The Good Old Days of 3Dfx

Fosters writes: "There's a short story about the old days of the 3D graphics world, when 3dfx (3Dfx) were kings of 3D and how things have changed in today's industry. The authors talk about how that came about, albeit somewhat light-heartedly. This sums it up as the author says, "To this day, I truly believe that this was the turning point for 3dfx and their SuperG downhill slide (that's a winter Olympics event). And it wasn't because of some fancy technology, a military leader (depends on how you look at some of the former VPs at 3dfx), or even a drill instructor named Zim (yeah, Starship Troopers- too easy). 3dfx started to lose their fan-boys and early technology adopters to NVIDIA then, who were waiting and watching, as 'Bugs' do, with TNT, TNT2 and something more than '22-bits' of color.'"

Comments

Re:3dfx still has a chance

[Ryokurin]

That dosn't mean jack. Glide is dead. Espically when their next card comes out.

Re:The same mistakes, again and again

[SuiteSisterMary]

Yeah, and the same hardware developers will tell you that a GeForce on a really fast computer, with hardware T&L turned on will be slower than with T&L turned off, because it becomes a limiting factor. 3dfx has always been hesitant to put tech in until they think it can be done right, and as far as I can see, they've always been pretty correct. And antialiasing is the way of the future. That's why, for example, Dreamcast DOA2 looks so much better than PS2 version; no jaggies. Less polygons, sure, but it still looks so much better....

Re:3dfx still has a chance

[Sanchi]

umm nVidia?
I just dl their newest source and i counted 3 switch statements in the entire source.
And they have direct support for the KX133 and KT133 finaly. Cant wait untill i COMPILE this and install it from the SOURCE direct from

ftp://ftp1.detonator.nvidia.com/pub/drivers/engl ish/XFree86_40/0.9-5/NVIDIA_kernel-0.9-5.t ar.gz

Sanchi

Re:Obviously, you love Adobe and Apple as well

[AFCArchvile]

Your definetly an FSAA addict; an addiction worse than being a girl-drink drunk. You obviously forget that all GeForce owners like to have >30fps in all situations. The only real reason why FSAA is there is to help in screenshots; FSAA's antics can really fudge up a game which uses detailed sprites (take a look at Half-Life and Soldier of Fortune under FSAA; I thought it was downright ghastly).

To sum up, I'd rather have the jaggies so I can gauge movement and angles, than having the "blurries," which serve no other purpose than lying to your eyes.

Re:Length....

[MolGOLD]

Who's blaming 3DFX? I'm totally blaming my case manufacturer..... Did you read the DIE COMPAQ, DIE DIE part???

:)

If you can't read ?????

[nihilogos]

Try the fish. And if you can figure out what language the article was written in please let me know.

Re:The same mistakes, again and again

[skimmer]

Well, this is true only if the entire CPU is calculating T&L. The whole point of offloading it to the graphics card is that is frees up a rather mundane graphic task so that the CPU can do other things like AI routines.

The software support gives 3dfx the advantage.

[Bungie]

A while ago I walked into a computer store to by a 3D card. On the shelf was the 3dfx Voodoo 3 and some card with the NVIDIA TNT2 chipset. I bought the NVIDIA card because it was about $30.00 cheaper than the Voodoo, but I found it was not what they told me.

The game that I bought with it, which I was assured would work with the game, only worked after about three patches. Even then it crashed when the real high level graphics had to be loaded. Not much other software supported it either. Even the game that came with it only worked about a third of the time.

The end result? I traded in the card for a Voodoo 3 a few days later. I couldn't be happier. It draws great graphics and runs every piece of 3D software I have come across...including the software that came with it.

The Voodoo 3 may not have all the features of the TNT2, but at least I can be sure that it will run most of the software that I have without hassle. That is also why 3dfx can continue along with inferior technology...because it is compatable.

Re:Self-Inflicted Wound

[htmlboy]

Don't forget that the voodoo3 was limited to 256x256 textures while the tnt2 supported 2048x2048 pixel textures. While this didn't come into play nearly as much as the 16 bit color and 16 megs of memory, it was still a stupid move by 3dfx.

I was always entertained by 3dfx's late notion of including support for 22.5 bit colour, as a halfway point between 16 and 32. I don't remember how they were going to get half a bit, so if someone else knows the details, I'd be most interested.

Re:No surprise; most wounds are self-inflicted

[Anonymous Coward]

It takes a leader with a real inferiority complex (like Bill Gates's) to keep up the fight after all the competitors have been slain, and it takes a lot of cahones to squash all future competitors before they can rise to the challenge.

Creative seems to be doing a pretty good job of this lately. Sunk their competition into bankruptcy with frivolous litigation and then swooped in to buy up the pieces. Which is really a shame because Aureal arguably had better technology.

I'll tip my hat to 3dfx. They may be losing the war, but at least they've been mostly fighting a fair fight. Companies like Creative, or even Intel piss me off because they are on top and complacent, but they stay there through marketing and lawsuits, rather than technical merit.

At least AMD processors have fared better than the Aureal cards :/

- Just another AC

3Dfx vs nVidia vs The World

[RISCy Business]

Well, they're both making chipsets. Wow.

3Dfx makes cards. nVidia does not - they simply make chips and sell them to manufacturers to make the card.

They both claim to be better than the other. Now, gee, am I the only one seeing atypical competition there?

3Dfx wants to innovate - ie; use a stagnant chipset for a base and make a better design. nVidia wants to go faster - ie; redesign every 6 to 12 months to milk out another 3FPS on systems that aren't already running into bus limitations.

Reguardless, I won't buy either. Why? Because they both claim OpenGL support. Now, I don't know about you folks, but seeing as I work in AutoCAD frequently, that means hardware support. Neither of them have it. ATI doesn't. #9 didn't. Why? Most of them view software as the future.

The mistake both nVidia and 3Dfx are making is that they're trying to take on the world when they don't have the staff, technology, or knowhow to do it. I've seen the Voodoo3, the Voodoo5, the TNT2, the GeForce MX, etcetera. The 2D quality, quite honestly, SUCKS. I've seen better 2D rendering in a blender. And I'm not talking a video blender, I'm talking the one in my kitchen. The refresh rates are for the most part inadequate for professional graphics work, the 2D image quality is abhorable at best, and considering I'm hitting bus limitations, I don't see how the extra 30FPS it's capable of in the chipset is going to help any.

I remember back about a year or two ago, I have a 3DLabs Permedia2 8M PCI card and the Voodoo had just come out. My friend snagged one, I scoffed. I said 'ha! My card already does all that stuff.' His 8M Voodoo continuously and routinely got smoked by my Permedia2 when it came to games. QuakeGL, Final Fantasy 7, etcetera. My Voodoo2's (2x 12M - for Unreal Tournament, there is no other option) combined with my #9 RevolutionIV 32M still are VERY hard pressed to beat the Permedia2 in any number of tests.

Now if you go read AnandTech sometime, you'll note that a lot of the cards these days - at least the gaming cards - are getting *OBSCENE* FPS rates. >70FPS. And when you pair the big names - nVidia, 3Dfx, Matrox, ATI, etc - up in, say, a pIII 733 or whatever it is, they ALL get the SAME RATE at 640x480x whatever depth. Why? The bus is full. Can't push any more data than that. And what are these companies doing about it?

3Dfx is adding an external powersupply for all the active cooling you're going to need just to run the Voodoo6 at normal speeds. nVidia is gleefully ignoring it and boasting a faster and bigger chip. ATI's touting more and more memory. Now, bear in mind, if the chipset doesn't use the memory for ZBuffering (mind you, not true ZBuffering), 64M of DDR SDRAM is doing you no good - 1800x1440 only needs around 14M or 16M IIRC. The companies are putting memory on the cards to make them look bigger, perhaps perform a bit better, and ignoring the core problems.

Quite frankly, I could care less whether or not 3Dfx is 'stagnating' or nVidia is 'amazing' or what have you. I need a card that works with and around bus limitations, that can do 2D and hardware OpenGL, that can do what I need. I don't buy mass marketed cards because unlike the Permedia2, which *was* mass marketed (Diamond FireGL 1000 Pro (PCI and AGP)) and an excellent card, today's cards are the equivalent of junk for me.

What do I use? Well, now instead of putting multiple cards in a single system, I'm stuck using top end cards. We're talking cards that cost more than your typical PC and more than a well configured laptop in some cases.

I just purchased, much against my desires but in tune with my *needs*, a $4,200 Wildcat 4210 graphics adapter. What is it? Dual pipeline. Dual head and a few more outputs. 90 Hz at 1824x1368. One AGP Pro 110 and two PCI connectors. All on a single card. That requires 110W of power. Wildcat was just bought by 3DLabs, the name in 'affordable' cards. (The Permedia3 is affordable, but not enough for what I do.) I was forced into spending more for a single video card than I spent on the entire system. ($2,935 for the curious. I reused the 18G SCSI-UW disks and controller.)

Now maybe some of you don't have this problem. Actually, I'm betting most of you don't. But for those of us who actually really *don't* do this for a living, per se, but need the hardware anyways (I use AutoCAD for various engine modification work on a very regular basis) are getting screwed by the dick wars between 3Dfx and company. It used to be that I could do just fine with a happy Permedia2 and AutoCAD R14. Then it was a #9 Revolution IV 32M. I went to go buy something with excellent 2D quality that could perform better than the #9 Revolution IV and found out that nothing does. If I want 2D, I have to go Matrox, which doesn't perform terribly well under AutoCAD R14 or AC2K. If I want real rendering performance, I have to go up to the professional cards, which I really didn't want to do. Now maybe the 4210 was overkill, but quite frankly, any of the cards is a pain to find and order. I could have probably gotten a 3DLabs Oxygen GVX420, but they also made the mistake of ignoring bus issues, and boom. The card ends up limited by the bus, performing really not all that much better than the other options. Just with ZBuffering and a $2300 pricetag. A single AGP/PCI combination (yes, two connectors, two PCBs) still runs into bus limits before the card hits its.

I don't know about you, but I really feel cheated.

Maybe I'll just put the Wildcat on eBay. Bidding starts at $1.

=RISCy Business

Re:3Dfx vs nVidia vs The World

[VargaTom]

1. Having the same scores at 640*480 means that the app is CPU limited. 2. The Permedia1 and 2 cards got smoked by a Voodoo1 in any game. I know it because I had a FireGL 1000 Pro. It sucked in GLQuake, hardly pushing 15-20 fps at 640*480. 3. I wonder what your Wildcat can do about the (maximum) 1 GB/sec speed of the FSB in your system...

