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Who else misses these beasts?

U

UG_PL

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 25, 2007
Messages
200
Pneer.jpg


Ahhh... the good old days. I used to drool every time I saw X1950XTXs.
 
I used to have one, sapphire I think the first one was, cant remember the second, some company that went out of business and wouldn't honor a warranty. Exchanged when new for a dead card. Used the replacement for about a year until that one caused lots or random instability and crashing, was really hard to find it was the video card, fortunately Amex replaced it for me when I explained about the company. Somehow that bad one went to a friend in a lot of parts I donated. It messed his system up too and we didn't figure it out till I remembered it was the same damn card. I don't really have fond memories of them.

The two GTX260s I have here on the other hand though, love em.

Oh hey, found my old rant: http://hardforum.com:80/showthread.php?t=1378874&highlight=X1950xtx

http://hardforum.com:80/showthread.php?t=1523119&highlight=X1950xtx

This put me off ATI stuff for a while, now considering a 6950 though.
 
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Is that the Voodoo 6000 (or quad SLI)? I saw another picture of it one time, but the cores were arranged in a square pattern. It must have been a mock-up or something?

Voodoo5+6500+AGP+x2.jpg
 
XacTactX said:
Is that the Voodoo 6000 (or quad SLI)? I saw another picture of it one time, but the cores were arranged in a square pattern. It must have been a mock-up or something?

Voodoo5+6500+AGP+x2.jpg
Click to expand...

It's the Voodoo 5 6000 that never saw the light of day. I think there are 5 or so cards in existence which makes them more rare than a Honus Wagner baseball card.
 
It sure is. The card that was canceled because nobody would pay $600 for a video card, lol.
 
How about this "monstrous" guy?

3dfxvoodoo1diamond.jpg


I had one of those along with an S3 ViRGE Stealth 3D.

3dv7_virge325.jpg


Pure mid-90's bliss. Man, I miss that era of PC gaming...
 
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Travatron said:
It sure is. The card that was canceled because nobody would pay $600 for a video card, lol.
Click to expand...

In today's dollars that $600 is almost $1,200 though.

$1,200 cards certainly wouldn't be flying off shelves today either.
 
I never really understood what happened there. they had some good products but were not able to adapt.
 
jiminator said:
I never really understood what happened there. they had some good products but were not able to adapt.
Click to expand...

I honestly thought they ended up just trying too hard. They felt like they had to prove they still had the mojo, and in the process alienated their base.

That's just how I saw it...I was in high school when 3Dfx went under, so I could have been wrong.
 
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pojut, i think you are right. I heard nothing but good things about them and as poplular as they were they went under because of their ego probably. I think they should have slowly come out with new products. They spent way too much time and money probably trying to prove something they didn't have to.
 
NKD said:
pojut, i think you are right. I heard nothing but good things about them and as poplular as they were they went under because of their ego probably. I think they should have slowly come out with new products. They spent way too much time and money probably trying to prove something they didn't have to.
Click to expand...

It's possible they gained a Microsoft complex...lulled into thinking they were untouchable.
 
3dfx had the best gamer advertising, too bad not many companies today are not in tune with gamers..... Nvidia is close to making similar ads, but not as "cool" as 3dfx was

I remember getting a 3dFx Voodoo 3 3000 (16MB) for my birthday as my upgrade to my Pentium 2 350 Mhz w/ 192MB of ram (1st custom PC). :p

Delta Force (the first one) was hella fun on 56k online at the time
 
I started out with the voodoo1 4mb card posted above then moved to dual diamond 12meggers. Still to this day each time i upgrade my video card it makes me all giddy :D
 
NKD said:
pojut, i think you are right. I heard nothing but good things about them and as poplular as they were they went under because of their ego probably. I think they should have slowly come out with new products. They spent way too much time and money probably trying to prove something they didn't have to.
Click to expand...

From what I remember they simply read the market wrong, and oddly due to being to "ahead." So multiple factors ended up doing them in.

