Question 3dfx coming back? Holy Cow...

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aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
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Sep 28, 2005
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Straight from tweeter...


Please oh pretty please bring back SLI... better yet, give us something magical like how voodoo was, and PLEASE make it non mineable.

However i think its a troll, but April 1st passed a while back ago...

Well here's crossing my fingers.
 
Feb 4, 2009
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Yeah... why is the question for sure. Even 5 year old Intel integrated graphics would run rings around a Voodoo 5 at this point.

My memory is foggy about these things but could it even do a now regular 1080P desktop display?
What about windows are those old drivers going to work? Would someone write new more current drivers? Would it just go with generic windows drivers assigned to it?
 

Magic Carpet

Diamond Member
Oct 2, 2011
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bringing back AGP and PCI cards? Gotta be a troll account. Or some HuGe untapped market for retrogaming that I'm not aware of. Is a VooDoo 3000 PCI card faster than an AMD 3400G APU?
There is some retro market, but not huge by any means. Also, compared to the newer stuff even Voodoo 5 5500 64MB is dog slow, that card didn’t even have hardware T&L. One of my favorite games of the 2000s, Sacrifice supported T&L for example. Hell, even GeForce 2 MX was faster in most games let alone the GTS variant. V5 was too late to the market and seriously behind the competition (well except for the AA and VSA scalability). Also, you can’t really compare anything voodoo to AMD 3400G APU. That’s just not a fair comparison. It will miserably fail in every metric there is.

NB. I own a dozen of different voodoos ranging from V1 to V5. Currently running V5 5500 PCI in my P3 1.4-S retro box.
 
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Magic Carpet

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Oct 2, 2011
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My memory is foggy about these things but could it even do a now regular 1080P desktop display?
What about windows are those old drivers going to work? Would someone write new more current drivers? Would it just go with generic windows drivers assigned to it?
THE GOOD:

There are special drivers for PCI Voodoo’s that work well with the latest Windows 10 x64. 1080p desktop UI speed is fine. Study this article.

I would say the V2 SLI is the better option though, because you can use your main GPU instead and only use Voodoo when you need it. So, you don’t have to lose video codecs and what not when working with video.

The main appeal are the Glide games released in the 90s, for example on a V5 you can run Tomb Raider 1 in pure DOS with 4x full screen anti aliasing. How cool is that? The AA was of good quality and well above of what ATI/Nvidia offered at the time. There are other Glide games that can’t be perfectly emulated using a Glide wrapper. There is a list, you can google if you want. So, there is some value in that.

Except the dos games, Windows 10 can run *some* of Win9x games rather well with patches. I played Need for Speed II SE (1997) last weekend without any problems but I had to run a few compatibility patches to eliminate sound problems. But again, if you a fan of that particular game, you can run it almost perfectly in a Glide wrapper on ANY graphics card.

THE BAD:

Bear in mind, there is a maximum resolution with every Voodoo card. V5 can't do 3D graphics above 1600x1200 for example (it can technically do 2048x1536 in 2D, though). It may look awkward on a mainstream 16:9 panel, 4:3 and 16:10 is highly recommended. Also, if you run Win9x you must have monitor drivers or else you won't get your native resolution/Hz. Sure you can tweak it, but it's a pain nonetheless. Older monitors came with Win9x drivers, though. Did I mention that only the MAC revision feature DVI output connector, everything else used analog VGA (good quality on V3-V5 though).

My retro V5 box runs on Windows Millennium (for better compatibility with older dos games) on a 16:10 monitor, 1920x1200. It was such a pain to set up everything including network shares on it for the computers (Windows 7, 8.1 and 10) on my network, but it's totally doable. You can't really browse the web on Win9x anymore, so you need supporting machines in order to download patches, tweaks and what not you may need, onboard USB 1.1 is that slow and add-on PCI USB 2.0 cards are not very reliable with Win9x. Remote desktop is doable, but not a very enjoyable experience. So, network share is still the best.

AND THE UGLY:

The drivers again. They are NOT perfect. There may be glitches depending on graphical settings. Sometimes, you need to change to a different driver for a particular game. Also, you must have Windows 9x for game library. And Windows 9x was the least reliable OS I have ever used (Mobile Nokia Symbian can compete though). Yes, I even more preferred plain DOS, too bad it lacked multi tasking. So think twice, if you really need AND want that hassle of messing with older hardware and settings. That can be, at times a very time consuming and frustrating endeavor.

Stick to modern hardware/software and run stuff emulated if you can.
 
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moonbogg

Lifer
Jan 8, 2011
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Regarding this tweet there's only one thing people want or care about, and that thing almost certainly won't happen: 3DFx making GPUs again. Even if "they" tried, they would be limited by fab capacity like everyone else. All eyes are on fab capacity. Nothing else really matters. A tweet from TSMC revealing a new surprise secret fab that just opened would be way more exciting that this 3DFx tweet.
 

aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
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Sep 28, 2005
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im pretty sure usb3.0 could easily handle the bandwidth on agp without breaking a sweat.

But that last post made this feel even more trollish.
 

aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
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Voodoo was such a cooler name back then compared to ATi Rage / Matrox Millennium / Riva TnT.

Well Riva TnT didn't sound so bad as it was a BANG of a videocard.
Oh lets not forget intel's Original attempt at a Videocard, the i740 as well, which NO ONE seems to remember about unless you were that age group that woke up early Saturday morning to watch cartoons when kids actually did that sort of things.
 
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PingSpike

Lifer
Feb 25, 2004
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Voodoo was such a cooler name back then compared to ATi Rage / Matrox Millennium / Riva TnT.

Well Riva TnT didn't sound so bad as it was a BANG of a videocard.
Oh lets not forget intel's Original attempt at a Videocard, the i740 as well, which NO ONE seems to remember about unless you were that age group that woke up early Saturday morning to watch cartoons when kids actually did that sort of things.

Even Intel doesn't want to remember that thing based on all their "first discrete GPU!" marketing materials for the Xe.
 

aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
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Sep 28, 2005
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The i740 was not that bad of a card.
It gave the Riva TnT a good run for its money, and then Geforce came out and ground stomp'd all.
Then it was all about ATi Vs Geforce and were still in that segment as ATi is now AMD.

Voodoo2 i think was way too far advance for its time.
Seriously it's the second biggest thing that changed PC gaming next to the introduction of Sound Blaster.
SLI concept is still something no one can get right which Voodoo2 did well in that regards.
 

CP5670

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Jun 24, 2004
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The Voodoo 2 was awesome back in the day, and many games of that time ran faster on Glide or had Glide-only features.

I still play Glide games occasionally on Windows 10 with dgVoodoo, which actually has better compatibility and more features than the original 3dfx cards. Many Glide games designed for Voodoo 1/2 had various glitches on the Voodoo 3/4/5.
 

Iron Woode

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Oct 10, 1999
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There is some retro market, but not huge by any means. Also, compared to the newer stuff even Voodoo 5 5500 64MB is dog slow, that card didn’t even have hardware T&L. One of my favorite games of the 2000s, Sacrifice supported T&L for example. Hell, even GeForce 2 MX was faster in most games let alone the GTS variant. V5 was too late to the market and seriously behind the competition (well except for the AA and VSA scalability). Also, you can’t really compare anything voodoo to AMD 3400G APU. That’s just not a fair comparison. It will miserably fail in every metric there is.

NB. I own a dozen of different voodoos ranging from V1 to V5. Currently running V5 5500 PCI in my P3 1.4-S retro box.
as someone who used to own a Geforce 2 GTS 32mg card, compared to my Voodoo 3 3000 16mg card, it was way more powerful. That is why I switched to Nvidia back then.
 
Feb 4, 2009
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I remember my Gateway Cow-putet working really good with the voodoo 3.
I abounded it because I could no longer get drivers that worked right with Ever Quest.
Worked great while it was supported then 3Dfx died.
I tried some unofficial drivers but those were a pain and the twice I tried they solved one problem and caused two other problems.
 

aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
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lol the troll continues...

Falcon_Northwest_3dfx.jpg

Looking closely at the wires on the power brick... they were smart enough to plug it into something.... it looks like its plugged next to the display port.
Man, this would of been great in april.... but no so much here, especially with how expensive GPU's are.

But lets assume its real..
I would love this kind of hardware, because we could essentially get a cheapo card, and have a 3d accelerator card.
Only if the accelerator card, is not minable.
 

Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
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Since it's a teaser image the intent would be to hide some important details about the product in order to build hype and anticipation. The other explanation is that it's all bollocks and the mosaic helps
cover that up.
 
Feb 4, 2009
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Isn’t falcon northwest still a real company. I mean in the sense it would be strange for them to engage in some oddball troll project.
I know what they could lose but what could the possibly gain by trolling?
 

PingSpike

Lifer
Feb 25, 2004
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I vaguely remember Falcon Northwest from the 1990s. Pretty sure they made super high end 486 PCs that cost a fortune and I'd drool over in gaming mags, lol.
 

jpiniero

Lifer
Oct 1, 2010
15,125
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Looking closely at the wires on the power brick... they were smart enough to plug it into something.... it looks like its plugged next to the display port.
Man, this would of been great in april.... but no so much here, especially with how expensive GPU's are.

3dfx did have a card with external power (Voodoo Volt!) but I don't think it got released.
 

blckgrffn

Diamond Member
May 1, 2003
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www.teamjuchems.com
Haha, pretty sure you can still buy rigs from Falcon NW, they are just completely boutique.

My first college system was a Talon System that came with ton of testing documentation that I have saved as a PDF somewhere because I finally had to part ways with it.

Tons of nostalgia. Athlon XP 1700+. Nforce2 Board. Beige Case that was meticulously cable managed (hot glue even) inside. The good old days...
 

CP5670

Diamond Member
Jun 24, 2004
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I had a prebuilt gaming rig from Hypersonic around 2000. It had one of those 60mm 6000rpm CPU fans that sounded like a jet engine, but I was used to it. I think they shut down at some point.