Re:3Dfx vs nVidia vs The World

[Anonymous Coward]

You have some good points, but also made some ill-informed comments.

While it is true that most consumer cards have OpenGL drivers that are...lacking...for professional work, you completely miss the point of having more memory on graphics cards: textures. Texture thrashing can be a significant problem if a level in, say, a FPS uses a lot of textures, or high-res textures. By keeping them on the card rather than having to continually transfer them over the bus, performance is increased considerably. This is also why texture compression, IMHO, is something that all game developers and card/chipset manufacturers need to support. This is a reaction to the limitations of the system bus, so your complaint about card/chipset manufacturers seems a little unfounded.

And, not speaking as a graphics professional, I find today's cards' 2D performance to be adequate -- decent image quality and insane refresh rate support mean no eyestrain for me. Dunno what your standards are, but again, I'm no professional hehehe.

Re:3Dfx vs nVidia vs The World

[Examiner]

John Carmack Said:-
> All of the modern cards have full rasterization
> support for OpenGL, but I guess you are refering
> to geometry acceleration.
[and]
> Today, there isn't a single combination of
> rendering attributes that will let a wildcat
> out-rasterize a GeForce2.

What is the case with antialiased lines? Both 3D and 2D? These were once considered a 'professional' level feature. Are these now accelerated in consumer cards?

--
- Antony Suter (antony@mira.net) "Examiner" openpgp:71ADFC87
- "And how do you store the nuclear equivalent of the universal solvent?"

Re:3Dfx vs nVidia vs The World

[RandomCoil]

Ah, the screams of those on the bleeding edge of technology. Well, I'm glad you're out there, dumping money into R&D with the purchase of $4,200 graphics cards; I'm sure it will benefit me someday. Quite frankly, if your current needs are a dual pipeline/dual head display with 90Hz at 1824x_whatever_, you should be paying through the nose for it. I think you're stuck not being able to make a distinction between home systems and true workstations. Kind of like a GT driver complaining about the stock brakes on an Audi. The Voodoo/ATI/NVIDIA chipsets you mention are clearly for the home market. You mention your Permedia card "smoking" a Voodoo2. That's splendid. I hope your friend discovered the price of your card and had a good laugh. Bleeding edge technology is always a lot of fun, especially if you can afford/justify it. Spend the extra money if you need to, but don't tell me that graphics card wars that allow me to purchase a GeForce SDR (I know, you wouldn't touch it) for ~$130 are a waste of time. I'm loving it. On a technical note, at 640x480 you do see filling of the PCI/AGP bus. I know you don't work at those resolutions, and I don't play at them. At anything above 800x600, the bus ceases to be the limiting factor. RC (I bet you use RDRAM, don't you?)

Re:3Dfx vs nVidia vs The World

[John Carmack]

>Reguardless, I won't buy either. Why? Because
>they both claim OpenGL support. Now, I don't
>know about you folks, but seeing as I work in
>AutoCAD frequently, that means hardware support.
>Neither of them have it. ATI doesn't. #9 didn't.
>Why? Most of them view software as the future.

All of the modern cards have full rasterization support for OpenGL, but I guess you are refering to geometry acceleration.

The situation has changed since you last looked at it.

The Nvidia GeForce cards have an extremely capable geometry accelerator, and they have the ability to fetch display lists either over AGP with a large bandwidth savings due to vertex reuse, or store the display lists completely in local memory to remove all vertex traffic from the bus.

The issue with professional OpenGL support has mostly been the focus of the driver writers, not the hardware. I think that Nvidia's partnering with ELSA to work on professional app certification with the Nvidia hardware was an extremely good move.

There are a few edges that the expensive professional boards still have over the nvidia consumer cards, but not many:

You can get more total memory, like a 32mb framebuffer and 64mb texture memory configuration. We will probably see workstation graphics systems with up to a gig of memory within a year. Consumer cards will offer 128mb next year, but the workstation cards can easily maintain an advantage there.

This has a cost, though: large, expandable memory subsystems can't be clocked as high as the single-option, short trace layouts that nvidia does. Even dual pipe workstation boards can't match the memory bandwidth of a GeForce2.

You generally get better high end DACs and shielding on workstation boards. The upper end of the consumer boards will do the high numbers, but it just isn't as clean of a signal.

Dual monitor has been supported much better on the workstation boards. This is starting to become a feature on consumer boards, which is welcome.

The consumer cards are still skimping on itterator precision bits. Under demanding conditions, like very large magnitude texcoord values stretched a small increment across a large number of pixels, you can see many consumer cards start getting fuzzy texel edges while the workstation cards still look rock solid.

Probably the most noticable case is in edge rasterization, where some workstation cards are so good that you don't usually notice T-Junction cracks in your data, while the consumer cards have them stand out all over the place.

Next years consumer cards should fix that.

When the consumer cards first started posting fill rate numbers higher than the professional boards, it was mostly a lie. They got impressive numbers at 640x480 in 16 bit color, without blending, depth buffering, and filtering, but if you turned on 32 bit, depth, blend, trilinear, and ran at high res, they could fall to 1/4 or less of the quoted value.

Today, there isn't a single combination of rendering attributes that will let a wildcat out-rasterize a GeForce2.

Wildcat was supposed to offer huge 8 and 16 way scalability that would offset that, but it doesn't look like it is coming any time soon.

The workstation vendors do stupid driver tricks to make CDRS go faster, while consumer vendors do stupid driver tricks to make Q3 go faster.

We bought three generations of intergraph/intense3D products, but the last generation (initial wildcat) was a mistake. We use nvidia boards for both professional work and gaming now. I still think the professional boards are a bit more stable, but they fell behind in other features, especially fill rate. Being an order of magnitude cheaper doesn't directly factor into our decisions, but it would for most people.

John Carmack

Re:3Dfx vs nVidia vs The World

[Cow*Chikkin]

Mr '3D King' John Carmack Said -"Today, there isn't a single combination of rendering attributes that will let a wildcat out-rasterize a GeForce2."
&
"The workstation vendors do stupid driver tricks to make CDRS go faster, while consumer vendors do stupid driver tricks to make Q3 go faster."

I feel that when I bought my '1st' 3d card -The Voodoo 2 Addin, by 3Dfx, it was a great Innovation, then i added a second one, "Doubling" my game play; then i bought an Ati Rage 128... (after figuring out that i couldnt do anything in OGL, until after i sold my voodoos) needing to Model things in 3d, and wanting to 'speed' up in 3d not running in software..

I liked 3Dfx, because they were the 'Spark' in Consumer 3D graphics, now it seems that they are moving into more cinematic effects, rather than 3d speed.

Then, my friend came home with a TNT! wow, that sucker was awesome, (XCept on q3 at first, until we updated the drivers) Wow! 32 bit! even the voodoo 3 couldnt do that! (minding that it couldnt when it was first released), I was impressed.. and from a consumers view im sure that isnt too hard to do..

Looking at the Quality in Quake, how 'Clear' it looks with a G(u) Force 2 compared to anything else that i have seen on the consumer level, all i can say is that i cant wait for the NV25 :)

John Carmack I commend you on your work in 3d, you have shown all of us the way in 3d, starting from the old Wolfenstien that I loved, then DooM, how that forever changed my life, playing multiplayer... wow

I just want to say that 3D is very intriguing and i'm choosing to go down this path, so ANY card by Either 3Dfx, Nvidia, or ES, or any High end Workstation card, that within $$$ Reason i will use, currently i use The Geforce 2, because it was better for Modeling. (3D Studio Max, Lightwave, Maya, Softimage)
Thats the Reason why I like Nvidia... Speed, Quality, and allowing all consumers that own it to be able to Create media at the same Quality as Developers

Thanks,
Cow*Chikkin
AKA: raVen

Re:3Dfx vs nVidia vs The World

[Fiddich]

Well this just asks for a comment, so I'm sure I won't be the only one.

It's easy to sit, and say you missed this differance or that, but the biggest bugbear I have about the consumer cards is the lack of proper Accum buffer. But as you rightly say about the other features, they'll certainly have that in a year anyway.

But just as the consumer cards will have all the more features in a years time, so will the workstation cards, and more than just memory too.
I look forward to curves and NURBS and a whole host of other features.

But again, (if you listen to rumours), the likes of nVidia are all ready thinking that far ahead.

3D Labs must have noticed the vast fill rate gap, (and to some degree in geometry acceleration I think ?), and presumably will be working towards solving this problem. Although I'm sure they're having fun solving the memory bandwidth issue.
All this is to the great benifit of the consumer.

One of my issues of contention is external bandwidth however. I'm not an expert in the field, but in my mind it still seams to be one of the biggest problems. I work in broadcasting, and getting video and 3D working together is highly desired. The idea of a spinning cube with 6 video textures on it is an old favourite. I think it will be a long time before consumer cards can address this issue, where as the proffesional cards can afford to look at the problems themselves. Matrox have the likes of the Movie 2 bus for their video products, and SGI add a special port to the Wildcat 4210 to help get data in and out quick. I'm sure there are other examples.

People can add all the external ports they like however, but it seams both sides are struggling with memorey bandwidth issues though, and I think that will be the presiding issue for years to come. More features will be added to counterbalance this, and draw away peoples attention. But when you start wanting real time video, and 3D textures, this is going to be a continuing problem.

Whatever happened to the likes of BitBoys and Pixel Fusion who were going have on die memory ? Is anyone else going to following in their so far seamingly unsuccessful footsteps ?

I think the only survivial for the 'workstation' manufacturors such as 3D Labs is in splitting 2 ways. Producing a card with a price/performance to match nVidia, and/or moving in the more niche markets where bandwidth and special features override any cost comparison. The features they currently offer over the likes of the GeForce 2 for most workstation needs just do not justify the price. Their cheaper cards just simply don't cut it when held up against nVidia.

Glenn Shoosmith

Re:Who says 3dfx is down and out?

[ranessin]

OK... 3dfx is great.

Ranessin

Bad example...

[DoctaWatson]

"How is it that, in January, I bought a dang-fast TNT2 for $60, while the Voodoo2, a slower card, sold for over $100 everywhere I looked? Simple - the different board manufacturers compete with each other" The Voodoo 2 WAS sold by different board manufacturers, and you can still find V2's by Creative and Diamond in some places.

Re:Self-Inflicted Wound

[liposuction]

Geforce DDR myself. (Former 3dfx user.) I don't see myself going back anytime soon.

