketing
purposes... And lower price points AND the ability to order nude
chipsets or get product from a board manufacturer that will supply
them cheap and with custom drivers (remember those?).
--
Standard Disclaimer:
My Employer gives my internet access, but I don't speak for them...
So blame me for saying something dumb, not them.

Clay Cahill 2004

"I would just like to say that after all these years of heavy drinking, bright lights and late
nights, I still don't need glasses. I drink right out of the bottle." - David Lee Roth

 

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Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia,comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (More info?)

3DFX had bought a graphics company with cutting edge technology, using all
their spare cash, hoping
to win a contact to supply graphic's chips to Microsoft's new X-box.
Microsoft ended up going with Nvidia.
3DFX had to sell itself to Nvidia for about $115 million to cover it's
debts.

"Opticreep" <opticreep@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:9e1f277e.0408182035.22f77d5@posting.google.com...
> Back in '96, 3DFX ruled the computer gaming industry. People gobbled
> up those old Voodoo cards, which had been the first true
> commercial-level graphics accelerators. Voodoo cards enjoyed great
> success, even though it wasn't a standalone card (you needed a
> separate card to handle 2D applications). Anyway, lotsa people
> thought that the competition, Direct3D-based graphics cards, were the
> red-headed stepchild of the 3D gaming community.
>
> Then came Voodoo2, and it was even more popular than the original
> Voodoo cards. I *did* start having doubts though, when 3DFX started
> peddling that whacky technology of hooking up two Voodoo 2's together
> in the same computer. That was just plain dumb. Regardless, 3DFX
> practically had a monopoly on the 3D videor cards for the computer
> gaming industry. 3DFX was to computer graphics as much as Creative
> Labs was to computer soundcards.
>
> Then came Voodoo3, and that just fell flat on its face. It enjoyed
> very mild success, but by then *everyone* knew that 3DFX was about to
> fall off the face of the earth. By the time the much-hyped Voodoo3
> came around, they were barely toe-to-toe with NVidia's Direct3D cards.
> After Voodoo3, all subsequent releases from 3DFX became a
> laughingstock in the industry.
>
> So what went wrong? Was Microsoft's backing of Direct3D technology
> simply too much for 3DFX to overcome? Or was it because 3DFX got too
> comfortable sitting atop of its perch in 1997? Or perhaps the
> management at 3DFX just made one horrendous decision after another,
> resulting in a catastrophic downfall bigger than anything I've seen in
> the computer industry? If you were to tell PC gamers in 1997 that
> 3DFX will be practically defunct in less than 5 years' time, they
> would've laughed at your face.

 

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Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia,comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (More info?)

On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 15:37:56 GMT, "Tod" <no_spam_me@comcast.net>
wrote:

>3DFX had bought a graphics company with cutting edge technology, using all
>their spare cash, hoping
>to win a contact to supply graphic's chips to Microsoft's new X-box.
>Microsoft ended up going with Nvidia.
>3DFX had to sell itself to Nvidia for about $115 million to cover it's
>debts.

Thats a simplistic telling of the story, I don't think it gives the
proper feel fo the time. 3dfx was bleeding money for IIRC 7-8
quarters before their closing announcement. Their Voodoo3,4,5
products simply weren't selling as well as their predecessors that
virtually controlled the market (mainly due to increasingly poor
comparison benchmarks versus nvidia's offerings), and their purchase
of manufacturing plants ended up drawing them away from their core
business of making chips. If anything, the x-box gamble was just one
of several issues that brought about their demise, but it wasn't the
primary reason nor was it even one of the major reasons IMO.

-s-

 

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Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia,comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (More info?)

All of the talk of 3dfx in this thread, along with a bunch of old computer
publications and ads I've come across recently (from 1999 and 2000), has
made me seriously think about digging up my old 433MHz Celeron and re-living
things as they once were! I have a 16MB Voodoo3 3000 AGP video card in that
computer right now. Unfortunately, I do recall coming across a few driver
issues with the Voodoo3 with games from that era.

 

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Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia,comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (More info?)

On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 12:57:40 GMT, Kokoro
<kokoro@kokorolibrary.something.net> wrote:

>In alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia, Toby Newman ordered an army of
>hamsters to type:
>
>> # N
>>
>>> I still have that old 3Dfx TV ad (video clip) of the scientists
>>> working for a computer chip which will be used to make a better world
>>> (environment etc.), when suddenly their boss announces "We'll drop
>>> that environmental stuff and use the chip for video games instead.
>>> Back to work.". That was a hilarious ad. Wonder where 3Dfx would be
>>> today if they had stuck to the environmental stuff? The moon???
>>
>> Hah! Yeah, forgot about that one - what's the filename so I can search
>> for it?
>
>If you find it online, please post a link to the channel

I didn't find that particular TV ad online, but instead I just found
two other hilarious 3Dfx TV ads on this page:

http://www.punchbaby.com/clip_ads.htm

Search the page with the keyword "3dfx".

 

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Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.videocards.nvidia,comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (More info?)

On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 14:24:07 -0400, Steven L Cox
<stevencox56@hotmail.com> wrote:

>On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 15:37:56 GMT, "Tod" <no_spam_me@comcast.net>
>wrote:
>
>>3DFX had bought a graphics company with cutting edge technology, using all
>>their spare cash, hoping
>>to win a contact to supply graphic's chips to Microsoft's new X-box.
>>Microsoft ended up going with Nvidia.
>>3DFX had to sell itself to Nvidia for about $115 million to cover it's
>>debts.
>
>Thats a simplistic telling of the story, I don't think it gives the
>proper feel fo the time. 3dfx was bleeding money for IIRC 7-8
>quarters before their closing announcement. Their Voodoo3,4,5
>products simply weren't selling as well as their predecessors that
>virtually controlled the market (mainly due to increasingly poor
>comparison benchmarks versus nvidia's offerings), and their purchase
>of manufacturing plants ended up drawing them away from their core
>business of making chips. If anything, the x-box gamble was just one
>of several issues that brought about their demise, but it wasn't the
>primary reason nor was it even one of the major reasons IMO.
>
>-s-
The reason for me seems to be that while the Voodoo 1 & 2 were
fantastic and well supported the Voodoo Rush and Voodoo Banshee seemed
to be bugged to the extreme and games seemed to need some kind of
patch or simply not compatible.

For me by the time I upgraded from a Voodoo 1 I would have loved a V3,
4,or 5 with their parallel processors but they were far too expensive
and there were already rumblings of problems, lack of support and
financial problems. In the end I went for a TNT2 Ultra which gave
great results.

From then I've always stuck with the big boys, Geforce 2 GTS, Radeon
7200 (for the built in DVD Cap card), Radeon 8500LE and now a FX5900





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