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3Dfx No More -- NVidia Purchases Video Card Maker
Julius X writes: "This just came out, from Yahoo, 3dfx has announced that they will be sold to NVidia as soon as the deal is approved by its shareholders. From the release, "After aggressively pursuing a wide range of options that take into consideration the interests of our creditors, our shareholders, our employees and our customers," said Alex Leupp, president and CEO, 3dfx Interactive Inc., "we strongly believe that to reduce expenses, sell our assets and dissolve the company provides the highest return to our creditors, shareholders, and employees." I think we all saw this one coming. For more details, go to the press release." Actually, tossing in some details early is [hk]doogie, who writes: "Nvidia bought the patents, pending patent applications, trademarks, brand names, and chip inventory related to the graphics business of 3dfx. Get the full scoop [here]."
Don't laugh too much. One of ATI's big advantages is that they already have an "SLI"-type technology. Although the Radeon is a bit slower than the GeForce 2 (original, not ultra) it has some nice extra features, so they're roughly comparable. But with the ability to put two chips on one board, ATI should have been able to keep up easily, at least for a while.
Now, though, nVidia has access to 3dfx's SLI technology. Dual Geforce 2 Ultras aren't very likely, but how about 2 (or 4?) Geforce 2 MX's on a card? It'll take some time before they can integrate SLI into their present products, maybe it's not even possible, but maybe this buyout will take away one of ATI's big advantages.
We don't want their drivers, we want the specs to their cards so others can make independent drivers. Unfortunately, their driver developers have equated NVidia's driver development with their job security, and don't see releasing specs as welcoming competition (never mind that quite afew of open source projects that were started by companies are still worked on by paid in-house developers).
Something breaks here...
Underdog bests incumbent, knocks them silly, outmaneuvers them, and then destroys them, finally purchasing all the relevent patents and technologies:
Nvidia == Underdog
3dFX == Incumbent
AMD == Underdog
Intel == Incumbent
Microsoft == Incumbent
Apple == Underdog
I suspect I have your pattern wrong; what pattern causes Microsoft buying Apple insightful, instead of confusing. Apple hasn't been an incumbant, unless you're counting the days of Apple II...
Your VA Linux crack should give some insight, but all I could glean was that an upstart who has no technical prowess is able to purchase VA Linux, who will probably crumble in a way analgous to 3dFX...
The only thing that comes to mind is Slashdot's ties to VA Linux(whatever they are), and that a kid who delivers newspapers are somehow... more relevant than Slashdot?
I'm sorry, I know asking about a joke will often kill the humor.
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...and see releasing specs ...
blah, gotta hit that preview button more often
The best thing that could happen for regular, non-bleeding-edge consumers like myself is for the few remaining companies to raise prices on the newest cards by $50 or so, and have them reign for a year, getting down to current new release prices at around 4-6 months.
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
NVidia IMHO makes the best current 3d hardware, but they have nothing in the business/SOHO/laptop/OEM market that I'm aware of, whereas Matrox and ATI have vast sums of revenue from those markets.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Where have you been the past 6 months. Take a look at almost every PC sold at CompUSA, go to Dell.com and look at their PCs, try Micron, Gateway, etc. They all use NVIDIA cards. There used to be a time when ATI owned this segment (RagePro) but these days, most OEM/cheap PCs come with integrated TNT2-VANTA class processors. ATI is starting to make a little bit of a comeback here since Dell recently started using the Radeon on some of its machines, but NVIDIA owns the market right now. Neomagic and ATI still rule the notebook roost, however, but there is no word on how long that will last. The reason NVIDIA is dominating is simple; their price/performance kicks ass. NVIDIA cards are cheap and fast. A Radeon DDR is usually about the same price as a GF2, but the GF2 is faster. There is only one weak segment in NVIDIA's line, that is the GeForce2 MX vs Radeon 32 SDR (or DDR for a slightly uneven match)The Radeon is only slightly more expensive, but much more powerful.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
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That's what Aureal said about their Vortex drivers, just before they went bankrupt and bugs that could only be resolved in the binary portion were found with VIA based Athlon motherboards. They too were bought by their competition, Creative Labs, but inversely creative had released open source drivers for their competing cards. hopefully they'll give the same treatment to the vortex driver once the acquisition's complete, but I gave up waiting and got a SBLive!
Does anyone else think 3Dfx's naming conventions are completely stupid? There would be the model, which is a number, and the product, which is another number. Voodoo3 2000, 3000, 3500, V4, V5 5500, V5 6000...
I gotta really apologise to y'all.
I went and bought a V3-2000 videocard last weekend. Finally gave up on trying to pump Unreal through 4-year-old technology.
And I really, really should have alerted the world about my purchase.
You see, this sort of thing happens to me on a regular basis.
Call it the Purchase of Deth syndrome. The reverse Midas touch. With friends like me, what company needs competition?
Needed a sound card. Picked out Gravis as the best. Company went under a few weeks later.
Needed a video card. Picked out a Diamond Monster. Company quit the video business shortly after.
Needed a sound card upgrade. Picked Aureal A3D. It shut its doors a few months later.
Needed a new video card. Picked out a 3DFX Voodoo3-2000. Bang, within ten days, they fold.
Tell you what... I'll make up for all that.
I'm off to purchase some Microsoft products. Hah! That'll teach the bastards...
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This is too bad. This is also the reason why getting an IPO isn't the best idea. At anytime the shareholders can hold a meeting and liquidate your assets. Nvidia's code has been buggy. I know forst hand, my son's TNT2 Riva never worked right. Glide problems, OpenGL problems, the promise of new drivers to fix the problems, and eventually the card is no longer supported and the new drivers never materialize. Nvidia sucks... 3DFX was great, and the code was pretty solid. They will be missed.
With Julius X, Yahoo, 3dfx, announced, press release, [hk]doogie, and full scoop [here] getting hyperlinks, why didn't NVidia get one too?
ATI has long had a reputation of putting out awful drivers. If they manage to put out decent drivers and improve their technical support, then they might be a worthy contender.
Bzzt! Thanks for playing! As of two weeks ago, Rage 128 and Rage 128 Pros running OpenGL under Linux Quake 3 [as an example] now generally outperform Windows, thanks to drivers ATI commissioned from Precision Insight. Download them from ATIs site.
They're not going to put any chips in them because there won't be any 3dfx to make them. Whatever remains of 3dfx after this, it will be dissolved, after they finalize the sale of the Juarez plant.
So you will get what, about 5 of them?
You forget ATI
Oh, and Matrox
They aren't dead yet.
I think ATI still has a very good presence in the market, so NVIDIA still has a lot of fighting (and thus competition) to do.
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Matrox has already announced that they are leaving the gaming
card business behind to pursuit the video editing genre.
So, count them out.
Wonder if this will do anything for NV20 which I'm eagerly waiting to be released...
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ACtually, all of these are FUD.
1. Visual Quality is highly subjective, obviously, but from what I've seen (and what most reviews say), the Matrox and Nvidia cards tend to look better. (anti-aliasing aside, obviously)
2. The reason glide seems to be so wonderful on your voodoo3 is because (from what I've been told) glide almost directly translates into the register commands on the 3dfx chip. Also, Glide was fine for earlier generation cards, but it really isn't up to snuff featurewise with OpenGL or DirectX. In addition, before 3dfx decided to open source glide, they had a nasty habit of trying to sue people who wrote glide->OpenGL/DirectX wrappers.
3. At least in MS Windows land, 3dfx was one of the last consumer card companies to get decent OpenGL drivers. Nvidia has had some pretty good OpenGL drivers since the TNT (2 years ago).
There are a few other major issues 3dfx hasn't resolved (or only resolved recently)
-lack of a geometry engine
-no 32 bit color
-lack of a stencil buffer
from what I can tell Nvidia is not aquireing 3dfx; it is only purchaseing most of its assets. 3dfx plans to dissolve the company. I'm not sure what this means for 3dfx share holders but I'm pretty sure you don't end up with cheap Nvidia stocks.
I have a Voodoo3 2000, and it works great for me. I love that the drifvers are open, and that it's one of the few cards that gives me good 3D OpenGL performance under Linux, Windows, QNX, and BeOS (well... maybe not BeOS..)
So, my question is this: I've been looking around for a new video card, it MUST support Linux, it MUST have Open Source drivers of a decent quality. It MUST be 3D accelerated under Linux, and SHOULD be under FreeBSD, it would be nice to have 3D support in QNX too. So, what are my options?
Seriously, I'm not going to buy another card until I can get those criteria. I was looking at both the Matrox G450 and the ATI Radeon, what is the better option given my criteria? Also, what's the chipset relationship between the G400/G450, and the ATI 128/Radeon? Is the Radeon a continuation of the 128, as the xpert98 was a continuationof the Mach64?
Someone, please offer some good solid advice. I really wish 3DFX was still going strong, to be honest, this caught me completely off guard, I'd have kept buying 3DFX as long as they stayed open. If nVidia does, I'm all theirs..
To Recap:
Required:
- Fast, OpenGL accleration under Linux/XFree86 4.0
- Open Source drivers
- Compatibility (at least 2D) with Linux, *BSD, BeOS, QNX
Desired:
- OpenGL acceleration under FreeBSD, QNX, BeOS
Optional:
- At least 2D compatibility with decent video/color in Solaris
Oh yeah, I won't pay >$300 CDN... Both the Matrox G450 and Radeon (I think) are under budget.
i think my world is collapsing... is that true? whoa nelly! now who will stand against the evil nVidia empire? :-)
who would have thought of that 5 years ago when that funny NV-1 chip arrived...
[--- PGP key and more on http://www.root42.de ---]
I suspect the market will narrow as it becomes a footrace towards efficiency, refinements, and generational improvements.
NVIDIA and ATI will settle into the top 2, with Matrox hovering around the edge...
Some no-name will come up with something stellar and exciting, 2 years from now (not BitBoys), and knock some excitement into the display adaptor market, until ATI or NVIDIA catch up, 2 years later, giving said competitor 2 years to build itself up to a frenzy... then a third competitor will jump in, with a further refinement, and perhaps topple ATI in the process... then there will be a competition between the incumbent NVIDIA, the newly grown Radical, and freshly fed Upstart+ATI...
Something like what happened just two years ago, when 3dfx bowled everyone over (s3, Rendition, ATI, and Matrox)
It's just business, as usual.
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Holy crap, I never saw this coming. I've owned 3Dfx cards for years, and their hardware kicks ass - not necessarily performance-wise, but reliability, and compatibility. Drivers were never an issue (as opposed to some other card maker).
... and it runs sweet on Linux. I'm not about to change it for any NVidia product anytime soon, till someone can prove to me that NV works as well as 3Dfx.