Re:Who says 3dfx is down and out?

[bobu]

have you ever looked at a recent nvidia based card? come back and tell me you still think 3dfx is great.

Anyone can sell information

[Froid]

Anyone can sell information these days. It's nothing special, anymore -- the internet has lowered the price/datum ratio to all-time levels. To succeed, you have to add value, and what easier value to add is there than verve? It boosts your credibility, and it especially raises your stature in markets that cater to other smug assholes (no offense to 3d gamerz, but that's the generalization).

Re:Who says 3dfx is down and out?

[DrTomorrow]

What is 3dfx doing wrong?

Look at their stockprice and earnings for the last year or so. Where is the Voodoo5-6000 that was announce last year and still doesn't have a release date?

And their next-gen card, code name RAMPAGE, has been in development for 3.5 years and $50mill R&D, and it doesn't have a release date.

Re:here come the 3dfx-haters...sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

"And, so far, only they and Matrox have opened up all their specs. (3dfx was first, though)"

Incorrect. Matrox provided all the info needed for Utah-GLX to write 3d Drivers for their cards long before 3dfx released any information at all. 3dfx did have binary x86 only Glide drivers for linux for a while, which is probably what confused you.

3dfx didn't get open source friendly until it became clear that nvidia was kicking their ass on the high end. product differentiation is the name of the game for the also-rans.

The irony that is 3dfx

[Phokus]

"The King is dead, long live the king!"

Ok well at least the first part of that cliche is true. The turning point of 3dfx is quite ironic though. After Nvidia came out with the Tnt (which was the first consumer chip to have 32 bit color), and both Nvidia and 3dfx began revealing their plans for their next generation chips, we were all surprised by 3dfx's arrogance (or naiveness) when they announced they would not include 32 bit color.

"Speed is King"

That was 3dfx's response when everyone questioned their next product, the voodoo 3. Alright so both products were relatively compareable in speed, and 3dfx still had some clout with glide games (tribes anyone?). Lessons (not) Learned?

Now what has happened? Nvidia introduces Hardware T&L on their chips, but the controversy is, who needs hardware T&L when there are no games supporting it (back then that is)?? 3dfx yet again sat on their laurels and decided to let Nvidia introduce it in their products first. While it's quite true that HW T&L was not really important back then, Nvidia was smart and marketed it as the next revolution in 3d acceleration. I mean, who wouldn't want to remove the CPU bottleneck and let the graphics card handle most of the 3d rendering? Sadly, 3dfx was only able to say "see? We have 32 bit now!"

The irony that is 3dfx

Now what do we have with the voodoo 5? Still, 3dfx REFUSES to incorporate onboard T&L when it's becomming more and more apparent that it is important these days. However, now 3dfx is ditching their "speed is king" philosophy and is trying to be innovative with their anti-aliasing and T-Buffer technology. But it seems that Nvidia has learned from 3dfx's mistakes and have included anti-aliasing technology of their own.

The road ahead?

After all these mistakes, has 3dfx learned their lesson yet? Who knows, perhaps 3dfx was right all along about not needing HW T&L right now (still, not many popular games support it) and they may very well outdo Nvidia with the release of the Napalm. But you have to admit, Nvidia played the marketing card extremely well with their Geforce cards, even if T&L wasn't really useful at the time. I pray to God that 3dfx will get their feet back on the ground, otherwise we may see another monopoly in the computing industry.

Re:The irony that is 3dfx

[Anonymous Coward]

The argument can also be made that the reason there aren't many games that REALLY support hardware T&L is that it was not adopted by both NVIDIA and 3dfx.

You need to figure about two years after a feature set is first broadly introducted for games to broadly accept it (because of the turn around time in game development).

If 3dfx had even a weak T&L processor in the Voodoo3 3500 and later card, that would signaled the go-ahead to game developers to push hardware T&L in their games right then and there.

Unfortunately, it's not going to be 2003, before you start to see games that REALLY take advantage of hardware T&L, not only using it to push optional higher polygon renderings faster, but to load balance between rendering on the video card and more advance AI, physics, and simulation models on the CPU.

THAT is the cost of 3dfx's arrogance this time... 32bit color was a minor stumble compared to the difference between 100,000+ poly and 10,000+ polys. FSAA is something that is cool, but will only really be fully taken advantage of when the rendering of the world looks like something less than lego.

What about Add-On Cards?

[MolGOLD]

Does anyone else think 3DFX started on the downhill run around the time of the Voodoo2/Voodoo Banshee series?
Personally, I love my little Voodoo2....the only issue of course being limited to a resolution of 800x600. Even with overclocking, there's only so much you can do with the card.
Before the Voodoo2, 3DFX chips were blowing people away...Woodoo2 came along, and for a short period of time, were amazing. I remember playing Quake 2 on my Voodoo2 and being told that my CPU wasn't fast enough to make the Voodoo2 really perform properly. I stick a Voodoo2 inside a box with a better processor, and while nice, the limitations it was bound to prevented me from going out and grabbing a Voodoo3.
Nowadays, people want high framerates and DVD decoding (or so it seems). Every box I pick up these days says "DVD decoding". I have a GeForce 256 32mb DDR and lemme tell you, no matter which drivers I use, the DVD decoding SUCKS. Maybe my system is holding it back, but honestly....For gaming, I choose NVIDIA....for DVD I pick ATI....woudln't it be nice for someone to throw together an MB with 2 AGP ports, perhaps one for an addon card?

As long as 3dfx keeps up with NVIDIA and ATI as far as releases, they'll do fine. As far as Linux support, 3DFX has easily provided the quickest and easiest. While this may change in the future, if they keep catering to the geek community in this way, 3dfx will most likely make some kind of comeback.

Re:What about Add-On Cards?

[Phokus]

No, the voodoo 2 was 3dfx's most successful card and it's also the card that most people associate with 3dfx's success. ANYONE who wanted good 3d graphics bought one, even though they were somewhat pricey. The Banshee is the product that started giving the consumer doubts about 3dfx's future though.

Re:What about Add-On Cards?

[Tower]

>woudln't it be nice for someone to throw together an MB with 2 AGP ports, perhaps one for an addon card?

Hmmm, that would require a new northbridge, and the total pinout for that package would raise the cost considerably... not to mention the design complexity involved. Kind of an expensive 'throw together'...

--

Re:There were advantages

[pallex]

I`m in the u.k. - No idea if its different. Cheers though :)

ummmm

[Scudsucker]

The game that I bought with it, which I was assured would work with the game, only worked after about three patches. Even then it crashed when the real high level graphics had to be loaded.

If its a bad game its a bad game, the card you're using can't fix bugs in the program. Sin will crash wether you're running a Voodoo card or one from nVidia.

The Voodoo 3 may not have all the features of the TNT2, but at least I can be sure that it will run most of the software that I have without hassle. That is also why 3dfx can continue along with inferior technology...because it is compatable.

The only "compatibility" that the Voodoo has over the TNT2 is glide, which is dying. Even 3dfx have admitted so, and will concentrate on Direct3d and OpenGL, which all games are now designed around anyway.

Re:ummmm

[Bungie]

If its a bad game its a bad game, the card you're using can't fix bugs in the program. Sin will crash wether you're running a Voodoo card or one from nVidia.

I admit that poor code is poor code, but the fact is that the game was coded for both cards and only one worked. If the card properly worked with OpenGL as it claimed it did, then there is no reason the TNT2 should fail where the Voodoo didn't. Unless of course the TNT2 uses some other sort of OpenGL standard than everyone else...

Re:ummmm

[ChodaBoy]

The only "compatibility" that the Voodoo has over the TNT2 is glide, which is dying. Even 3dfx have admitted so, and will concentrate on Direct3d and OpenGL, which all games are now designed around anyway.

People have been predicting the death of Glide for about three years now and it's still supported. Granted Q3A knocked a nail into its coffin by going OpenGL only, but it is still around, eg. UT, etc.

Direct3d is still a poor cousin (maybe the upcoming DirectGL will be an improvement). OpenGL is improving now that it's actually being used.

Frankly, the main reason I still by 3dfx is a personal one on a matter of principal, I find it hard to support a company that condones whores like Tom Pabst. But that's just my opinion, someday I'll give nVidea a try, maybe.

not nVidia's problem

[Scudsucker]

Bought Deus Ex and have a GeForce 2? Gotta wait for the patch. Same goes for many games. I want NVidia to get this right, but they're obviously focusing elsewhere.

Nothing's wrong with the Geforce 2 or its drivers, the problem is with the game. Deus Ex is based on the Unreal engine, which is glide-centric and was glide-only when it first came out.

Try playing Dues Ex on a Voodoo under Direct3d or OpenGL and you'd have the same problems.

Re:not nVidia's problem

[Junks Jerzey]

Nothing's wrong with the Geforce 2 or its drivers, the problem is with the game. Deus Ex is based on the Unreal engine, which is glide-centric and was glide-only when it first came out.

It's not just Deus Ex. In general, the GeForce 2 drivers seems to be wackier than those for other cards. I've seen cases where installing newer drivers trashes your machine in weird ways--ways you wouldn't expect to be related to video card drivers. There's a good list of games with GeForce 2 trouble. Great card, but the drivers were released much too early. Don't let devotion to Nvidia blind you here.

In case I look like a pro-3dfx zealot, I'm not happy with the recent Voodoo cards either. The power consumption is about 4x what is should be. Good grief.

To the moderators

[gad_zuki!]

Get a sense of humor.

Click away I've got tons more Karma than you'll ever have.

Re:To the moderators

[King of the World]

I don't know about you, but i'm more interested in what nader's running -- if you know what I mean.

have you actually done comparisons?

[Scudsucker]

With the Detonator 3 drivers, I get 62 fps in Quake 3 at fastest settings at 640x480. If I crank it up to high quality I only lose 7 fps.

And this is on a 450 celeron with a TNT2 Ultra.

Re:nope

[John Carmack]

>Q. After reading the voodooextreme interview, it sounds like you are pursuing an allmost completely different rendering pass/phases with Doom 3. Can you give us any more details? :-)

It adds up to lots and lots of passes. I am expecting the total overdraw to average around 30x when you have all features enabled.

>Q. Could you give us your thoughts on T&L? Why does 3Dfx say it's not important?

Contrary to some comments here, 3dfx didn't just "decide not to put in T&L", the didn't have that option. Product development cycles can take years, and you can't just change your mind at the end.

They don't have it, so naturally they downplay the importance of it.