3dfx was focused on 3d accelerators only, requiring a separate video card, while there competitors made all in ones.

3dfx was focused on scalable SLI, while there competitors focused on single card solutions. As you can see nowadays both Nvidia and AMD use SLI/Crossfire.

3dfx invested in there own Glide API, but developers started to move more and more to OpenGL and more so DirectX. They still had advantages in games running Glide, but there competitors were better in DirectX and OpenGL.

3dfx emphasized anti-aliasing performance, while there competitors focused on Hardware Lighting (being pushed by DirectX and OpenGL). However even then the AA performance wasn't there (although better then the others at the time), while most people wanted Hardware lighting and considered it a better IQ.
 
All I remember is my first proper PC had something by Trident Microsystems in it.
 
limitedaccess said:
3dfx was focused on 3d accelerators only, requiring a separate video card, while there competitors made all in ones.
Click to expand...

That wasn't the case anymore already by 1999.

3dfx's biggest pro? Everything worked right out of the box with everything that's in the box. I'm not certain if Nvidia might be able to say this today, but I know for damn sure AMD can't.

3dfx's biggest con? Sticking with 16-bit color for the performance boost. While this was beating Nvidia's cards doing 32-bit color (ever since 1998 or 1999, too!), I think Nvidia was at least equal if not better at 16-bit color too now though. So 3dfx could no longer spin this as a pro, and it quickly became a con that they could only say "maybe on our next card" in response to it.
 
pojut said:
I honestly thought they ended up just trying too hard. They felt like they had to prove they still had the mojo, and in the process alienated their base.

That's just how I saw it...I was in high school when 3Dfx went under, so I could have been wrong.
Click to expand...

Well... I was 30 when 3DFX died, and already working at Microsoft... Man... these threads make me feel ancient! LOL... The biggest problem with 3DFX is they decided to position GLIDE as competition for DirectX. Period. The end.

DirectX was the future of Windows and, as passionate as the Linux crowd might be, nothing but Windows has mattered for computer gaming since around 1990, plus, DirectX was a lot more than just a 3D graphics API as we all know.

Creative and Aureal were doing the same kind of dance back then, but most people dont remember sound as passionately as video... LOL... EAX ultimately became essentially the core of DirectSound.

With Direct3D, Hardware T&L was around as of Direct3D 7 and NVidia jumped onboard early. 3DFX found itself in a self created position of having to compete against not just Microsoft, but also NVidia and S3. Game over.

Another thing to keep in mind is that NVidia, and the NV1, pre-date 3DFX and GLIDE by at least a year. NVidia was first. 3DFX brought GLIDE out and had a much better software solution (these are the days when Direct3D basically didnt exist and OpenGL was not aimed at gaming and was weak on Windows), and so gained fast mindshare. There were plenty of other great competitors as well - Rendition and PowerVR in particular.
 
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DirectX certainly took over....but does anyone remember how glorious Unreal Tournament looked in Glide?
 
ramrod126 said:
DirectX certainly took over....but does anyone remember how glorious Unreal Tournament looked in Glide?
Click to expand...

Personally, I think that is just because we were coming from the Doom era of bit-mapped sprites being dumped into a pseudo 3D environment, but I do remember that era fondly anyway. I try to not let nostalgia cloud the vision too much though :D

Another interesting memory is that back then "benchmarks" included still shots. There was a difference in the final image the cards produced that you need to seen in screen shots. Some of this was the API, some not. I remember that I always preferred the image quality of the Verite parts over the 3DFX parts, but the raw speed of the Voodoo, esp at "high res" (LOL... 1024x768) was unmatched.
 
I never got to try Unreal with Glide.

I do miss the old Voodoo 2's I was sporting once upon a time. Shouldn't have sold them. Still have a couple of old TNT cards floating around storage someplace.

I miss gaming in that time period too.
 
