A Look Back At 3dfx Graphics Cards

Merc1138 said:
Lame reader.

Seriously, look at the page again. The link goes to page 2, not page 1.
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Weird, noticed the 3rd page but not that it started on page 2. :D

Thanks for pointing that out. Either way the article is pretty bland with the coverage. Still brings back memories.
 
Stoly said:
I disagree that Spectre would have crushed the competition. It was supposed to be almost ready by the time nvidia bought them. Had it been a killer card, nvidia wouldn't pass on it.
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Thats speculation, no one knows if Specter would of been worth it or actually made it to the market. 3dfx's prior multi GPU plan with the Voodoo5's didn't pan out as well as they thought they would, they ended up being sub performers (slightly), was missing technology when compared to Nvidia and was horrendously late. Im pretty pecismistic when it comes to how well this would of worked for 3dfx.

The one good thing the voodoo5's brought was it gave Kyle his first foray into making graphs?
 
Ahh 3dfx!
My first computer that I bought with my own money at age 16 was a P2 300. (overclocked to 333 XD) I shelled out $700 Canadian for a pair of 12mb Creative labs Voodoo2's . I had originally bought 2x 8mb cards, but quickly returned them so that I could run quake @ 1024x768.
Those cards were Amazing. Kept me going till around the time quake 3 arena came out. The game still ran pretty good. Quake 2 with voodoo2 SLI was the Best!
RIP 3dfx. you started a lifelong obsesion.
 
Bought a voodoo 3 back in the day just for the original unreal tournament. Still one of my favorite games ever and dust it off for some lan action with my brothers on occasion.
 
Anyone ever use the 3D Blaster from Creative Labs? II have fond memories of that 3D card, using the VLB. There were some cools game on it too that I've never seen since, and I can't remember the name of them at all either!
 
So many fond memories of 3dfx. Thread and articles like this pop-up all the time. Why nVidia doesn't put out a 3dfx line is beyond me. They would sell like hotcakes.
 
Just looked at fleaBay, several AGP/PCI Voodoo5 5500's for sale, wow.
 
Got my first 3dfx card to play Unreal. I think what made these cards so special in our minds was that the games back then were actually worthy of the hardware.
 
Azhar said:
MCI was only in older IBMs, not IBM clones. IBM clones used ISA and EISA.

Unless you're thinking of riser cards that uses MCI-like proprietary slots?
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These where IBMs - the actual IBM 'Personal System' 2 systems. A whole network of the clunkers. Proprietary Micro Channel (MCI) slots so you couldn't clone it without paying IBM, proprietary mouse and keyboard ports (the 'PS/2' ports, though since these where really just AT in another form factor they where easy to clone).

And after Micro Channel sunk as a 'standard' it was nearly impossible to find replacements for when those boards fried and needed to be replaced (and yes, it was the damn MCI network cards that died at regular intervals, the MCI video cards held up pretty well).
 
Gmok Bonecrusha said:
Banshee brings back memories. Bought the card to play Everquest. Matter fact, that was when I started lurking here on the boards.

Christ I am old.
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I had a Banshee get hot enough to melt the plastic BGA packaging of its GPU. Miraculously, it didn't die, but I put a fan on it (this was for a friend) and resolved I wouldn't ever buy one for someone else. Got a second-degree burn off the heatsink from a Banshee card from a different vendor.

The Voodoo and Voodoo 2 were awesome. I got my Orchid Righteous 3D for a fire sale price of $90 during a time when they had had a recall on a few of the cards, and a few vendors panicked and thought they wouldn't be able to sell their stock. For $90, I got a $200+ card that made me the envy of the mom-n-pop shop where I worked. Those were the days.

The article neglects to mention a number of limitations 3dfx never got over once their cards became 2D/3D solutions, though. They took a long time to get AGP implemented properly, as well as 32-bit color. Their first 2D/3D card, the Voodoo Rush, was a disaster due to a lousy technical design using a third-party 2D chip (with 3dfx providing the 3D chip). The Banshee was scorchingly hot, and slow compared to competing solutions, and drivers weren't great.

As the article did state, buying STB killed them. They weren't prepared to be a video card OEM, and it showed.
 
CrimsonKnight13 said:
My first 3D gaming experience was MechWarrior 2 (Windows version) with the Matrox Mystique enhancements.
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Ditto here.

Too bad there were so few titles that supported the Mystique.

My Mystique fried, and I returned it for a full refund which I used towards my Voodoo1
 
motqalden said:
Ahh 3dfx!
My first computer that I bought with my own money at age 16 was a P2 300. (overclocked to 333 XD) I shelled out $700 Canadian for a pair of 12mb Creative labs Voodoo2's . I had originally bought 2x 8mb cards, but quickly returned them so that I could run quake @ 1024x768.
Those cards were Amazing. Kept me going till around the time quake 3 arena came out. The game still ran pretty good. Quake 2 with voodoo2 SLI was the Best!
RIP 3dfx. you started a lifelong obsesion.
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I didn't have much money back then. I used my Voodoo1 board (Miro HiScore 3D, Canopus Pure 3d clone, granted it was 6MB) in my Pentium 150Mhz@200Mhz (not MMX) all the way until I got a Duron 650(@950) and a Geforce 2 GTS board.

