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The Last Days at 3dfx
sand writes "FiringSquad has a detailed account of what happened in the final days at 3dfx. Every 3dfx product that was released or upcoming is discussed by a former 3dfx employee with inside knowledge on what caused the product delays (including an employee who forgot to fly to Asia to pickup the first Voodoo5 chips). He also discusses money mismanagement and the STB merger. It's a very enlightening article for anyone who's interested in 3D graphics and what goes on inside these companies."
There is no rule that says that business have to survive.
3dfx changed the graphics scene at a time when this was worth doing,
but today there is little need for faster graphics.
It's natural and normal that the market moves and the companies move with the market.
When a company is so focussed on a single segment, they usually go broke during such changes.
Sad, but presumably their excellent people will find good work elsewhere.
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Just love getting the skinny on failed companies. Wish people from other companies would come out and do the same.
I am a homosexual. I bought an Apple computer because of its well earned reputation for being "the" gay computer. Since I have become an Apple owner, I have been exposed to a whole new world of gay friends. It is really a pleasure to meet and compute with other homos such as myself. I plan on using my new Apple computer as a way to entice and recruit young schoolboys into the homosexual lifestyle; it would be so helpful if you could produce more software which would appeal to young boys. Thanks in advance.
with much gayness,
Father Randy "Pudge" O'Day, S.J.
3dfx became a religion. I bought an nVidia RIVA 128 and was ridiculed for buying from an unknown firm. That Glide was available for a few graphic cards only was neglected by 3dfx-zealots.
This is what competition is all about. When a company cannot deliver the best product to the best price they don't get any income. If you don't have and income and spend alot without being able to overtake your competators, you will enventually run out of money. It is not fun, but reality in a market economy.
Eventually we will see this when it comes to ATI and nVidia, or they will find a niche market to survive in. The big profit will go to the one making the best product at the best price.
Note - I do not critisize market economy, without it we would probably not have hardware accelerated 3D for home computers at all!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
1) Sell high-end video cards which only a relatively small percentage of computer users will buy while everyone else buys the competitions' cards
2) ????
3) Profit!
Grrrrr closed source.
-----
sexy sexy wallpaper mmmmmmmmmmmm
3dfx were good bar the v3 3500 their drivers were good and the hardware was good i had v2,banshee,v3 and still have a v5 5500 in my kids pc.It was a sad day when they died.But they always seemed to be behind the game after they started making thier own cards..
They did truely sell out. The people who bought their shares were left with nothing. And once again the CEOs and all the big-urns gets a fat bonus with a big grin on their faces as they make this oh-so-tough-decision. It was so very pathethic to get the letter for 3dfx.
They should have added useful features and clever thinking that circumvented the problems that plagued the other companies. AGP Texture bandwidth could have been solved by texture compression, but S3 ended up doing that. 32 bit colour was implemented by everyone except 3DFX. They could have saved a lot fo bandwidth if they'd have come up with better Z buffer algorithms, but PowerVR did that. They could have added programmable graphics, but that was left to ATI. They could have put T&L on the card, but that was left to Nvidia.
3DFX failed because they didn't innovate
At the start of the consumer 3d graphics business Voodoo were clearly superior, I still have a Voodoo 1 laying around somewhere, there were problems; the whole passthrough cable thing, the lack of windowed support & 16bit clour were all problematic. As an upgrade Voodoo offered the second revision that could run in SLI mode. It required two PCI slots in addition to your 2d graphics card and was horrendously expensive.
nVidia released the TNT that offered similar performance, in one card (not 3!), did 32 bit colour and was significantly cheaper.
3DFX was never competitive from then on, offering weaker, more expensive products that relied on brand name support.
The widespread adoption of D3D / OpenGL around this time over the proprietary Glide API was the nail in the coffin.
So, you have a banshee in a box that you put under your PC and it'll run UT so well you can hear it? How does that work?
:-)
Try NetBSD... safe,straightforward,useful.
Up until the TNT (TNT2), 3dfx was still king of the hill... It would be like buying a Maxtor drive back in Western Digital's heyday.
:)
You *know* what works, so why buy anything else? On the other hand, that's why I like hardware review sites like anantech and Tom's. You may not want to trust them completely, but they do give you a free peek at hardware capabilities.
It's too bad they couldn't keep up with nVidia and ATI, though I must admit I'm loving my shiny new Radeon 9700 Pro....
I like many others was not concerned with them going. Thier attempt to lock the market in via the proprietray GLIDE API was a blatant move to control the market.
:-)
I'm happy to see the tail end of any company that does this.
Thier lawsuit against the guy doing the GLIDE wrapper didn't help improve my opinion of them.
1) Attend 3fx product show
2) Report it on slashdot
3) ????
4) PROFIT!
"including an employee who forgot to fly to Asia to pickup the first Voodoo5 chips" Because we all know how expensive FedEX is :-)...
Makes me wonder how Creative have managed to stay top of the soundcard pile. They seem to have been making consistently the best cards, (apart from a brief time when Gravis Ultrasound marketed using the Demo scene). No-one has really compared for the non-professional market. In fact I cannot think of any other Tech product where the first company to make something is still regarded the best. (Intel excluded) So from a business perspective maybe innovation is not the key but improvement of existing technolagy. Sad but true
That was not offtopic. It's exactly what happened to 3DFX. They went for the high-end, while leaving the mass-market to their competition. Their competition sold far more units, even if at much lower cost, made more money and therefore developed their technology at a faster pace. 3DFX lost out and went bust because of their tactics. How is that offtopic? It's right on the nose.
