Why did 3dfx Voodoo vid card maker die ?

[Mojo]

Hi guy


Now that I may look at buying nForce4 SLI. Lets go back in time to my
first big 3D card buy.........3dfx Voodoo2. I bought two to use for
SLI, and they was not cheap back then. These voodoo rocked. The best
and fastest on the market. How can a company go from being Number #
1 to out of business in just a few years. ? ANYONE remember the
history of 3dfx and what happened to them.



Still have my Voodoo2 SLI in my PC just for the hell of
it...................................... Funny how low it benchmarks
now...................hehehheheheh


Thanks

 

[Andrew]

Now that I may look at buying nForce4 SLI. Lets go back in time to my
first big 3D card buy.........3dfx Voodoo2. I bought two to use for
SLI, and they was not cheap back then. These voodoo rocked. The best
and fastest on the market. How can a company go from being Number #
1 to out of business in just a few years. ? ANYONE remember the
history of 3dfx and what happened to them.

NVidia caught up with them in terms of performance and offered 32bit
rendering. 3Dfx stated that users don't need 32bit and the users voted
with their wallets. When 3Dfx started to die, NVidia bought them out
and it was game over.

 

[Tim]

NVidia caught up with them in terms of performance and offered 32bit
rendering. 3Dfx stated that users don't need 32bit and the users voted
with their wallets. When 3Dfx started to die, NVidia bought them out
and it was game over.

3dfx also overextended themselves when they started manufacturing their own
graphics cards (instead of just making the GPUs like NVidia). In addition,
their console deal with Sega fell through which cut off a huge source of
potential revenue.

 

[Andrew]

3dfx also overextended themselves when they started manufacturing their own
graphics cards (instead of just making the GPUs like NVidia). In addition,
their console deal with Sega fell through which cut off a huge source of
potential revenue.

Oh yeah, I forgot about those. Didn't they take Sega to court and win
compensation?

 

[Ne>]

3dfx also overextended themselves when they started manufacturing their
own graphics cards (instead of just making the GPUs like NVidia). In
addition, their console deal with Sega fell through which cut off a huge
source of potential revenue.

And all Sega can really do now is arcade stuff, (but is it the hardware?)

 

[Tim]

Didn't they take Sega to court and win compensation?
--

I know they filed a lawsuit which I think was settled out of court, I don't
know the amount though.

 

[Andrew]

And all Sega can really do now is arcade stuff, (but is it the hardware?)

I think Sega announced a few months back that they were pulling out of
hardware and concentrating on software.

 

[Ne>]

I think Sega announced a few months back that they were pulling out of
hardware and concentrating on software.

Tiz a shame, they did some good stuff in their heyday.

 

[Mike]

If I remember correctly nvidia was touting a lot of new technology, most of
which had no real world value, it was a marketing ploy. The TNT was a great
card though, which set nvidia.

Mike

 

[Frank]

NVidia caught up with them in terms of performance and offered 32bit
rendering. 3Dfx stated that users don't need 32bit and the users voted
with their wallets. When 3Dfx started to die, NVidia bought them out
and it was game over.

Anything that uses glide misses the 3dfx cards. There is a lot of good
technology that is scarfed up and put on the shelf. Go figure.

 

[Just Askin']

NVidia caught up with them in terms of performance and offered 32bit
rendering. 3Dfx stated that users don't need 32bit and the users voted
with their wallets. When 3Dfx started to die, NVidia bought them out
and it was game over.

Not really. 3Dfx was only bought up after they went bust.

They went bust because their products in the pipeline of development didn't
get to market in time to generate the cash to support the rest of the
business.

With more cash coming in, they would have blown nVidia out of the water with
their new products based on SLi. Instead, nVidia was given a clear playing
field when they went under.

 

[Tone-EQ]

Still have my Voodoo2 SLI in my PC just for the hell of

it...................................... Funny how low it benchmarks
now...................hehehheheheh

You might enjoy seeing Doom 3 running on them then:
http://www.3dfxzone.it/enboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1462

--
Regards,
Tony. (tony.cue(at)tiscali.co.uk)

Discogs: building the definitive database of electronic music...
http://www.discogs.com

 

[John Russell]

Hi guy


Now that I may look at buying nForce4 SLI. Lets go back in time to my
first big 3D card buy.........3dfx Voodoo2. I bought two to use for
SLI, and they was not cheap back then. These voodoo rocked. The best
and fastest on the market. How can a company go from being Number #
1 to out of business in just a few years. ? ANYONE remember the
history of 3dfx and what happened to them.



