Just wondering ....Nvidia....3dfx

[wizardmaxx]

I was just wondering if anyone knows whether Nvidia has ever used any of the 3dfx patents (hardware or software code) since the buyout of 3dfx in 2001. I know its a probably a dead subject, but I've always had the theory that if Ati brought out a 'Nvidia Destroyer' that a the 3dfx technology would be used a trump card. If i'm not mistaken 3dfx coding was far superior to than of nvidia at the time. Any thoughts ?

 

[Pottsey]

”I was just wondering if anyone knows whether Nvidia has ever used any of the 3dfx patents (hardware or software code) since the buyout of 3dfx in 2001”
Nvidia did not buy out 3DFX and they did not get everything to do with 3DFX. All they did was get some of the technology and staff and a few other things. More staff ended up at PowerVR and some at ATI.

Look at 3DFX last two cards V3 and V5 they had pretty much had nothing that everyone else did not already have.






“I know its a probably a dead subject, but I've always had the theory that if Ati brought out a 'Nvidia Destroyer' that a the 3dfx technology would be used a trump card. If i'm not mistaken 3dfx coding was far superior to than of nvidia at the time. Any thoughts ?”
If Nvidia has a trump card with 3DFX they would have bought it out right away. They would not wait and only do it if ATI had a killer card. As for coding 3DFX where not far superior and in fact a number of people say it was poor after looking at the source code. 3DFX went bankrupt as there last 2 generation of cards where poor to ok at best. In my opinion the company leaders got rich and didn’t care about the company any more then made a bunch of bad dissuasions

Some of the 3DFX tech would have been used in the Gefroce FX and well you not how bad that card turned out to be.

 

[semi-pro waster]

I don't know of anything specific Nvidia has used from 3dfx, I think technology has moved on too much for most of it to be useful. Glide probably was the better looking technology in terms of results in games but if memory serves it was a bit more complicated to code for so wasn't as likely to get used when there were simpler solutions that were almost as good.

As an aside you are allowed 4 lines of normal sized text or smaller in your signature so you should probably change it

 

[MeatLoaf]

Well 3DFX probably trademarked the term 'SLI' so they used that at least, even tho the technologies are totally different.

 

[Pottsey]

“Glide probably was the better looking technology in terms of results in games but if memory serves it was a bit more complicated to code for so wasn't as likely to get used when there were simpler solutions that were almost as good.”
Personally I don’t think it was better looking, smoother sure but not better looking. Saying that Glide was basically a cut down version of OpenGL it was very easy to code for which is why so many developers took it up so fast. Making it easy to code for was one of 3DFX’s better ideas. There was not really a simpler solution to code for. I guess you could argue D3D and OpenGL where simpler to code for as they worked on more cards. Coding for 1 API is always better to coding for 2 or more.

 

[ernysmuntz]

If you want some info, just check out wikipedia do a search for "3dfx"

 

[ernysmuntz]

“Glide probably was the better looking technology in terms of results in games but if memory serves it was a bit more complicated to code for so wasn't as likely to get used when there were simpler solutions that were almost as good.”
Personally I don’t think it was better looking, smoother sure but not better looking. Saying that Glide was basically a cut down version of OpenGL it was very easy to code for which is why so many developers took it up so fast. Making it easy to code for was one of 3DFX’s better ideas. There was not really a simpler solution to code for. I guess you could argue D3D and OpenGL where simpler to code for as they worked on more cards. Coding for 1 API is always better to coding for 2 or more.

Games DID look better using the Glide API, the reason being that the other 2 APIs OpenGL\Direct3D weren't always supported entierly by graphics cards.

Back then, no 3d card for gaming fully supported all the functionality of OpenGL. Even Direct3D was hit and miss.

Back in those days, there were always games that wouldn't run on your particular 3d card because of the lack of 100% compatability with the standards.

With Glide, all the cards that supported it, supported it fully (exception being that 2d\3d card they released that wasn't fully glide compliant, not the banshee, the other one, it was based on voodoo1) and you'd be certain of decent image quality\special effects in the games, things like transparent windows would actually be transparent and not like just a solid colour as would often happen in certain games for certain cards.

It did go overboard of the smoothing, this was highlighted even more because of the pass through technology 3dfx cards used (analogue), bring even more blurryness to the picture.

A good example of a card that was said to be fully 100% Direct3D compliant but wasn't, was the Apocalypse 3DX based on the PCX2 graphics chip from PowerVR. I remember playing games like Outwars from microsoft and all sorts of crappy textrure corruption etc etc.

 

[ernysmuntz]

nVidia bough out 3dfx, not for any intellectual property. Just the skills of the people that worked there.

So they certainly won't be using any "special moves" from any technology they gained from 3dfx.

In any case, this is 5-6 years on?

Do you really think any of the tech acquired then would have any use whatsover in this day and age? Not a chance.

3dfx weren't all that after the Voodoo2\Banshee came out, that was it all their other cards were no better than the competition, and nvidia with its TNT2 gave 'em a good kick in the nuts not long after the above cards were released.

 

[wizardmaxx]

”I was just wondering if anyone knows whether Nvidia has ever used any of the 3dfx patents (hardware or software code) since the buyout of 3dfx in 2001”
Nvidia did not buy out 3DFX and they did not get everything to do with 3DFX. All they did was get some of the technology and staff and a few other things. More staff ended up at PowerVR and some at ATI.

