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What killed the 3dfx giant

256x256 textures killed 3dfx imo. That was just one of the limitations their cards had when games like Quake3 came out, and to be blunt those games looked much better on the TNT2/Geforce.

By the time Voodoo 4&5 came out it was too little too late.
 
Matrox just seemed to give up by never producing a real 3D accelerated card. The G400 wasn't even in the game.
 
I started in my gaming world loyal voodoo had a voodoo 1, 2, 3 and 5.
As stated tho the 5 series was not that good at least not for me.
Thanks for the info guys:)
 
Yep as others have said bad management and greed killed them.

Voodoo5 was very late because they got greedy and cut out the OEM & also cut down the technical specs & Nvidia in the meantime created a better product so by the time Voodoo5 was ready it was about 18 months too late as they had squandered their huge market lead by then and bringing Voodoo5 to market was a financial disaster.

Nvidia then bought 3DFX and killed it off totally which helped them become who they are today as they took all the decent engineers & even used Glide code in the forceware drivers for Ti4200+4400 as I used to run Glide games on mine native with nothing else required (like a Glide wrapper).

3DFX totally rulled PC gaming from 1996-1998 and every major new release included Glide support but from 1999 onwards others could see how to better them so it was only a matter of time.

Halo 1 was actually supposed to come out in 2000 as a Voodoo5 exclusive and even featured on the box I had for mine but MS bought Bungie so it changed into a Xbox exclusive instead so & by the time the PC got a port it was 2 years out of date so nothing special (if it had made its original release date it would have been better received).
 
I bought a Voodoo 5 5500 and absolutely loved it, was great in Quake 3 Arena and took it to me personally to a new level :) loved the experience!

However...when Max Payne came out it was the first game I played on it which supported T&L and that for me was the nail in the coffin and I upgraded to an Nvidia card! If they had added things like T&L into their line up at the time I suspect they would still be around today! A few wrong choices and this OEM thing people are talking about just killed them unfortunately!

I feel the need for a 3rd brand in graphics and hopefully intel will live up to the expectations :)
 
jrodga2k5 said:
I bought a Voodoo 5 5500 and absolutely loved it, was great in Quake 3 Arena and took it to me personally to a new level :) loved the experience!

However...when Max Payne came out it was the first game I played on it which supported T&L and that for me was the nail in the coffin and I upgraded to an Nvidia card! If they had added things like T&L into their line up at the time I suspect they would still be around today! A few wrong choices and this OEM thing people are talking about just killed them unfortunately!

I feel the need for a 3rd brand in graphics and hopefully intel will live up to the expectations :)
Click to expand...

I, too had a 5500 and like yourself and the turning point for me to upgrade was when Unreal 2 : The Awakening, Max Payne 2 and Project IGI 2. I loved this card though.
 
Echo the interesting reading sentiments!

Will always remember going roung my mates house when I was about 12 and seeing quake 2 being ran by a dual Voodoo 2 setup. Knocked my socks off!

My christmas list for 1999:

Quake 3 Arena
Voodoo 3 3000
64meg of ram

Brilliant!
 
While as other said 3dfx didn't expand their features set like nvidia was, I do seem to remember seeing some 3dfx demo videos of features such as depth of field and a few others that we never saw until I think Directx 9.

I guessing the features were for the rampage card.
 
As previously stated their were a number of factors that brought about the demise of 3Dfx.

1. 3Dfx purchasing STB (who incidently used to make the TNT1 cards, and god knows how bad they were), which put a huge drain on the companie's resources apparently.

2. 3DFX cards couldn't do 32-bit colour (thought the V5 could iirc) or texture and lighting. Not a big deal at the time and wasn't for a few more years, but the popular tech sites made a huge deal about it and the cards got slammed accordingly.

3. The Voodoo5 being very late to market - it was said at the time the V5 was meant to be a Geforce 1 competitor with which it competed well, but by the time it came out it was up against the almighty Geforce 2 GTS. Mind you, a big play was made at the time about anti-aliasing by 3DFX and to be fair its implementation was superior to the NV way of doing things.

I still remember when 3DFX folded and going to a popular high street retailer and getting 3 V5s for £99 each instead of the £250 there were retailing for a few days previously.

Like many others I bought a Voodoo 1 in '97 and it truly was the greatest thing I have ever witnessed in computer graphic terms, hell even SLI Voodoo 2s in Quake 2 at 1024x768 was a joy to behold.

I have yet to witness another change of that magnitude in the 11 years since, in fact, thinking about it, its been a bit boring tbh.

Edited for typos as its past my bedtime.
 
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One thing that puzzles me is how S3 Graphics are still going despite their microscopic marketshare, they even have DirectX10.1 cards out! :eek:
 
jrodga2k5 said:
I feel the need for a 3rd brand in graphics and hopefully intel will live up to the expectations :)
Click to expand...

Well since my laptop's Mobility Radeon 9600 completely embarasses any Intel onboard lineup to date in pure performance, I'm still waiting with baited breath :p

Monkeynut said:
One thing that puzzles me is how S3 Graphics are still going despite their microscopic marketshare, they even have DirectX10.1 cards out! :eek:
Click to expand...

Onboard graphics, especially the partnership with VIA, and they had a few cards that were mid-level at release (Geforce 6600GT performance).
 
If my memory serves me correctly then I think the voodoo 5500 did have 32bit colour but was the only one that 3dfx made that did have it. Think I'm also right in saying that it had very good AA. Wouldn't swear to that though or maybe it was something equivalent. Mind you once I bought my first radeon, the limited edition 64mb 8500, it pwned the 5500.
 
sr4470 said:
Well since my laptop's Mobility Radeon 9600 completely embarasses any Intel onboard lineup to date in pure performance, I'm still waiting with baited breath :p



Onboard graphics, especially the partnership with VIA, and they had a few cards that were mid-level at release (Geforce 6600GT performance).
Click to expand...

Yep, they're even marketing their Chrome 530 against the Radeon 4350, and there're rumours that they're going to be making a mid-range chip with a 128-bit interface (all of their Chrome 4xx and 5xx series so far have had a 64-bit interface). Not exactly ground breaking I know, but it's nice to know there's somebody out there trying. :p
 
arc@css said "Think I'm also right in saying that it had very good AA. Wouldn't swear to that though or maybe it was something equivalent."
Depends how you define good. It looked very good but its performance was dreadful.

It has supersampling FSAA which although it looks very nice has one massive drawback. x2 FSAA caused a 50% drop in filtrate which at that time was a 50% drop in FPS. x4FSAA caused a 75% drop in filtrate which is a 75% drop in FPS. Those where minimum FPS drops, sometimes it was bigger due to extra bandwidth needed for FSAA.

I still use supersampling FSAA today when I can get away with it as it looks so much better then other types of FSAA.
 
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