I currently have a V3 3K
Isnt it ironic that Nvidia beat 3dfx by using opengl instead of 3dfx's proprietry glide.
Now 3dfx realised their error opened up and becasme a friend of open source.
Nvidia have forgoten all about openness and dominating the market by any means necessary.
Nvidia became open when it suited them and have long since shut the door.
There is no way this is good for the open source community.
A Radeon 32mb DDR can be had for $150, 64mb ddr $300. Drivers will be open source, the card is comparable, if not better than, a GeForce, but sadly the drivers have not yet been released.
------ 24.5% slashdot pure
A shame? 3dfx, like any other company, are in the business of making profit -- in any way they can. If they are unable to do this, they shouldn't exist. That's integral to the concept of a capitalist economy. I've never understood people having "pity" for a failing company. If it's failing, there is almost always one primary reason: the company is incompetant! If 3dfx were a good enough company to make a profit, they would have continued; obviously, they were not.
Note: I'm not anti-3dfx at all (I still own a couple V2s) -- but I just think sometimes people need reminding we do live in a capitalism.
SGI... Now isn't that funny. ;-)
No, that's not funny. That's ridiculous. As far as SGI is concerned, there is nothing preventing NVIDIA from open sourcing their drivers.
Jon Leech
OpenGL Group
SGI
You sound bitter - why's that? nVidia should be concerned with one thing: profit. They should take steps to make as much money as they can off the video card industry. If they judge that the best way to do this is picking the bones of 3dfx's corpse, so be it. Really, what do you think? That nVidia should be concerned about the financial well-being of 3dfx investors? What kind of fscked up society would that be!
Hell, I just got my voodoo3 back from a warranty repair yesterday.
--Perianwyr Stormcrow
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
You worked on the M2!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
Please, let me know more info! Heck, looking back at the M2 it looks about as powerful as a Dreamcast now... I mean look at those screenshots of that one racing game. Holy crap. Please, more info.
As an example at a previous employer many many years ago we once bet the company on a [then] new and untested chip packaging technology - it worked and we had an accelerator design that walked all over the competition for almost 2 generations - made over $100M in sales off of it - but management wouldn't spend the money to do the short term re-engineering to keep our lead and we were toast - and by the time they figured it out it was of course too late ....
I think that in the long run NVDA and ATI have more to worry about from Intel than anyone else (Intel's 810 is already hurting them both) - they now own the largest pieces of silicon in a PC outside of Intel's control - luckily for them Intel has already been burned by trying to go the graphics route and may be somewhat reluctant (just talk to the C&T people who were absorbed by the iBorg ...)
The incredibly scary thing is that MS may very well go under soon. Well, scary in coincidence, promising otherwise.
After I have received the wisdom of good teaching, I will untiringly teach all people. - The Teachings of Buddha
A slowdown in development cycle can have benefits elsewhere. If the hardware development slows down, then software development can ramp up knowing that they will have a longer window of viability before hardware improvements makes older software obsolete. Also, a more stable hardware environment benefits open source and alternative operating systems, who often get frozen out of hardware improvements and lag behind Windows in terms of driver support.
I own a Voodoo 2 (Guillemot), Voodoo 3, and Vortex 2 (Diamond). I find it quite amusing:
Some New Year's resolutions:
Moral: developers are cheaper and more effective than lawyers.
Ok, According to the benchmarks the Nvida whatever card had beat the V5. Now I own a V5, and it is a quite nice card running at around 208 fps tops in X4. Not too long ago at a LAN party a friend of mine had brought his GF2 over to run q3 with. Not a bad card, but the V5 topped it out by about 20 or so FPS, and the graphics looked a bit better on the V5, with the same settings.
I am willing to bet that M$ paid off those Benchmarks to make 3dfx look bad, THEN have their partner (Nvidia) buy 3dfx, just so M$ can have again, a larger monopoly and it would be MORE $ for both the companys.
M$: How do you want us to monopolise your day?
M$ stock dropped in 1/2 since last year. If you are a MCSE, you will be broke.
What do you expect people to say? "Hooray, now I won't be as confused by all the choices next time I buy a video card?"
Actually, I was thinking something along these lines.. As others have said, the 3d hardware life-cycle seems to be about 6 months. Now, I don't know about you, but I can't afford to throw away $200+ every six months whenever 3dblah comes out with the New VoodooNextBestThingForce card... And God forbid you make the wrong decision when you buy one. My last 3d card purchase was a VoodooBanshee. Anyone remember those? 3dfx basically took a Voodoo 2 and added the Banshee extentions to it, which NO ONE used, so it's now basically an overpriced Voodoo 2.
The way I see it, if 3d chipset manufacturers get out of this arms race and slow the life cycle to about a year, and spent the extra time to tweak the drivers for better performance, everyone wins. This also benefits game developers.. With the typical game development time being two years or so, I imagine it's a very difficult to hit moving target for a developer to keep up.
Shayne
Today I didn't even have to use my AK; I got to say it was a good day -- Icecube
Actually, with closed source drivers, you are usually guaranteed it will get worse.
What if Nvidia decided they would not support the 2.4 kernel? glibc versions >2.2? Xfree 4.1? With closed source drivers, all work comes from paid employees - think of it not as them deciding NOT to support these, but deciding not to expand their support to these new technologies.
If I want to try BSD/Hurd, as far as I know I am up sh*t creek as far as support with an NVidia board. Same with trying to get it working under LinuxPPC.
With closed-source drivers, every new technology amounts to 'expand support budget, eliminate support for old technology, or ignore'. With open-source drivers, at least people who want say, their Riva 128 to work with new drivers actually *can* implement the support.
Well.. it seems like the shareholders aren't digging the news too much. NVidia shares fell 10% today.
Theres a good wrapup about the stock with lots of links to articles about the buyout at Yahoo Financial.
-gerbik
Oh! I remember you! Well, I remember seeing your name on various bits of software that I ran on my (lost, lamented) Amiga 1000.
You did Llamatron, didn't you?
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
This is very bad news for Mac users. For quite some time now, 3Dfx has been the only one putting out a combination of decent cards, drivers, and support for Macs at a reasonable price (ATI skimps on drivers, Matrox skimps on support, Formac is way too expensive even with the neato 3D glasses, etc). There are rumors of NVidia supporting Macs, but those have been around for nearly two years and nothing has surfaced from them (plus there have been announcements by NVidia about their commitment to a single-platform environment).
So to say the least, I'm very dismayed by this one. Here's hoping NVidia will finally deliver the support they've been promising. If not, the future of 3D on the Mac looks rather bleak.
Besides which, while NVidia was known for delivering excellent framerates, the renderer itself is also known for having the worst quality of The Big Three if taken on a frame-by-frame basis (ATI tends to come first, which may be part of -if not most of- the reason for the framerate problems their cards tend to have).
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Do either of you have anything to do with the FOX Network? Chris Elliot's Get A Life and Seth Macfarlane's The Family Guy are two of the best shows that network ever made.
"Watch these suckers jump when I get root." - l33t j03
I'll put in my 2 quatloos re: point 1 - /. ?!) In 3D, the image quality with matching settings comes through sharper on the Matrox, but that GTS is a killer for speed, though Triple Play and Madden don't really cause nearly as much pain as Q3.
;-)
My Matrox G200 (and my old 1995 vintage Matrox Millenium) can drive my 21" monitor cleaner at the higher resolutions in 2D (ghosting, edges, etc) than my TNT. Comparing the G400Max and the GTS, there's the same comparison in 2D quality, which is where I spend most of my time (3D
That, and it took the other video card makers until late 1998 to make a card that performed better than the "old" 4MB Millenium at 1024x768/32bpp and better... shouldn't have been a problem, but 3D was the focus. Oh well... now I'm just into my crotchety old man phase again (once you hit 23, it's all downhill
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"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
ok, one more thing...i get an error message when i try to boot it, too. it says,
"Requested kernel load address (0x447000) too high!"
what does this mean & how can i fix it?
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# cd /
Well there's always ATI. Also, I'm pretty sure that ATI recently purchased the company that's puting the graphics cards in the Ninendo Gamecube (ArtX). I think if Gamecube is a success, and ATI manages to keep some OEM support, then we'll still see some competition to nVidia's domination to the market. Anyway, I don't think this is as bas as you make it seem. 3Dfx hasn't really put out a quality product since the Voodoo2 SLI to worry nVidia. So slashdot readers, buy a GameCube!! It'll probably be worth it just for Zelda neway.
ciao, jacoplane
So, what happens to former 3dfx employees?
Oh, and how 'bout their stock options??
Their main problem appeared to be management focusing on getting faster revisions of old technology out rather than letting their engineers reinvent the architecture.
They bought STB based on their strong branding (apparently they were very branding-oriented, like Intel), but unfortunately lost the majority of their sales outlets due to this, as well as direction due to management of two different companies.
Because of my belief that they kept taking engineers off of next-gen projects (Rampage, anyone?) and putting them on feature-adding revisions of the Voodoo I, I would imagine that NVidia is inheiriting a *lot* of new technology with this deal which we haven't seen yet
And why would they even think of that? ATI is doing fine. Matrox isn't exacty selling boatloads of chips at the moment.
Even if Nvidia starts to get complacent in a market dominate postion, guess what, that opens the door for another com,pany to step up and bring the pain to them. Thats how The system works.
Strange movement. First I bough STB Velocity 440 (with a TNT chipset). Then 3dfx bought STB, so I had no more support from my card by STB, while people that had bought creative's one had all the latest improvements. And now.. wil I get back support for my Velocity, that still rocks?
On a separate, unrelated note, anyone know how I can run old Sound-blaster only software on a Diamond Monster audio card? Just curious.
forager
student of animation and the fine arts
uhm...yes there is, look at my posted email address.
-Julius X
-Julius X
remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
Sure.... the stock values for the remaining "employees". Namely, the President, CEO, CFO, and their buddies.
as far as I know, intel has completely stopped creating video chipsets. They have also cancelled every projects for an all-in-one cpu/chipset that I know of. They also are the only company I've seen who managed to push worse drivers than ATi's
There's a very real chance that the NDA issue WILL go away with the 3dfx purchase. I may just be blowing smoke here, but it seems to me that, because 3dfx comes with fullblown OGL drivers, it's not outside the realm of possibility that NVidia will adopt them and stop paying SGI.
--
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Sure, I'd like to see more openness from video/sound/other card companies but I cant see this purchase of 3dfx as a step backwards. It can and will only get better.
siri
It's not even that. It only has a single TMU, so performance in multitexturing games (i.e. all of them) is worse than V2.