However, they do not appear to be popular, or even widely available, here in Europe. Until extremly recently, every sound card I have ever seen for sale, or installed, or owned myself, has been a Creative card of some description. As it happens, this computer I am using (Company owned) has a Turtle Beach in it, and that is the first time I have ever seen one. At home I currently use the onboard Via 82Cxx Ac'97, because it was there, and it is the first time I have heard on board audio actually sound passable.
Creative have been at the top of the pile for so long that it is difficult to imagine them going the way of 3dfx. However, sound cards are becoming a comodity item, and it seems that they are bailing out of the low end market as quickly as possible. The low end is being eaten up by integrated motherboard chipsets.
Well this has certainly been a bit of a rant without much of a point. Or direction. Oh well.
Are there any Glide emulators around, that convert to OpenGL or Direct3D? That would make these games playable and allow them to take advantage of non-Voodoo accelerator cards.
Cheers,
Ian
Introduction
We've chronicled the humble beginnings of industry titans ATI and NVIDIA in the past, but for today's article we're doing something a bit different. Rather than discuss the origins of a 3D company you're familiar with, 3dfx, we were given the unique opportunity to learn more about what was going on within the company around the time of its sudden downfall. However, unlike previous industry articles we've published, this one comes straight from the horse's mouth!
For obvious reasons our source would like to remain anonymous, but we've known him for quite awhile and can assure you that he is indeed legit. He will briefly go over the early days of 3dfx, before going into detail over each of the company's products. From the original Voodoo Graphics chipset, all the way to unannounced parts such as Fearless and Mojo, it's all covered here. So without further discussion, lets listen up to what he has to say!
In the beginning...
It was a sad loss for the entire graphics industry when 3dfx announced they were closing their doors. Within the last year and half there have been several articles on the subject of 3dfx's demise, looking into both what went wrong and the future generation of products that would have been. Unfortunately, these authors were ill informed on the subject, having made errors on the facts and missed key points. This article will attempt to clear up some of the facts. It will not present every single event that occurred at 3dfx, as that would take an entire book. Rather, highlights will be given that took place along the life of the company.
With the initial introduction of the Voodoo Graphics chipset, 3dfx was given a substantial performance lead. As one of the first true 3D accelerators, the competition for it was Rendition's Verite, S3's Virge and NVIDIA's NV1. PowerVR soon followed with a part, but it was plagued with compatibility issues. Even with these competitors, Verite was the only true 3D accelerator, with S3's decelerator Virge taking a large part of the OEM market. Thus, achieving the performance lead, 3dfx was crowned the winner and the market was theirs.
While it was a product that was not originally scheduled, Voodoo2 soon followed. Voodoo2, much like every other product that followed, was created to fill a gap in 3dfx's product cycles. Voodoo2 again took the market in performance, more than doubling Voodoo Graphic's performance with SLI configurations. Yet through all this, the goal was to deliver Rampage.
Voodoo Banshee
Management changes
It was sometime in between the Voodoo/Voodoo2 period that Greg Ballard came onto the scene as CEO. He was there for marketing, and he was good at it, though there was something missing when it came to technology. He pushed a variety of 3dfx marketing campaigns that helped bring 3dfx to the top. Problems apparently came from his lack of understanding how the graphics industry functioned. Ballard desired to deliver a single chip 2D/3D solution as the competition had thus far done the same.
This would allow 3dfx to enter the mainstream and OEM markets, increasing revenue. It would also renew trust in 3dfx as their ill-fated Voodoo Rush (a multi-chip 2D/3D solution with a separate vendor's 2D core) had created doubters. With limited engineering resources at the time, the only option for this to occur was to remove staff from another project and dedicate them to this. Thus Rampage lost vital engineering resources and Banshee was created.
Voodoo Banshee
With the release of Voodoo Banshee, 3dfx was able to offer a solid 2D/3D solution. Unfortunately, all was not pleasant in the land of 3dfx. Having removed the second texture unit on Banshee's pixel pipeline, multi-texturing performance was below that of a single Voodoo2 solution.
Additionally, NVIDIA for the first time had become a real competitor with their TNT graphics core. NVIDIA's TNT offered similar performance to that of Banshee (in some cases slower, in others faster). Several additional features were built within TNT that were not included in Banshee, such as 32-bit color and textures, as well as high-resolution textures. This made it a somewhat more appealing solution for consumers and developers. 3dfx thus began losing market share and developer confidence.
With all this having taken place and Banshee already having consumed much of Rampage's resources, 3dfx was forced to take Rampage back to the drawing board. It was no longer the high-end board they had hoped. The anticipated market leading performance and feature set no longer existed as NVIDIA had gained considerable ground and the part was simply taking too long to deliver. Thus, with Rampage substantially delayed another stopgap product would be required, this one in the form of Avenger.
Avenger/Delays
Avenger becomes Voodoo3
Avenger, which later became known as Voodoo3, was 3dfx's follow-up to Banshee. Originally this product was to be named Banshee2, for that is really what it was. However, 3dfx management knew that the Voodoo name provided much greater brand recognition and so they opted for that name. Voodoo3's feature set was identical to that of Banshee. It was simply a higher-clocked version of the previous chip with a second texture unit installed. Performance was definitely competitive, with NVIDIA's TNT2 and TNT2 Ultra often falling behind in performance, but the lack of new features made NVIDIA's solution more appealing once again. This hurt 3dfx's sales and caused them to further lose market share and developers confidence.
Just prior to the launch of Avenger, the merger with STB Systems was announced. STB had been an add-in board manufacturer and they had pretty much dominated the OEM market with products in nearly all the major OEM systems. For 3dfx, the hope was to get their products into OEM systems. For STB the hope was to finally have a say in each chip's feature set.
