I miss the 3dfx gaming days :(

[cybereality]

Ah, I remember having the VooDoo 3000. Awesome card back then. R.I.P.

 

[Trimlock]

Still have my monster and voodoo2, always contemplated on remaking my Pentium 133 system and Pentium2 350 system.

 

[wra18th]

Man, those were the good old days. I still have my very first Voodoo card. The Voodoo Banshie and 2 Voodoo 3s. I've been contemplating making a vintage rig, too. Still got an Asus P3B-F and a PIII 450 laying around, as well as IDE drives, PC100 Ram and a good copy of win98. I even have the Unreal Game CD that came with the Banshie. Need for Speed II SE looked best on 3Dfx.

 

[bart1975]

Nglide FTW

 

[mrgstiffler]

I remember my Voodoo Banshee. That thing was awesome for the UT Demo.

 

[Deleted member 82943]

me too i wish 3dfx was brought back

 

[pxc]

LOL - hold on a sec, here.

...

At the time I'd make the argument that "32 bit was just not worth it for the performance loss", the chief competitor was the TNT2 - which just couldn't hack 32-bit color. It was more than a 50% performance loss in most cases, which made 1024x768 unplayable.

lulz Yes, as point you point out above, 3dfx was far behind in supporting 32-bit and > 256x256 textures.

BTW: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-rocks-boat-tnt2,102-6.html

"(TNT2) Support of 32-bit rendering, which seems to have an impact of around 10-15%." That's what I remember. But I don't need to rely on 10+ year old memories. I still have one in use in the same system as Voodoo2 SLI (UT on V2 SLI actually still looks good and the TNT2 is still pretty impressive running old games and wow does it usually look noticeably better... the analog SLI always looked kinda funky).

The TNT2 far outclassed Voodoo3 in virtually every way possible. And thanks for reminding me of V3's "PCI66" non-AGP support. The "AGP" version used an AGP slot, but had PCI performance and it couldn't take advantage of AGP features. That didn't really hold back anything. It just made 3dfx look even more behind.

The Voodoo4 4500 was outclassed by the GF2MX (LOL). The Voodoo5 was a competititor for the original GF256 DDR, but was released after the GF2 GTS. Dose of reality: http://www.anandtech.com/show/580/24

It basically comes down to this - if you want the fastest frame rates possible, go with the GeForce 2 GTS. For the best price / performance ratio, the current leader appears to be the GeForce 2 MX. Once again, the trump card that 3dfx currently holds is their higher quality FSAA implementation. Let's hope that is enough to allow the Voodoo5 5500 to carry them over until the release of the Voodoo5 6000 and/or their next generation product. That next generation product will be the key to 3dfx's future in the 3D accelerator market - they must have it out in time to compete with the NVIDIA NV20, rumored to be coming this fall, and it must match the NV20's performance.

Go to the FSAA comparision pages. 3dfx had advantages in OpenGL FSAA, but had the same D3D FSAA quality as Nvidia, maybe slightly inferior. And we all know how 3dfx's "next project" (Rampage) worked out. Even if it had been released, the market for $600 video cards was tiny. It wouldn't have saved 3dfx. 3dfx was doomed after the poor decision to buy STB and relying on the relatively expensive [Strike=1]Bulldozer[/s] Voodoo Scalable Architecture.

 

[Dmitri]

I remember buying a Rendition Verite V1000 that came bundled with Quake. This was before 3Dfx was popular. All my friends who were still running in software were like "what's the big deal" with the texture filtering. Then the 3dfx hype hit and they were all firmly on the bandwagon a few months later.

Rendition are my 3Dfx. 3Dfx is my Microsoft.

 

[3dfx_zombie]

Seriously, I thought that 3dfx apology was long dead. 32-bit was only "bad" because 3dfx didn't support it. Suddenly when 3dfx did support it, it was good. Same thing with 3dfx's 256x256 texture limit. It held back progress for years.

Don't forget hardware Transform & Lighting. The Geforce256 introduced it in 1999 and when Voodoo-5 came out months later, 3dfx said software T&L was still good enough (because Voodoo-5 didn't have it in hardware).

I always roll my eyes when companies use these tactics once again these days. Nothing ever changes:

- 2009, AMD presents dx11 tesselation as the best thing since sliced bread. (because they are the only ones that have it.) Nvidia doesn't care because all games are DX9/10 anyway.

- 2010, one year later, AMD dismisses DX11 "extreme" tesselation as unrealistic. (because it turns out Fermi does it better.) Nvidia brags about their "DX11 done right".

So I guess the spirit of 3dfx lives on after all.

 

[pxc]

Rendition are my 3Dfx. 3Dfx is my Microsoft.

Ah, another old timer! Did you go to Bjorn Tidal's old Verite site? That place was great for Rendition stuff. It later became what's now bjorn3d.com (useless fact: that's the board I have the longest membership at, even longer than here).

I liked the V2100/V2200, but wow were the drivers terrible, particularly the too late OpenGL icd. One feature I loved though was edge AA, but it got yanked from the drivers. Yeah you non-Rendition using people: Rendition had edge AA back in the 1990s, and a hardware accelerated Quake before 3dfx did.

 

[H-street]

Don't forget hardware Transform & Lighting. The Geforce256 introduced it in 1999 and when Voodoo-5 came out months later, 3dfx said software T&L was still good enough (because Voodoo-5 didn't have it in hardware).

I always roll my eyes when companies use these tactics once again these days. Nothing ever changes:

In all fairness the CPUs at the time could render TnL faster than the Geforce 256. I actually remember getting my Geforce 256 and was underwhelmed by the performance of the games when enabling TnL (MDK2 comes to mind).

It wasn't bad but just as an example.

Geforce 256 DDR
MDK2 1024/TnL Enabled: 101 Mp/s
MDK2 1024/TnL Disabled: 107 Mp/s

Not a big difference @ 6% performance loss with the Geforce, the criticism should have been that even though CPU's could do it better at the time the future path was clear and there is a lot to be said about experience on the hardware with it.

 

[Brent_Justice]

Best combo I ever had was an ATI Radeon Xpert@Play 8MB and a Diamond Monster Voodoo2 12MB. The Xpert@Play (Rage Pro GPU), allowed 32-bit color D3D support, superior 2D image quality and MPEG-1 hardware acceleration, but the drivers sucked at OpenGL. The Voodoo2 therefore came in and allowed superior 3D acceleration performance with Glide and OGL at better resolutions when gaming. It was the best combo, and I'll never forget it.

Shout out to the times when we had a separate 2D video card and 3D video card accelerator

 

[bigdogchris]

My first 3D GPU was a Voodoo 1 with the external dongle to connect it to my 2D card since it did not have built in 2D. I ran the Tomb Raider demo on it for my first 3D experience. I also owned a Voodoo 3 and Voodoo 5.

 

[Viper87227]

Voodoo3 2000 was my first video card. I can still remember how much smoother Viper Racing ran when I popped it in.

 

[dderidex]

Voodoo3 2000 was my first video card. I can still remember how much smoother Viper Racing ran when I popped it in.

Thinking back, I think this might be the first 3d card I ended up picking up, too.

I was definitely gaming a lot before it, but...well, even after the Voodoo3, so many games still released with a software renderer, that they still weren't a requirement.

I did, ultimately, have a Voodoo2 and Intel's i740 in the Real3d 'Starfighter' card as offerings from an earlier era...both used primarily in office PCs to enable our after-work Tribes marathons. But I think the Voodoo3 3000 was the first 3d card I spent serious money on for myself.

(Reason I went with that over nVidia was that I was *mostly* playing Jane's Longbow 2 or F-15...which were Glide games)

 

[martinje]

LONG Live the Kyro Line of Video cards!

http://www.anandtech.com/show/735/18

Damn wrong thread

Sorry

 

[daglesj]

More a Matrox Mystique/M3D man myself. Looked very nice.

Then got a Creative Labs Banshee. Nice card but nothing amazing. Nice to have only one card doing the rendering though.

I would like to see Matrox make a mainstream comeback. I have more of a need for some ultra image quality over gaming these days.

