3dfx employee interviews (1997)

[Gerard]

Interesting 3 vids with employees talking about how the company started:

 

[arc@css]

Thanks for the vids.

 

[An Exception]

That's really sad their gone...

 

[jorzeh]

Aww i love 3dFX i like the end vid at the end "wipe out the compo" *Nvidia* sorta back fired on them since they got bought out by them lol.

 

[Gerard]

Its very possible they could have still been around today if they had better management. The people in charge basically kept diverting resources away from the rampage project to put out stopgap products. From what i remember from an article the Voodoo 3 series and the VSA 100 series (voodoo 4 and 5) were basically short term solutions just to get a product to market while the rampage project was being hammered away at.

But as said, staff were diverted away from the rampage project and it continued to fall further behind schedule. Rampage was originally meant to be out around late 1998 =/.

Also it didn't help matters that they alienated their board partners when they bought STB and started producing their own cards.

I remember one story that in late 2000 they had investors in talking shop but a "goof" by a board member basically put them off investing. Then it was the nvidia deal and bye bye 3dfx

My first proper pc gfx card was a voodoo 3 2000 pci 16mb, coming from an onboard rage chip it was just jawdropping how much of an improvement there was. When i finally ended up with a voodoo 5 and seen what antialiasing could do it was a similar experience. Since that though we get faster cards with better iq etc but ive yet to be wowed in the same way =/

Going by this article though if 3dfx had been able to deliver rampage around 2001 sometime then it seems that it would have stuck the boot well into nvidia as they apparently wouldn't have had similar performance untill the geforce 4 line.

http://www.thedodgegarage.com/3dfx/rampage.htm

 

[DarrenM343]

Seemed like a great bunch of people with a real passion.
It's often the case that the company the first to produce a new product or make a big advance end up disappearing for whatever reason (bust, took over).

Wonder what some of those people are doing today? The founders probably made a huge load of money and again when they were took over by NVidia, but are they still involved in the industry in some way?

I would have thought the Rampage chip mentioned would have been used in some way by nVidia?, the then new owners of the company

 

[An Exception]

^^^
I think we can see their influence in Nvidia TBH...

 

[Skyrocket]

3dfx brought AA to the table. Single most important IQ setting to date....legends!
I remember re-playing all the games with my new Voodoo 5 5500 hardware AA


RIP 3dfx

 

[Cooper]

3dfx brought AA to the table.

Didnt they also pioneer T-Buffer effects....more commonly known as Depth Of Field effects today.?

 

[kola]

30k for lunch lol

The cause of 3dfx's decline is a debated topic assuming several factors contributed in some measure. One of the first reactions was that there were rare claims that the company spent too lavishly on employee perqs including unsupported reports of spending $30,000–50,000 on company lunches and other non-essentials each month.

 

[Dark_Angel]

I miss 'em..

I remember hanging around their old 3d community gaming forums a lot.

 

[arc@css]

I think I took for granted just how good their products were, playing games with AA maxed out. Then one day a new generation of games came out...and that was it.

 

[mattyfez]

Very bad business that we see all to often today, you cant sell a product that you dont have. All built on hype and spin, shame for the guys actualy doing the hard work, although I would guess they have done ok for themselves!

 

[running_troll]

i miss them