John Carmack

Re:nope

[John Carmack]

Actually, even the original Verite V1000 could do 32 bit color rendering.

At a whopping 6 mpix or so...

Rendition did a lot of things right, even on their very first card. They had all the blend modes and texture environments from the very beginning. The only thing they didn't have was per-pixel mip-mapping.

If they had delivered the V2xx series on time, they could have had a strong foothold before voodoo2. The V3xx seried would have been a solid TNT competitor, but again, it wasn't ready on time. They wound up ditching that entire generation.

John Carmack

Re:Nvidia, proprietary concerns

[nbarratt]

NVidia does this so that they don't have to maintain multiple driver cores. They use the same core set of code for all OS's and all products, from the TNT to the GeForce2.

Hardware T&L isn't a big issue...

[psycho_driver]

Okay, maybe if you have a slower processor T&L can help out quite a bit. But as it stands, the current crop of T&L units found in nVidia and ATi products aren't a whole heck of a lot faster than letting a p3/athlon do it with their extra instruction sets (the S3 attempt was a heck of a lot slower).

In some situations the on-board T&L unit can actually slow things down. A considerable amount of data must be sent to and from the card when using hardware T&L. If you're already bouncing off the memory bandwidth limitation of your video card (1600x1200x32 anyone?) then you'll see little or no advantage to hardware T&L.

Of course I think hardware T&L units are generally a Good Thing. They're just a bit over-hyped IMHO.

3dFx

[Anonymous Coward]

Ontopic?

32 bits -- I'm not sure they were wrong!

[Nicolas MONNET]

Considering the fact that even now, even the fastest 3D cards give poor performance in 32 bits color; and considering that it does'nt make much difference when your textures are compressed to death ... I wonder if they are so wrong stating that 32 bit color is useless?

Self-Inflicted Wound

[bonzoesc]

3dfx didn't just get mercilessly ripped apart by nVidia - they let it happen. When the TNT2, supposedly the first consumer chip faster than Voodoo2 SLI, came out, sporting 32-bit color and support for over 32 megs of video ram, 3dfx countered months later with the Voodoo3, which had the 16-bit color and 16-megs of ram limitation of the Voodoo2. That was really the first nail in the coffin of 3dfx. Their relase schedule can also be blamed, because nVidia has a new chip out every year or so, and sells them to many different board manufacturers, causing competition. 3dfx makes their own boards, just like ATI.

How is it that, in January, I bought a dang-fast TNT2 for $60, while the Voodoo2, a slower card, sold for over $100 everywhere I looked? Simple - the different board manufacturers compete with each other, trying to sell their TNT2 board over somebody else's. The 3dfx board manufacturer just tries to sell their boards to Voodoo zealots, who are, for the most part, GeForce believers now.

Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate

Re:Self-Inflicted Wound

[dairypope]

Same here. I only had 3dfx boards (all three of the Voodoos) until finally I broke down and bought myself a GeForce DDR. I had no idea what I was missing, and I'm not going back anytime soon either.

Re:Self-Inflicted Wound

[itarget]

Fewer colours needs less memory for the same resolution. At the time, any more than 16mb for 16bit colour would be overkill much like 64mb for 32bit colour would be. Having owned a voodoo2 and then a geforce though, 32bit colour is a drastic improvement that they shouldn't have put off so long, IMHO.

As for the 22.5bit colour, it's actually 16bit dithered to 32 (or close to... I think they lose a few bits for some reason). It's "22.5 bit" in name only.
---
Where can the word be found, where can the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.

Re:Self-Inflicted Wound

[YKnot]

>I was always entertained by 3dfx's late
>notion of including support for 22.5 bit
>colour, as a halfway point between 16 and
>32. I don't remember how they were going
>to get alf a bit, so if someone else knows
>the details, I'd be most interested.

The colourdepth is a technical value which describes the number of distinctive colours that a card can produce. 16 bit equals 65536 colours, 32 bit equals more than 16.7 million colours. The problem with these technical numbers is that they don't take into account what a human eye can distinguish. Visual perception is not linear. Users of early drivers for tnt-cards used to have the problem of games showing up too dark. That is because games were optimized for Voodoo2 gamma values. Gamma is a number which describes the non-linearity of the digital-to-analogue conversion. The Voodoo2 had a gamma value which "wasted" less colours on the dark end of the scale and was better adapted to human vision. To get the numbers of distinguishable colours which can be put on the screen by a Voodoo2, a graphics card with the now more common TNT1-gamma would need 22.5 bits per pixel.

Ugh

[bbay]

Holy cow. It's like they ran the article through babelfish several times in a row. I've seen better grammar from Dr. Spaitso.

Re:Ugh

[g_mcbay]

I agree! I had to reread most of the paragraphs 5 or more times before I could parse what it was the guy was trying to say. And even after that, there was nothing of interest to be had in the article.

Length....

[MolGOLD]

Slightly off topic, but..... Has anyone else noticed that 3DFX cards seem to be a lot longer than any other GFX cards?
I mean, my Voodoo2 barely fit into my last CPU (DIE COMPAQ, DIE DIE!), and I mean, with a little work (read bending) I managed to get the card in. I haven't had the problem since...but then, today, reading the posts, I saw some shots of the Voodoo 5....and it just astonished me that the cards don't really seem to be case frriendly....just from looking at it, I don't think it would fit into my case, and I ain't bending a $500 card just so it fits in there.....
I wonder if this has some crazy effect on our buying habits....

Or I'm just nuts :)

(Check out http://www.mooshware.com/images/3dfx/V5-6000.jpg to see what I mean)

Re:Length....

[Pulzar]

As big as the new Pentiums are, I don't think there are any cards that can fit inside a CPU..

Re:Length....

[Cabana]

They meet the standards for card size, so if it doesn't fit you have to put blame on the case manufacturer, not 3dfx.

Re:Yeah 3dfx stinks, but Nvidia? Please...

[Phokus]

Above an average of about 40FPS, nobody notices anymore - they can't! As others have mentioned, the top end is probably closer to 60fps than 40.

More important, though, is the headroom you get with a faster card. A game like Q3 has a standard deviation of about 7fps, which means over 15% of your frames are under 33fps, and about 3% are under 26fps. These are very noticeable slowdowns.

At 80fps mean, your standard deviation may jump to 14 fps (it's not a linear progression in real life, but for argument's sake...), 97% of your frames are at 52fps+, and 99.85% above 38fps. So it's smooth all the time, not just when you're standing around with nothing happening.

And that's why NVidia is still in business.

Re:Brought down by fanboy journalism

[DCS01]

As for waiting for the "patch" for Dues Ex. It has been out almost as long as the game. It was the game engine at fault. Specifically the engine had "texture thrashing" problems. Eidos has a new dll to download. Also, most game that I have seen that run better on a Voodoo than anything else is usually because the game has been optimized for glide and not anything else. Hence, if you run a game, like Deus Ex, on a Voodoo, but put it in Direct 3D mode you will get the same crappy frame rates that everyone gets with their Direct 3D cards. So, this is an issue having more to do with the games than NVidia's drivers.

Re:?Bugs?

[onion2k]

Stop using windows goddamnit!!!

How would I look outside?

TBuffer

[nigelb0]

I prefer 3DFX's approach to improve quality, over nVidia's raw speed philisophy. The main reason to go with nVidia is an attempt at future-proofing. Graphics cards are still such a hotbed of development though, future-proofing probably isn't possible.

Re:What about Rendition?!

[festers]

Rendition's not dead, it just looks that way...
Rendition Revival


--------

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:nope

[Watts]

I remember those early days of 3D gaming as I was able to bask in the glory of VQuake. It's too bad that Rendition has sort of faded out. The Verite chipset was actually fairly decent for the time but it got squashed by the juggernaut that was Voodoo.

If anyone wants to read more about VQuake, the first 3D accelerated version of Quake, I'd suggest checking out the articles Michael Abrash wrote for Dr. Dobbs magazine, some of which were reprinted in his Graphics Programming Black Book. I believe that book is out of print now as well, though.

I was lucky enough to see Abrash give a speech last year and was able to talk to him about some things, including VQuake. In retrospect, it's amazing what was done with such a low fill rate. :)

Concentration on Quake does not help 3dfx

[qts]

Virtually every reviewer benchmarks cards on Quake 3. The GeForce cards score highly here. They don't consider FSAA because it doesn't do much for Quake 3. Add in FSAA and GeForce performance plummets.

I'm not really into twitch games, though I do enjoy a quick bash at Unreal now and then. I am into sims, and FSAA is a godsend. On a low-spec system like mine (dual Celeron 400), the V5 is much the better choice where FSAA is a must.

Re:Concentration on Quake does not help 3dfx

[GameGuy]

Acutally, recent review don't show the gap closing from the V5 to the GeForce 2 even under FSAA until you get to like 1600x1200. Even then it only matches it. Pretty much everywhere else is lower or MUCH lower.

Re:We have a winner

[Malor]

God, I was thinking exactly the same thing. It reminded me of the line from MST3K:

"Filmed in Confuso-Vision for your viewing displeasure."

I have rarely read a more incoherent article. It didn't actually SAY anything.

One of the downsides of the web: most of us aren't lucky enough to have an editor. This guy needed one.

Re:There were advantages

[Malor]

The best card I ever bought was a Millenium 1. I am still using it in my OpenBSD box. I spent nearly $500 on it -- back when I didn't have much money -- and I used that card steadily for probably three years. When I bought it, it was the fastest DOS VGA card you could buy, and also was damn fast in Windows. 3-D acceleration hadn't even been thought of yet.

I haven't been afraid since to spend a lot of money on a video card, but I'm starting to re-evaluate that a bit. NVidia is moving SO fast with their cards that it's getting foolish to try to buy their top-of-the-line; in six months it will be half-assed at best. It has let them gain a lot of ground but it sure does shorten the life cycle of gfx cards. :(

There's an upside to all the progress too, of course. I downloaded and ran that XL-R8R utility. Pardon my language, but F*CK that is am impressive demo. I remember the old Amiga demo scene -- those guys would have (and probably still will) shit their pants when they saw that. I wouldn't have believed it could be done live until I saw it. I figured graphics like that were another two or three years out -- WRONG. Wow. Recommended. (www.madonion.com)

Re:maybe im stupid

[treke]

He did mean in 3d. Having 32bit color in 2d is something I remember being able to do in the 2meg trident days. Maybe not a wise idea, but possible.
treke

Re:True, but not true at the same time

[treke]

Last I heard Tribes 2 was in the "Linux isn't out of the question" zone. Dynamix wasn't committing to ever releasing a Tribes 2 Client, but it wasn't quite agreeing to one either. Hope it does happen though.
treke

Re:3dfx still has a chance

[imroy]

I just dl their newest source and i counted 3 switch statements in the entire source.
And they have direct support for the KX133 and KT133 finaly. Cant wait untill i COMPILE this and install it from the SOURCE direct from
ftp://ftp1.detonator.nvidia.com/pub/drivers/englis h/XFree86_40/0.9-5/NVIDIA_kernel-0.9-5.t ar.gz

Bahaha! What's that, the kernel source for their DRI/DRM ripoff? NVidia are most definitely keeping their X/GLX drivers closed. They need to release the kernel source because compiled kernel modules are tied so closely to the kernel version. It's easier just to release source and let people do a little compiling.