Many would say a mistake made by 3dfx in all this was cutting off supply to other board manufactures. With several companies having strong brand recognition in the United States and Europe, this reduced potential sales. Additionally, Asian board makers, typically having niche with Asian system builders, were cut off. This hurt 3dfx's sales throughout the remainder of their existence.
Product delays
With the oncoming merger almost complete, many at STB were under the impression that 3dfx's next part, Rampage, was all but taped out. This would have been true had 3dfx not decided to make some last minute changes to the design. These were not minor changes either, but major feature introductions. The most important new addition was SLI support. Had SLI not been an included feature, what would be called VSA-100 in its original form, would have been nothing more than a TNT2 Ultra. 3dfx knew this would not be an appealing solution, so Rampage was redesigned to allow for multi-chip boards, theoretically doubling performance (or more, depending on many chips were used). Additionally, 3dfx engineers added FXT-1 texture compression.
Adding technology meant additional delays. Delays not only came from adding features, but also from the new issues that spawned as a result of these additions. Problems crept up along the development path and even more delays were found. Officials within 3dfx did not help this problem either. There were serious delays from simple miscommunications within the company.
One example of this was somebody apparently forgetting to go to Asia to pickup the first batch of completed VSA-100 chips. Another example was a mistake in QA. Quake3 was repeatedly locking their system on Voodoo5 and they could not determine the cause. After a two-week delay the cause was found to be a bad Ghost image that was repeatedly used. These and other reasons set VSA-100 back by weeks.
GeForce vs. Voodoo5
NVIDIA launches GeForce
While all this was developing, NVIDIA was coming on strong. They had released their GeForce256 chip, which took a nice performance lead over Voodoo3. As a follow up, NVIDIA brought the GeForce2 to market. These two parts offered a considerable number of additional features that 3dfx did not provide with Voodoo5. While 3dfx did offer anti-aliasing that was considerably superior to NVIDIA's, they had a tough time selling it due to NVIDIA's aggressive marketing and technology demos. From this, 3dfx lost the majority of their developer support and a considerable amount of consumer confidence.
Voodoo5 6000 problems
In the end, Voodoo5 was a fairly successful product. However, the high-end board, Voodoo5 6000, was forever delayed. There were many happenings with this board, but it boils down to this: 3dfx did not consider the design well enough before the board was announced.
The AGP specification simply was not designed with this type of product in mind. Many attempts were made to work around this, even completely changing the board design and the bridge chip used. Yet in the end, Voodoo5 6000 was canceled in the last weeks of 3dfx.
The specific issue that resulted in the final cancellation was an AGP issue with certain motherboards. While most motherboards did function, there were several that did not quite meet AGP spec, resulting in the boards not functioning. While a BIOS fix on these boards would have likely resolved the issue and though the incompatible boards were few in number, 3dfx chose not release the product. And thus they again failed to retake the performance crown they so badly wanted and lost even more consumer confidence.
While all these events were occurring, 3dfx was losing money. The board manufacturing plant in Mexico was never at capacity, reducing profits on each graphics board sold by roughly 10% from the intended 25% margin. Only in 3dfx's final months did management decide to start selling out the remaining factory space, filling the product lines. This brought the board plant to near profitability on its own, but this was just one change that was too little, too late.
Money/Rampage
More inside details
3dfx was notorious for spending money. In the last year or so, roughly $30-50,000 was spent monthly on lunches. This did not include the additional snacks and drinks that were provided to employees. Hiring didn't stop until the last few weeks, with all of us keeping hope that the company would pull through. Of course this did not happen.
Could 3dfx have lasted? Perhaps. They were offered a line of credit, but the board opted not to accept it as they would not accept the terms. Rumors within the company also circulated that an investor had expressed strong interest in the company, but backed out from a simple "goof" on the boards' part (specifically, it was said to be their mention to the investor the possibility of a buyout by another company). But what would the future have held for 3dfx?
Next generation parts
Daytona- 3dfx's first low-end OEM part. Daytona was effectively a VSA-100 part with a DDR memory controller and a 64-bit memory bus. The idea was to deliver a cheaper version of the VSA-100, with the 64-bit bus making a notable dent in cost. Daytona simply could not be finalized though. It would tape out and a bug would be found, then tape out again and another bug would be found. Fortunately, a chip was not made between each tape out with the final number being A7 silicon. In the end, this resulted in considerable delays and final Daytona silicon never coming to life.
Rampage bringup
This is what you got when your socket isn't connecting well
Rampage (Spectre) - 3dfx's next high-end graphics part was capable of quad-chip support. Rampage silicon had come back from the fab just weeks before the announcement of 3dfx's demise. Sage, Rampage's geometry processor had recently taped out as well, so expectations were high. The first revision of Rampage silicon was able to achieve 200 MHz clock frequencies without active cooling. Originally, the expectation had been to ship it at 200 MHz, but with this capability, there was nothing limiting it from 250+ MHz clock speeds.
Of interesting note are the two bugs that did exist in Rampage silicon. The first was the DAC being flipped, reversing the color channels. It is hard to be certain how this bug managed to slip through, but it did. One possible reason it was not detected is because this was one of the few places on the chip that had not been simulated. The temporary fix was an interesting little board that was attached between the monitor cable and VGA connector. It flipped all the color channels, making it display correctly.
The second bug was an AGP issue that had initially caused some problems but was corrected for bring up boards by fibbing the chips.
