3dfx Unveils Info Regarding Voodoo 4 & 5

A reader wrote to us about the latest press release from 3dfx regarding the Voodoo 4 and 5. The V4 and V5 will apparently be released in March of 2000. The V4 will be single processor, but the V5 will have both a commercial and professional version, respectively supporting up to 4 and up to 32 VSA-100 processors, and up to 128 and 2GB of RAM each. The release for the V4 and V5 is rolled in with the VSA-100 talks - definitely worth checking out.

Comments

Why does anyone care?

[jalefkowit]

I fail to understand why this stuff excites people. I've always thought that the market for add-on 3D graphics cards was going to develop a lot like the market for add-on sound cards did, and so far I'm seeing nothing that indicates otherwise.

What I mean is -- consider for a moment how the market for add-on sound cards developed. Up to 1992, sound on the x86 PC was basically nonexistant, unless you owned a flaky almost-compatible like the Tandy 1000. Then the multimedia tidal wave hit and suddenly there was consumer demand for hardware sound support -- and a market sprang up to fill the demand.

Once the demand for sound cards sprang up, the market developed through 3 distinct stages in the next 5 or so years:

1. Race for Market Position: Five thousand companies hit the market selling sound cards that are all completely incompatible with each other. Software developers pull their hair out trying to decide which to support. Consumers pull their hair out trying to decide which to buy. Eventually one (Creative Labs' Sound Blaster) ekes out enough sales to justify making it the default choice for software developers to support, which launches a virtuous circle of consumers buying it because that's what the software supports and developers supporting it because that's what the consumers have.
2. Hegemony through De Facto Standards. Soon the virtuous circle described above means that, for good or ill, the Sound Blaster becomes the de facto standard in the marketplace. Other products either become Sound Blaster compatible or are consigned to the margins. Creative maintains its profit margins by releasing a new board every so often(SB, SB Pro, SB16, SB32), upping features and performance. But eventually the feature set becomes Good Enough (TM) for most users, and adding new features becomes a less and less compelling reason for consumers to upgrade. (In the sound card market, this happened, IMHO, with the release of the Sound Blaster 16.) This puts downward pressure on prices, which broadens the market for these Good Enough products (and strains the market for the latest and greatest), which leads to...
3. Integration and Commoditization. The fact that suddenly the hardware is cheap enough for everyone to own leads to integration -- the Good Enough hardware starts to become part of the motherboard, and the software APIs get rolled into the OS. This effectively kills the mass market for upgrade hardware -- if you can get a Good Enough sound card built right into your PC at the point of purchase, why spend $200 for the Latest and Greatest, especially since you'll never use most of those snazzy features anyway?

So this is where we are today in sound cards -- while a few enthusiasts care about buying the latest Sound Blaster Live! or whatever, the vast majority of users are happy with the 16-bit audio that's hardwired into their motherboards. It's Good Enough!

And that's what's going to happen in the 3D card marketplace, IMHO, fairly soon. We've already passed through stage 1 (I remember agonizing over whether to buy a Voodoo1 or a Rendition Verite card) and stage 2 (with 3Dfx milking their brand name for all it's worth through the Voodoo3). But now Good Enough 3D hardware is starting to come integrated on motherboards, and 3Dfx's Voodoo-only APIs have been almost entirely forsaken in favor of Direct3D, which is integrated into the OS. I've run 3D games on cheapo PCs using this integrated hardware, and while the performance isn't great, it's Good Enough -- while the add-on card companies fight over which card can provide 80 fps in Q3Test, or other "features" which would be lost on the average consumer anyway. So watch for it -- in a year I'd be amazed if there's still a market for whizbang add-on cards. Most people will be just fine with the Voodoo2-level hardware they'll get free with their PC.

-- Jason A. Lefkowitz