The Banshee was yet another product showcasing 3dfx's utter lack of desire to improve their technology. They stunned the world with their amazing original Voodoo Graphics chipset, and then coasted right up 'till today. They incrementally improved the original (adding 2D, adding 32 bit color) ONLY long after the rest of the industry forced them to realize that these features were required.
3dfx arguably gave birth to the consumer 3D industry. But after delivery, they sure did a lousy job of rearing their child.
Here we have something very interesting
two companies, both with some good and some bad technology, essentialy becoming one company
will nvidia use 3dfx technology in future cards? hell yes
will nvidia cards be BETTER because of it? here's where it gets complicated
you've got good technologies merging into one, but you have a severe lack of competition
prior to nvidia, there was 3dfx
it was all 3dfx
if you wanted a decent 3d accelerator, you went with 3dfx Voodoo 2
then came nvidia with their Riva 128, to be followed shortly thereafter by the TNT and TNT2, and all hell broke loose
3dfx has been the primary nvidia competition and has been what has driven nvidia to release faster, better, higher quality cards
ATI has become a decent alternative to both nvidia and 3dfx, but the competition level is similar to linux vs Windows (I'm not talking about quality, just the level of competition and market share) though ATI does have a bit more foothold in the video card market than linux does in the OS market
now we have 3dfx and nvidia in one company
where's the competition? where's the drive to release new and better cards?
Microsoft version 2.0: The Video Chronicles ?
let's hope and pray that that's not what happens, that nvidia doesn't release one good card combining technologies and then stagnate and release crappy cards because they know they can get away with it
what will the final outcome be? who knows
let's just hope ATI can become a major force and give nvidia a run for its money
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CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
a slower release cycle does not mean that there will be bigger jumps per release. Mostly it means that they will charge more for the next gen so that they can generate the same amount of money they would make providing more frequent upgrades.
I remember the old days of certain swinging dicks in some online communities I frequented blathering on and on and pissing themselves talking about how 3dfx was always king and always would be. 3dfx this. 3dfx that. I guess you studs are chugging some monster crow now. Heh heh heh. Hope you don't mind if I chuckle just a bit more over that. Heh heh heh heh.
my BEOWULF CLUSTER of 3dfx chips?
Out of curiousity, why? The 3d graphics cards are already 2+ years ahead of the software (even in games, which are typically leading the pack). I just recently upgraded from one of the original TNT's which up to the last 4-5 months had -no- problems keeping up with any game. Slowing down a little isn't going to hurt significantly, and it -will- give the software developers an environment that is just a bit more stable. A more stable environment for devs could easily translate into software that isn't focused on pure eye-candy, or at least not quite as much as they currently tend to be.
I, for one, will heartily applaud anything that encourages devs to develop -content- as opposed to eye-candy.
Has no one thought of NVidia supporting Glide?. Yes, I know half of you are thinking that Glide sucks, but think of it...
It is fast and it is supported in Linux/Windoze/Dos. In fact it could become the standard everyone is waiting for (besides OpenGL that is too slow compared to Glide and Direct3D that is even worse).
PS => I've got to say that I do not own a 3dfx gfx card: I own a Matrox G400 (and I'm very happy with it), so you can't say I'm biassed.
"When they dissolve the company, the remaining assets (after liabilities) will be divided among the shareholders. You'll probably wind up with some NVidia stock."
How much? Suppose it's 1/100th of a share of nVidia per share of TDFX?
Again, details are spare and there is much room for interpretation of what little info we have. However, it appears that the shares of nVidia do not go to TDFX shareholders. If my interpretation is correct, they instead first go to 3dfx, which still exists as an "independent" company (Although stripped of everything of value), which apparently will use them to pay their creditors first. Then, whatever is left (Could end up being very little) will go to shareholders, possibly directly, or maybe as cash after liquidation. Probably the latter, as it appears the management will attempt to bail in their golden parachutes first.
Thanks for the pedantic sig, arrogant ass.
There is not a single good reason from a software engineering point of view for NVIDIA to open source their drivers. Not one. Software engineering is not a religion, it is an engineering discipline. General users of an operating system should not need to have the source code for their drivers. NVIDIA is more than capable of producing very good drivers and distributing the source code would only give its competition valuable information and algorithms. When you have such a high technological edge with drivers (just look how bad ATIs are), why give it away? Why give millions of dollars of research away to competition for free? Why should I, as ATI, even *bother* with driver research and development if NVIDIA, the current market leader, *gives* it away? I mean really, think a little bit...get off the pathetic and completely useless tangent of NVIDIA or other big software companies releasing their software under open source. NVIDIA is supporting linux, and quite well it seems from Tom's Hardware benchmarks, they are quite close to windows framerates with the only reason that's holding them back being XFree86. The GNU movement is all about re-inventing the wheel. You said you fear for the 3d revolution because of NVIDIA's closed source drivers under linux. That is so blatantly narrow view. You do not take *any* factors into account. NVIDIA has continually broken 3d barriers with their hardware, they have continually produced excellent products with exceptional drivers. It appears you comments were not based on anything rational...
On top of that, as others have pointed out, 3dfx is much better about open drivers than Nvidia. It's the same reason most of us want Netscape to triumph over MS, because mozilla is open source, and IE will go open source sometime around when Hell freezes over.
Yes, this is the natural result of 3dfx not doing a good job. Yes, there are some other graphics card makers out there. However, there aren't a lot of them, and Nvidia may be able to use their market position to drive up the price of cards, which is obviously bad for all of us. What do you expect people to say? "Hooray, now I won't be as confused by all the choices next time I buy a video card?" This may not be horrible, but there's really nothing good about it either.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Wait a second...
This is a misleading statement. id said they wouldn't provide a separate Linux-only CD-ROM for purchase at your local software outlet. They'll still be supporting Linux through downloadable binaries. And if you think your Q3TA CD will be good for anything besides reinstalling graphics and models after the first patch to the binaries, you should think again.
Sure, nVidia should allow open source developers to see specs on their hardware so free like speech drivers can be developed. You have a great point with a non-great example.
Good. I really don't think we need the rate of "advancement" we're getting in 3d. Not when it's being used to make up for poor performance by software and to make Ms. Croft's boobs more detailed.
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
I doubt it. NVIDIA's Q&A says, "The structure of this deal allows NVIDIA to purchase certain assets that are consistent with our business model without acquiring 3dfx liabilities." One of these liabilities, apparently, is the current Voodoo line: "The remaining 3dfx entity is responsible for their current product lines and retail channel. ...
The 3dfx product in the channel and installed base and customer support remain the responsibility of 3dfx.
It is best to check those details with 3dfx management."
After this deal, there isn't going to be a "remaining 3dfx entity." According to the 3dfx press release, the "board of directors will recommend to its shareholders that they ... approve a plan to dissolve the company following completion of the asset sale."
The creditors will lick the plate clean, any remaining employees will be fired, and Nasdaq will remove TDFX from the ticker.
Nintendo will use ATI on there next game console.
You think you've got it bad...
Once upon a time, I fell in love with the Amiga computer. I bought one as quickly as I could, and was happily hacking on it for years. I thought it was a really neat system, and it died.
Roughly parallel to that, I got to work on CDTV, which was a "consumerized" version of an Amiga 500, intended to directly compete with Philip's CDI. I helped create what is still probably one of the best CD audio players ever done for a "home" gaming/multimedia system. I though it was a really neat system, and it died.
After that, I was fortunate enough to be invited by RJ Mical and Dave Needle to join NTG (New Technologies Group) who were working on what was to become the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer. It was based on the ARM-60, had ass-kicking graphics and sound capabilities, and a nice tiny OS that owed much of its heritage to the Amiga. I thought it was a really neat system, and it died.
Undeterred, we went on to design M2, the 64-bit follow-on to the 3DO Multiplayer. This thing had a 3D chip that did 32-bit rendering and outperformed 3Dfx's PC offerings at the time. It was also slated to have two 66MHz PowerPC 602 chips running the show. I thought it was going to be a really neat system, and it died.
I now work for Be, Incorporated... And I think it's a really neat system.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
So I am assuming the shares will be folded into 3DFX right ?
Actually they have the geforce 2 mx (sub $150), and the tnt 2 64 (sub $90). Nvidia has done verry well in all segments of the market, but they don't have anything like the market share in the low end that ATI and Intel have.
Now it's up to the Bitboys to give us the hardware competition we need.
Uh oh.
F.O.Dobbs
Portal-Potty founder and Mr. Brown drinker
They deliver a solid product, good drivers, and are open source sympathetic.
I have to say I disagree with every point you just mentioned. I purchased a G400 Dual Head card last year, and it fried its own BIOS when I tried to install the Win2k drivers that were available at the time. The Win98 drivers that I tried were dog slow and had some weird quirks (such a graphic artifacting with certain Direct3D games that always worked fine with the Voodoo3 I bought afterward). And frankly, most consumers don't give a rat's ass about open-source sympathy or not, so I consider that a non-issue when it comes to predicting the successs of a video board company.
- "It's just a matter of opinion!" - PRIMUS
I don't know if they're advertising it much but Hitman: Codename 47 which was just released has Glide support, so some people out there still think it's worth it
I disagree. NVidia is really pushing about as high as they can price-wise right now. If they jack prices up any more then they will just be opening the doors to their competition.
They certainly don't want to settle into the high-end only market. Their competition is quite competent, even if they are lagging a little right now.
-renderguy
Take it easy chief... I read your post again, and I don't think I misinterpreted anything. Would you be so kind as to point out what else I should have read in your original post?
3dfx management may be trying to benefit themselves at the expense of their own shareholder who are the true owners of the company, and that we believe there are ways to dispose of 3dfx's assets that would return more of it's value to us.
I wasn't talking about that. I was talking about the aspect of your post when you talked about nVidia 'screwing over 3dfx investors'. You actually didn't talk about 3dfx's management at all in your original post.
Forgot to mention something--nVidia has agreed to pay $70 million plus 1 million in nVidia stock. Now, assuming all of that stock goes to TDFX shareholders (The amount of debt TDFX has is still unclear to me at this moment, so I'm unsure how many shares will have to be liquidated to pay creditors), there are 39.4 million shares of TDFX outstanding. So let's assume 1 share nVidia for every 40 you own of TDFX. That's still a hell of a lot of suckage for TDFX investors, as it currently puts my 3dfx stock at less than $1 in value.
Is there anyone really left that can compete now in the video card market? Unless Matrox pulls something fantastic out of their hats, I wonder what's going to happen, especially with prices.
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
hmm...built in sound, modem, NIC, and video? you have an iMac, too?