Here are the specs on Rampage, and its companion chip, Sage:
Rampage
200+ MHz Core
Approximately 30 million transistors
4 Pixel Pipelines
8 textures per-pass
DX 8 Pixel Shader 1.0
Quad-Chip support
Sage
50 million triangles/sec sustained
150 million triangles/sec real world
DX8 1.0 Vertex Shader
Approx. 20 million transistors
Next generation cores
Tantrum- A single chip combination of Rampage and Sage. Targeted at the OEM market, performance would be lower than a Rampage-Sage combination, with considerably reduced cost.
Fear- The first part based on 3dfx and Gigapixel technology. Fear actually consisted of two separate parts: Fusion and Sage II. Fusion was derived from combining 3dfx and Gigapixel technology. This was a part targeted at DirectX8-9 (though the specification was nothing near final). Being from Gigapixel, it was a deferred rendering architecture. At the time of 3dfx closing shop, Fusion was considered RTL complete and tape out was expected in March of 2001. Sage II was slightly behind Fusion, but it was making ground.
Fusion
250+ MHz Core
Approx 60 Million transistors
4 pixel pipelines
8 texture per-pass via loop back
Deferred Rendering Architecture
DX8-DX9 Pixel Shader
Sage2
100 Million Triangles/sec Sustained
300 Million Triangles/sec Theoretical
DX8-DX9 Vertex Shader
Fearless- A single-chip Fusion-Sage2 part. Comparable to what Tantrum was to Rampage.
Mojo- The distant future of 3dfx. This was based on an entirely new generation of design. It was considered the next-generation of deferred rendering. Targeted at DX9 and higher, it had a considerably extensive feature set. With Fear's anticipated performance being such a high level, the raw performance specifications of Mojo were actually slightly lower. Mojo was a single-chip solution unlike Fear and Spectre, including the geometry processor with the pixel pipeline.
Conclusion
Did 3dfx sell out? Perhaps. Many within the company thought so. Many fans of the company felt let down as well. Members of the board are reported to have received notable perks for the purchase of 3dfx's name and IP, with the dissolution of the company. And of course the end of an era came. Certainly it was a fun era, but as they say, all good things must come to an end.
-- botsex is {grep;touch;strip;unzip;head;mount}
I used to work at a company called Real3D. The company was thoroughly mismanaged -- despite having an excellent engineering group. It's a similar tale to 3DFX, only R3D never quite penetrated the market. Eventually the company folded, all the engineers were laid off, and most of them have gone to work for ATI. Whatever was left of R3D was eventually consumed by Intel.
I remember walking by the manager of engineering 's office -- he was busy day-trading stocks all day. Our marketing department kept trying to add new features to our board (feature-creep-itis), trying to scramble to catch up to the competition. The introduction of new features really pushed back our schedules in a big way.
Poor management and poor marketing are what really killed R3D.
The PC Weenies: 11 Years of Online Tech 'Too
There is also the occasion when something is still on top because no one knows better. If you've owned a mobo based on a via chipset, and a creative card. I bet more often then not you had some issues with it.
I own a Gametheater XP, as well as a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. Both provide the functionality any offering of Creative can. With a hell of a lot fewer compliance issues.
I'll admit I have been interested in some of Creatives recent releases, they have a few with an interesting break-out box. But it's still just a different set of knobs on the same broken sound card.
I wont purchase another Creative at the present time. I'm quite pleased with Turtle Beach and/or Hercules. But one can't predict the future.
Computational Madness in a round package.
Plus, any one notice the national news perp walks of the corporate crooks? They are all middle aged, white guys! Bet you money they drive German cars and play golf. I just know it!
Moral of the story, allow hunting on golf courses and require golfers to wear antlers when playing.
Well creative bought aureal two years ago (creator of the a3d standard) and thus eliminated their primary competitor in the 3d sound market.
I still have a vortex 2 based card which actually still is a nice card. The only problem is that driver support under win xp/2k and linux is really lousy.
Next week I'll receive my new PC and my voodoo 3 and vortex 2 cards will be retired.
Jilles
They day 3DFX bought STB was the beginning of the end. The sheer arrogance of believing they could cut off all their customers and just have the whole business to themselves. That they could compete with both chip *and* board manufacturers, and still come out on top. Sure, they had a head start, but Creative, Diamond, etc, would inevitably throw their considerable support behind another chip company.
The management overplayed their hand, big style, they were bound to lose. They were just way too cocky. Of course you can see that just from the lunch budget.
Makes me wonder how Creative have managed to stay top of the soundcard pile. They seem to have been making consistently the best cards, (apart from a brief time when Gravis Ultrasound marketed using the Demo scene). No-one has really compared for the non-professional market.
Both Gravis and Aureal made better sound chips than Creative, and better cards were made from the chips. Both companies lost to Creative the same way, too: Creative brought massive lawsuits with little merit that lasted so long the companies went bankrupt paying the legal fees to defend themselves.
In other words, Creative managed to stay at the top of the soundcard pile by legislating anyone that looked competetive out of existance.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
Seesm to me (last page of the story) that if they did indeed ahve all these projects running concurrently they would have over-burdeoned their engineers.
There doesn't seem to be enough spread in the sorts of products they where going to fab either. They needed to break out of just pure graphics chips and produce a better range for those on different budgets. It's all well and good shooting for the high end BUT nV still sell bucket loads of TNT2 type cards.
"None of this shit works" -W.Shatner
good to hear someone stick up for the Santa Cruz, I bought one early on and it's a fantastic card. I wish it did EAX as well as the Creative cards, but it's all good.
Most secret technology is often sent through methods that can be intercepted by halfway decent corporate spies.
Actually, they weren't the first makers of the modern soundcard. I think that distinction would go to Adlib not Creative Labs. Creative Labs first showing of a soundcard was the incredibly medicore Game Blaster. We also can't forget the incredible for its time Roland MT32 which still has kick ass Midi today.
i think the dumb fucktard probably keeps a condom in his pocket all the time so he can safe sex anywhere, anytime without fear of getting any STDs.
nothing to see here. move along. just a dumb asshole who's fucking stupid.
I had an SB Live! and a GeForce 2 in a Via K133 motherboard. I never had any problems.
Not that I'm saying that no one ever had any problems, just that not everyone did have those problems.
They might have been great engineers at 3dfx, but I as well as many other people would not simply buy a card named after pagan worshop with some satanic elements and put it my computer in my bedroom.
As well, I would not support company, which thinks that "voodoo" is really a cool name for their product. When they became Linux supported 3dfx card, I decided to keep 2D Matrox Millenium for a looong time.
Petrus
I think one thing that really started to kill 3dfx was the fact until Voodoo5, 3dfx acceleration required you buy a separate board in addition to the main graphics card, something many users and OEM's intensely dislike.
When both nVidia and ATI started offering better 3-D graphics cards that didn't need a second card for good 3-D performance, that seriously hurt 3dfx very quickly. It also didn't help that 3dfx's offerings when the Voodoo5 did finally get released didn't compare well with the nVidia and ATI competition, either.
What finally killed 3dfx was the release of nVidia's GeForce 256 chipset, which offered a quantum leap forward in 3-D acceleration. ATI's rapid development of the Radeon R100 and R200 chipsets didn't help things for 3dfx, either.
Yep, it's all very simple:
;)
If a company fails because it tries to do the wrong things, the management is at fault because they are supposed to tell the rest of the company what to do. If the rest of the company fails to do the things the management asks of them, the managers are at fault because they hired these guys.
In short, always blame the boss when something goes wrong.
The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi
"Death of a business" is exactly the thing to avoid.
Normal liquidation means paying all creditors,
giving the employees a decent period of dismissal
and splitting the remains between the shareholders.
It's not about quitting after a "first profit"
but about applying the same rules to the future
as one hopes the founders applied at the start.
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I got tired of chasing this tech curve. Sure, I like playing computer games, but keeping up with the spec required just ticks me off. I've got an old P1 233mmx with a Voodoo2 (which Quake3 runs just fine on, thank you), and a P3 laptop with no hardware acceleration.
So I go to the games store these days, and (with the exception of Civ3) there's nothing to buy - unless I want to stump up a couple of thousand for a new system. Thanks, but no thanks.
need a free COBOL editor for Windows?
yes but these could only be used to play tunes (Fm synthisis on Adlib bit better on Roland) any explosions were silly musical sounds Creative added a DAC and then people took PC games seriously. better stop now, going off topic I see, apolagies
I've got an SB Live Platinum on a VIA-based mobo and it works like a charm, even in Linux. (I had to disable the on-board audio in BIOS before Linux would configure the SB card properly, though, but that's not really something I'd call an "issue" with the mobo --- any conflict with onboard audiowould need to be resolved, no matter what the chipset.) Maybe they do have problems on some boards, though. My mobo is a newer board, and they might have fixed some things.
UT ran GREAT on my Voodoo 3.
It used the 3dfx Glide API, and ran closer to 60fps for me (even at higher res).
I've overclocked my brain!!!
Simple; Creative does it with Creative marketing.
The Audigy, for instance, is little more than a gamer's card. Any serious review of the card that you come across on the internet will tell you this, or if you bought it hoping for some advanced features, you'll find it out for yourself.
Here are some examples of this Creative marketing:
- The Audigy does support 24bit/96kHz sound playback, as advertised, but does not actually play it at that. The second it hits the main chip, it's downmixed to 16/44. So while you can play sound at the higher frequency to it, you're not actually going to hear it. (This is what they mean when they plaster 24/96 all over the boxart.)
- The Audigy does not have independant recording and playback volume controls on the line in. If you wish to record something on a TV tuner, for instance, then you'll have to either listen to it while it records, or turn off the global volume on your soundcard. (Or turn off the speakers.) This makes it impossible to use an Audigy in a PVR setup.
- The much-touted sub 100dB SNR is only on playback. On recording, the SNR is much higher.
I haven't been this disappointed in a card since my SB 128 upgrade ran slower than my SB 64. (I suspect the 64 did the soundfonts in hardware; the 128 did them in software.) Looking at the new Audigy 2, it appears that they'll be offering the 24/96 functionality that was insinuated to be present in the original Audigy, but I don't think I'll bite. I think my next card will be a Hoontech.
And, of course, this is all off-topic..
The industry will not stop for a single person who thinks it is too expensive to upgrade once or even twice a year.
Sorry, but you're completely wrong.
1. The Voodoo 3, 4, and 5 all had integrated 2D and 3D.
2. If OEMs didn't like add-on cards, why did they sell them preinstalled? I was shopping online for my PC way-back-when, and Voodoo 1 (and eventually Voodoo 2) cards were offered as (overpriced) options. Just like you can get NIC's and CD-RWs as options now.
3. The GeForce and Radeons weren't the main killers of 3dfx. The other contributing factors were:
a. Technical limitations. The Voodoo 3 and 4 line weren't much more than fast Banshees. My Voodoo 3 card has most of the same limitations as a Voodoo 1 (16-bit color, 256x256 textures), but almost no additional 3D features (primarily higher screen resolution).
b. Marketing. The Voodoo 1 and 2 lines were always the fastest in benchmarks. NVidia's TNT line was slower (but had more stable framerates), and Matrox was known for picture quality. When the Voodoo 3/4 came out, 3dfx lost the speed crown, and started talking about "image quality".
c. NVidia's 6-month release cycle. 3dfx couldn't keep up, and their "older" cards had an outdated feature-set. The GeForce was a big advance, but only in terms of fill-rate; there weren't any games (at that time) taking advantage of the new features. 3dfx lost a lot of the hearts of gamers and enthusiasts when they started pushing back release dates.
d. Buying STB. I don't think that the purchase was the final nail in 3dfx's coffin, but it certainly didn't provide the desired benefits.
