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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.'"
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....
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
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/eng
Sanchi
"They said we couldn't do it [Athlon]... but we built it, we shipped it... and we didn't have to recall it." Rich Heye
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.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Try the fish. And if you can figure out what language the article was written in please let me know.
:wq
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
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
your company here.
shelby != ford
"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.
"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.
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.
Get a sense of humor.
Click away I've got tons more Karma than you'll ever have.
>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
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
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?
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
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
How to Lobby Politicians http://www.zeta.org.au/~aldis/lobby.html
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.
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.
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]
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 .
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.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
They open their source code. You guys know who to buy stuff from.
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
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.
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!
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.
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.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah