Sorry, it's my first post in this forum
No intention to bash anyone or the maker

Rumors

RV770 R & D tested, beats 9800GTX
How reliable is the source, I wouldn't know

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yeah they said that about R600 too... and Phenom... all that stuff is speculation since the RV770 is at most in prototype stages and the 9800GTX may not even be in existance. I hope so tho... i bought some AMD stock long :D

Funny Picture man

ChillyMystacctualy the dual voodoo2 combo was VERY popular in my experiance, i knew alot of ppl that got 1 card then later got another, problem was that 3dfx sucked for driver support they never made a full opengl or d3d driver for those cards, only thing they truely rocked at was glide.......

and the voodoo3/4/5 all sucked 16bit dithered insted of true 32bit colour......oh and dont get me started on the banshee cards............

ChillyMystacctualy the dual voodoo2 combo was VERY popular in my experiance, i knew alot of ppl that got 1 card then later got another, problem was that 3dfx sucked for driver support they never made a full opengl or d3d driver for those cards, only thing they truely rocked at was glide.......

and the voodoo3/4/5 all sucked 16bit dithered insted of true 32bit colour......oh and dont get me started on the banshee cards............

I'll say that 3DFX was a bit odd with their driver support, being an old school and proud 3DFX owner here. Damn their drivers were buggy - but when they worked, they worked like a charm.

3DFX never needed to impliment an OpenGL driver for their cards, as their Glide API could process all the commands used in OGL. Difference being, though, that the Glide API only made use of the commands useful for gaming, so it wasn't nearly as bloated, but, it was extensively faster at the time than any other competitors when rendering OGL based applications - and taking into account this was back during the time that DirectX and OpenGL were first gaining momentum, also, it helped push the VooDoo cards to the performance throne.

True, the VooDoo cards were 16bit dithered, but the cards were still capable of near 24-bit output, and still technically rendered a 32-bit image. The actual display output was hard to distinguish any real color differences between a VooDoo and a competitors card; if you happened to own any of the VooDoo lineup, you should be able to remember that. The big difference that everyone pointed out, though, was in their screenshots.

3DFX was a hardware company that carved their niche for performance graphics in gaming, and that led to their downfall (amoung other things). They became complacent after the release of the VooDoo3 (which, IMO, was their best card they ever offered), and towards the end were releasing a bunch of insane products to try and recapture market share (one of my favorite 3DFX marketing slogans was "So Powerful, it's kind of ridiculous") - multi GPU cards (there was a card planned with 4 GPUs, required it's own power adapter, but never released), multi SLI setups (4 card SLI was possible, I think they might have even offered a 5 card setup, too). Still, though, they were a pivital company through the late 90s, and I really think they paved the way for strong 3D graphics support and performance. Love 'em or hate 'em, they had a lasting impact on the PC market, and will always be revered and remembered by both the die hard fans, and tech junkies alike.

You might find this an interesting read: www.x86-secret.com/articles/divers/v5-6000/v56kgb-1.htm

imperialreignI'll say that 3DFX was a bit odd with their driver support, being an old school and proud 3DFX owner here. Damn their drivers were buggy - but when they worked, they worked like a charm.

3DFX never needed to impliment an OpenGL driver for their cards, as their Glide API could process all the commands used in OGL. Difference being, though, that the Glide API only made use of the commands useful for gaming, so it wasn't nearly as bloated, but, it was extensively faster at the time than any other competitors when rendering OGL based applications - and taking into account this was back during the time that DirectX and OpenGL were first gaining momentum, also, it helped push the VooDoo cards to the performance throne.

True, the VooDoo cards were 16bit dithered, but the cards were still capable of near 24-bit output, and still technically rendered a 32-bit image. The actual display output was hard to distinguish any real color differences between a VooDoo and a competitors card; if you happened to own any of the VooDoo lineup, you should be able to remember that. The big difference that everyone pointed out, though, was in their screenshots.

3DFX was a hardware company that carved their niche for performance graphics in gaming, and that led to their downfall (amoung other things). They became complacent after the release of the VooDoo3 (which, IMO, was their best card they ever offered), and towards the end were releasing a bunch of insane products to try and recapture market share (one of my favorite 3DFX marketing slogans was "So Powerful, it's kind of ridiculous") - multi GPU cards (there was a card planned with 4 GPUs, required it's own power adapter, but never released), multi SLI setups (4 card SLI was possible, I think they might have even offered a 5 card setup, too). Still, though, they were a pivital company through the late 90s, and I really think they paved the way for strong 3D graphics support and performance. Love 'em or hate 'em, they had a lasting impact on the PC market, and will always be revered and remembered by both the die hard fans, and tech junkies alike.