I was dying for an upgrade the last 6 months or so, reading every article about the "upcoming K7 architecture" that summer.
 
A Intergraph Voodoo Rush 6MB (2MB for 2D and 4MB for 3D) was my first 3D card replacing the crap ass S3 virge in my 166MHz Compaq with 48MB RAM and it came with Moto Racer! I remember how mindblowing the glide API seemed at the time with it's rendering capabilities and effects. It allowed me to start playing stuff like quake, turok, mechwarrior, etc. Epic stuff.
 
Had (and still have) a Voodoo3 2000 PCI in my Windows98SE machine, which I recently upgraded to a Voodoo4 4500 :). The machine also has an Aureal SQ2500 soundcard, 512MB BH-5 memory, and Opteron 144 CPU (ASRock motherboard, as it was one that I had that was socket 939 and was supported by Windows98SE).
 
Wow... I know a lot of people had nostalgia, but some of this is way over the top revisionist history. Either that or I'm totally wrong, but anyways, here's what I remembered.

1) Voodoo1 blew everything out of the water. Rendition V1000 (or whatever) was the only serious competitor, but it was way slower. Riva128 was late to market and had serious driver problems in OpenGL. Its only saving grace was Direct3D performance, but D3D was unpopular because for the most part, it sucked compared to OpenGL at the time.

2) Voodoo2 was a revelation. The Riva128 ZX (higher clocked Riva128 with 8MB instead of 4MB memory) obviously couldn't match it. Then SLI gave it double the performance, so nothing was close to it. TNT came out and could trade blows with a single Voodoo2, for about the same price. Still, if you wanted premium performance, you'd use SLI. However, TNT's D3D performance was significantly better than a V2 and it supported things like large textures and 32 bit color. Those were more or less marketing features, because they were not commonly used in games.

3) TNT2 and Voodoo3 came around the same time. A V2-SLI was around the performance of a mid-range V3. The TNT2 and V3 traded blows. TNT2 mainly won in D3D and had the same feature set of the TNT. V3 lacked large texture and 32 bit support (but wait! there's 22 bit color!). Although in the enthusiast space, the V3 was very popular, the TNT/TNT2 scored huge wins in the OEM space.

4) Direct3D is rising to prominence. DX7 fixed a LOT of the issues with DX5/6 and introduced T&L support. Games started using DX7 instead of OpenGL. Features such as large texture support and 32 bit color, which were niche in the TNT time-frame gradually became standard. 3dfx still hadn't adopted a lot of the features and their D3D performance was still sub-optimal.

5) GeForce DDR came around and beat the crap out of anyone. Voodoo 4/5 was late and under-performing albeit it finally introduced large texture support and 32 bit color support. Basically the GF was a smaller die, required less PCB real-estate, memory (since 64MB SLI = 32MB usable memory), and consumed less power.

The only thing I'm not sure of was the creditor situation. It did seem suspicious that 3dfx fell as fast as they did. Moreover, Rampage wasn't a guaranteed save (as the author would like to think). Most people speculate it a lot of Rampage technology was merged into GeForce FX, and that product was a total failure in comparison to the Radeon 9700/9800 series.
 
My first foray into the wonderful world of GLide was with a Diamond Voodoo Banshie. Unreal and Need For Speed II SE looked awesome. Later on I bought a Voodoo3 3000 AGP. I still have them.
 
I remember that being the speculation too, that Nvidia incorporated the tech into the FX release. . . and we all remember what a failure the 5xxx line was right? "F"



dexvx said:
The only thing I'm not sure of was the creditor situation. It did seem suspicious that 3dfx fell as fast as they did. Moreover, Rampage wasn't a guaranteed save (as the author would like to think). Most people speculate it a lot of Rampage technology was merged into GeForce FX, and that product was a total failure in comparison to the Radeon 9700/9800 series.
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Hey Dexvx, I have the Riva128 8meg, since it was cheaper at the time then a V3. I remember comparing it to my friends V3, and the TNT to me looked better. The Riva didn't blend textures (which I always haded about Glide) and it had brighter lighting, where every single voodoo I had for some reason would turn the light switch halfway off.
 
I thought the Pentium 166 with a TNT was the bomb till my buddy picked up his rig with SLI'd Voodoo 2s. Unreal, droooooooollllllll
 
I still have a couple 3DFX shirts hanging in my closet.

I remember seeing Quake2 with colored lighting and Unreal. Was full of awesome!
 
That was a nice article, but it doesn't really explain 3dfx's managerial ineptitude.
 
David_CAN said:
These where IBMs - the actual IBM 'Personal System' 2 systems. A whole network of the clunkers. Proprietary Micro Channel (MCI) slots so you couldn't clone it without paying IBM, proprietary mouse and keyboard ports (the 'PS/2' ports, though since these where really just AT in another form factor they where easy to clone).

