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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]."
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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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
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
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.
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
With open drivers and open specs, you know that support for your precious card will only get better in the future - as time goes, someone will improve it, and they have full access.
With closed drivers, your card will work fine today. But what if NVIDIA tomorrow does an "ID Software" and says that they won't support Linux in the future, due to that niche being to small? Then your card is just a worthless piece of crap... the binary drivers won't be upgraded and you are suddenly stuck with having to use old kernels and old XFree86:s.
Openness is not as much as about today as it is about tomorrow. Personally, I like to decide myself when I want to scrap my hardware.
GNU/Linux. The Freshmaker.
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
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.
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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 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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