- The Audigy's driver rejects all audio streams above 16/48. It doesn't even downmix it for you -- it just rejects everything above that outright.
- The DACs are 24/96 capable, but the DSP doesn't seem to be. That's how they get away with advertising 24/96.
- You could, in theory, get 24/96, but only if you had a 24/96 digital source and outputted it directly to the SPDIF port, bypassing the DSP entirely.
- Creative is full of shit.
Although the last one is not much of surprise to people who dealt with the SB Live! fiasco. (The SB Live!, due to not being 100% PCI compliant, couldn't share IRQs correctly; but ACPI requires that all PCI devices share the same IRQ, so if you had an ACPI-compliant board and OS, you were screwed. Creative's tech support blamed the motherboards, telling people that their boards were unsupported and that they should build new computers with motherboards that didn't enable ACPI's IRQ-sharing feature.)The Voodoo 1 was one of the most ground-breaking pieces of hardware I've ever seen. In an era when a good graphics card would set you back $400.00 (US) and still give you NO 3d acceleration, a day when no one cared about that, the Voodoo 1 came out of nowhere and changed everything.
While it did have the drawback of needing a 2D video card in your system, it did have the advantage that it simply worked with ANY video card you had. Period. It did what it claimed it would do and it did it well.
3DFX really pulled a rabit out of a hat with that card. Many people do not remember that the compitition was either laughable (The Verite or the NV1) or so expensive as to be rediculous. 3DFX created a consumer level 3D card at a price point people would accept.
To do this they concentrated on doing ONLY what was needed. This would later bite them on the ass when they tried to move into the combined 2D/3D card market.
As for GLIDE, well, there wasn't anything else out there. Direct 3D was a joke at the time and OpenGL didn't even run on Windows 95 (the primary gaming OS of teh day). GLIDE wasn't perfect, and it wasn't portable, but it worked.
Looking back on the history of the computer (or any other) industry, we can see that the trail blazers often get left behind by the people that follow their lead, and this is what happened to 3DFX. The dicisions that made their product work in the early days (16-bit color, limited texture size, 3D only, etc...) created a foundation of basic technology that held them back later. The minute NVidea came out with the TNT 3DFX' days were numbered.
I owned a Orchid Righteos 3D, a Canopus Voodoo 1, a Creative Labs Voodoo 2, and a Creative Labs Voodoo 3. They were all great products for their day. There are times that I think about getting my old Voodoo 1 card back from my friend and rebuilding my old gaming rig to play some of my old GLIDE games again.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Well, not compared to what people will pay today. Do you really need to spend 400-500$ USD on a GeForce 4 or Radeon 9700 Pro? But people do, just like they bought a V2 SLI config back in 1998.
:)
You might not buy it, but someone does, otherwise they'd not be selling at that price point. Although I'd rather spend the 200$ USD on a good set of console games
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I worked at Diamond when Ballard pulled the STB merger. It's kind of ironic that he is now in charge of what S3 and Diamond became: SBLU.
53 days and counting until SBLU gets delisted.
Xbox, Playstation 2, Gamecube.
Get one of each and you are still spending less than getting a new hotrod gaming PC. Then you will be able to go into the games store and spend bags of cash on the games!
Whenver a company with good engineers but bad marketing dies, not only is there a loss of decent hardware, but also a loss of information. I can't find the original programmers' specs for the Voodoo series anywhere. I used to have the Voodoo3 specs in PDF, but lost it. Does anyone have the Voodoo3 specs? I've got an old voodoo3 sitting around, and I miss hardware level programming it.... 3dfx was the only recent company that was so friendly to Open Source, Free Software, and independent developers as to give out driver source code and hardware specs. Of course, though, some troll is going to try to blame their failure on the fact that they were the only company giving out source code, or that their OSS friendliness was simply a sign of their coming demise...
A solution to the problem with music today
When they entered the consumer market, available were units with 4mb, 8mb, and later 12mb units. They were quite costly at first. Voodoo2 offers anti-aliased polygons; which was a secret for a long time. With a Voodoo2 and XFree86 3.3, you can achieve in-window openGL graphics with a little enironment-variable trick and by leaving off the pass-through cable. Many people didn't like the idea of Voodoo2 SLI taking 2 PCI slots in addition to a 2D(and/or 3d) graphics adaptor; 3 slots total required! Quantum3d released a Voodoo2 SLI solution called the Quantum Obsidian2 X24 and it offered Voodoo2 SLI with dual 12MB RAM capability. It was fast and a more realistic solution, but it was outside the above-average consumer due to its hefty price-tag of $800.00. 75% of retailers didn't stock Quantum's X24 and good reason to do it. Now, you can buy a new OEM Quantum Obsidian2 X24 on eBay for nearly $75.00(+ S/H). All Voodoo2 SLI solutions scale with the computer and Voodoo2 SLI is a superior solution to Voodoo3 and Voodoo4 because you may integrate Voodoo2 with another brand of Graphics accelerator such as ATI, nVidia, 3DLabs, PowerVR, Matrox, etc. 3Dfx created the consumer 3d graphics market and that it their only undying success. b-bye.