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Actually, the GeForce2-class chips already blows away the Oxygen series in terms of performance. If you take a look at the Intense3D benchmarks you'll find that the WildCat (designed by Intense3D, acquired by Intergraph, then acquired by 3Dlabs) is the fastest midrange workstation card out there. However, take a look at the Elsa Gloria II scores. The Gloria II is almost exactly a GeForce running at 130Mhz. (10MHz overclock) with some anti-aliasing and other features enabled. Its already around 50-70% of the performance of the WildCat, and I wouldn't be surprised if a GeForce2 Ultra comes within 20% of the performance of a WildCat. At around 1/4 the cost. While 3DLabs might have some tricks up their sleeves, they better get those tricks out fast, because NVIDIA is not only taking over consumer space, but has a great chance at the workstation market as well. As for Matrox, you have to respect them. The G400 MAX was a little late, but had the best visual quality of any card (and still does) and was most of the speed of a TNT2 Ultra.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Hey! We're just gonna sell chips now!
No wait, sorry, we're still gonna sell cards!
Ah screw it, we suck, let NVIDIA have it all.
And I thought the wife's moodswings were bad. Sheesh.
Which means they'll sell the Voodoo line-up at a bargain price to whoever's slightly interested, and give the creditors the customary pennies-on-the-dollar.
3Dfx screwed up, so it's hard to feel sorry for them. But it sucks to seem one company essentially just pay another to go out-of-business. (There might be some lawsuits that go away too, I dunno.)
- In the beginning... 3D graphics chips were *really* expensive, running to the thousands of dollars and only working on certain hardware.
- Then simple 3D graphics chips like S3's ViRGE (shudder) came along. They were slow and had a horrible framerate (the ViRGE is commonly referred to as the world's only 3D decelerator), but actually made the pictures look a bit more smooth. This trend continued for a while, until...
- 3Dfx released the Voodoo, ushering in really nice second-generation hardware acceleration. With high-res, high-color-depth and smooth framerates, they became the overnight champ. They scared the daylights out of companies like Number 9, S3, ATI and all the other 3D chipmakers. The only card these companies had was that the Voodoo was a secondary graphics card; it didn't do 2D. The other problem was that the Voodoo really only worked with Glide; most other graphics chips could work with OpenGL.
- 3Dfx tried to fix this problem with the Voodoo Rush, which was essentailly a 2D chip hot-glued to a Voodoo. The Rush failed miserably (First slip: Don't cobble together a half-assed product. Gamers and reviewers always know the difference.), because 3Dfx did not take into proper account the interaction and integration needed to make the 2D and 3D work together. 3Dfx then released the Voodoo2 (essentially a sped-up Voodoo), to much critical acclaim. Still, Glide was the only graphics system that it really worked with, and 3Dfx was convinced that Glide would eventually replace OpenGL. (Second slip: Hubris has brough down more empires than one can imagine. Always know that you are mortal.)
- Around this time nVidia was starting to show signs of becoming a good chipmaker. While early chips like the NV1 were absolutely laughable when compared to the mighty 3Dfx chips, nVidia was busy trying to prove that they were fast learners (the Riva 128 was considered a great chip for gamers on a tight budget).
- The release of the TNT was the first real threat to 3Dfx's business; it was fast, ran OpenGL & Direct3D (at the time a horrible choice for anyone, but there nonetheless) and also did 2D. At first 3Dfx tried to convince itself (and us) that the future would be powered by Voodoo/Glide, but when reviews of TNT chips essentially matched the Voodoo2, 3Dfx knew it was in for a fight to the death.
- 3Dfx had to do something; people were buying TNT cards, and that spelled trouble. 3Dfx ultimately decided that their best (only?) option was to do it all: the chip and the board. They bought STB (right after I bought my PC which had an STB graphics card and a TNT chip -- doh!) and stopped selling Voodoo technology to third parties, most of whom immediately jumped into bed with nVidia (remember how pissed off Creative was?). The Voodoo3 would come from only one source: 3Dfx. (Third slip: Don't alienate the very people who provide most of your revenue, i.e. boardmakers)
- As the Voodoo3 and TNT/TNT-Ultra waged war, gamers were slowly coming to realize that nVidia's chip was just as fast (or faster), on par with price, and didn't require the proprietary Glide. PC makers also realized this and started shifting towards nVidia graphics boards. And since they came from a variety of boardmakers, the PC makers could pick and choose their vendor while still using the nVidia core. Meanwhile, 3Dfx watched their sales plummet as they realized that shipping the Voodoo3 without support for 32-bit color was turning many gamers away. (Fourth slip: Of course we didn't need 32-bit color support then; most games turned into slideshows at that depth. But the first rule of business is to make the customer happy.
- nVidia also got gamers horny by releasing a new chip approximately every six months; 3Dfx was releasing at a rate of one new chip about every year to year-and-a-half. 3Dfx had failed to realize that hardcore gamers demand speed, and that gamers will do just about anything within their power to get that little extra boost of speed from their machines. (If you don't believe me, visit Tweak3D and see for yourself.) 3Dfx was also having serious financial problems; between the collapse of the dot-com-saturated market bubble and disappointing sales, 3Dfx must have realized that going solo was a terrible mistake.
Since then, 3Dfx has been in free-fall, and the announcement of their sale is just the SPLAT of a once-mighty graphics giant hitting the pavement; even their open-source drivers were not enough to save them. 3Dfx never developed (or at least never released) a new architecture; the V2 through V5 were essentially speed upgrades and hot-glue-and-duct-tape "new features" to their now sorely outdated and overworked architecture. (Why do you think they have required so much more power and cooling? I mean, a power brick for the V5? Are they kidding me?)Also around this time, most other 3D chipmakers (like Number 9, PowerVR and S3) were frantically trying to stay in business. A couple of them made it, but most either quit the 3D market or fizzled. 3Dfx was riding high, and went public amidst the dot-com market inflation. Things were looking good.
Meanwhile, nVidia continues to dominate the market; they will provide the precious GPU for Microsoft's upcoming XBox, and the GeForce 2 Ultra GTS Pro Whizbang 7 Foomlegricken Supersize (or whatever the hell they call the latest chip) consistently garners rave reviews among journalists and gamers alike. Even the lack of open-source drivers hasn't stopped people (even open-source advocates like myself) from going with them. In short, 3Dfx got beat by a company with a real third-generation graphics chip, but not without help from itself.
I am sorry to see them go; they were nVidia's biggest rival, and I am always a fan of good competition. My only hope is that nVidia open-sources their own drivers, and perhaps learns from 3Dfx's mistakes. No, I hope we all learn from 3Dfx's mistakes.
Robert Dumas (robertdumas@hotmail.com)
The question is of course if Nvidia will take a page from 3dfx:s book and further open their own drivers, or if this is the end of the (relative) openness from 3dfx. Then again, it's quite possible that they will continue to support the open effoert of current 3dfx cards, while continuing to produce closed drivers for their core Nvidia line.
As Nvidia has claimed that a big reason not to open their drivers is that they are forbidden to do so because of NDA:s with technology partners, one possibility is that as they now own 3dfx technology can use that in place of (probably quite expensive) 3rd party stuff. That would mean more the possibility of increasing the openness towards developers.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Are you sure this time?
First, let me describe how I came to be a 3dfx shareholder. I first started investing while I was still in college, using a little money I had saved up (in part earned by serving as a guinea pig in clinical trials). I began buying 3dfx back before they merged with STB. As shares gradually dropped from my initial purchase price of ~$15, I doubled down, and doubled down again. Eventually, I ended up with about 1,000 shares, at an average purchase price of $10. I really wanted to believe in the company, in the engineers that were always so earnest and hopeful when you spoke to them. And in the products that always seemed to get slammed around by web reviewers, but really kicked butt if you actually took the time to try one out yourself.
OK, details on this are pretty sparse, but at first look it looks really, really bad for us shareholders. The Motley Fool board has the most active and knowledgable group of 3dfx investors out there, and on that board, some of the mostly highly recommended (ie., plus moderated) messages there right now happen to be pure profanity. Some folks there have suggested we may be getting as little as 0.30 a share, if anything.
It looks like nVidia may not actually be "buying" 3dfx. Rather, it looks like they will be cherry picking the few assets worth anything, like the designs for 3dfx's next products including Rampage (And it's associated T&L chip, Sage) and Mosaic, and leaving 3dfx as a hollow shell containing nothing but a near-worthless boardmaking plant and lots of debt--in other words, completely screwing over the shareholders in the worst way possible. This hollow shell would also probably be responsible for for providing support, warranties, and driver updates for anybody out there owning a 3dfx card.
Basically, it looks like I may as well write off my entire investment as a loss, and consider it tuition in the school of hard knocks.
You haven't noticed the i810 chipset? I certainly have -- there's a stack of Dells at work up to the ceiling, all with 810 video.
Agreed about the drivers, although the new version seems to at least display 2D correctly.
how exactly do you put out vaporware?
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What if this actually is GOOD for the video card market? With one less type of technology to worry about, perhaps we can standardize a bit more? Also, will this make development easier, perhaps allowing coders to work more on features and cool games rather than supporting every obscure feature for every different card out there.
Fawking Trolls!
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
Its really a shame with all the problems that 3dfx has had that they couldn't pull it out of the gutter...they started out great, and made the best products back in the day...if they hadn't bought STB, I doubt this would have ever happened.
-Julius X
-Julius X
remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
I used to be very pro-3dfx, but the GeForce2 GTS I've got kicked their ass (and I do have V5 5500 as well, in another box.)
Yours truly's two year old custom-built machine includes:
:)
A Voodoo 2
A TNT, which I bought the day it came out- made by STB, of course...
An LS-120 drive
An Aureal Vortex 1 soundcard
A Phillips CDD2600 CD-R- the model that was the cause of a successful class action lawsuit due to massive mechanical errors
A DTC SCSI card (company out of business 3 times over)
I'm building a new machine in the near future. It will have the newest and greatest parts from Nvidia, Creative Labs, and AMD- the best processors, video cards and soundcards money can currently buy.
I'm looking forward to seeing how many of them go down
Let's hope nothing happens to AMD..
First it was the Betamax leaving us, then (skip ahead a few years..) Creative purchased Aureal, now this.
I know the market's going south for the winter, but DAMN..
With the combined nVidia and 3Dfx patents, they can sue any potential competitor in the gaming market who even tries to compete with them, so no possible competitor will get funding and no existing competitor will be able to approach current nVidia performance levels.
It's an interesting question whether there is any reason to support Linux or the Mac- with Microsoft shaking and issuing earnings warnings, it's not stupid to hang onto whatever support for alternate platforms you have, so binary-only support for Linux and Mac is likely to continue indefinitely. The current nVidia offerings will make their way to a mostly-working support of Linux and Mac, and they will stay there- because it'll be at least five years before we see any significant improvements. No financial return in wasting money on development, remember? When no other competitor _can_ arise because you have the field locked up with patents and can afford to use them as a weapon, it's payback time.