Still have my Voodoo2 SLI in my PC just for the hell of
it...................................... Funny how low it benchmarks
now...................hehehheheheh


Thanks

Why was 3DFX SLI good? Nvidia's is only similer in "acronym" and dosn't
stand for "Scan line interleave" at all.

 

[DaveW]

They made bad business decisions and were bought out by Nvidia.

 

[Crimson Liar]

You might enjoy seeing Doom 3 running on them then:
http://www.3dfxzone.it/enboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1462

--
Regards,
Tony. (tony.cue(at)tiscali.co.uk)

Discogs: building the definitive database of electronic music...
http://www.discogs.com

Wow - not just the frame-rates though, it doesn't even look like the game I
played, the graphics looked soooo primitive!

Crimson Liar

 

[Frank]

Not really. 3Dfx was only bought up after they went bust.

They went bust because their products in the pipeline of development
didn't get to market in time to generate the cash to support the rest of
the business.

With more cash coming in, they would have blown nVidia out of the water
with their new products based on SLi. Instead, nVidia was given a clear
playing field when they went under.

Whatever...I use ATI now but I have never been as pleased as I was with any
of my 3dfx products. I still have a voodo 2,3,4,5 on the shelf that I
cannot use.
I also have the matrox m2 on the shelf.

 

[Son of Blahguy]

Why was 3DFX SLI good? Nvidia's is only similer in "acronym" and dosn't
stand for "Scan line interleave" at all.

It was 2 voodoo2 s next to each other in PCI slots. Doesn't it make sense
that 2 cards will run faster than 1?

 

[First of One]

Simple: gamers account for less than 5% of total video card sales. (Sales of
high-end cards like today's X800 and yesteryear's Voodoo2 occupy less than
1%.) The other 95% are from OEMs like IBM and Gateway. The demographics in
this newsgroup does not represent the market.

The bulk of 3dfx's sales were in the retail channel, which made 3dfx a
significantly smaller player than nVidia and ATi, and much more vulnerable
to simple economic downturns (when people can't afford $600 SLI setups).

Put it this way: for a long time ATi had shitty video cards, but the company
didn't care: it owned 30% of the market through OEM sales.

That was then, nowadays consumers are more "informed", and there exists a
need for a manufacturer to offer the fastest video card, just for the image.
So really, the Geforce FX5800 was created for the purpose of dumping
boatloads of FX5200s on IBM, Gateway, etc. This is why you see nVidia and
ATi one-upping each other with paper launches, since to build an image, one
needs only the press and fancy marketing...

 

[Tod]

3DFX had put out a lot of cash and bought a company with some cutting edge
graphics technology.
They had hoped to use this cutting edge stuff to win a big contract to
supply graphics chips for an
upcoming game console (Xbox ?), they did not win the contract.
So I would assume the 3DFX management figured they did not have the cash
reserves
to keep the company going, so they sold 3DFX to Nvidia for around $115
million.
I would assume the 3dfx management got some really big golden parachutes
out of the deal.

 

[John Russell]

It was 2 voodoo2 s next to each other in PCI slots. Doesn't it make sense
that 2 cards will run faster than 1?

Voodoo's approach only solved the problem of the GPU hanging due to writing
to "slow" frame buffer memory. Nvidia's SLI recognises that the Voodoo
architecture results in both cards performing the same front end geometry
calcualtions, which is a waste. Nvidia's idea is to look at the pipline as a
whole and allow the second GPU to support the first GPU in keeping the
pipeline running at full potential. Evidently memory speed is not the
problem it was!

This also means that the two GPU's don't have to be matched. So in theory
you can buy one SLI card, and then add a second later, which following
improvements in technology, will be cheaper and faster. The old one will
contribute to keeping the faster one working at full potential.

I suppose most people won't be care that this isn't Scan Line Interleaving.
For them SLI just means "two better than one"