 

[dderidex]

I would like to see Matrox make a mainstream comeback. I have more of a need for some ultra image quality over gaming these days.

At present, honestly, this is more of an OS and software thing than the video card, though.

Specifically, the whole 'wide gamut' issue with LCDs. If the OS really supported this concept in its core - everything (and I mean EVERYTHING - games, DVD players, etc) supporting proper color management - then you'd be quite happy with the state of things.

Pretty much any modern video card, outputting via DVI, should be pretty much as good as it gets for quality...limited basically by the software...

 

[daglesj]

At present, honestly, this is more of an OS and software thing than the video card, though.

Specifically, the whole 'wide gamut' issue with LCDs. If the OS really supported this concept in its core - everything (and I mean EVERYTHING - games, DVD players, etc) supporting proper color management - then you'd be quite happy with the state of things.

Pretty much any modern video card, outputting via DVI, should be pretty much as good as it gets for quality...limited basically by the software...

Oh indeed, but I'll take any edge I can get without having to spend a fortune.

A lot of 2D improvments are still being waited on in driver improvements from both AMD and Nvidia but I guess when you have X thousand kids on forums all moaning about framerates in Crysis and a few dozen in the pro arena moaning about 2D image quality.....

 

[CruisD64]

Good ol days. For sure! I had all of them up to Voodoo 4 and 5.

Do you remember that N64 emulator, UltraHLE which ran exclusively on 3dfx hardware? I remember getting super excited when I first heard, "Itsa mea! Mario!!!"

 

[LeviathanZERO]

I'll give 3dfx the kudos for beginning the 3D accelerator revolution, but they are a perfect example of a company that stopped innovating and basically committed suicide. They lost relevance in the market when they started making excuses for not supporting new standards. You don't make excuses. What the hell is that? What kind of dumbass marketing department do you have that makes excuses? Shareholders dont want to hear that shit, and neither do the customers EXPECTING innovation.

Voodoo 3 is what began their demise. Not only that, but the insane amount of wasteful spending internally. (thousands of dollars spent each week for free candy/snacks and soda for employees, for no apparent reason.) With TNT2, Nvidia innovated, with Voodoo3, 3dfx just made excuses. (16-bit is faster!!!)

lulz Yes, as point you point out above, 3dfx was far behind in supporting 32-bit and > 256x256 textures.

BTW: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-rocks-boat-tnt2,102-6.html

"(TNT2) Support of 32-bit rendering, which seems to have an impact of around 10-15%." That's what I remember. But I don't need to rely on 10+ year old memories. I still have one in use in the same system as Voodoo2 SLI (UT on V2 SLI actually still looks good and the TNT2 is still pretty impressive running old games and wow does it usually look noticeably better... the analog SLI always looked kinda funky).

The TNT2 far outclassed Voodoo3 in virtually every way possible. And thanks for reminding me of V3's "PCI66" non-AGP support. The "AGP" version used an AGP slot, but had PCI performance and it couldn't take advantage of AGP features. That didn't really hold back anything. It just made 3dfx look even more behind.

The Voodoo4 4500 was outclassed by the GF2MX (LOL). The Voodoo5 was a competititor for the original GF256 DDR, but was released after the GF2 GTS. Dose of reality: http://www.anandtech.com/show/580/24



Go to the FSAA comparision pages. 3dfx had advantages in OpenGL FSAA, but had the same D3D FSAA quality as Nvidia, maybe slightly inferior. And we all know how 3dfx's "next project" (Rampage) worked out. Even if it had been released, the market for $600 video cards was tiny. It wouldn't have saved 3dfx. 3dfx was doomed after the poor decision to buy STB and relying on the relatively expensive [Strike=1]Bulldozer[/s] Voodoo Scalable Architecture.

Somebody has good memory.
This is exactly what happened. Management is what killed 3dfx.

 

[pxc]

I'll give 3dfx the kudos for beginning the 3D accelerator revolution,

Clap for proper use of "accelerator" in 3D history. S3 had a 3D chip (ViRGE) a year before Voodoo Graphics was released.