I'm quite glad that I'm not a serious gamer today. I can play 'X-Plane' quite happily on an old ATI rage128-based card, and don't need to play new games. If I want more flash I can get a PS2. That's the smart bet now- because there's no reason for nVidia to sweat too hard making X-Box that great, even if it does ship. It's PC-based, and the only PC-based 3D vendor of note is nVidia now, so nothing will come along to make X-Box look bad compared to the PC platform. I honestly thought that the PC was going to far outclass X-Box by the time X-Box is supposedly out, but now everything changes because the PC development will stop (fiduciary duty, remember? They can hire some ad-men to go with the lawyers- that'll do. Cheaper than techs) meaning that nVidia can actually cooperate with Microsoft to ensure that PC gaming does _not_ exceed X-Box- assuming of course Microsoft _wants_ X-Box to beat PC gaming, which I guess is up to Microsoft and not you.
Welcome to the world of the future. Chess anyone?
The 'lifetime' warranty refers to the life of the company
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
Damn it? did you ever use Netscape too?! Stay away from Mozilla, Debian, OpenBSD, NVidia, and while you're at it get of Slashdot too ;-)
*Shrug*
Everyone knows the Radeon blows any Voodoo 5 out the water.
Firingsquad has an interview with Brian Burke of nVidia's PR department regarding the buy out at http://firingsquad.gamers.com/features/nvidia1215/ .
They talk about driver support, 3dfx's current and future hardware.
I work for a company who was spun off of 3dfx back in February and we're still in their building in Dallas (Richardson to be exact). This has been talked about for over a month here daily and it really comes as no surprise. The bottom line was it was cheaper for nVidia to buy 3dfx then to pay the fines from the lawsuits from 3dfx.
Dude, nobody pays attention to Anonoymous Cowards. Get a login or get a life. I got the nut to post my name bitch.
Imaging Geforce4 sli, with FSAA
'I sense much NT in you. NT leads to blue screen, blue screen leads to downtime, downtime leads to suffering.' -Uknown
just my $.02
if even that
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.
But then, I'm still using my Aureal Vortex 2 sound card, so I suppose obsolescence is in my blood...
Sean Daugherty "I have walked in Eternity -- and Eternity weeps."
In the past few years we've seen a lot of graphics companies go under. I've tried to put together a list, although I'm sure there may be a few names missing.
Dead:
Tseng Labs - gone.
Western Digital - out of the business.
Number 9 - gone (?)
Orchid - gone (?)
Hercules - gone in all but name.
Cirrus - Out of the graphics business.
Neomagic - Moving out of the graphics business.
Alliance - Out of the graphics business.
MIA:
C&T - Purchased by Intel.
3D Labs - Purchased by Intel.
Rendition - Purchased by Micron.
S3 - Purchased by VIA, now focusing on "integrated chipsets".
Trident - Still making low end cards, mostly living off proceeds from well-timed investment in UMC.
Still kicking:
Matrox - Appears to be focusing on corporate and 2D markets. Private company, so little info on internal status.
Videologic - in Sega's Dreamcast, still attempting to break into PC market, active R&D. Partners with STMicro.
ATI - Looks like will be in Nintendo's Dolphin, financially still strong (for now). Large (but shrinking) OEM and retail share, dominant in mobile graphics and Macintosh market. Active R&D.
SiS - Low end cards, apparently active R&D.
I'm pretty sure id is supplying Linux binaries, meaning they are supporting the Linux platform and whatever Linux stands for, but this doesn't mean they are supporting their program as a product running under Linux. It depends on which "support" you mean when you read the original poster.
(free and free?)
Mantle
This is VERY BAD for consumers. In the past, competition between 3DFX and NVidia who both shared the lead position in the 3D card battle have helped prices crashed. Now, it's just NVidia, ATI, and Matrox. Matrox can't really harm anyone with their current 3D technology, and ATI can't convince people that RAEDON cards are up to the level of Geforce2 or Vodoo5 cards. It's really a dissapointment.
Outlook for the future:
NVidia will rule the graphics card business. The Geforce3 will be at least $400 and will stay that way due to the lack of an alternative. I can only hope that ATI or Matrox can come out with a comperablie card at a lower price, or we'll all be paying a lot more for 3D cards.
Doesn't this sound like AOL TIME WARNER? Two giant industry leaders joining together to become a giant? Monopoly is bad for consumers, with media or 3D cards. Like I said, this is bad.
I'm afraid I see a lot of competition dropping out of the 3D market in the near future with this event. :(
For starters, NVidia is likely to get a bit complacent with their marketshare now. :( I see their support in the future dropping at least a little.
This leave us with just a few viable ( < $400 card) vendors..
- NVidia
- ATI
- Matrox
- S3
Anyone care to correct me if I'm wrong here?On a side note, I'd be willing to pay a premium for an openly-speced, programmable graphic accellerator? Anyone else?
If I were in the stock business, I'd get myself some 3dfx or Nvidia shares ASAP.
With only ATI as a competitor and no new, revolutionary product coming from them, what's there to prevent Nvidia from dominating the market?
Just my thoughts, anyway. I could be wrong.
Flavio
I can't believe how perfect this is...
Granted i'd prefer to have two top dogs competing for my market... but to own an "Nvidia Voodoo" so preferctly ironic...
-T
Old truckers never die, they just get a new peterbilt
The 3D workstation graphics board market has been run over by the gamers. E&S has retreated to big simulators, Lockheed doesn't seem to be in 3D boards any more, and Fujitsu exited long ago. NVidia bought out ELSA. 3DLabs is still selling "high end" boards, but their product line is still stuck in 1999, and the latest game boards outperform them. We all know what happened to SGI.
NVidia's high end line, the "Quadro", is actually the GeForce line with a jumper change. The gamer boards have caught up to the high end, and there's no real distinction any more.
Well, actually there is. If you buy a Quadro board through ELSA, you get a real warranty, drivers that have been tested, and reachable tech support.
How long before ATI and and Videologic succomb to the new empire?
Jesus used to be my co-pilot, but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him.
One of my closest friends worked there. He lost his job over a month ago. Anyone looking for an exceptional 3D artist?
-- Will program for bandwidth
I can only hope that Nvidia can provide the same level of support to the Linux community that 3dfx did. I was pleased with the V3 line and their speedy support under XFree86, and this makes me a little worried.
I don't care as much about blistering speed (I'm more than happy with 60fps, why do I need 160?), as much as having a card do what I want, doing it reliably and well enough.
;)
I used to use an ATI Rage Pro (came with the machine, not my choice). For 2d, it did what I wanted well and did it pretty reliably. A refresh rate of 100 was more than enough, and I didn't really consciously think of the video card, as there was nothing wrong, it worked, and so I didn't think about it. For 3d though, well, let's just say I always used software mode rendering.
Since I like playing all the latest games, and software mode was cutting it less and less, I upgraded to a Voodoo 3 2000. I could have gotten a faster, more showier TNT, but it didn't do what I want, and it didn't do it reliably. What did I want? Glide support for all my old games that had Glide or Software mode, nothing else really; decent 3D performance, which the V3 provided and good 2D, refresh rate of 100; many other things more than good enough and for this iteration, good enough Linux support to do various work & game related things. Grabbing the latest version of XFree86 at the time, there it was. At the time, I was hearing that while NVIDIA was faster, 3dfx was more stable. Hearsay or not, I heard it enough from websites, discussion groups, friends, etc., to lean towards 3dfx in this matter too (although glide support was a bit higher up than small issues, graphics bugs can be very annoying).
Time moves on again... This time I have a bit more cash to spend, and I'm also very interested in having TV-in capabilities (for various reasons). Again, I hit the reviews, reading between the "200 fps" hype, and looking for what I want, and what I want done reliably. I hear that ATI's drivers, instead of being almost never stable, are now almost never unstable. Performance wise, they appear to score pretty well compared to the GeForce's I'm looking at (I have more money, not infinately more money). And guess what else Radeon comes in? All-In-Wonder! The best TV-in solution, or so everywhere seems to say (even new and better with the Radeon version supposedly). So I get very decent 2D (ATI's strong point since way back), very decent 3D (new to ATI, but still very good) and also very decent TV-in. I bought my ATI AIW Radeon 32MB DDR, and haven't looked back since.
3dfx + NVIDIA may make a really good card in the future that will make me change my mind, but for now, I'm in the ATI camp. As far as I see in the immediate and near future, ATI's going to be the big competition to NVIDIA. They've got the T&L, got all the whizzbangs, even have some that GeForce's don't (yet, they all end up on the next rev of cards). Not only am I happy with the card, they're also Canadian, like myself. Gotta support those local multinationals.
It seems to be happening more and more often now. The large #1 company, tired of competing with the #2 company, simply buys the #2 company to make its problems go away. Creative bought A3D, Microsoft has vanquished several foes this way over the past (but finally have enough pressure on them to make them stop), and AOL bought Compuserve. HOw much more of this can we sit by and watch? Every time this happens each individual market inches closer and closer to a monopoly. From every tiny pool of starting companies, it aways seems to end up as one mega-corporation after a bit of competition. How many choices do you now actually have for Videocards? Two, maybe 3, ATI and NVIDIA. And what if you don't happen to like your options? Thats too bad. With such a huge giant in the market there is simply no room for a startup to compete. When was the last time you saw a startup company put out a word processor or spreadsheet program that went up against Microsoft and put a dent in their marketshare? Never.
Perhaps the part of this that disturbs me most is that there doesn't seem to be anything we can do about it. We've seen our government slowly turn into a government run for and by corporations via lobyists and PACs. And unless Ralph Nader suddenly discovers another 30 million votes next election, it doesn't look like anything will change. Sorry to be such a downer, but this is really starting to bother me.
It's just about time, at least I don't have to go into any more stupid discussions like "I want to buy a video card, 3DFX or Nvidia?!".
Well, this knocks out NVIDIA's biggest competitor for the hard core gamer's dollar, even though 3dfx isn't what it used to be. That leaves who in the market? ATI, Matrox and S3 (now sonicube or some such thing), it would seem.
Now, ATI makes decent stuff, but I've never been very impressed with their hardware in terms of leading edge polygon spinning power. For Matrox, gaming video cards are a side thing, and they seemed pretty quiet since the G400 came out some time ago to compete with the TNT2. And finally S3, the bastards who bought Diamond and took them out of the video card business after a single, somewhat disappointing release using S3's not-so-hot chip (I really liked Diamond and the things they made; the 3dfx based Monster and the NVIDIA based Viper video cards, for instance) - they have the FireGL but I'm not sure how effective that will be at gaining any market share.