Which isn't to say that the last two pages of the article aren't interesting. It's clear the author was either a board designer or working on the silcon somehow. These last two pages help me make that assumption, and the insights as to the future chips are worth reading.
But because he was stuck in the trenches, he makes these general statements as to what the "board" was doing. Just your typical rumor-mill and water cooler talk you hear at your own office. I started to have tired head after the formulaic writing that in each paragraph read, "3Dfx tech guys did good. 3Dfx managment made poor decision. NVidia catches up." My advice is to skip over the already publicly known information and get to the last two pages which feature chip specs of cards that never made it to market.
Makes me wonder how Creative have managed to stay top of the soundcard pile
A combination of great marketing and incompetent consumers. The Ensoniq AudioPCI had superior sound. Aureal had superior sound. Right now, Turtle Beach has superior sound. It doesn't seem to matter to consumers (ironic considering that Creative is going to lead them into the path of audio slavery with their DRM "support").
At first, the reason for Creative's success was that "Sound Blaster" was the standard, and it was quite difficult (well, a hassle at least) to develop for different sound cards in a DOS environment. This created a "I should buy Creative if I expect sound" mentality for game players (and even though no one would like to admit it, games have been driving the hardware market since 1990). After the introduction of abstracted sound APIs supported by the OS, that "SB compatibility" isn't as important, yet people still had that "I should get Sound Blaster if I want to play games" meme stuck in their heads.
Well.
All the "first" things are correct.
Voodoo1 was great. Really really great.
Then voodoo2. Die shrink. more memory. third chip. Faster clocked. SLI possible. But no real innovation
Then banshee. 2D graphics. slower then voodoo2 sli. no new features.
then voodoo 3. faster clocked. Only innovation was enabling the voodoo2 multitexturing banshee lacked.
then
long time nothing.
---
now voodoo3 remained their main product until all was lost (the vsa-100 was to little to late). While everybody else innovated , 3dfx told people that speed, not quality is important.
The voodoo3 had the great "22 bit coloring" they advertised because EVERYBODY else supported 32 bit
The same 256*256 pixel limit for textures voodoo1 already featured ("nobody will ever want more then 640K ram, ähhh more then 65K pixels in a texture...).
They were only able to continue that long because customers and "review" sites liked them.
when 3dfx announced the voodoo3 and the stats said it still had only 16 bit rendering, limited texture sizes and so on - their fanboys cheered. Because they were told they get "22bit" colour. And quake 2 at 1024*786 in 60 frames...
You really got the impression the whole managment was stoned by this "we created the fastest biggest best thing in computer history" shit and forgot to do theis job...
Even the vsa-100 architecture couldnt save them. They simply DIDNT innovate for at least 2 years.
To long.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Where the name "voodoo" comes from: it's from a song:
.
...
...
"You Do Something to Me"
Words and Music by ColePorter , 1929
You do somethin' to me,
Somethin' that simply mystifies me,
Tell me, why should it be?
You have the power to hypnotize me . .
Let me live 'neath your spell,
Do do that 'voodoo' that you do so well!
For you do somethin' to me,
That nobody else could do!
You . . . do . . . somethin' to me,
Somethin' that simply mystifies me,
Tell . . . me . . . why should it be?
You have the power to hypnotize me
Let me live 'neath your spell,
Do do that 'voodoo' that
you do so well!
For you do somethin' to me,
That nobody else could do!
That nobody else could do
-- Terry
"...keeping up with the spec required just ticks me off..."
"...old P1 233mmx with a Voodoo2 (which Quake3 runs just fine on, thank you), and a P3 laptop with no hardware acceleration..."
But according to the second quote, you *haven't* been keeping up with the minspecs. So exactly what is it that you're pissed off at? Something you haven't had to do? Monkeys dipped in orange paint?
Pfft. Hey, here's an idea - just think of all the money you're saving by not buying all those new games *and* by not buying all those computer upgrades, and then take all that money and go very far away.
My sMacPowerBook/DualVoodooRush powered sMicrowave cooks mama celeste pizzas at about .008734 frames per second!!!
http://home.earthlink.net/~powersthatbe/110-1022_I MG.jpg
It's all good! ;-D
brockout.
Look at Nvidia. I still have a TNT2 and you can find almost 3 NEW "leaked" drivers every month! I also own a 3dfx Banshee and the bastards barely released 3 buggy drivers over its lifetime!
The company I work for uses Quantum3D AAlchemy systems in their simulators, they use 4, 8, or 16 3DFX VSA-100 GPUs with up to a gig of ram per video card. We seem to have no problem getting these systems from Quantum3D
That story was pretty interesting..although I was hoping to see a little more commentary about the Rush fiasco :p.
For me, 3dfx jumped the shark with the Voodoo Rush. Maybe I was just naive, but I figured that a card that came out after the Voodoo 2, would have similar performance (the Voodoo 1 was faster). They did make good by allowing Rush users to send in the 3d daughterboard and exchange it for a faster Voodoo 1 (which I did)...but that whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth.
I became an Nvidia convert shortly after that, as did quite a few other people who bought that card.
The #1 3D card when the Voodoo 1 came out was the Matrox Mystique. It had support for Tomb Raider 2 and so sold quite a few copies. It was not a great card and didn't produce as good of output as the Voodoo 1 but it was integrated 3D and it did sell more than a few.
- Bunch of cool geeks come up with great idea, and start a company.
- They don't have lots of money, so they release a limited compromise version of the product. Even this version is really cool.
- To handle all the sales and manufacturing tasks necessary because of the new best-selling gear, the vulture capitalists call in "professional" management, which might be someone who last ran a garbage truck company, or a carpet cleaning company.