Re:There were advantages

[Martin Blank]

I dunno about having to be rich... I got a WinFast GF2MX for $140, and I'm quite happy with the 40-70fps I get in Counterstrike. Great performance for low cost is what is propelling nVidia into the territories formerly covered by 3dfx, and nVidia may soon be invading 3DLabs' and the chipset manufacturers territories.

Personally, I was hoping for a buyout of the Aureal assets by nVidia, but that's not happening. Although.... Word has it that nVidia "aquired" Aureal's techs. Whether it was sneaky and underhanded, I don't know, but it could bode well for the future.

True, but not true at the same time

[Phokus]

actually, the 32 bit controversy was almost as big a stumbling block to 3dfx as the T&L one, because almost EVERYONE heard about it. If you aren't the type of company that likes to be first in their industry, you're likely to fail. Even if the new feature isn't particularly useful, or isn't useful at that particular time, if the consumer sees it as being a big plus, you're going to be in deep trouble. I mean, 3dfx was almost like free marketing for Nvidia, because ALL the websites and magazines published their blunders in comparison to Nvidia's innovation.

And don't worry about T&L not comming soon to games. While it is true that the only games that support it right now are the lesser known titles, we should see more mainstream titles that support it by the time napalm rolls around. Hey, doesn't soldier of fortune support it? That's a good sign already...

Re:True, but not true at the same time

[MODERATE THIS UP!]

I'd be very surprised if SOF supported T&L considering that it uses the Q2 engine. I know MDK2 was the first game I heard about that supports T&L. Tribes 2 and Doom 3 will both support it... and they're both comming out for Linux too!! :-)

Well yes, it's obvious that they've gotten larger

[Phokus]

... and for good reason. Because 3dfx is basically reusing the same old architecture, and the fact that they're processing chips cannot really go any faster than they already are, they decided to just slap on multiple chips in order to compensate for their lack of engineering. The voodoo 5 has like 4 VSA 100 chips on it i believe (correct me if i'm wrong).

Of course since you increase the number of processors, you also have to increase the ammount of memory. That is why 3dfx's cards are getting bigger and bigger. However, with the release of napalm, the card will be 'normal size' since it's an entirely new architecture.

FSAA

[Free Bird]

No, 3dfx was smart to release FSAA. And still, it is the best and fastest implementation to date, because it is hardware, whereas nVidia used some kind of driver-trick to scale down the resolution, giving something that's slower and blurrier.

Also, they never supported T-buffering, which may not be supported yet, but definitely proves to be great when implemented, unlike HW T&L, which sometimes actually lowered image quality.

Re:nope

[Free Bird]

But you must admit that, even in Q3, the HW T&L is minimal at best.

Voodoo Banshee runs @ 100 MHz

[Free Bird]

The article says it runs at 90 MHz, but in reality it's 100. This means it's slightly faster in single-texturing games.

Interesting point of view...

[GameGuy]

considering 3DFX is seeing how many chips they can plug onto a board, I'd say _they_ are the ones trying to use raw power/speed to achieve goals.

3DFX downwards slide..

[GameGuy]

happened when they went proprietary. Basically: They got greedy. This allowed an opening for Nvidia to swoop in and snap up that market. The other stuff, like 32bit color (which _is_ better) and such just made it easier.

Be careful...

[GunFodder]

If your fridge starts up while you're playing Q3A with this monster you might blow a fuse :)

And how much lift do those fans generate? What if you opened your case and those fans just blew your computer on to its side?

Re:3dfx still has a chance

[mors]

I just dl their newest source and i counted 3 switch statements in the entire source. Why does it matter how many switch statements they used?

What? Are you running a P1?

[GameGuy]

Fact? I don't know about your machine, but mine flies with my GeForce at 32 bit color. And there is no doubt it looks better. I use to be a 'nah, I don't need 32 bit color' til I spent some time switching between them. A _lot_ of it depends on whether the game designers took the time to provide true 32 bit color maps. So what is wrong is that it isn't even _close_ to a fact that performance is poor. Incidentally, it also flew under my TNT & TNT2. Now I just use 1200x1024 instead of 1024x700. To suggest not using them because of performance just means you need a new machine.

Re:The same mistakes, again and again

[GameGuy]

I suspect 3DFX has a problem at the core of their chips that they are having a hard time working around. Why else would it take dual chips to even compe close to keeping up with a GeForce2? (and it doesn't but the latest reviews, though I suspect when the drivers get better it will be much closer)

Re:Nvidia, proprietary concerns

[ranessin]

You need *one* libGL for all the DRI cards... This means one libGL for ATI Rage 128, Matrox G400, Intel 810, and 3dfx Voodoo3/4/5. This is the libGL shipped with XFree86 4.0.* and up. nVidia requires a completely different libGL.

Ranessin

Re:Well yes, it's obvious that they've gotten larg

[GameGuy]

Should also mention that the V5 needs it's own powersupply (what a pain)

Re:3dfx still has a chance

[Sanchi]

while yes that is the kernel source, You can DL the GLX source from ftp://ftp1.detonator.nvidia.com/pub/drivers/englis h/XFree86_40/NVIDIA_GLX 0.9-5.tar.gz

Nvidia has had the source open sence they releaced 0.92. The default may be to install a RPM but the Tars have been there the whole time

The ftp site is down as of 0-Dark 30 or else i would tell you the number of switch statements in that also.

Sanchi

your fps deviates from 160 to 30? What a lie...

[Phokus]

I don't even know how to respond to this, your video card drivers must be playing a horrible trick on you.

Re:your fps deviates from 160 to 30? What a lie...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, not at all. The answer is VERY simple.

My CPU can't handle the other tasks it has to do and so can't push the graphics card as hard as it can take, in some circumstances. In others, the complexity of the scene changes, because of differences in map layout, and now I'm pushing several times more polygons and textures than I was before.

Game maps aren't uniform structures. If you go from a scene with no other players and no shader effects to a scene with five or six other players, multiple shader effects, and increased geometry complexity, your framerate drops like a stone.

In Unreal Tournament, the benchmarks range from 80fps maximum to 25fps minimum, because different parts of the standard benchmark map show different levels of complexity.

nope

[Jett]

The TNT was NOT the first consumer card with 32-bit support. That would be the Rendition Verite 2100/2200 (it also had a pretty decent full OpenGL ICD).

I agree 3dfx has lagged on implementing features, not counting the FSAA/T-Buffer deal in the VSA-100 generation which is pretty cute. It would be nice if they lead the market into new features rather than the other way around.

I strongly believe that 3dfx is positioning themselves for a solid comeback. They bought out Gigapixel which had some really great tech from everything I have read. Low power, high performance stuff, with very low transistor counts, they were a finalist in the X-box bid but lost out to Nvidia. The "Rampage" core has been in developement for a very long time now, a huge amount of 3dfx's R&D budget has gone to developing it. Considering the resources they've thrown at it I don't see any reason why it won't kick ass, unless they run into another component shortage (one of their biggest problems has been the RAM market).

I think 3dfx is going 1 of 2 ways: They either release the first "Rampage" core product and it kicks all ass and the company bounces back, or they release the "Rampage" product and it doesn't do very good and they continue their downward spiral and are bought out by another company. I personally think the first is more likely, but then I own a little 3dfx stock so I'm naturally a little optimistic.

Re:nope

[CrashMaster]

Just an somewhat interesting and worthless note... Even the Old v1000 will run Quake 3.

A guy by the nick name Fester was kind enough to post a few screen shots of it running at http://rendition.levitate.org/ under the files section. I never ran a full benchmark run at 640x480 but just playing around on a PIII 500 it would run it at about 2fps and at 320x240 it would run at about 20fps.

Re:nope

[Suppafly]

Does 'nny the not so homicidal maniac always get an automatic score of 5 or is there actual modding going on?

Re:nope

[AlphaWolf]

Spot on for the reliable Rendition chips. I gave VQuake a shot once, and was totally blown away by it, and that was on an AMD 5x86-133. Smooth action everywhere. Q2 was a joy to play on the V2k as well. I'd never realised how colourful Q2 was until I got it running in full OpenGL glory on the V2k. I had been stuck with either software mode or the crappy washed out fuzziness of a Voodoo1/2. Q3 worked like charm right away on the V2k, so I had the pleasure of enjoying the game whilst all of my friends with their 3Dfx cards lamented the troubles of even getting it to work. :) A couple people were even amazed to find out that I was playing at 512x384 because the graphics were so good even at that res. It was a sad day when I retired the V2k for a shiny new TNT1, but it's recently found new life in the gaming machine that I built for my roomies, and it's still kicking the crap out of the Voodoo2 in that box. Now if they'd just grace us with another well made chip, I'd be happy. I'd possibly even reconsider my position as a hardcore nVidia user.

Re:nope

[UnknownSoldier]

"glQuake/QuakeWorld was the 'killer' 3D app that pushed 3D into the mainstream." - Pohoreski

Thank-you Carmack, for helping drive low-end PC's be competative against high-end SGI boxes.

Couple of questions:

Q. After reading the voodooextreme interview, it sounds like you are pursuing an allmost completely different rendering pass/phases with Doom 3. Can you give us any more details? :-)

Q. Could you give us your thoughts on T&L? Why does 3Dfx say it's not important?

Cheers

Re:We have a winner

[blixel]

That is !exactly! what I thought while reading the article. 95% babble and 5% relevant content.

Someone needs to teach that guy the meaning of the word concise.

Re:Well yes, it's obvious that they've gotten larg

[eudas]

iirc it has two vsa-100 chips on it, each with their own 32mb memory banks.