Since none of these seem like a serious threat to NVIDIA, it appears that we have a monopoly brewing. On one hand we might benefit, if this serves to reduce the speed with which they pump out new electronics. It would be nice, I think, if they stopped turning up the chip speed by 20MHz and releasing the new hardware while calling it the [Old Name] Ultra and charging $100 more. Maybe if there's no one to outrun, they'll have time to make some truly new product while the software catches up with the hardware they've already made. Then again, maybe this will kill research and innovation while driving prices through the roof. Who knows...
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Even as you read this, your pants are strangling your loins! Aaa!
3DFX could really no longer compete as the Windows/Intel/Nvidia alliance grows stronger by the day... Xbox anyone? Forget about AOL+Time Warner, lets see these three come together... Suddenly The Matrix doesn't seem so far fetched.
All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be. -Gilmore
As a spoiler, what about the new Kyro PowerVR chip? Looks to do some interesting things with lower memory-bandwidth requirements..
:p
Though the first card out of the gate.. 'Evil Kyro'.. Kinda dumb name if you ask me
Your Working Boy,
Sure there are plenty of video card companies out there, but the big 3 for gamers have been NVIDIA 3DFX and ATI... mostly the first two with ATI targeted at a slightly lower game performance and better video editing.
There isn't much competition left for NVIDIA now that 3DFX will be assimilated. I hope this doesn't lead to a video card market that resembels the pre K6/Athlon days of Intel. Without any compatition NVIDIA can charge more for there products and put much less into them... *sniff*
Spread your butt cheeks and squeeze?
Your Working Boy,
Well, guess my video card has graphics to the nth degree now (see NVidia advertisements)
I wonder what this will do to the development of Glide?
I think you'll be pretty happy with the V3-2000. I know it doesn't compete with a GeForce2, but I like mine. It was affordable, and it lets me run the games I enjoy at an acceptable framerate, especially Unreal Tournament.
Enjoy, and don't worry.
There have been a number of strange things happening in the 3D market lately. One time industry leader DiamondMM decided to pull out of the board manufacturing industry and focus on its MP3 player. Now 3dfx has also pulled out. It seems to be hard times for the board makers. Two major manufacturers have stopped making products. Is this part of a general trend in the marketplace away from high powered graphics boards?
Perhaps it is just that those who entered the market first did not make good enough products to survive when the competition got serious. I was never impressed by 3dfxs decision to focus on its own proprietary format instead of OpenGL. Was there ever a 3dfx product that had full OpenGL support? Also, I own a Diamond Viper V770 Ultra and it was a real pain to get working. I was never impressed by their customer service and I recommend against them.
Don't make me use my other sig!!
Chech this out(no goat porn, I swear!):
http://www.nvidia.com/news.nsf/121500faq.html
While I'm happy that the linux drivers are decent, that is not the point. The point is that ATI does not have a worthy competitor to Nvidia's or 3dfx's fastest chips. The Radeon may be a contender, but ATI still has to prove its drivers dont suck. They also have to provide driver updates for the card, on a regular basis.
In the past, ATI has just released drivers, and considered them to be good enough. If they want to compete, they have to constantly get better performance out of the drivers themselves to stay viable.
This is not a windows versus linux issue, this is an Nvidia vs. ATI issue.
Exactly. I use the card that came with my machine because it works fine. I'm not a gamer; I don't need a $300 3-D card.
If it can display Windows/X, that's all I require of it, and my card does just that.
NVidia holds a huge share of the OEM market. Most of Gateway and Dell's home PCs come with a NVidia TNT2 M64 card. Their workstation PCs typically ship with the TNT2 Pro or some other NVidia card standard. NVidia has also had OEM success with the Vanta and GeForce2 MX chipsets. They have also released a new mobile GeForce2 chipset, so we can expect to see NVidia hit that market in the near future as well.
In short, don't assume that becuase NVidia has become the de facto monopolist in the gamer market (with a very, very small foothold in the workstation market[1]) they are somehow the totality of the video card market. They will continue to face competition from Matrox and ATI for the forseeable future.
NVidia's market has grown far beyond the garmer-speed-freak market. Not only have they taken over 3dfx's retail arena, but they are now digging very deep into ATI and Matrox's territory.
sup
At this rate:
In one year, AMD will buy out Intel (or vice versa).
In two years, Microsoft will buy out Apple...
In three years, VA Linux will be purchased by a twelve year old that has been with the money he has earned delivering newspapers for two months.
"Watch these suckers jump when I get root." - l33t j03
Actually Microsoft owns Apple, most of it anyway. Back in 1997 apple was at the verge of declaring bankruptcy because of terrible earnings. Since that would make Microsoft a monopoly in the OS department if apple went under So to keep them afloat they bought 75% of Apple in stock. Though it didn't really help Microsoft any, they still got slapped by the DoJ with the red bloody letters of "Monopoly" -I want my Dot Com Monopoly board.
GeForce + Voodoo =
VoodooForce!
This is an example of a sig that should be revered worldwide. It's short, sweet, to the point, and bold - this draws the reader's attention to the sig, and depending on the display device, makes it easier to read.
A job well done. If there was such a thing I'd mod you under Good Sig. Much kudos to you, man.
The Anal Retentive Sig Man - Bugging you about every sig mistake
When is OpenGL going to be done!? :) (I know you can't answer that... But I really really want to start working with it! :)
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I remember the good old days when 3dfx was king. Half the 3D games were in both Glide and software, and the other hald were in Glide only. ATI was puffing along on the sidelines (much like it is now), NVIDIA was just starting out and my Diamond Monster 2 was the fastest thing in the world that a reasonable ammount of money could buy. Now it hasn't been even three years and 3dfx is gone. I don't know whether to blame NVIDIA's hardware supermacy or some really bad choices made by someone at 3dfx.
Actually, to be honest, I think 3dfx is as much to blame for its fall as is any competition they had. In my opinion, they made two major mistakes since then that led to where they are now;
1) Voodoo 3 - the bigger mistake of the two, I think, was the release of this video card. It was a faster, "AGP-enhanced" Voodoo 2 with a 2D renderer. While being nice and fast, the image quality hadn't improved much, it was 16bit only and there was nothing new to it what so ever. Meanwhile the TNT2 could do anything the Voodoo 2 could just as fast, but also had 32bit capability, better image quality and a whole bunch of new features.
I'm sure the Voodoo 3 sold well since 3dfx was still a well-established company, but it was the begining of the end. Someone's poor market predicions (for what type of video card would be in demand) essentially doomed them.
2) The purchase of STB, which led to 3dfx ceasing to sell their technology to 3rd party manufacturers, served to further screw things up for them. The chip is only half the fun in a video card and having multiple manufacturers using the chip meant that it would appeal to a wider audience (because of the individual tweaks and addons from each manufacturer), and hence sell better. Alas, 3dfx was too good for that, and brand name 3rd party manufacturers had to default to NVIDIA, whether they wanted to or not.
Now the latest offerings from 3dfx come late, way after NVIDIA's geeforce (which is on something like a third or fourth version since initial release), and can barely compete. The only relatively new games that still use Glide are Ultima IX and Unreal Tournament (and its derivatives) and no OEMs that I've heard of put 3dfx cards into their computers. It's over, and 3dfx goes the way of the dinosaurs. It's kind-of sad...
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Even as you read this, your pants are strangling your loins! Aaa!
More importantly - it's in our interest that there be multiple competing vendors - that means better drivers, faster and cheaper cards - so spread your money around - don't just buy from one manufacturer
Hopefully this will open up a chance for new card makers to come in with new and different cards and actually have a market for them.
This might even get matrox to work a bit harder to try to get the G800 out before I'm an old man. Although, if it as good as it is rumored to be, I will still be a very happy old man.
Throw these two technologies into one product and you'll finally have an awesome board. I like everything about nvidia's current flagship chipset except their fsaa pales in comparison to 3dfx's. In fact it was a big enough difference for me to endure the speed hit and get a v5 5500. I was actually holding off for the v5 6000 because I didn't feel the 5500 had the fillrate to make fsaa truly usable, and since the 6000 was killed I caved and got a 5500 anyways. And I turned out to be right, the 5500 doesn't quite have the fillrate/bandwidth for what I personally feel is good performance when fsaa is on. The 6000 would've filled the bill though I think. Too bad. Oh well. I hope nvidia does the smart thing and incorporates 3dfx's fsaa method into one of their future products.
So it looks like NVIDIA is going to be an evil dictator in the same mould as microsoft or intel.
Is there any hope that this will get blocked by the FTC or whoever it is over that that stops monopolies.
If you think this is in any way shape or form good for consumers you are a poor deluded fool !
Yeah, I'm pretty sure ATI and Matrox are the only other (big) ones out there, unless I'm missing something. I think NVidia will dominate the gaming market now, with the help of 3Dfx. ATI has the Radeon, but that probably won't hold a candle to what NVidia and 3Dfx will put out. Matrox doesn't seem to cater to gamers, mainly professionals. This seems crazy! I'm shocked to see this happen. What will be next?
(add a couple more pennies to the stack)
Not only that, but they won in spite of a patent war -- with 3dfx!
They won by simply flat out making a better product.
No question at all about that. Here's hoping that they stay hungry and keep driving the industry forward.
Ahh.... an NVoodia card, you mean?
What will happen to Glide now? With nVidia's excellent driver team, they could release a Glide wrapper a week after getting their hands on specs. I know Glide is mostly useless today, but still there are people out there using UltraHLE.
Join the NFSNET. Our prime goal is making little numbers out of big ones. http://www.nfsnet.org/
They have excellent drivers for Windows. Some people are reporting success under Linux although I haven't been able to get my Media GX working for crap in Debian.
They're only buying certain assets, not including marketing and management.
Check out www.x3dfx.com
X3dfx Lives On
Big problem though: with only one large company the market will disappear. It's as if Intel bought AMD.
Competition in graphic cards, we hardly knew ye.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
He must have done it, too- Microsoft shares are freefalling after they released a profit warning. The next couple weeks could be verrry interesting...
As I sit looking at my perfect when it was new Voodoo 3 3000 box I ponder. I think the new deal will be better because we won't have to compare Nvidia to 3dfx. I hope everything works out and we can still get the cards we want, not just be forced to buy a few. Oh well.
--Nick D.
inick@netacs.net
http://www.inick.net
http://www.lavoixceline.com
I don't get who gives "score" to articles but that article isn't funny and thats why even maccers frustrated about this takeover (in other words, no mo 3dfx anymore) If Matrix shit is all about monopolized IT, that is a giant step
Folks,
You can rant and rave all you want, but let's face one fact: high end graphics cards are a very limited market item.