And after Micro Channel sunk as a 'standard' it was nearly impossible to find replacements for when those boards fried and needed to be replaced (and yes, it was the damn MCI network cards that died at regular intervals, the MCI video cards held up pretty well).
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Yeah I'm familiar with IBM PS2. I had a 50/55sx with a dual 5.25 floppy drive - later pulled one out and tossed in a massive 10mb hard drive. I had an MCI token ring card that was murder to set up, but then I didn't know as much about computers then as I do now.
 
Eisenblut said:
Someone else would have bought the technology if nVidia didn't.
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Yes, probably ATI! :D

I always liked the "dark" artwork associated with 3dfx stuff. I suppose back then with the games around, everything was pretty..."satanic" in appearance.
 
The only 3dfx cards I bought were a pair of 8MB Voodoo2's. Got the first one when Everquest I came out, was like OMGWTF then bought a 2nd one and was like OMGWTFBBQSAUCE. Getting the external cables hooked up in the right order was a real PITA.
 
That is not the best 3dfx article I've ever read. They glossed over a lot of points. You can basically boil it down to an endless series of boneheaded management decisions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3dfx#Acquisition_and_bankruptcy

The STB merger was the coffin in which they would be buried in. All the other issues were just the nails that sealed it shut (largely supplied by Nvidia). I had actually typed up a way too long overview based on what we know and what I knew (I knew people that worked for 3DFX) but changed my mind. Long story short, 3DFX management screwed themselves. If Rampage had been given a chance to succeed instead of squandering their R&D resources for YEARS on other efforts... well we can only guess. But Rampage would have likely torn Geforce a new one and shoved Nvidia back into the #2 spot for years to come.

Management short sightedness and incompetence. We could all be sporting 3DFX cards today...

On another note... if you have enjoyed Nvidia products in the last 10 years you have 3DFX to thank. Considering Nvidia bought all their research and technology.
 
I still have 2 Voodoo 2's and I used them in SLI with 3D Glasses!

Mega Cool!
 
Never had a 3dfx card, but always secretly wanted one. By the time I ventured into preformance graphics, they were on the way out so I plunked down my hard earned cash on a TNT2 card. Remember playing a lot of star wars pod racer and quake after that. Fun times.
 
My 3DFX Voodoo Banshees green PCB turned a browning green color from all the overclocking I did LOL That sucker was so hot I can't believe it stayed alive.
 
Zarathustra[H];1038033477 said:
Ditto here.

Too bad there were so few titles that supported the Mystique.

My Mystique fried, and I returned it for a full refund which I used towards my Voodoo1
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I used a Mystique for 2D (replacing my ATI Graphics Pro Turbo) and the Voodoo 1 for 3D. Later, I ran a Riva 128ZX for 2D and a Voodoo2 for 3D when AGP became the standard.

Few titles supported the Mystique because Matrox didn't support fogging, hardware mip-mapping, or bilinear filtering, so the code path to good gaming was messier. However, it was nearly as fast in 2D as the Matrox Millenium, and tons cheaper.
 
LoneWolf said:
I used a Mystique for 2D (replacing my ATI Graphics Pro Turbo) and the Voodoo 1 for 3D. Later, I ran a Riva 128ZX for 2D and a Voodoo2 for 3D when AGP became the standard.

Few titles supported the Mystique because Matrox didn't support fogging, hardware mip-mapping, or bilinear filtering, so the code path to good gaming was messier. However, it was nearly as fast in 2D as the Matrox Millenium, and tons cheaper.
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Matrox. There's another blast from the past. They shriveled up and died too. I still have a Millenium 4mb pci around here somewhere.
 
I still have fond memories of my first Voodoo2 card...man, those were the most fun times of PC gaming ever. Now it's all technical rank crap for people who have nothing but time to play games all day and all night.
 
I remember getting a Voodoo 2 card, and feeling like a millionaire.. Woohoo, look at how smooth Quake runs!

Now I look back and think, damn, talk about primitive graphics!

Ahh, the good old naive days.
 
Maaan that thing was expensive in its day. I wanted one so bad. 2 Voodoo 2 in SLI on one card. I can't remember was it hurt by the bandwidth of one PCI slot?



CharonPDX said:
Still have my Obsidian X-24 floating around my parts cabinet somewhere...
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CrimsonKnight13 said:
My first 3D gaming experience was MechWarrior 2 (Windows version) with the Matrox Mystique enhancements. I never got to use 3dfx products but I definitely remember reading the amazing review for Half-Life & how awesome SLI'd Voodoo2s were with it. :)
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That was me writing some of those reviews but it started with how awesome quake2 was with Voodoo2 SLI.

Does anyone remember voodoolights? That was mesmerizing stuff...back in the day.
 
Turbo Mach 5 said:
I remember the click it made when going from 2D to 3D...ahhh...Mechwarrior came with it too.
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I still have the Mechwarrior 2 disc and still listen to the soundtrack everyonce in a while (since the soundtrack was standard redbook CD format....game was "track 1").
 
"but I do know where two Voodoo2 12MB cards are. " Yup their hanging up on my wall in older motherboards that I have collected. All the slots filled with cards of sorts.;)
 
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