Look at 3DFX last two cards V3 and V5 they had pretty much had nothing that everyone else did not already have.






“I know its a probably a dead subject, but I've always had the theory that if Ati brought out a 'Nvidia Destroyer' that a the 3dfx technology would be used a trump card. If i'm not mistaken 3dfx coding was far superior to than of nvidia at the time. Any thoughts ?”
If Nvidia has a trump card with 3DFX they would have bought it out right away. They would not wait and only do it if ATI had a killer card. As for coding 3DFX where not far superior and in fact a number of people say it was poor after looking at the source code. 3DFX went bankrupt as there last 2 generation of cards where poor to ok at best. In my opinion the company leaders got rich and didn’t care about the company any more then made a bunch of bad dissuasions

Some of the 3DFX tech would have been used in the Gefroce FX and well you not how bad that card turned out to be.

It was just a generalised question as everything about 3dfx and Voodoo died out very quickly. Just seems strange. I was under the impression at that stage that they were busy developing a new 'code' for their chips that was far superior in efficiency compared to the likes of Nvidia. Mabye I was just young and naive and a Voodoo enthusiast, or mabye Nvidia have been perfecting that code for use one day. You cannot release a product that will completely kill the cometition anyway. It's against the cometitions board rules as far as I know. Who knows, time will tell.

 

[Pottsey]

“nVidia bough out 3dfx, not for any intellectual property. Just the skills of the people that worked there.”
Why do people keep insisting this? Nvidia did not buy out 3DFX and they did not automatically get the staff and skills of the people that work there. Nvidia did hire some of the 3DFX staff but so did ATI, PowerVR and perhaps some others.





“Games DID look better using the Glide API, the reason being that the other 2 APIs OpenGL\Direct3D weren't always supported entierly by graphics cards.”
It did depend on the game but I found OpenGL in 32/24bit colour looked better then Glide games. Unreal and Quake spring to mind as games that looked better then Glide games. I remember the first time I played Quake in 24-bit colour the lights where so much better then in 16-bit glide games of the time. Unreal also looked better in SGL then glide and later D3D looked much better then glide.

Then again there where games like Diablo 2 which where better in Glide then D3D. It really did depend on the game and to an extent personnel opinion over the rendering style used.





“With Glide, all the cards that supported it, supported it fully”
That’s also the same for SGL and SGL games nearly always looked better then Glide games due to more features. Compare something like Ultim@te Race Pro or Unreal with Glide to SGL and SGL looked better.

I remember playing games with SGL in pre V5 days with 32-bit colour, x4 FSAA and AF while 3DFX where limited to 16-bit colour and no FSAA and no AF. Unreal with FSAA and 32-bit colour in SGL was stunning to say the least for its timeframe.

 

[Cyber-Mav]

only thing nvidia used is the term SLI from 3dfx. although it stands for different things, scan line interleave / scaleable link interface or something.

 

[Curio]

Why do people keep insisting this? Nvidia did not buy out 3DFX and they did not automatically get the staff and skills of the people that work there.

Maybe people keep saying it because that's what happened. 3dfx had already filed for bankruptcy and opted to sell out to nVidia - who took most of the intellectual property (they were mainly interested in 3dfx's AA/AF tech, if I remember correctly...) and also about 100 employees to work on the FX series. Of course they didn't just keep all the 3dfx employees - the company didn't exist anymore (it wasn't a merger...) and of course most of them went off to other companies. But nVidia did buy out 3dfx. If you've heard anything different then please show me a link or two and I'm happy to be proved wrong.

 

[Pottsey]

“Maybe people keep saying it because that's what happened. 3dfx had already filed for bankruptcy and opted to sell out to nVidia - who took most of the intellectual property (they were mainly interested in 3dfx's AA/AF tech, if I remember correctly...)”
Buying assists off a company is very different from buying that compnay. 3DFX the company are not owned by Nvidia which is would be if they bought 3DFX. All that happened was 3DFX sold assets so they could try and raise cash. As a company 3DFX was still working even after Nvidia bought some of the assist. Nvidia didn’t even buy all the assists.

EDIT: Just released I typed buyout in my older posts but was thinking and reading buy 3DFX. My point was meant to be Nvidia did buyout 3DFX assets but they didn’t buy 3DFX and they don’t own 3DFX. Sorry for the confussion.



“If you've heard anything different then please show me a link or two and I'm happy to be proved wrong.”
http://news.com.com/2104-1040_3-256103.html
They bought out 3dfx patents, patent applications, trademarks and brand names related to 3dfx's graphics.
That’s not buying 3DFX but acquiring some of there assists. As far as I can tell Nvidia didn’t get any hardware or physical objects at all that went to different people.

A buyout of 3DFX would include everything you would own the company, fabs, building, staff and everything else. As Nvidia do not own the company or buildings it’s wrong to say they bought 3DFX.

Even though Nvidia did not buy 3DFX it was a smart move to get there assets.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=7
Also says they did not purchase 3dfx but made offers to some staff and bought some of the IP that looked interesting.

 

[Noxis]

Damn it Pottsey learn to post properly, its intensly irritating.

IMO nVidia should have released (or still could) some cards with the 3dfx brand name. It would get them some sales imo