Time for another manufacturer to jump into graphics cards?

defaultluser said:
Yeaah, Mtrox was doomed unless they bet it all n performance 3D. It was fairly easy to release a card competitive with 3DFX, but taking it to the next level with T&L and competent performance was a task too hard for most companies.

between 1998 and 2002, six "competent" consumer 3D companies were completely plowed-over by Nvidia:

Rendition
3DLabs
3dfx
S3
Real3D
Matrox

Because doing more than basic 3D takes some real engineering talent. That's why ATI's purchase of ArtX was so important, because Nvidia already started with a few SGI engineers (who knew what lighting and effects were). And 3dfx wasted their SGI talent, until Nvidia bought them.

http://boards.fool.com/battle-of-the-ex-sgi-engineers-10143854.aspx

It wasn't new technology, just new for the consumer space. SGI didn't know how to manage that transition, so they bled engineers and eventually died.

Nvidia and ATI didn't really start innovating until DX9. Everything prior to that was available on professional cards in the 1990s.
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Well it wasn't just Matrox that failed, nV almost failed too, they took the wrong direction and didn't realize RAM was going to drop so much in price. They went another route with nv1 and of course MS went a different direction than nV with Direct X which helped the commercialization of RAM to the masses. nV was close to bankruptcy before they released TNT card. After that they really had no issues till FX series, which again almost brought them under, of course that was due to ATi, but after than there was no looking back, nV pretty much kept their performance crown or tied with ATi/AMD and always had marketshare above 50%
 
Well yes, but I'm talking about 1998-onnward. that was AFTER the big debacle with triangles vs quad, or tilled rendering vs immediate mode, or dedicated memory vs steal someone elses.

The vast majority of PC hardware makers had all jumped on the same boat by then, so it was just a matter of engineering talent and project management and massive funding. These companies were lucky if the could score two out of the three, so it's no surprise how quickly they all cratered :D

If Nvidia had died prior to the relaase of the Riva 128, then someone else would have done what they did a few years later. That huge melting pot of 3D chip competitors gave a whole lot of CEOs a taste o fthe 3D good life, and it was only a matter of time before one of them dreamed big, and bet the company on a new features race.
 
Very true, and we still see the issue of failure in one generation now though, it can cripple a company and if it happens for more than one generation, yeah its harder to come back than before. Matrox did it to themselves, they didn't realize 3d was going mainstream as you stated, another company that was really good at graphics accelerators, Number 9 (think they were former SGI engineers too), they too did the same mistake.
 
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But I don't put Number Nine on the list for one simple reason: they died before they made a competent entry into 3D gaming (slower than Minnenium II, produced rendering artifacts unbecoming of professionals).

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Performance as low as Half the speed of one of the most worthless 3D cards of 1997 is not usable in any way.

So did many other chipmakers: Trident, Cirrus Logic. All three produced 3D chipsets that barely did anything, and then gave up after a single generation.

There were still six companies on that list who showed competency, and then cratered. That's simply astounding for just five years.
 
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My new card company delivers awesome 3D....

cough>Uh, we have patents on that..

Oh, well you should see the vibrant colors....

cough>Patented...

But our 2D performance vs. the competition...

cough>Patents, patents, patents

But instead of a typical green circuit board...

cough>... do I need to say it?
 
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