First of all Crossfire isn't even out yet. It apparently will support higher resolutions in the future.
As for my vote: the Voodoo 5. The 5800 Ultra comes very close and one could argue that it was a worse failure than the Voodoo 5 in that people's expectations were really high for it, whereas I think everyone knew the Voodoo 5 was dead the minute it was announced and thus it didn't really fail people's expectations.
As for my vote: the Voodoo 5. The 5800 Ultra comes very close and one could argue that it was a worse failure than the Voodoo 5 in that people's expectations were really high for it, whereas I think everyone knew the Voodoo 5 was dead the minute it was announced and thus it didn't really fail people's expectations.
Perhaps I should have been more specific and said X800 Crossfire.
It's a failure because it has one of the most laughable built in hardware limitations in history built in- the 16X12 60Hz limit.
So, no one would be dumb enough to buy it.
I Bought the voodoo5 5500 at launch for 270 bucks, which I thought was too much. To be fair it was a great card for it's time, only surpassed by the geforce2 ultra or perhaps the geforce2 gts (dep on which games).
But, I have a couple points:
3dfx was the king of 3d cards for a while but this card isn't what killed them. The acquisition of STB didn't help their bidget and they were constantly losing money in a legal battle with nvidia. The voodoo5 was behind schedule, so their business wasn't up to par, but it wasn't the tech that killed them.
3dfx had a bunch of innovations that we're only starting to see today.
They introduced the original SLI, by having 2 cards work together, on each drawing alternating sets of lines. The voodoo5 did SLI on one board at the hardware level, each chip had 32MB of ram, making it the first dual GPU 2d/3d board with 64MB total of ram.
The voodoo5 was the first card to need a hard driive molex plugged into it to power it. wethere this is good or bad, they dared to do it first.
The voodoo cards were optimized for glide. The downside for being the first 3d card company was having crappy support for 3d standards, so they made glide. Glide is now outdated as directx and opengl have matured, but back in it's day, glide was a lean and beautiful API. The voodoo5 could chew through glide frames like they were nothing. Some games still support glide, like unreal tournament 2003 and the aging voodoo5 can still handle them nicely. My best example was the old N64 emulator UltraHLE used glide, and with my P2 400 and an 8MB intel video card, I could run mario kart 64 at a crawling pace, but when I threw the voodoo5 in there, it ran full speed and looked amazing, better than the N64.
In summary, the voodoo5 wasn't a technical failure, it was the last product of a company that was a business failure.
The voodoo5 5500 PCI is worth the 50 bucks they cost now if you need a good second card for an extra monitor, or maybe a debuggers board. great for building a cheap system for a friend who likes some games. The voodoo3 3000 PCI is great for low-power vid card debugging.
If you ever find a voodoo5 6000 prototype, they are a marvel to behold, but not worth the 1k or more they go for. 4 gpus, total 128MB of ram, and an AC adapter to plug your video card into the wall.
:Q
But, I have a couple points:
3dfx was the king of 3d cards for a while but this card isn't what killed them. The acquisition of STB didn't help their bidget and they were constantly losing money in a legal battle with nvidia. The voodoo5 was behind schedule, so their business wasn't up to par, but it wasn't the tech that killed them.
3dfx had a bunch of innovations that we're only starting to see today.
They introduced the original SLI, by having 2 cards work together, on each drawing alternating sets of lines. The voodoo5 did SLI on one board at the hardware level, each chip had 32MB of ram, making it the first dual GPU 2d/3d board with 64MB total of ram.
The voodoo5 was the first card to need a hard driive molex plugged into it to power it. wethere this is good or bad, they dared to do it first.
The voodoo cards were optimized for glide. The downside for being the first 3d card company was having crappy support for 3d standards, so they made glide. Glide is now outdated as directx and opengl have matured, but back in it's day, glide was a lean and beautiful API. The voodoo5 could chew through glide frames like they were nothing. Some games still support glide, like unreal tournament 2003 and the aging voodoo5 can still handle them nicely. My best example was the old N64 emulator UltraHLE used glide, and with my P2 400 and an 8MB intel video card, I could run mario kart 64 at a crawling pace, but when I threw the voodoo5 in there, it ran full speed and looked amazing, better than the N64.
In summary, the voodoo5 wasn't a technical failure, it was the last product of a company that was a business failure.
The voodoo5 5500 PCI is worth the 50 bucks they cost now if you need a good second card for an extra monitor, or maybe a debuggers board. great for building a cheap system for a friend who likes some games. The voodoo3 3000 PCI is great for low-power vid card debugging.
If you ever find a voodoo5 6000 prototype, they are a marvel to behold, but not worth the 1k or more they go for. 4 gpus, total 128MB of ram, and an AC adapter to plug your video card into the wall.