Think about it: how much do the best graphics cards using the nVidia GeForce2 series chipset cost? Well over US$300.
The thing here is that for the majority of computer users, they don't NEED that level of 3-D graphics acceleration.
With the advent of the Intel i81x series of motherboard chipsets with built-in graphics functions, that is more than enough for the average home user who uses the computer to surb the Web, run business applications, and the majority of games. The current Intel i815E chipset actually has a pretty decent on-board graphics accelerator--Anandtech and others who have tested the on-board video were pleasantly surprised that it worked reasonably well.
The reason why 3dfx failed was because their products never recovered from the debacle of the Voodoo3 series, which were overtaken by the nVidia Riva TNT/TNT2/TNT2 Ultra series a few years ago. The arrival of the nVidia GeForce series effectively sealed the doom of 3dfx.
Right now, only ATI and Matrox are the serious competitors left. ATI's latest Radeon chipset is actually very good, and Matrox's G450 chipset is also quite good.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Yeah those were my exact words, damn sad to see the pioneers in the field go. :~(
3000 dead over past 2 years, still no free Palestinians, still
3dfx never was able to crack in both the game and 3d (workstation (low-mid range) and buisness market.... nvidia simply did a great job, technology wise, performance-wise and quality-wise. They've won the fight against 3dfx with a FAIR war, beating them on every point they had to. They deserve a praise, as opposed to rambus. I never liked 3dfx after seeing tnt2, besides I Couldn't use a crappy voodoo2 with lightwave, so i've abandonned it there. Another good thing is it leaves nvidia with another load of 3d engr. which is surely not bad do advance technology. either competing or joining force, they're will bring out new killer stuff, I'm sure... besides there's still ATI for competition... and if they do like matrox and sit on their ass while having a great product (millenium anyone?) well, they'll still be in trouble... don't worry, ATI won't sit on their ass and do nothing, and as for matrox well.. dunno, since they've seem to have quitted the "performance" market to the visual.... will see with the newer chipsets. anyhows, good move nvidia, congrads... you're the first company I see winning a fair war since a long time.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
This situation will mean only one thing. That soon we may find only bloatness and stagnation in this market.
NVidia's is surely a winner here. And the quality of their cards much better than 3Dfx's. But how many of this quality was made under the market presence of 3Dfx?
Let's note one thing. 3Dfx was never a real market dominator. It had a golden time with its 3D accelerator cards. But when it came into the video market it was already a looser, much like the big old gamers here. NVidia made a great move by combining 2D+3D into one card and beat everyone else on this. Meanwhile, it should be noted that this was done having a huge concurrence from two parties 3Dfx and the 2D market. Now they are nearly gone...
Yes, NVidia did a big job. Their technology is just great! But is everything so cool? No. The 2D is worser than many of its concurrents. I'm sure of this because I did a lot of design and noted that some features on NVidia are even buggy. Specially irritating are some features with colours. Even an old S3Virge manages to produce a much cleaner pallete than NVidia. It is funny but I still keep an old Diamond exactly for this case.
On 3D everything seems quite cool. Yes everything does seem very good. They do beat all concurrents. But... Bloatness is already in its way. I can't understand NVidia's sticking to make "it's own drivers for X". Yeah cool, it is great but it suxx quite a lot sometimes. For game players, this may seem strange and weird. However OpenGL does not start or end with an X interface. In fact we don't need X to produce 3D. And in scientific work this is BLOATNESS. I need something more than a X driver. I know that the card can shoot more and better than 3Dfx. But it is DAMN slow and buggy when i get out of the game play. Because it sticks too much to present things in a X+games environment and everything else is less cared. and I can't use Windows for such stuff. One file on Windows is enough to overkill the machine, even a Win2000 based. So I have to stick to a 3Dfx V3 to do my work. Now 3Dfx is no more...
If after acquiring 3Dfx these guys kill Glide and 3Dfx's almost Open Source policies then this will make a huge blow. Yeah you windowsers will be happy. Quakers, Starcrafters, Counterstrikers will surely be happy for some time longer than us. but the fact is that having a company sticking into one trend (games) and not releasing specs will immediately have a blowing effect on *NIX world.
However this is not the worst. the worst will be to see this company sticking to its own rules and disregarding everyone else. Even a 5% 3Dfx presence on the market was enough to push NVidia further. 3Dfx were the forefathers of 3D acceleration, a standard to overcome. Now there are no lights around. A few concurrents and a market that looks more as a bunch of play-hunger users + some irritating Open Source hackers. NVidia will surely turn over the first. But it will have no clear incentives to do something more than 3D gaming. Later it may not have any incentive to improve 3D gaming itself.
Granted, many probably think 3dfx hasn't been much of a challenger to NVIDIA since who-knows-when, and the purchase may really not mean all that much in the end, but still...
Am I the only one that finds it unsettling that:
Or is it just me being bitter because I purchased hardware from both 3dfx and Aureal, only to find each company disappearing?
To be fair, I miss Aureal (and its tech) more than I will miss 3dfx (and whatever may come to pass for its tech), but still...
I wish I had the illusion of choice, or at least the opportunity to delude myself into finding it. Ah, well, back to Matrox. :P
Me,
being bitter
So will there continue to be two distinct product lines? Or will the 3dfx tech be assimilated and used to help create an entirely new generation of graphics accelerator/processor?
If you ask me, these two schools of graphics technology could learn from each other. With nvidia's recent trend towards speed rather than eyecandy, and 3dfx doing much the opposite (speed => effects), we could soon see blazingly fast, awesome-looking graphics headed our way, courtesy of the new VoodooForce card.
Or, perhaps they will choose to keep the brands seperate. Any speculation?
--Psi
Max, in America, it's customary to drive on the right.
The way I see it, the card's nVidia release in the next 2 years will be absolutely amazing. They'll have the best of 3dfx and nVid tech in them. (and hopefully we'll see the end to 3dfxGlide, that just got annoying for non 3dfx'ers)
Yet after the initial burst, I do see the company getting lazy and just releasing "amazing new features" that do nothing, but just keep the customers buying.
Alternatively development could continue just as well, but prices could get too high. Either way, I'm gonna buy a great 3D card in 2 years because it's going to have to last me a while.
It's turtles all the way down.
The only reason I stayed with the Voodoos is because 1. Everyone supports them, and 2. They came out with decent drivers when they were released. Now that Nvidia seems to be widely supported, hopefully, with the addition of 3dfx, they will make some rockin' cards.
I will have to say, bummer for 3dfx though. The competition ends, now only the Microsoft of Video cards remains. :-P
I don't think any of you have actually used a NVidia card before... They have the best drivers and driver support of any card I've ever owned.
I am a big NVidia fan (as many of you know). I really think they have better hardware and I love working with the special features they add to their stuff in my 3D game engine. But this news worries me.
I hope NVidia will continue to advance the industry at the same rate as they did in the past. Without 3dfx as competition, their incentive may not be so great as it was before...
However, there is plenty of reason to believe that these concerns are misplaced. The ATI Radeon is a good card, having some features (like the third TMU) which not even the GeForce 2 has. Also, NVidia hardware is now being used in consoles as well as computers. Tough competition in the console arena is pretty much gaurenteed for them. So, as long as they continue to use their console gaming hardware in their video cards, we can continue expect new, better hardware from them.
This really could go either way. We'll have to watch and see what happens. If they do stop advancing their hardware, or charge too much for them, I will stop supporting them. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.
------
Apple has been dying since 1988 and guess what they're still alive. Damn How Could That Be?
It is indeed an honour to meet someone who is not in awe of 3D card-board effects in the gaming industry.
What do you need to create a good game? Good enough representation to get your ideas across, this can be 2D, 3D isometric, text, or (depending on your idea being completely useless without it) perspective, texture-mapped, 3D-vector graphics.
The top-10 best selling game franchises include: The Sims, Championship manager, Command and Conquer, (and here in the UK) Who wants to be a millionaire? Some of the other best sellers are variation of these. These games are either 3D isometric or text (with 2D backdrops and coloured fonts). The vast majority of games probably are 3D cardboard effect games with little chance of success, as Good game developers, and public in general, realise that you do not need Cardboard effects to be a good game.
Good ridance to the 3D-cardboard industry, and heres hoping for a restoration of balance and sanity in the game industry once again. Here is to definitions of gameplay which do not include superfulous graphics. Here are to games of the future whose representation is not predefined before the game is even written.
Everyone seems to be bemoaning the death of competition, and predicting the coming Dark Years when Nvidia will monopolize the video card market, force feeding us ever-crappier cards and support as their domination grows secure.
But you're forgetting about the free market that saw 3dfx rise and fall. If Nvidia lets its R&D or support falter, another competitor will spring up. We're talking about open standards to some degree at least. There are plenty of chip makers out there, and a lot of smart engineers too. The video card biz is worth a lot of money, I wouldn't worry about the rest of the world leaving Nvidia alone.
Everyone knows that damage is done to the soul by bad motion pictures. -Pope Pius XI
back when I used a i740, there were many programs which wouldn't even draw correctly due driver ploblems. Things like ORCad, some circuit modelling tools, Protel, and every graphical Java application.
Upgrade to a TNT I bought for $6, and all problems went away.
6. Are you also acquiring the board-related business?
No, the board business remains with 3dfx.
So what chips are they going to put on these boards, NVidia??? Now that would be ironic...
So, they're laying off everybody in order to preserve the stock value for the employees?
Mmmm... Donuts - in 3D!
As far as I can see, this is a win-win deal any way you look at it!
And the brethren went away edified.
It could be said that this is the same to the graphics chip industry as Microsoft's attempt to buy Netscape would have been to browsers.
I have a pending 'lifetime' warranty claim on my 3DFX Voodoo3, I wonder what's going to happen with that..
*looks out the window at the Matrox bldg.*
Well, now.. The NViddy kiddies now officially rule the high-end PC graphics market. And with PS2 going 'thud', next year they stand to also rule, with M$FT, the console space with XBox. This is disquieting at best. They are in a position to not only stifle PC/console graphics capability competition, but to start rolling out new graphics tech at a rate best suited to their financial gain (instead of as demanded by a state of healthy competition). I like NV, I like their cards, but this state of affairs can only be bad for the consumer. Of course, AI co-processors may well be the next big thing in gaming. If NVid makes graphics less interesting, there are other plcaes gamers can put their money. My $.03.
Gotta give 3dfx credit; it jumpstarted 3D hardware for the PC. They weren't the first, but they brought inexpensive workstation class 3D to home PCs with a bang. Even today, the Voodoo 1 is an impressive piece of hardware.
