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Look at this picture. One of the exhibitors is wearing a 3Dfx T-Shirt! Was Half-Life2 tested on 3Dfx hardware? The suspicion continues...did nVidia buy 3Dfx, only for its development personels' innards to be eaten from inside by the foul works of 3Dfx' cadillac-size technologies? Look again, and ponder on whether the exhibiter to the left of Mr. 3Dfx^H^H^H^HnVidia; obviously, he must drive a cadillac because he's so large that a cadillac is the only car that can carry him! Oh no! 3Dfx has returned!

Look at this picture. One of the exhibitors is wearing a 3Dfx T-Shirt! Was Half-Life2 tested on 3Dfx hardware? The suspicion continues...did nVidia buy 3Dfx, only for its development personels' innards to be eaten from inside by the foul works of 3Dfx' cadillac-size technologies? Look again, and ponder on whether the exhibiter to the left of Mr. 3Dfx^H^H^H^HnVidia; obviously, he must drive a cadillac because he's so large that a cadillac is the only car that can carry him! Oh no! 3Dfx has returned!

The proof is in the pudding.

Which is why, I'm sure, that every single real DX9 benchmark has shown nVidia falling far, far behind ATI.

The quotes from that second link are particularly damning -- and they're from a variety of companies, including id Software, not just Valve.

I've never owned an ATI card. My last 5 or 6 cards in all my computers (and my wife's) have been nVidia. My next card is almost certainly going to be ATI though because they're currently the performance leaders. I have some reservations about drivers still -- not with performance or stability but with long term support since ATI has still failed to deliver a unified driver architecture -- but I'm unwilling to sacrifice that much performance while still paying a higher price.

Frankly, at this point anyone who is still wondering about the validity of the benchmarks is deserving of the title "nVidia fanboy".

Toms Hardware
FiringSquad
Tech Report
Gamers Depot
Beyond 3d

GD: What exactly have you bought from 3dfx, and do you now own Gigapixel?

Brian: Their core assets, which includes their patents, patent pending applications, trademarks, branding, and inventory related to the graphics business. Gigapixel was a company who was purchased by 3dfx. We have purchased 3dfx's core assets, so that means we have access to whatever technology might've been developed by either company. The two transactions were different in that the 3dfx/Gigapixel transaction was a complete buyout of the company. Today's announcement is that nVIDIA has only purchased the core assets of 3dfx, so I want to make it clear that it's not a complete buyout.

Here is the press release, pretty much says they bought the technology, nothing about further support.

And we have this interview with Brian Burke, employee of Nvidia. Heres a little quote:

GD: What does this mean for future driver support for current Voodoo card owners?

Brian: Under the terms of this agreement, 3dfx will still be responsible for driver support.

Nvidia has no benefit by buying a competing companies technology, and having to dedicate people, computers, and many other things necessary to do driver development and still have it compete with thier own products, it makes no sense. It was really up to what was left of 3dfx to support your hardware, but instead they shipped out the Voodoo 4/5 and now everyones screwed who bought one and wants to use a fairly current OS (including me). I blame 3dfx for this not Nvidia.

So, yes, many former 3dfx users have good reason to dislike nVidia and refuse to use their products.

I think that many former 3dfx users should have many more reasons to dislike 3dfx instead of the way you put it. They really didn't do much for the graphics market after the voodoo 3 (and the voodoo 3 wasn't anything new, as someone stated before it was pretty much 2 voodoo 2's SLI'd, the technology was basically the same). Then they came out with this marketing buzz about motion blur supported on thier new cards, boy that really took off =). So I would say move on with the whole 3dfx deal, nvidia came along and created a superior product and they couldn't compete. Just think of the kinds of things that Nvidia has brought along though. Im not saying they invented any of this stuff, but it was their products I first saw them on.. Hardware T&L, which led to programmable pixel and vertex shaders, which is going to bring us some pretty high quality real time animation on a pc. I am not saying they are perfect by any means but they have made some impressive hardware. It looks like ATI is doing good as well, and if nvidia doesn't keep up they will go the way of 3dfx.

I've also been playing the game for a few days with a Geforce 3,Athlon 1.3, 256 DDR and platinum sound card. This guide was very interesting to me, because my fps keeps dropping to unbearably low levels any time things are happening which makes it impossible to play. When I turn textures and particles all the way up I get a whopping 2-5 fps, but otherwise usually get around 15 fps which is still pretty weak. And, yes I have all the latest drivers and patches.

For my two cents on the game.. the downside is that the gameplay is very linear and the level load times are extremely unbearable--'quick' load takes about two minutes. EAX is also buggy as hell. However, the eye candy is definitely incredible. There are very realistic volumetric particle affects like rain, flame, and billowing smoke and dust, incredibly detailed alien landscapes and actual realistic fingers on hands instead of square blobs.

Here's one positive review and a great screenshot of the bad guys.

It's here and that's not even big. This is big.