You might find this an interesting read: www.x86-secret.com/articles/divers/v5-6000/v56kgb-1.htm

glide was a moded form of OGL, very hardware spicific, the prolem was 3dfx never bothered to make a full OGL icd like most other companys, they never made a 100% functional version of d3d eather in my exp, some games forced you to revert to glide because, to be honest any other mode looked bad or didnt run properly.

and their dithered output was NOT as good, i had banshee,voodoo3 and nvidia cards of the day, and the 16bit dithered in games was notable specly in firey explosions/flames and the like you could see the dithering easly, where as my nvidia and even ati rage128 cards didnt have that issue in 32bit mode, it looked flawless.

3dfx effectivly commited suicide, they cut themselves of from their main market(sales of chips to other card makers) then refused to make cards that where up to the standreds of the day, till it was to late, and their last futile act was the voodoo5, basickly an SLI voodoo4 on 1 card, it was fast, but it also was expencive as hell and HOT, the voodoo6 never went into full production because, 3dfx had lost so much of its market by then that they had to close down.

they are a prime example of what NOT to do as a card or chip maker.

ChillyMystthey are a prime example of what NOT to do as a card or chip maker.

completely agree with that. Although, at their beginning, they had it good - they covered an area of the market that was pretty much ignored. But, they should've gone more mainstream friendly after the VD3, instead of 1337 only.

ChillyMystand their dithered output was NOT as good, i had banshee,voodoo3 and nvidia cards of the day, and the 16bit dithered in games was notable specly in firey explosions/flames and the like you could see the dithering easly, where as my nvidia and even ati rage128 cards didnt have that issue in 32bit mode, it looked flawless.

yeah, I do remember those semi-transparent sprites like that. I have to agree that did look like crap comparatively.

Sorry, I had meant more along the lines of solid texture images and sprites. I forgot how badly the VooDoos rendered transparent and translucent objects and colors (if at all, sometimes they'd revert to a solid color instead).

imperialreigncompletely agree with that. Although, at their beginning, they had it good - they covered an area of the market that was pretty much ignored. But, they should've gone more mainstream friendly after the VD3, instead of 1337 only.



yeah, I do remember those semi-transparent sprites like that. I have to agree that did look like crap comparatively.

Sorry, I had meant more along the lines of solid texture images and sprites. I forgot how badly the VooDoos rendered transparent and translucent objects and colors (if at all, sometimes they'd revert to a solid color instead).

yeah, i stoped buying myself voodoo cards after my fist tnt1, i got them as gifts a few times(banshee and v3) and the tnt1 and2 where just the better card, image quility was better, drivers where better, fetures better, the only thing the doodoo's and going for them was glide and it was being replaces with d3d and ogl fast because game makers saw that glide was dieing thanks to 3dfx's policy of not letting anybody else support it even with emulation.

in the begining 3dfx sold their chips to other companys, made alot of $ doing it, then they stoped that and went to only making and selling their own cards, the banshee was worse then 1 doodoo2 card, and 2 killed it, it was a striped down doodoo2 core, missing fetures, 16bit only in games, just...crap.......

honestly, thats why they arent around anymore, if they had kept up making chips and selling them to other companys to make cards on they would be around along side ati and nvidia today, even if they didnt get a good 32bit card out till the 6k or 7k seirse, hell look at creative, they are still around and their driver supports sucked ballz since the sblive days!!!!

but they put out cards in all price ranges, not just leet gearz, and now they even let other companys build cards with this x-fi chip(still wouldnt buy it tho, creative drivers SUCK!!!) its just a matter of knowing ur market and place in the market.

3dfx was getting royaly pwned in the market by companys like ati and nvidia, but insted of adapting and carving out a better nich for themselves and keeping their old partneer ships going strong, they dumped their old partners and kept making cards that, to be honest didnt compete well with their compotition on a price to perf/feture ratio.

meh, they are dead, nvidia bought their tech, then made the fx line with some of it*shudders* those horrible horrible fx cards.......