- The new management has no understanding of the market, so they look at what the biggest company in the market is doing, and say "We want to do that!".
- In the meantime, this bunch of cool geeks is working on the great idea that will be the company's next product. There still isn't lots of money or people.
- The new management says "Don't do that, we need this other product first!".
- The new management strips the engineering team of the cool product. The engineering team pleads for more good people, but the new management says "that'll hurt our margins too much."
- The other product flops.
- The cool product has gotten obsolete while the other product flops.
- Management panics and hires lots of dunderheads.
- Meanwhile, management decides they can make more margin in another business, and put all the money from the sales of the first product into that new business.
- The new business flops.
- The cool product is being worked on by a few die-hard engineers, but is starved of resources. Delivery date gets shoved off further and further in the future.
- Company realizes mistake. Hires a bunch of bodies off the street to work on cool product. Unfortunately, the bunch of bodies are dunderheads and make the project even *LATER*.
- The first product becomes obsolete.
- Sales plummet.
- Company dies.
I've seen this happen so many times. The point:Send mail here if you want to reach me.
http://www2.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/doc-tech/voodoo3_ spec.pdf
o doo3.html
Google is your friend.
[check near the bottom]
http://members.fortunecity.com/pa3pyx/vo
Hmm... this remainds me of http://www.x3Dfx.com, but they don't seem alive and kicking, same old welcome message and a few tweaked drivers, voodoo users may find them useful. Would be nice to see them shake a leg.
I visited www.3dfx.com and it is sad to find an nVIDIA advertising there.
Well they went on in a blaze of glory, made it in the history of computing and disappear in a blink, adding a piece to my computer shrine to the history of PC where you can find along my (t)rusty Voodoo 3 2000, an Aureal Vortex 2 (Aureal gone), a 13Gb HDD from Quantum (Qunatum bye-bye) and an Ambient modem (Ambient bye-bye).
I have run UT on my Riva128, so bleh! :)
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
I was sad to see 3dfx go under because they were offering fantastic Mac support - seperate Mac versions of the cards, online updates, full QuickTime acceleration, DVI output, the works.
For Mac gamers, the cards were a wonderful (and welcome) addition to the Mac market.
I would have liked to see 3dfx continue. It would have been nice to have their cards as OEM choices at the Apple Store (they were pushing for that, too..)
Oh well. Guess I'll get a GeForce 4 Ti in my next Mac purchase... unless an All-In-Wonder comes out for the Mac (and works well)
3 Dfx had the highest performance with open source drivers, Nvidea at the time had gforce2 with closed drivers, and in linux nvidea had a little better performance, but the linux drivers at the time for the vodoo5 5500 did not support LSI mode, so instead of using both chips it used only one.
I am not sure how ATI performed at the time.
What is important about this, is that over time open source drivers work better than closed source drivers, one of the problems with closed source is that once the product is discontinued it is no longer supported, and no more new and improve drivers, with open source the drivers continue to improve.
Please tell me....how does one forget to fly to Asia? Does one hide their tickets in their underwear drawer and forget about it? Does one's manager not say, "I'm really exited about the new sample you're flying out to get next week... Can't wait to see it!" Did one neglect to write the trip in one's calendar?
Enquiring minds want to know.
4. Creative is full of shit.
How did you know Creative(C) is full of shit? Stick your hand up their ass lately?
more than that
they was swaping assholes
you gotta be "creative" to ride the hershey highway
I am by no means a hard-core gamer, but I thought this would be an interesting article to describe the video card industry. Unfortunately, the article was so full of jargon and subjective comments you'd have to already know everthing in it first-hand for anything to make any sense.
Could someone please define the term "taped out", which is used about every second paragraph, without flaming?
Also, what does it mean to say a problem"was corrected for bring up boards by fibbing the chips"?
> I still contend that the one-board solution was what really did in 3dfx.
:-) The era of the passthrough cable ended with the Voodoo2.
Then you're wrong, because the Voodoo3 cards were all one-board 2D/3D solutions.
Incidentally, this is why many enthusiasts of older games keep a Voodoo2 in their machines--it provides seamless Glide support while allowing the primary card to handle all OpenGL and DirectX calls without interfering, and doesn't even use up an IRQ.
I myself have several old Voodoo2 cards for just this purpose--many older games look worlds better when rendered under Glide as they were intended, than when rendered under D3D or a software renderer. I've tried Glide wrappers and they absolutely suck. So, for retro PC gaming, many well-rounded gamers keep a Voodoo2 along with their modern GeForceSomenumber or RadeonWhatever series cards. My favorites are the dual-Voodoo2-SLI-on-a-single-card solutions made by Quantum3D, such as the Obsidian2 X-24, which provided the best performance ever seen back in 1998 and retailed for $699. Today they can be found on eBay for less than $50, while "plain" Voodoo2 cards can be had for just a few dollars.
I digress, but anyway, my point was that the Voodoo2 was the last add-in 3d-only accelerator. Everything after, including the Voodoo3 series, were integrated 2d/3d. And at the time, the Voodoo3 series spanked all but the TNT2 Ultra line, which of course was released 6 months later than the original TNT2, which was stomped by the Voodoo3 cards in performance. The TNT2's only advantage was 32-bit color, which at the time required a rather high-end processor to be playable anyway.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
In the beginning there was data. The data was without form and
null, and darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Spirit of
IBM was moving over the face of the market. And DEC said, "Let there
be registers"; and there were registers. And DEC saw that they
carried; and DEC separated the data from the instructions. DEC called
the data Stack, and the instructions they called Code. And there was
evening and there was morning, one interrupt.
-- Rico Tudor, "The Story of Creation or, The Myth of Urk"
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