First off, I read a good portion of the reviews that I found linked from Blue's News:
Source Magazine
Target PC
Hardware Unlimited
Tech Report
Gamer's Depot

What's the upshot? That even with each processor's "ideal" system (DDR on the Athlon, RAMBUS on the P4)-- well, the P4 kicks ass at Quake 3: Team Arena. I mean, it's really really good at Quake 3. So good, in fact, that-- well, you won't be running anything else, I hope?

Because in almost every other app, the cheaper Athlon 1.2 equals or outperforms the P4. That even includes apps such as POVRay that did some early optimizations for the P4's extended instructions. I recommend reading the Tech Report's overview if you're interested in that; they have more details on exactly which instructions were used, and the current state of Intel's compilers for the chip.

Keep in mind, of course, that the compilers are still a bit beta-ish-- sometimes they actually make the programs run slower. But they never appeared to actually make it faster than an Athlon 1.2.

Debate what you will about future extensibility, and so on-- but unless you're going to be playing a whole lot of Quake, if you're looking for a new system you should grab one of those cheap Athlon CPU/Motherboard combos selling for $300 at Fry's.

AMDZone
Gamer's Depot
Ace's Hardware
GotApex?.

And here is a presentation with benchmarks and a roadmap. Have fun. Don't let biased slashdot postings warp your mind!

Wow, I couldn't agree more. For a little hint into what went down at Sierra, you might want to check out an interview Gamer's Depot did with Mrs. Williams some time back (thank you Google for finding that old review!) She gives a little insight as to what truly happened at Sierra. I guess it got pretty messy and she regrets the decision she and Ken made to sell.

As for looking back, I would have to agree that the Laura Bow mysteries were some of the best. Graphics were great for the time and it was all around fun that my mom and I would play (I was a youngin'). LSL was also a classic, but no one has mentioned Freddy Pharkas, Frontier Pharmacist, another classic from the designer of LSL, Al Lowe and with some help from Mark Seibert. Yes, they will be missed.

Bryan R.

Wow, I couldn't agree more. For a little hint into what went down at Sierra, you might want to check out an interview Gamer's Depot did with Mrs. Williams some time back (thank you Google for finding that old review!) She gives a little insight as to what truly happened at Sierra. I guess it got pretty messy and she regrets the decision she and Ken made to sell.

As for looking back, I would have to agree that the Laura Bow mysteries were some of the best. Graphics were great for the time and it was all around fun that my mom and I would play (I was a youngin'). LSL was also a classic, but no one has mentioned Freddy Pharkas, Frontier Pharmacist, another classic from the designer of LSL, Al Lowe and with some help from Mark Seibert. Yes, they will be missed.

Bryan R.

I'm surprised there was just Sharky's review. All of the sites normally come up with reviews when the NDA's expire:

AnandTech
Fast Graphics
FiringSquad
GamersDepot
GameSpot
GA-Hardware
HotHardware
PlanetHardware
Tom's Hardware

For my money, Anand's is the best place to go for these things, although Tom usually has better discussions of the details behind the hardware and features itself.

Also, 20 questions with ATI, mostly about Radeon.

Yet another review is available from gamesdepot. You can find it here.

Yet another review is available from gamesdepot. You can find it here.

I hope they'll use this chipset to target the hardcore gamers and start a good battle against nVidia's supremacy. Like the AMD vs. Intel thing, us consumers will only benefit :)

(Another cool article on the charisma is here.)

His claims are far from outrageous. That you look to Sharky for technical insight doesn't rack up any points for your team, either.

If you like benchmarks, you should look here, here, here, or maybe even here.

The Coppermine has a few technical advantages over the Athlon, and even outperforms it on most platforms. The Athlon still suffers from a selection of mostly sub-par motherboards, and Intel's 820 is a dud. There are no great chipsets available to the motherboard manufacturers right now (though Via's KX133 is off to a good start) -- a "wait and see" attitude is probably the best thing for us about now. Poot.

Check out ATI vs GeForce 256

Very similair results to these benchmarks, although the Geforce is far superior on the slower :-)Intel CPU

AMD is important from an idealogical standpoint. I have two Linux boxes at home that have zero Intel or Microsoft components in them. And I like that very much. Every time I use those machines, I'm reminded that I voted for choice with my dollars, and that keeps me voting (like the $3500 ballot I cast when I bought the parts for my K7/600 system a couple weeks ago).

I don't like serialized CPUs. I don't like strong-arm, quasi-legal, neo-soviet business tactics. I don't like to be told what I want. I don't like paying a mint for CPUs just so I can fund some mindless "Our CPU makes the Internet better" campaign.

You like giving Micros~1 the finger? Well Intel ain't much better than them. So give them the finger too and get AMD and Via and Linux all together. If you do, you're casting your vote for freedom, choice, quality, advancing technology and lower prices.

P.S. The "major motherboard manufacturer" the Ars article mentioned is Asus and the mobo in question is called the K7M. Gamer's Depot has a review, as do many other sites. See AMD Zone for more news about all things AMD. And slota.com has a complete list of all the Slot A motherboards. Which makes it an interesting comparision to AMD's list.

-B

-B