3DFX went under due to continuously poor business decisions such as:
Keeping Glide proprietary until it was too late. Attempting to force it as a standard when no one else had access. Trying to lock everyone else out of the game failed spectacularly.
Buying STB, and getting rid of all of their AIB partners. That act alone insured 3DFX shouldered all the risks and marketing expenses that normally would have been shared with the AIB's.
Ignoring OGL, and then sucking at it when they finally got around to sort of implementing it.
Not having the sense to make their cards do 32bit color in 3D, even if it was only a marketing gimmick at the time. The TNT's performance suffered in 32bit, and many games at the time did not 32bit assets anyway. Even then 32bit looked almost no better than the Voodoo 2/3's 16/24 bit arrangement, but it was an important marketing check mark, and it became the standard.
They failed to win OEM contracts. Winning OEM contracts was a plain and simple rule of survival in the PC component world of the late 90's early 2000's. Still is really.

They did have some great cards. Still use one in my legacy gamer for the rare old Glide only game. The days when video cards did not need heat sinks and most computers only had the fans in the PSU, and maybe, just maybe, one other case fan.
 
UG_PL said:
Ahhh... the good old days. I used to drool every time I saw X1950XTXs.
Click to expand...


i had the X1950PRO AGP card and honestly i dont miss it at all, that card was a piece of shit due to the PCIe to AGP bridge which made it slower then the x1650PRO i already owned at that time. not to mention you couldn't friggin overclock them even 1mhz. seriously wtf!!!

but i do miss my 9800SE(softmodded PRO) that card was a beast and was a steal at the time to be able to unlock it to a PRO that cost twice as much.




"Keeping Glide proprietary until it was too late. Attempting to force it as a standard when no one else had access. Trying to lock everyone else out of the game failed spectacularly.
Buying STB, and getting rid of all of their AIB partners. That act alone insured 3DFX shouldered all the risks and marketing expenses that normally would have been shared with the AIB's."

lol Gorankar, doesnt that remind you of another company now? oh wait thats right its the same company that bought out 3DFX. ;)
 
I still have 3 voodoo2s laying around somewhere. Anyone remember the Diamond voodoo2 sli addon card? Full card with no vga outputs. Just the slave sli card.

And yes Unreal and half-life on glide was slick.

Ryan
 
I remember getting my 8800gts 320mb. I used the 1950xtx as a benchmark for it. I never thought the 8800 would be faster.
 
serpretetsky said:
.... wait... really????
where did you get it? how much was it?
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Really.

Got it from NVIDIA after it bought out 3dfx IP.

A gift from a buddy at NVIDIA that found it in a closet full of junk left at 3dfx offices.

PCB A001 - A0 silicon

The board was covered with reworks. Snipped those all off so it looked prettier.

:)
 
i miss the good ole days. playing unreal and marveling at the graphics. think i had a riva tnt 32bit card then or it was a 64 bit.
 
txmale4969 said:
i miss the good ole days. playing unreal and marveling at the graphics. think i had a riva tnt 32bit card then or it was a 64 bit.
Click to expand...

Was a 32bit color card with a 32bit frame buffer (first one I believe), but from a process standpoint it was a 128bit data bus with, I believe, a 64bit processor.
 
I love these threads! We need more hot pics of great cards. I think I've had just about every card mentioned in here, making me feel old!
 
I went from 3dfx to Nvidia like most. Seeing these brings back memories.

The dawning of networked gaming was the shit, nothing will ever compare to it for me.

I'm sure the kids today have their own memories. But that time felt special. I remember
running 10B-2 coax and terminators so I could do some P2P gaming with my 2 boxes back
then. That was the shit, playing Blood, Hexen, Doom, Quake, all that way. Then jumping on
this new thing called the Internet @ 56k modem speeds and fragging.

Ahhh, those were the days of lesser worries and more fun times :)
 
Playing Kingpin, 10six, Battlezone and Mechwarrior on my old 3dfx cards on dialup. Anyone remember HEAT.net?
 
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