:Qvoodoo 5 was a "good" card, but the size of it just makes it hideous.
i voted for voodoo 5, but the funny thing is that is a peice of hardware that i would like to own right now (especially the v56k)
i voted for voodoo 5, but the funny thing is that is a peice of hardware that i would like to own right now (especially the v56k)
Sigh.
Still can't get over the Pure Video thing can you RBV5?
Well, as the 6800GT was probably the biggest selling card of the last year, I couldn't put that as a "spectacular failure".
Believe it or not, it looks like most people could give a fat rats ass about WMV9 acceleration on a gaming card. In spite of your efforts, nV OEMS sold freaking craploads of 6800GTs.
Very true, the acquisition of STB was the beginning of the end (it cost them a boatload of dough and put them indo big debt), but the V5 was the card that killed them, if only because of the constant delays and missed release dates. Plus, right around when it was released, if I remember correctly, the GeForce 1 DDR was faster, and the GF2 GTS (soon released) blew it away.
They did introduce SLI way back with the V2, so kudos to them for that.
Necessity is the mother of invention. When GPU's got power enough, this was the logical way to proceed...
This is true - Glide was good early in the Voodoo days. It was essentially the standard API in the Voodoo 2 days and continued to be strong in the V3, and any V3 card or above was a lean, mean, Glide rendering machine
. I remember playing Unreal with great frames in Glide.It was a bit of a technical failure as well, if only because when it was launched, it wasn't superior to the competition. Had it been released 6 months earlier (as planned), then they might've had something. And Rampage looked to be pretty interesting as well...
Originally posted by: Rollo
Sigh.
Still can't get over the Pure Video thing can you RBV5?
Well, as the 6800GT was probably the biggest selling card of the last year, I couldn't put that as a "spectacular failure".
Believe it or not, it looks like most people could give a fat rats ass about WMV9 acceleration on a gaming card. In spite of your efforts, nV OEMS sold freaking craploads of 6800GTs.
And in spite of no Shader Model 3.0, ATI still sold quite a few Radeon X800 series cards, despite your protestation that they were based on a "3 year old design" .
Actually, they DIDN'T. ATIs market share in the "performance DX9" sector has been below 30% for quarters.
Check out Hs poll where nV has ATI outsold 3>1 on over 1000 responses.
Check out the way lopsided STEAM survey.
Not many people bought X800s, with good reason.
Nvidia FX 5200 was a digrace to videocards. I swear my old geforce 2 MX was performing better then the 5200.
It doesn't matter that ATI's margin in the "performance DX9" sector (what are the boundaries for a card being included in this group, btw?) are diminished - they've still sold quite a few cards.
ATI still has a larger percentage of the market overall, and has the largest piece of the discrete desktop market segment.
And if you want to talk about declines, Both ATI and Nvidia have lost 3% combined to Intel in the graphics market (mostly due to the Laptop market).
Oh look Nvidia lost even more marketshare to ATI in Q2 of 2005 - ATI actually shipped 6.2% more GPU's in the desktop market over Q1. So ATI is still doing something right, even though all you speak about them is doom and gloom.
The point of this, Rollo, is that it is not a black and white argument as you make it out to be. ATI is not closing up shop anytime soon, even though their X800 cards have been lackluster in terms of features. You can quote message board polls all you want, it doesn't change the realities of the situation that ATI is still doing fine. They aren't dominating like they were in the days of R300, and the past year or so has been marked with delays, and disappointment. Nonetheless, they have been competitive with Nvidia the whole way, only getting spanked by the next-gen 7800 cards and are on the brink of releasing a card that will be competitive with the 7800.
Nvidia has made some good movies with Nforce4, SLI and the 7800 series. They are winning this round of the battle, but this tug-of-war has a tendency to go back and fourth. ATI, despite all of your harsh words, even briefly took the (single GPU) performance crown with the X850XT PE. They've still got a lot of fight left in them.
The Voodoo 5 was the most spectacular failure because it put Voodoo down for the count after they put all their money into it and then realized it was barely going to compete with NV's single-GPU offering.
None of that mattered Jiffy and you know it as well as I.
While ATI was gaining that market share based on giveaway chips and losing many millions, nVidia was posting record profits while their CEO posted they did not care about losses in the ghetto chip market, that their market is the high end and always would be.
I doubt nVidia cares if ATI goes broke giving away $1 integrated graphics chips, they're selling 3/4 of the money chips.
I haven't seen anything from the North that's making me think ATIs fortunes are reversing:
1. Slashing product warranty
2. Indicted in multitude of stock fraud lawsuits on heels of paying damages for others
3. X800 Crossfire a missfire
4. R520 months late, already way over budget due to multiple respins
The only good news I see out there for them is the possibility of their new motherboard being "good", although it's strangely getting a pass on USB performance and lacking features.