Just speculation here, but I can't help but wonder if the performance video card market is much smaller than assumed. I expect most people just use whatever video card came with their machine. I've read that 80% of all video cards out there are from ATI, because they dominate the OEM market. Having a bunch of big fish fighting over the last 20% would be pretty rough.
I hope that Nvidia adds support for Glide. I know its an older standard, but Unreal Tournament runs better on my computer in Glide, than in OpenGL.
Amigori
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Well, so much for Linux support from 3Dfx.
"The quality of life is determined by its activites."--Aristotle
S3 bought Diamond actually, and then changed their name and got out of the graphics business.
There is a post near the beginning of this topic about it.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Oh, woops. Thanks for the heads up.
Funny you mentioned Intel.
With Intel creating better video, and embedding it into motherboards, what else can *video card* manufacturers do? It's inevitable. Many HP, Compaq, and Dells come with the embedded video already. In no time they will have sound, modem and NIC cards built in! In the shadow of that giant, you'd run for cover too!
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
In other news, voodooextreme.com exploded. No one knows why.
I'm not sure about 3dfx's assets, but if it is below 112M they were running the risk of being liquidated. At least this way, we'll see their technology incorporated into future products.
check out:
http://www.voodooextreme.com/
They have more information on the subject and lots of news about 3d gaming.
The news of the deal with Quantum3D over the V5 6000 gave hints that 3dfx starting to run into trouble. The recognized grandfather of consumer 3d acceleration bowing out of the race could very well change the shape of the market in the future. nVidia has a huge lead over most of it's competitors (BitBoys [do they even have a product yet?], S3 [i think diamond bought them...], ATI [they're catching up, but not fast enough. Had they bought 3dfx they could probably have weilded the combined technology's to bring themselves par with nVidia in a few short years.], Matrox, et al) even with it's current products. The technical inovation that 3dfx's technology and production facilties can bring to nVidia are staggering. Think of what nVidia could do with SLI geForce chips? How about T-buffer and an improved Anti-Alias? Will there be a joint venture with Quantum3D similar to what 3dfx had?(Just no extra power supply needed *please*)
This news is not without possibly dire consequences. Though unlikely, it could bring about an era of stagnation within nVidia as it figures out what the hell to do with all the stuff it acquired and how to integrate it into it's products. Once they're so far ahead that it's clear no one can catch them in the near future, will they start to exploit their position in an unfriendly manner?
Time will tell.
I just can't wait to get my hands on whatever they can do with the hybrid technologies...
What is it with all the posts in here moaning about how bad this is, because of how there is no competition and other such...
People, please... are you living in a fantasy land? 3dfx hasn't been any serious competition for Nvidia since the GeForce. As much as you might like to think that the Linux market matters, it doesn't. Nvidia destroyed 3dfx in the Windows market, aka the one that matters.
Contrary to several posts in here, this is not a bad thing. Its the natural course of business.
- 3dfx dominates market
- Nvidia enters market
- 3dfx gets lazy
- Nvidia makes better products
- Nvidia dominates market
- Nvidia continues to make better products, and 3dfx crumbles against the competition.
Its not like Nvidia won because of a Patent war (hello Rambus!), because of backdoor shenagians, or whatever else thats bad. They won by simply flat out making a better product.
People who think this is some kind of disaster want a market where nothing changes. If you actually want innovation and competition, you had better expect that some players will loose at some point! If you want competition but without the potential to loose, you don't really want competition, you want to live in a fantasy world.
ATI is still there, as a better managed company then 3dfx with a better product, they stand a better chance in this market.
Now please... quit bitching about how this is the end of the world. Its not. After the 40th post moaning and whining about it, it really does start to get tiresome.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
I don't know what is wrong with all you people. But I saw this coming for at least a year and a half. 3DFX sucks ass. They have no good products.. they give excuses to why they don't support 32bit accelerated. NVidia since the TNT has had the superior product. (They became #1 soon after they ipo'd) Look at 3dfx's price 1.67 or so. They are being sued by them, so it would be cheaper to buy them out and own all their patents. Also they get good engineers too. The sad part is i've been telling my dad to buy amd/nvda for 3 years everytime he asks for advice and he still hasn't. Lol
Deepak
In a capitalist market, survival of the fittest is a rule, and 3Dfx just wasn't fit anymore. They were releasing crappy products, failing to license out their technology, and selling their cards only at retail (rather than working to get them integrated or included with new PCs).
A few people here have mentioned the Voodoo 1, 2, and 3's good cost-performance ratios and their stable drivers, and those are very true observations. However, 3Dfx shot themselves in the foot when they stopped marketing their products in any ways that bring in strong revenue. They stopped running television ads and stopped licensing their chip technology to other board manufacturers--and all the revenue dried up right there.
Someone here said that ATI owns 80% of the PC video card market because they get their chips and boards included with OEM systems. ATI has traditionally made somewhat crappy products, but as a business they have thrived because they know how to work themselves into revenue-making positions in the marketplace. They have become so successful as a business, in fact, that they have finally gotten back around to investing more resources in R&D and QA, and the quality of their products has improved radically in the last 2-4 years.
nVidia is especially interesting because they have a pretty even mix (IMHO) of product and marketing excellence. They have figured out how to achieve rapid growth in both areas. The only problem is that they now have only one worthy competitor left on their radar (ATI; Matrox just doesn't have enough market share or technical superiority). When one company in a given industry pulls far, far ahead of all the rest, it means they run the risk of getting lazy.
That hasn't happened with all large behemoths (Sony and Microsoft continue to work hard and produce excellent stuff, for instance), but it has happened with many (General Electric, Phillips/Magnavox). Let's hope that nVidia doesn't get too cozy as it approaches the top of the food chain.
- "It's just a matter of opinion!" - PRIMUS
I see a large number of posts saying that this will lead to stagnation in the video card market, increased prices, blah blah blah, the usual bad things that come with monopoly. I don't think these fears are grounded in a solid grasp of reality.
The video card market is much broader than the high-end-home-user-gamer-speed-freak niche. Although I do not have exact figures to back this up, I'd wager that the total amount of cards sold as integrated solutions (part of a Dell or the like) to both the business and non-gamer household market exceeds the gamer market by a large integer multiple. NVidia IMHO makes the best current 3d hardware, but they have nothing in the business/SOHO/laptop/OEM market that I'm aware of, whereas Matrox and ATI have vast sums of revenue from those markets. With that kind of revenue stream, they could probably each buy NVidia several times over.
In short, don't assume that becuase NVidia has become the de facto monopolist in the gamer market (with a very, very small foothold in the workstation market[1]) they are somehow the totality of the video card market. They will continue to face competition from Matrox and ATI for the forseeable future.
[1] quadro and somebody was telling me the new sgi vpro line of graphics chipsets was based on NVIdia tech
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News for Geeks in Austin, TX
- Will glide be dead? (please please please)
- Will NVidia OpenSource their drivers like 3dfx did? (Doubtful)
- Will 3dfx continue to supply 3D arcade hardware?
- What will happen to "Rampage"?
- Who will compete with NVidia? ATI, Matrox... anyone else? I doubt think these two will be able compete against NVidia + 3dfx... though if ATI continues getting better, maybe, but they don't have nearly as big a following at the moment.
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind
would perhaps be to get together with Matrox?
The way I see it, is now we have 3 major players in the video card ring: nVidia/3Dfx (I will never use their new names), ATi, and Matrox. Now, ATi has a very large market share and I don't see them failing anytime soon, but their going to have to make the best card they can in as little time as possible. Matrox has the best 2D cards around, and they keep getting better (DualHead anyone?), but 2D is becoming less and less of an issue. So with the nVidia and 3Dfx buyout, we, basically, have one company left in the 3D arena. Since all their competition is gone, maybe we don't need this six month cycle any more. Perhaps we could return to the older and less capitolistic year or two year cycle.
The way I see it, video games are about as realistic looking as they can reasonably get (if you have a 1Ghz+ box). So we now need mundane features (t-buffer) instead of fill rates.
Are they old games? Some of them. So what? I don't care about your politics. I care about my games.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
You really have to give a lot of credit to NVIDIA. Just two years ago, they were an obscure chip maker, and now they are the 800lb gorilla of the market. This whole 3DFx buyout is just symbolic; 3DFx was dead in the water anyway. However, it symbolizes the total defeat 3DFx has suffered at the hands of NVIDIA. I can remember when they released their original NV1 chip. It was non-standard (quads instead of triangles) was slow, and had very limited support. Then I remember the Riva128. It had pretty bad picture quality, but for several months held the speed crown. When the TNT came out, everyone pretty much knew NVIDIA would go to the top. Thankfully, they haven't lost their small-company image through all this. They still make great cards at great prices, have awesome customer support (eg. their latest drivers still upgrade even old cards like the TNT) and they are one of the few consumer vendors to get OpenGL right. If it weren't for NVIDIA, the rise of OpenGL would have been severely hindered. As I recall, they were the first major chip maker to publish a full, pro-caliber ICD. Otherwise, all those nifty OGL apps might still be useless on a market of consumer cards with "Quake drivers." All I can say is NVIDIA is 'da bomb!
;) and don't hold it against them. Of course, I would not be at all dissapointed if they would suddenly change their minds, and my new NV20 would accelerate GLTeapot for me ;)
PS> No, I did not get payed by NVIDIA to say this. I even have reasons to dislike NVIDIA (they won't give 3D specs to Be) However, I can see some logic in their desicion (BeOS might be a therat to the SGI-blessed Linux for 3D
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
It's clear from its press release that Creative Labs is a patent aggressor. CREAF boasts that "EMU's ... patent was upheld and
found to be valid and enforceable," and pledges to appeal (or buy Aureal, whichever comes first).
I can't find any details on Aureal's lawsuit.
i'm also very interested to see what happens with the 3dfx brand name. could nvidia keep marketing separate products under the 3dfx brand name? if so, what would be the differences between the products sold as 3dfx and those sold as nvidia. interesting indeed.
The 3Dfx name still provokes images of fast, quality video card for quake (or other 3D games), even though their latest cards may have sucked in comparison to NVidia's or ATI's.
From the NVidia Q&A:
9. What is NVIDIA's intention for the 3dfx and Voodoo brands?
We believe that the 3dfx and Voodoo brands are well known and respected throughout the industry. We have not finalized our plans for these brands at this time.
So now I own just a Voodoo5, which I've been happy with. In essence, I've always found that 3dfx quality just put it head and shoulders above the rest, at least for my tastes.
I hope that Nvidia will start getting 2D right, or I may have this Voodoo5 for a long time...
STOP . AMERICA . NOW