(i've been debating a better video card than a voodoo3 3000 16mb agp for playing counterstrike, and have been checking out the voodoo5 vs the geforce 2 cards. i may have mixed up the details though, so correct me if i'm wrong.)

eudas

Greed was rheir downfall

[Aldis Ozols]

Nobody seems to have mentioned what I believe is the real reason for this company's slide.

3dfx used to sell their chips to OEMs, in much the same way nVidia does. But after the Banshee, they bought a video card maker, and announced that they would no longer sell their chips to OEMs. In my opinion, this was a blatant attempt to monopolise the 3D card market.

Naturally, the video card makers had no alternative but to buy chips from other companies, or go out of business. This set up a situation of 3dfx vs the rest of the industry, and combined with nVidia's superior technology, the rest is history.

Pride goeth before a fall, as they say.

Sega did it.

[Wag]

It seems like 3dfx just never recovered from NOT being selected as the graphics hardware for Sega's Dreamcast.

After that came the lawsuit and the new products seemed later and later in coming.

Re:There were advantages

[jidar]

"No noticeable image degradation whatsoever, "

Compared to what? V2 looks like ass and always has.

Of course there are people that tell me that "Radio broadcasts sound fine."...

Re:There were advantages

[MODERATE THIS UP!]

I would doubt that NVIDIA would revive the Aureal3d sound cards because Creative Labs(PC sound card monopoly) is one of their biggest costumer for graphics chip.

Re:Hrmmm...

[trolebus]

AMD had gained a lot of ground recently. While buying my latest PC more than one local clone shack mentioned that they sell almost exclusivly AMD. Intel slaves like Dell will keep them alive for longer but Intel is a dying breed amoung the educated. -- Bow down to your robot master

Re:What about Rendition?!

[trolebus]

The Hercules Thriller 3D used the Rendition V2200, that was a pretty good card

Re:There were advantages

[pallex]

A decent Stereo FM broadcast sounds pretty good to me... its up there with CD (to my ears - f**k knows what the spec is)

2D killed the 3D star

[Steve525]

I don't think it's a coincidence that 3Dfx's first real 2D/3D product, the Banshee, was the beginning of the dethroning of 3Dfx. The true genius of the Voodoo cards was not that they were able to make the card (not to belittle the engineering of the card), but it is that they thought to try. No one else recognized that there was a market for a nearly $300 card for 3D games. It seems the industry was caught totally off guard and was forced to play catch-up. The people behind the Voodoo also knew exactly what to put in (640x480 at >30 fps), and exactly what to leave out (2D). By leaving out the 2D, they were able to get the part to market very quickly. To continue to succeed, 3Dfx recognized they were going to need a 2D/3D part. As the Voodoo Rush demonstrated slapping someone else's 2D on their 3D was not a good solution. Unfortunately, while 3Dfx was probably spending considerable effort to develop their 2D part, everyone else had the chance to catch-up on the 3D. With the release of the TNT, the playing field was relatively level and remained so until 3Dfx missed a product cycle. Because the TNT was made a couple years after the original Voodoo, it made sense to include features (such as 32 bit rendering) that would of made no sense on the original Voodoo. So at this point, Nvidia could offer these advanced rendering features, and the Voodoo series offered better compatibility. Both approaches make sense. (I bought the TNT2 instead of a Voodoo 3, but if I had to do it again I'd buy the Voodoo 3). I also think 3Dfx made some mistakes in terms of marketing and business plans, but none of this would of mattered if they remained the technology leader. I also think credit needs to be given to Nvidia and their extremely aggressive engineering. It's astonishing how quickly they turned into a 3D leader, and also how quickly they put out new products.

Re:There were advantages

[_outcat_]

Hehe. I'm still using the original Voodoo 3dFx--6 meg--and a 4-meg original Matrox Millenium. Still works fine for Half-Life. ;]

Who cares if they do or not.

[JohnGlenn]

If they haven't then someone else will be right there to take their place. All i care about is that the technology advances, i don't care who i buy the card from.

The camera's never staying still, though.

[itarget]

Low fps is especially noticable in games when your field of view moves. Even though the eye starts being fooled into seeing motion at 28fps, when the view moves it's not very smooth or easy to follow.

Say you snap around 180 degrees in 1/10th of a second playing your favorite FPS. For simplicity's sake assume you had a framerate of 60fps during the whole turn... The turn took 0.10 seconds so we only got to see 6 of those frames. 6 frames to take in 180 degrees of view. That's only one lousy frame for every 30 degrees. :-P It makes it all too easy to miss that fleeting glimpse of someone darting around a corner, or peeking out and aiming a rifle at you.

Of course, most people don't get anywhere near 60fps during a turn like that because the framerate will fluctuate, probably for the worse, as the contents of the scene rapidly changes.

My game of choice is Tribes, and those outdoor scenes cause a shocking drop in your fps as compared to being indoors. Since players are extremely mobile in that game (jetpacks), what you're looking at is usually drasticallly changing, and sending your fps rate all over the place. If you've got some hefty hardware capable of keeping up high framerates, you're going to have a much easier time while outdoors compared to most. Even the 80fps my geforce can manage on average doesn't seem smooth enough.
---
Where can the word be found, where can the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.

Re:There were advantages

[UnknownSoldier]

> I *still* use Matrox Millennium 2 w/ Voodoo 2

I was using this combo 2 (pardon the pun :-) until just a few months ago.

I finally got a Hercules Prophet II (GeForce 2) w/ 64 megs of ram. Won't have to upgrade the video card for another 2 to 3 years :-)

Cheers

P.S.
You can RUN dual PCI + AGP cards. Works great for 3D development. Of course Matrix has the dual-head support, but you can't get the GeForce in PCI (yet)

The same mistakes, again and again

[TDSObeseWhale]

It is not too infrequent that we see many articles labeling gamers as "fanboys" of 3dfx or nVidia... Let me tell you right away, that 90% of gamers are not "fanboys". Like it or not, most gamers will become fans of the company with the fastest across the board chip, which currently is nVidia with their GeForce2 Ultra (ATI took the title for a bit, but that is arugable due to ATI's humiliating performance with Full-Screen Anti-Aliasing). Us gamers are not the strange breed many label us as, we don't tend to flock to a brand due to any sort of allegiance to a name, but rather we will end up flocking to the company with the best, fastest chip.

Now, onto my main point. 3dfx has a very thin fanbase, and there is a clear reason behind it. 3dfx, time after time, again and again, has been making the same mistake of denying the future. We've heard the argument that the Voodoo3's lack of 32 bit color support (and the memory to handle that feature) is what started 3dfx on its downward spiral. Yet, 3dfx has AGAIN made this mistake with their resistance twoards using a hardware transform and lighting solution... Any game developer will tell you that Hardware T&L is the way of the future, and 3dfx is shooting themselves in the foot. And what about the FSAA card? 3dfx did have a point when the voodoo5 was released and creamed the GeForce 2 in antialiasing performance, but those days are over, and with new drivers, the GeForce 2 beats the voodoo5 in its home territory, FSAA.

So to conclude, us "nVidia fanboys" have reason behind what we believe in. As soon as 3dfx comes out with a better chip than nVidia, count me in on the 3dfx bandwagon. -Matt "ObeseWhale" Grinshpun
-The Darker Sector
-Website coming soon! Team Corrosive Quake 3 mods.

If Rampage doesn't do well, then 3dfx is done

[Phokus]

... given their financial situation. This is basically Custard's last stand here. I pray to God that they do well though, cuz if they don't, we'll be seeing the vanilla nvidia cards going for today's high end prices. Actually, i'm debating on whether to get stock or not, this could be a real gamble on my part, but since the stock is so low, why not? I already missed the NVidia stock wave, so it'd suck to miss it again heh.

Re:If Rampage doesn't do well, then 3dfx is done

[Jett]

I'm thinking of doing the same thing actually. It's so cheap right now, if they do turn things around it should climb quite a bit. I remember a time when their stock was up near 40, I could see them back around there easily if they get their game together. The only reason I've held onto the stock I have now is that I have faith in the "Rampage" core, 3dfx has some awesome engineers and have put a huge amount of time and money into developing the core.

I doubt that 3dfx dying or getting bought out will result in Nvidia prices going up much if at all. They still have ATI and Matrox to deal with.

Wait till ya see the Voodoo 6...

[BitwizeGHC]

It'll likely come in its own hermetically sealed, liquid-cooled case, and connect to your PC via a SCSI connector or something.

:)

Hrmmm...

[kwerkey]

Continuing the pattern with AMD overtaking (slowly) Intel, and NVIDIA overtaking 3dfx, I wonder who's going to overtake NVIDIA, and how much I can buy them for.

Heh

[Phokus]

It'll be the RAID of video cards. :o)

Re:ROB MALDA REFLECTS ON 3DFX

[trolebus]

but are you not to love your neighbour?

We have a simpons quote

[gad_zuki!]

Lisa "I recognize all three of those words but that statement doesn't make any sense."

[sign on a closed-down movie theatre that reads: Yahoo Serious Festival]

There were advantages

[Bilestoad]

When the Voodoo II was current I was using a Matrox Millennium II with a Voodoo II - best of both worlds. The Matrox was an uncompromising professional card, laid out by engineers who understood analog and how to produce a sharp, sharp signal. The Voodoo was the best 3d around, of course.

Today you get all in one cards, but a lot of them are still not as good as the Matrox was. It's trial and (expensive) error to get one that's as satisfying in a text editor as it is in Tomb Raider. Anyone care to name a combined card, maybe a GeForce II or Radeon, that is as sharp as it should be in the highest resolutions?

The problem goes away when LCD monitors become affordable in 21/22" sizes, but I think that's at least a year away .

Re:There were advantages

[bonzoesc]

A GF2 isn't as sharp as a Matrox card in 2D apps, but it's a gaming card, essentially. If you buy a GF2, you're either filthy rich or devoted to Q3A/UT/CS/(your favorite 3d game), or a little of both columns. Nowadays, 2D imaging is considered to be a thing of the past, no matter how many people browse the internet, use emacs/vi/notepad, or doodle in the gimp. The point is, it's much more sexy to market for Tomb Raider than Paintbrush.

Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate

Re:There were advantages

[Paladin128]

I recently upgraded from a Matrox Millenium G200... absolutely beautiful card. Wonderful 2D performance. I upgraded to a Creative Labs OEM TNT2, and it actually looks better! And that was before I bumped the refresh rate up from 85hz to 120hz... impossible on the Matrox with my resolution.