Maetryx
Diamond Member
- Jan 18, 2001
- 4,849
- 1
- 81
Well I'm not going to vote until *something* from Matrox shows up in the poll. My god, the companied failed AFAIK. I had the Millenium G200 which supposedly supported 3D, but not that I could ever tell. I finally added a VooDoo2 and suddenly Tribes blew my socks off. Colored lighting! I couldn't figure out my friend ShotgunSteven's obsession with that game until I got the VooDoo2.
So, yeah. Matrox went from contender to pretender very suddenly in the late 90s and 2000s... Where's that choice?
So, yeah. Matrox went from contender to pretender very suddenly in the late 90s and 2000s... Where's that choice?
They never actually released a product for mass consumption. Apart from the company name and maybe the odd glimpse of a prototype product, it is vapor-ware.
I don't think you can class something that never saw the light of day as a failure.
Why even bother talking to you if your replies are as thougtless as this? I'll answer this latest vomit from you but I'm tempted to just let you speak to yourself, because you're just an attention seeking child.
1. You couldn't overrate this move any more if you tried. Maxtor (another #1 in their respective category) did this a couple years ago on their whole line of consumer (non-server) HD's. They switched back after the market demanded ie (ie Seagate and co. started to get more sales).
Regardless of whether or not ATI returns to a 3-year warranty, the point is moot. There are over 5 other manufacturers to choose from if you're not happy with ATI's warranty policy.
And no, this does not have any reflection on quality whatsoever; that is an extrapolation that you have made because you're a fanboy. You haven't cited any sources or explained any reason for why this means there will be a drop in quality. It was an assumption you made.
2. How many of those cases were high profile billion dollar lawsuits? As a matter of fact, just let this issue die.
3. No kidding. Too bad SLI and Crossfire serve < 1% of the market. Besides, Crossfire is only limited to 60Hz @ 1600X1200 on R4xx cards. Why buy R4xx Crossfire at all? It's old technology!!
4. Does this matter to the consumer at all (aside from the delays)? "I was going to buy crossfire, but anything that requires 3 tapeouts can't be good!!!" This has no effect on the layman consumer whatsoever.
Rollo, when will you stop being an ignoramus? Not all of the chips ATI sells are "$1 chips." Do you understand the statement that ATI sells the most video cards in the desktop market? What integrated video boards do they sell? These are add-in cards here, and ATI sells 10% more chips than your beloved Nvidia. Sure Nvidia is dominating the ultra-high end (and thus reaping more profit there); ATI is still making money themselves. You act as if all high end sales are Nvidia and ATI only sells cards in the $50 video card market. Don't worry, I'll parrot out your response already so you don't have to: "Well, it's pretty much that way anyways. Nobody would buy ATI these days."
Last I checked the X800XL was a hot seller, and the X850's aren't doing too bad either. Quite a few people picked up X800 Pro's earlier in their life, back when they were moddable to X800XT PE.
Gamingphreek
Lifer
- Mar 31, 2003
- 11,679
- 0
- 81
Not to nitpick but it is like that on the R5xx cards as well. ATI said that they will try to change it and improve it later.
I think both of you have good points here...neither is too neutral though. While Rollos statements may be a little rash diction-wise, they are, nonetheless, true (brutally true).
So are we going to get back to the biggest Video card flop now...
I think that it was Voodoo 5 or FX series in general.
-Kevin
QFT.
I think he made this thread in hoping most people would vote Crossfire, even though it will be good for the R520 series.
Is it? That's pretty dumb for ATI then. Looks like R520 Crossfire is a bad idea as well for users of LCD's better than a 2005fpw or 2001fp, or CRT users in general.
Crossfire/SLI are and will always be niche solutions, but for those who want the best of the best (and are willing to shell out the bucks), this is very unfortunate. Still an overblown issue, but definitely a sticking point against ATI.
I think both of you have good points here...neither is too neutral though. While Rollos statements may be a little rash diction-wise, they are, nonetheless, true (brutally true).
So are we going to get back to the biggest Video card flop now...
I think that it was Voodoo 5 or FX series in general.
-Kevin
Please list for me Rollo's good points. I don't want to sound defensive because that's not the issue at all; I want you to tell me Rollo's good objective points. Furthermore, what is his thesis? What is he trying to prove? To me his (unending) argument is that ATI is on a downward spiral towards the toilet (ever since the Rage Fury MAXX
), and frankly I'm sick of hearing it.Also, please point out where I don't show a total lack of impartiality towards ATI and NVidia? I didn't think taking a side in an argument automatically meant showing bias; I always thought that ignoring evidence and facts and obfuscating truth was signs of bias.
I'm sick and tired of all of this Rollo defending. We're talking, here and now, in another Rollo-generated flame-seeking thread. Another thread, in a never ending e-penis measuring contest between the 5800 Ultra, and Rollo's ATI-hated solution of the day. We're talking in a thread that asks about an unreleased motherboard solution:
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