3dfx The Legacy

erek

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gdonovan TheeRaccoon
 
So, no insight, and you can't buy the book.

What was the point of this thread, besides Internet Dick Waving?

At least with your other throwback threads, you offer some experience or insight; but this was pointless, unless you want to start a

"I invested in a Kick starter you can't buy in stores, and I'm bragging about it" thread? :D

And from what I recall, this barely made it's funding threshold, telling you just how over served the 3DFX Inside story demand has been. Would you care to offer something new this book brought to the table after reading it, or are you just going to post the first page and brag?

If you want to start a geek brag war, how about I break out my First Edition Commodore: A Company On The Edge. The story of the 6502, the VIC II, SID and the Amiga Original Chipset is far more gaming innovation than 3DFX ever brought to the table. The book is so long and informative it took them multiple printings to capture/expand it as an ebook.

https://www.amazon.com/Commodore-Co...87HTJNC/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YYM8L16/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

https://www.amazon.com/Commodore-Fi.../ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Why would I care about another company just riding on the momentum of their predecessors? It's not like 3DFX was the first fully-featured Consumer 3D accelerator...it was just the fastest (for a short time), so it was easier to get ports made to GLIDE.

Gaming Glint would like to say hello from 1995



Consumer 3D companies didn't surpass their predecessors (and innovate) until the GeForce 3 came out, with a universally-progammable shader API. And 3dfx was long dead by then.



Sorry, you can buy the book

http://www.3dfxlegacy.com/

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At least the 3dfx driver source codes were "leaked" so things could be improved. Some fan made drivers for my Voodoo4 give a nice little performance boot over official releases. Dozer for one. Here is some content

dozer.1.07.2017 (2).JPG


Even with the improved drivers Voodoo4 cannot come close to my ASUS GF2 GTS in exact same system. Scores about 40-50% higher than above. 3dfx had already fallen far behind at that point.
 
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At least the 3dfx driver source codes were "leaked" so things could be improved. Some fan made drivers for my Voodoo4 give a nice little performance boot over official releases. Dozer for one. Here is some content

View attachment 196789

Even with the improved drivers Voodoo4 cannot come close to my ASUS GF2 GTS in exact same system. Scores about 40-50% higher than above. 3dfx had already fallen far behind at that point.

Hmm, wonder how they got leaked
 
Even with the improved drivers Voodoo4 cannot come close to my ASUS GF2 GTS in exact same system. Scores about 40-50% higher than above. 3dfx had already fallen far behind at that point.

Eh, I don't think it was meant to. Had a Voodoo 5 5500? (dual chip) that was competing with the Geforce 2, that I wound up swapping for a Geforce 2 because it looked pretty terrible (for whatever reason). Had used Voodoo -> Voodoo 2 -> Voodoo 3 up to that point.
 
Eh, I don't think it was meant to. Had a Voodoo 5 5500? (dual chip) that was competing with the Geforce 2, that I wound up swapping for a Geforce 2 because it looked pretty terrible (for whatever reason). Had used Voodoo -> Voodoo 2 -> Voodoo 3 up to that point.
was it partially due to the 16-bit color that it looked terrible?
 
Hmm, wonder how they got leaked
Good question. Just what I have read around the forums. Makes sense since most of the 3rd party drivers came out in a fairly short period in 2003/4.
Eh, I don't think it was meant to. Had a Voodoo 5 5500? (dual chip) that was competing with the Geforce 2, that I wound up swapping for a Geforce 2 because it looked pretty terrible (for whatever reason). Had used Voodoo -> Voodoo 2 -> Voodoo 3 up to that point.
Nope. Mentioned it because Voodoo4 and GF2 were released within a few weeks from each other in year 2000 at roughly same price point. I believe the voodoo5 5500 was actually released a couple months earlier and ended up performing similarly to the GF2. Going mostly from memory so please correct me if wrong.
 
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Because the OP is also acting like a dick. There's no link to buy the book, only the closed Kickstartter page.

I'm allowed to be judgemental over his piss-poor post, except I've gone above-and beyond, and done more than post pics.

If he wanted to contact gdonovan over PM , that's what PM is for. This was simply dick waving without insight.

But you're still being a dick.
 
Nope. Mentioned it because Voodoo4 and GF2 were released within a few weeks from each other in year 2000 at roughly same price point. I believe the voodoo5 5500 was actually released a couple months earlier and ended up performing similarly to the GF2. Going mostly from memory so please correct me if wrong.

Definitely going from memory on my part. In this case it's what I actually wound up buying, but hell if I remember what I actually paid. Also I was working at the store that I bought it from...
 
Oh, how fitting!
Almost 3 weeks ago my garage went up in smoke, and among of things I have no proof of purchase for or pictures is my small collection of 3DFX GPUs, including a Voodoo 5 5500 AGP and a Voodoo 5 5500 PCI in the original box.
What a lovely reminder!
 
Is the book ever going english like it should have in the first place?
 
I still have my old Voodoo 3 AGP card! I remember playing endless hours of Half Life on that thing until I ended up getting a GeForce 2. Memories... :)
 
3dfx lost because of delays.
VS100 which powered Voodoo4 and 5 was equivalent to Riva TNT2 but better in many ways: spotless Glide support, texture compression, far better 16bit rendering, SLI support
Problem is that VS100 was released too late.
If 3dfx released Voodoo4 as Voodoo3 and also created double chip solution at the same time or soon after then Nvidia and Ati and the rest of the pack would have run for their money.

Unfortunately this was not the case :(
 
was it partially due to the 16-bit color that it looked terrible?

The Voodoo4 4500 and Voodoo 5 5000, 5500 and 6000 all had 32 bit color support, not the 22 bit color dithered to 16 bit on the Voodoo3.

I have a Voodoo5 5500 and the color in 32 bit mode works fine. I prefer 16 bit in Glide games though, as there weren't many Glide games that took advantage of 32 bit and some had weird artifacts because of it.
 
This entire thread begs me to rebuild my old Athlon XP system with my Voodoo3. All parts of which I still have around! :)
 
This entire thread begs me to rebuild my old Athlon XP system with my Voodoo3. All parts of which I still have around! :)

Just be aware of what software you're going to use because in the later 2000s, many games and software in general started requiring SSE2 and SSE3, which the Athlon XP doesn't have. AMD was limited to SSE until the Athlon 64.

The way around it is to find a Pentium 4 board with a universal AGP slot, like the ECS P4VMM2. It can run any speed AGP card from 1x to 8x at up to 4x speeds, which is fine since the Voodoo3 is only a 2x card and doesn't even use any AGP features, it just treats it as a fast PCI bus. The fastest CPU you can use is a 3.06 GHz Northwood, which supports SSE2. If you need SSE3, you can also use a 2.80A Prescott at a cost of some speed.

3dfx made the dumb decision to not use AGP 4x on the Voodoo5, when all of their competitors were using it and motherboard manufacturers were transitioning away from the older 1x/2x slots. The Voodoo5 was capable of running in AGP 4x mode, as seen on its bastard stepchild the Voodoo4 4500, half of a Voodoo5 5500.
 
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