There were actually a few 3D graphics chips out before Voodoo Graphics. My first 3D card was a Western Digital Paradise Tasmania 3D based on a Yamaha YGV612 which also predated Voodoo Graphics by a year. I still have the card. It's a 3D only card that uses pass-through VGA to work with a 2D card. Someone posted his same card at B3D with pictures: http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=52625&page=2 Novel design there, eh? It actually wasn't bad for games that supported primitive 3D APIs. It looked far better than low resolution software rendering.

What 3dfx actually did for the PC was release a high performance 3D accelerator which eclipsed the performance of most previous chips, and as luck would have it, was also DirectX compatible.

And everyone pretty much forgets the pre-DirectX 3D cards except when it comes up in trivia. (Like why did Nvidia call the Riva128 a "NV3".)

 

[Killahurtz]

Man I miss my sli voodoo 2s playing grueling hours of q2 online on my hpb 56k connection.

you got that right ...long live the "low ping bastard" !

 

[insaneshell]

3dfx was good in its day, but they didn't have focus, they where tring to sell cards with only 16bit color in a 32bit color world, They tried to sell a DX6 card in a DX7 world. They lost me when the TNT2 came out. It was as fast as the Voodoo 3 3000, yet I could do 32bit color had proper OpenGL and DirectX support, and the days of glide where at an end. Had them been smart and not focused on there rampage chip, ala GeforceFX and instead tried to keep up they would have made it. No sympathy for 3dfx they failed because they where bloated, mismanaged and unable to keep up in the industry.

 

[insaneshell]

Clap for proper use of "accelerator" in 3D history. S3 had a 3D chip (ViRGE) a year before Voodoo Graphics was released.

There were actually a few 3D graphics chips out before Voodoo Graphics. My first 3D card was a Western Digital Paradise Tasmania 3D based on a Yamaha YGV612 which also predated Voodoo Graphics by a year. I still have the card. It's a 3D only card that uses pass-through VGA to work with a 2D card. Someone posted his same card at B3D with pictures: http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=52625&page=2 Novel design there, eh? It actually wasn't bad for games that supported primitive 3D APIs. It looked far better than low resolution software rendering.

What 3dfx actually did for the PC was release a high performance 3D accelerator which eclipsed the performance of most previous chips, and as luck would have it, was also DirectX compatible.

And everyone pretty much forgets the pre-DirectX 3D cards except when it comes up in trivia. (Like why did Nvidia call the Riva128 a "NV3".)

NV1 was based on quadratics, that didn't go so well, and gained very little support and NV2 was a planned chip for the dreamcast

 

[ccityinstaller]

Tribes 1 was my main reason to dump my TNT2 Ultra off on my Dad n get a Voodoo3 3000 AGP in my main gaming rig...Aah the memories...Tribes was one of the best games ever...The sheer scale of it, all over 56K in my area...Good times...I think I still have a Voodoo 4 4500 AGP if anyone wants to add it to their collection...I can hunt around for it...

 

[deff]

I wish I kept my Voodoo 3 3000... all those hours playing UT and Tribes

 

[asyork]

I've got my first computer with my Voodoo banshee just a few feet from me. It's primary function was to play Baldur's Gate and UT.

 

[wra18th]

I wish I kept my Voodoo 3 3000... all those hours playing UT and Tribes

I still have both games and the Voodoo 3 3000.

 

[FrEaKy]

I miss my V2 1000 PCI =[ 12MB of graphic awesomeness!

Combined with the onboard nastyness of my Cyrix processor!

 

[pxc]

I wish I kept my Voodoo 3 3000... all those hours playing UT and Tribes

I was going to suggest buying another one on ebay, but people are asking crazy high prices for Voodoo 3 and Voodoo 4/5 cards, compared to a few years ago at least. Same on Amazon now too.

I had gotten rid of my old V2 SLI long ago so I bought a pair of V2 cards off Amazon Marketplace for $20 shipped when I built a retro gaming system (most was given to me... had a dead HDD). The TNT2 for it was only $7 or $8 shipped on ebay. $15 for a replacement HDD, (edit) old SB PCI64 laying around, old Win98SE CD and voilà, $43 retro gaming powar! It has been pretty fun to run old DOS, Windows and Glide games on it without DOSBox or emulator hassles.