In short, the Matrox was the best of the times. In fact, the best looking card I've seen was the Matrox G400.

"Evil beware: I'm armed to the teeth and packing a hampster!"

Re:There were advantages

[BitwizeGHC]

I *still* use a Matrox Millennium 2 w/ Voodoo 2! It rocks! No noticeable image degradation whatsoever, even on this 17" monitor (which requires a more consistent video signal to deliver a clear image). I've been holding off on shelling out money for a new card: When the Voodoo 3 was hot, I wanted a GeForce. When the GeForce came out and NVIDIA stubbornly refused to release source for their drivers I decided a Voodoo 5 was the way to go. Now it looks like I'm gonna get an ATI Radeon... I hope I scrounge together enough money to buy one before holographic displays become practical. :)

Re:There were advantages

[CharlesV]

I have a RADEON VIVO 64meg and love it to death. The image quality is superb, the speed way up there (and should climb after the upcoming driver revamp) and features such as ati's superb tv-out, and some really great video capture (no tv-tuner, but realtime hardware mpeg-1 and mpeg-2 support)have made this one of the greatest boards i've had in my machine. The only thing that's compared in enjoyment featurewise (but lacked speed and bugwise) was my g400 + rainbow runner g-series. Now that was the best of both worlds. mmmmm

Re:There were advantages

[Bilestoad]

Sony GDM-F500R... 100% flat 21" BNC AND D-sub-15 inputs. Just what the doctor ordered to avoid those cheap nasty KVMs. Of course I have the USB KVM to switch between the PowerPC, the Thinkpad, the TV tuner and the Athlon...

"If you have the means I highly recommend you pick one up" - F. Bueller.

Re:There were advantages

[Cabana]

I had this setup, cost me somewhere in the neighborhood of $400, but it was worth it. 12 whole megs of 3d goodness!

Re:There were advantages

[Vegeta99]

In the US its a 5kHz wide channel, and the frequency limit is 20kHz. (eg, 40kHz digital sampling)

Nah, Glide is pretty much dead..

[GameGuy]

Funny, the reason I refuse to support 3DFX is principle. I cannot condone a company that builds itself up as non-proprietary and then switches to a proprietary card. No way.

Turnarounds

[Fervent]

Given the relatively quick turnarounds technology companies have, I don't feel inclined to put 3DFX down for the count. They were a pioneer (along with PowerVR) and pioneers aren't always rewarded in their time.

In PowerVR's example, they no longer make PC cards in bulk, but their chipset is in use with the Dreamcast. It has shown to be surprisingly robust and has turned the Dreamcast from a dark horse into a system with some incredible games (Sonic Adventure, NFL 2K1, Jet Grind Radio, etc.)

Same goes for ATI, which has been running in neutral for the last few years, then released the jaw-dropping Radeon this year.

Point is, don't count 3DFX out yet. Their latest chipsets are nothing extraordinary, but a few engineers and some faith within their infrastructure might be enough to turn them around.

Re:Turnarounds

[Bieeardo]

Blech-- please define "value". My first AGP card was a (gods forbid) ATI Xpert@Play 4mb POS. That bloody thing was absolutely useless-- crappy drivers, driver "upgrades" that wouldn't install, and virtually no native support for anything. Hell, even the ATI-branded copy of Mechwarrior 2 didn't play worth a damn. I had to slap a Voodoo 1 in there (this was about the time that Voodoo 2 SLI jobs were popular) to do *anything*, and I eventually dropped $200 CDN on a Voodoo 3.

Granted, I've got an All in Wonder 128 in my new box as a secondary card. But that's because I'm too cheap to get a nice Matrox board. Besides, it does what I want it to-- video in and video out. For anything serious, I have my GeForce 256, and a Creative Dxr3 card.

I never thought that I'd see the day that ATI beat 3dFX. Especially considering that the Radeon is definitely not "all that and a bag of chips" (so to speak), despite what ATI's engineers and marketing teams might like us to believe.

Re:Turnarounds

[Tiroth]

I've always been underwhelmed by ATI. They continually release products with great specs that never really live up to the hype. They also have a poor track record as far as drivers go.

Re:Turnarounds

[bonzoesc]

'poor' driver track record? I would choose my wording differently, such as 'horrid,' 'god-awful,' 'dismal,' 'worthless,' or even 'shitty.' At one point, my friend's ATI card required driver swapping when switching from UT to Half-Life. That's bad, especially because the best UT driver still forced us to use software mode.

Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate

Re:Turnarounds

[alen]

Only difference is ATI has always catered to OEM's who were looking for value instead of the highest frame rate in Quake II. They always made plenty of money in the OEM business. 3dfx decided to concentrate on the retail channel where only about 20% of all graphics cards are sold. Creative has been successful there because it makes good products. Lately 3dfx hasn't been in the good products category when compared to Nvidia. And now ATI which has long been a leader of mediocrity has them beat in performance. They aren't dead yet, but their next product better be pretty good. And it better cost less than $600 and not have to be plugged into an outlet. It's one thing to engineer a low end card and market it to the lower end. But 3dfx made the mistake of marketing low performing cards to the high end where every last frame counts.

Re:Turnarounds

[Bilestoad]

No - unfortunately in this business, pioneers often aren't rewarded at all. 3dfx were lucky to get as much as they did! Nvidia prove that there are two kinds of technology companies, the quick and the dead.

here come the 3dfx-haters...sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

But do try to recall that 3dfx supported Linux
long before anyone else did.

And, so far, only they and Matrox have opened up
all their specs. (3dfx was first, though)

It's distressing, though, that V5 drivers arent in better shape than they're currently in.

I'm still looking forward to the V5-6000. I probably wont get it, since I doubt the drivers will be sufficiently improved by the time it's released to support multiple VSA-100 chips, and FSAA.

If it _did_ fully support the product, I would buy that card over a Geforce2 (even Ultra), even at a higher price, even if the benchmarks still showed GeForce as a better performer -- simply because they support OSS and Linux.

Nvidia is already acting very Microsoft-like. They believe they own the market now, so everyone must play by their rules.

Re:here come the 3dfx-haters...sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is that Nvidia has increased their performance by using methods other than brute force clocking. Sorry, but when I have to plug my god damned video card into the wall because my PC power supply isn't sufficient to power the half dozen CPU's on it then there is a problem. 3dfx is the Intel of the graphics card world... pump up the clock speed, add more CPU's, run it faster faster.. while still keeping the same old outdated technology. Nvidia on the other hand comes out with advanced GPU's and all in one chip on a nice little AGP card. No external power needed. Who will I buy? Duh. The answer is obvious.. and no, Linux drivers don't mean anything to me. That is a Linux limitation IMHO. I want the fastest graphics card and that means I need to use windows.

Re:3dfx still has a chance

[ranessin]

"You can DL the GLX source from ftp://ftp1.detonator.nvidia.com/pub/drivers/englis h/XFree86_40/NVIDIA_GLX 0.9-5.tar.gz" Bullshit! None of the files in those directories contain the source. That particular tarball contains the libGL libraries, the glx extension, and a Makefile which installs them on your system. That's it. No Source. Ranessin

3dfx still has a chance

[alehmann]

They open their source code. You guys know who to buy stuff from.

Re:3dfx still has a chance

[ranessin]

You're just going to keep repeating this nonsense, aren't you? You do realize that the more you post it, the more you look like a moron.

That tarball that you've pointed out to us contains NO SOURCE!!! It contains the necessary libraries and a Makefile which installs those directories.

Ranessin

Re:3dfx still has a chance

[ranessin]

Let me clarify... The kernel tarball contains kernel source. Period. There is no source for the GL libraries or GLX extension anywhere in the linux download directories.

Ranessin

Re:3dfx still has a chance

[Mr. Piccolo]

Matrox? ;-)

Re:3dfx still has a chance

[scrytch]

You didn't look very far, did you? I still see no source for Module-nvkernel, which is statically linked with the rest of the source. You have a little bit of glue code, nothing more. All you do by buying an nvidia card is help them roll back the gains free software has made. I'm not even a free software zealot, I just want software that doesn't suck. A kernel that crashes because of a closed driver is software that sucks.

Re:3dfx still has a chance

[Sanchi]

umm nVidia? I just dl their newest source and i counted 3 switch statements in the entire source. And they have direct support for the KX133 and KT133 finaly. Cant wait untill i COMPILE this and install it from the SOURCE direct from ftp://ftp1.detonator.nvidia.com/pub/drivers/englis h/XFree86_40/0.9-5/NVIDIA_kernel-0.9-5.t ar.gz Sanchi

Re:3dfx still has a chance

[Froid]

VA Linux only bundles Matrox and G400 cards. Therefore Slashdot, a subsidiary of Andover.net, itself a subsidiary of VA Linux, is implicitly telling you not to buy 3dfx, politics be damned.

Re:Have you tired to get any 3Dfx drivers lately?

[journeyman101]

Hell, I have been trying to get some Voodoo3 drivers all weekend from 3Dfx's Linux Site all weekend. Its been down. (its usual state I might add) So what good are linux drivers if you can't get to them?

Death of 3dfx

[alen]

Nvidia pushes the limit with every new generation of card they make. 3dfx just sells an overclocked version of the original Voodoo card. They can best be compared to Intel and MS. MS has been selling Windows 95 under different names for the last five years with a little more every new generation. Intel has been doing the same with the Ppro core. Nvidia learned their lesson with the NV1 and came back looking for blood with the TNT. It has been downhill for 3dfx ever since.

No surprise; most wounds are self-inflicted

[Froid]

Success generally breeds complacency, and even the most intelligent falter when they've finally reached the top and try to stay there. It takes a leader with a real inferiority complex (like Bill Gates's) to keep up the fight after all the competitors have been slain, and it takes a lot of cahones to squash all future competitors before they can rise to the challenge. Thankfully, many companies can recover after their pointy reckoning; look at IBM of today as compared to IBM of even ten years ago, and you'll see a company who's managed to extricate its head from its nether-regions after falling from the top. Will 3dfx be like IBM or will they follow the likes of Polaroid (and Kodak, at least with their copiers)? That remains to be seen.

Re:Well yes, it's obvious that they've gotten larg

[ranessin]

Incorrect... The V5 needs to be plugged into the powersupply for the case. It does not need it's own.

Ranessin

Re:Yeah 3dfx stinks, but Nvidia? Please...

[UnknownSoldier]

> Above an average of about 40FPS, nobody notices anymore - they can't! As others have mentioned, the top end is probably closer to 60fps than 40.