 

[H-street]

I was going to suggest buying another one on ebay, but people are asking crazy high prices for Voodoo 3 and Voodoo 4/5 cards, compared to a few years ago at least. Same on Amazon now too.

I've noticed the Voodoo5 5500's recently took a spike in prices as well. upto 6 months ago you could find a v5 5500 agp for 25$ on ebay, now they are getting harder to find.

 

[ballpoint]

I have nostalgia for 3DFX as I got my own 4MB Diamond Monster 3DFX Voodoo 1 in summer 1998 after briefly borrowing one from a friend. I couldn't go back to Quake II software mode after that. Paid $200 or so, which seemed like a huge amount back then. It was also the first computer add-on which I installed myself.

On that card I played lots of: Rogue Squadron 3D, Test Drive 5, Quake 2, Half-Life, Rainbow Six... All great games that ran smooth on the 4MB Voodoo1. Although I do remember Half-Life chugging a bit.

 

[pxc]

This is exactly what happened. Management is what killed 3dfx.

LOL, I was thinking more about that this morning. There were many boneheaded decisions and very late cards hurt a lot, but the STB debacle stands out too.

For people who don't remember:
At the time, STB was Nvidia's largest customer. STB made Nvidia-based cards for major computer manufacturers and also its own branded retail cards (STB Velocity). The closest current company I can think of in the same position is MSI, but it doesn't have nearly the market share that STB had.

Nvidia was 3dfx's chief competitor, and a very successful one (to the horror of f-boys). What 3dfx decided to do was buy STB to cut off Nvidia's biggest customer and hopefully take back sales to computer manufacturers it had been losing to Nvidia, along with a strategy to manufacture its own cards. That didn't work out at all.

Firstly, computer manufacturers didn't dump Nvidia in favor of 3dfx, they simply changed suppliers (MSI + others won big there). Next, with 3dfx's announcement that only it would make new Voodoo card models from then on caused 3dfx's own customers to defect pretty immediately... to Nvidia. That was Diamond, Creative and Hercules IIRC, pretty big names at the time. They got served.

OK, a few bumps in the road. It had to be expected. What wasn't really expected was how much a drag on costs running a large manufacturing plant way below capacity was becoming. And since 3dfx had no experience running a manufacturing plant, it didn't know how to fix the problems.

It was all death spiral from there. Even the roadmap was underwhelming, with a dependence on a 4 chip model (2 pixel processing chips and 2 T&L chips) for Rampage vs one chip from the main competition (ATI and Nvidia).

 

[German Muscle]

Nvidia should definitely bring 3dfx back as a brand and sell its high end cards under the 3dfx voodoo name.

 

[Proxy]

Back when games where games, and not tech-demos. Granted there are some good games out now though.

Nvidia should definitely bring 3dfx back as a brand and sell its high end cards under the 3dfx voodoo name.

No.

 

[German Muscle]

No.

Nice reason.

 

[Proxy]

Nvidia should definitely bring 3dfx back as a brand and sell its high end cards under the 3dfx voodoo name.

Nice reason.

Since you want a reason. They would destroy a good name. Let nVidia be nVidia. There is a certain nostalgia to 3DFX.

 

[TwistedAegis]

What, seriously? Not ONE of Jane's Combat Simulation games? Those were *all* Glide titles. Longbow, Longbow 2, Jane's F-15, Jane's Fleet Command, Jane's WWII Fighters, etc.

And no 'Tribes', either. That was actually the reason I bought my first 3d card, for T1! (Well, that, and to get 3d graphics in Longbow 2)

Wow I love this thread. How many discs were required to play Longbow? And Tribes was definitely a great time for FPS gaming. Going Quake to GL Quake...so many great experiences with my Voodoos.

Also, LMAO at LPB/HPB...how much gaming has changed, I had forgotten all about these terms.

 

[Godmachine]

Nvidia should definitely bring 3dfx back as a brand and sell its high end cards under the 3dfx voodoo name.

Hell no.

3dfx brand should stay the way it is , a fond memory.