Higher Frames Per Seconds follows the law of decreasing returns. A jump for +10 fps from 15 fps to 25 fps is MUCH more noticable then the jump from 45 fps to 55 fps.

> So it's smooth all the time, not just when you're standing around with nothing happening.

Yes exactly.

What these people who complain about "why anyone needs a FPS higher then 40?" are also forgetting is something called temporal anti-aliasing. The computer generates STATIC frames. You need a much higher frame rate for it to look smooth.

I don't feel like repeating myself earlier... http://slashdot.org/com ments.pl?sid=00/09/18/1121250&cid=34

(I also crank my monitor refresh from 75 Hz up to 100 Hz because the anything less then 100 starts to give me a head-ache. Granted sort-of independent of the framerate, but I don't want my monitor running at 60Hz capping my 100 fps :)

Re:3Dfx vs nVidia vs The World - game engine test?

[staigerman]

Ok, so I don't have a Geforce2 or similar, but it worked quite nicely with a Wildcat. Can someone tell me which is better for this? http://www.staigerland.com/amapi/17hours/3space/co ol1/starship2.html Geometry acceleration may not be too much needed in this example, as there's just a few polygons on the space ship, and then there's particle systems for the background stars and the engine's exhaust fumes, rendered with texturing on billboard. Anyone care to compare on the two graphics systems? PS: you'll need I.E. 5, recommneded is 5.5, for XML support. ) -Philip

Re:Arcade Games

[UnknownSoldier]

> SF Rush

Was that the San Francisco driving game?
There was one driving game that showed the voodoo splash screen. The game was a lot of fun to play too.

Re:Nvidia, proprietary concerns

[ranessin]

You are correct... They are not using the Direct Rendering Infrastructure from Precision Insight. Instead of needing a nvidia_dri library, you need a whole different libGL on your system.

"Want to upgrade to the newest kernel? Got the source? No problem! Binary only? You may have to wait for the vendor to release a version for that kernel.."

And that's exactly what happened between 2.2.* and the 2.4.0-test* for people using their drivers.

Ranessin

Nvidia, proprietary concerns

[fire-bat]

Nvidia is clearly the graphics chip maker to shoot for now, obviously.

What I _am_ concerned about is the proprietary infrastructure they've put in place in order to support Direct Rendering. Correct me if I'm wrong, but they aren't using the standard "stuff" that XFree provides but their own special infrastructue to support direct rendering. Their binary drivers have recently caught up in performance to its Windows cousin, but I'm always weary about having just binary only drivers. Want to upgrade to the newest kernel? Got the source? No problem! Binary only? You may have to wait for the vendor to release a version for that kernel...

As for my next system, I will purchase a Matrox G450 /w dualhead. They've even released driver source/binary to support dualhead, etc (link provided below)

Matrox beta drivers

What about Rendition?!

[ShaggusMacHaggis]

What about Rendition? I mean afterall, the Verdite 1000 was what Direct3D was tested on..and also was the first card to support 3d acceleration for Quake! Then they were late on delivering new tech....and then Micron bought them out....and now it looks like the only thing we may see from Rendition is 3D Toaster and Refridgerator displays..

Arcade Games

[Sludge]

Everyone talks about 3DFX and Nvidia from their vicarious marketing experience, which usually ends up being on the PC, because that's where people are using their systems. However, no one seems to realise that 3DFX supplied the graphics hardware for arcade machines as well. Does anyone know what is happening on that front?

3DFX had a bigger market than the PC.

As a side note, does anyone else think that Nvidia needs new spin doctors? What the hell is an 'N' Vidia, or a 'G' (e)force. It just sounds bad to me.

Furthermore, what happens when we run out of high-testosterone burning, exploding and speedy names for video cards? :)

We have a winner

[Reality Master 101]

That must be the most obnoxious article I've read this year. I think it actually has more "Gee-I'm-clever" lines (NOT) than actual content.

I read it, but I'm still not quite sure what it was about.

--

Re:We have a winner

[bonzoesc]

Yes - after that article, SharkyExtreme is going into my worthless site blocked list. (one of those kiddy safe surfing programs)

Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate

Re:We have a winner

[The-Bus]

The only thing the article told me is what Quantum is doing now, which I don't really care about, regardless of whether they were "the bee's knees" or not. I'm kind of shocked that SE has turned into such crap, then again, they commissioned Sharky to write this article, and he's probably been out of sorts with what's going on in video cards since at least the Voodoo Rush.

Re:We have a winner

[hugg]

Strunk & White says in chapter V section 9: "Do not affect a breezy manner."

A personal experience

[NRLax27]

My first 3d accelerator was a Voodoo 2, 8MB of RAM. I remember my reaction was, "oohh....I can't tell where the pixels are anymore. Graphics are good. I will never be without 3Dfx again."

When the Voodoo 3 came out, I being a loyal fan of 3Dfx, rushed out to buy one. At the same time, my friend upgraded his Voodoo 2 to a TNT2. I didn't notice much of a difference at all, except that I could now watch TV on my computer. However, my friend had more colors at a much faster rate than I could get on the Voodoo 3.

When the next generation of chips began being released this summer, I was about to upgrade my computer. So I waited a month or two, and read the reviews of all of them. I really couldn't see anything that would make me choose the Voodoo 5. I really wanted to support 3Dfx, but I just couldn't justify that decision. I ended up upgrading to the ATI Radion 32MB DDR, and I love it. I hope 3Dfx can get their acts back together, as they are one of the more supportive companies toward open sourcers.

He left me hanging

[Saurentine]

He said "I'd hate to end on a negative (I'll use the Intel740 for that later)"

What the heck was he talking about?

He never came back to the i740 issue.

Was he talking about the mediocre performance for dirt-cheap price? Was he talking about the immense headaches suffered by those who installed them in VIA or SIS chipset boards?

Sure the board took me 14 hours to get running with my VIA MVP3 based FIC 503+ board 3 years ago, and another 10 hours yesterday to get it running correctly with my new VIA KT133 based Abit KT7-RAID board, but the card cost me $38 years ago when the ATI Expert series were going for over $100. Yeah, I didn't get quite the performance of the TNT, much less the TNT2, but the image quality is still excellent, and it'll do until Xmas when I get a Geforce MX based card. (Good performance, very reasonable price at under $150 street.)

Why did I post this? Well, I remember those days, and remember the extraordinary prices that have always been charged for the hot video cards of the day. And remeniscing about the "good ole days" is kind of fun... And I want to make sure, for anyone who scrounges up old hardware and didn't know, DON'T try to install an i740 board in a VIA or SIS based motherboard unless you have no other choice!

Brought down by fanboy journalism

[Junks Jerzey]

The irony of the Death of 3dfx is that 3D cards in general have been in a downward slide for several years now, with the last great cards being based on Voodoo 2 and Voodoo Banshee. The TNT came the following summer (and remember, we're only talking about 1998 here), and brought driver instability to new lows. Before the problems were ironed out, the TNT2 was released and continued NVidia's reputation as the poorest drivers writers in the industry. The GeForce and GeForce 2 have the same general troubles. Bought Deus Ex and have a GeForce 2? Gotta wait for the patch. Same goes for many games. I want NVidia to get this right, but they're obviously focusing elsewhere.

The downfall of 3DFX was the fanboy cry of "16 bits per pixel sucks!" which is something that was picked up from interviews with John Carmack. 16 bits per pixel *can* suck, depending on what you want to do. If you're doing half a dozen passes per triangle, then, yes, you need more color resolution. If you're not, then there's no issue. This is a good example of fanboy-oriented web journalism running amok and having real consequences.

In truth, many developers, including myself, really like 3dfx cards. The drivers are rock solid. Glide is the most predictable 3D API. Yes, OpenGL, blah, blah, blah, but Glide is number one in terms of stability.

old school

[titomane]

I'm still a 3DfX addict ! i've got an old voodoo3 16megs PCI (not even an AGP one) and i'm not a stupid guy ! well, not because of this choice. Let me explain

My PC is not an old horse (athlon 600 with 128 Mo of SDRAM 100, not too bad :). So if I read all the test, the articles, the game review :

they say change it !!!!

so a a good consummer i've bought a beautiful GEforce 256 wowamazing-3-billions-of-texel-in-a microsecond 3 billions of ram 3 billions of everything 6 monthes ago for only 150 $ !

and guess what ? after 15 days of patching / configuring/crying/praying etc etc... My PC was as fast as my good old K6-233 witth a 3dfx2

well here you can see my stupidity : I really think that I had almost won my war against this card but i was tired.

i cannot say that i hate this configurating jobs (that'smy work in the real life too system-administrator) but when i buy a card, i don't want to pay 3 times for the waste of time. I understand that i need to configure a free stuff but this card is at the price of 2 playstations !!!!

and a 3Dfx Is PnP ! well until 3dfx3... you plug (you take the last patch) and you play, that's it and when you try to configure you're card you don't have to navigate through a maze of menu.

technically it's not the best card in the world okay ! but i can play to all the game that i had, i have and i will have because of one thing : equillibrium.

this card hasn't got a great fill rate etc but all that it have is homogenous so it's tremendously speed for it's price especially against a TNT2 (a friend of mine respawn an old voodoo2 to play with diabloII cus' it's TNT2 was too slow...). All games are running, you don't have to reconfigure your driver for every kind of game...etc etc etc ...

it's like all things in informatique : do you want the best technology ? or do you want the best technology THAT WORKS ? I like dreams but not with my computer :)

3DfX3 in 2 words :

homogeneity and compatibility

Linux drivers

[Hasues]

The fact that Linux drivers are not an issue obviously shows why they are not important to the rest of us. Git.

Hasues

Who says 3dfx is down and out?

[Happy Fun BaII]

What is 3dfx doing wrong? I have a Voodoo3 in a Win98 gaming machine, and it's great. I'm sure the Voodoo4/5 series are even better.

If greatness is measured by how much a company can charge for its top end products, Oracle, Sun, and Microsoft come to mind...

I hope Nvidia learns from 3Dfx's mistake.

[Maul]

3Dfx obviously fell into a position of comfort and even arrogance as the #1 card maker, and it hurt them pretty badly. They started producing products that didn't live up to expected improvement, and had some delays that cost them the market share.

This let NVidia come out on top.

Now I see a few minor delays in some NVidia products, and I'm concerned that NVidia might be starting to show the same kind of behavior 3Dfx did. NVidia needs to be careful to stay on top, and not let itself fall into the same pattern 3Dfx did.