nVidia should bring back the Voodoo line

[PUN]

Forget these 9800, GTX 260/280 numbers and bring back the old Voodoo lines for their higher end product. what do you think?

 

[Klinky1984]

Sounds like a terrible idea... 3Dfx's last gasps were on a poor performing, power hogging Voodoo5 card that never really saw the light of day. The Voodoo2 was really the last triumphant moment for 3Dfx and that was a long long time ago. The "Voodoo" name has negative feelings attached to it, not something on the cutting edge.

 

[PUN]

but they were still loved by millions during the time of their doomsday. I think people still think of Voodoo line as a gaming card.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Voodoo to me reminds me of a poor image quality

Their Voodoo3 cards had pretty good 2D image quality. Their FSAA IQ on the Voodoo5 5500 was top notch and the Voodoo4 / 5 both supported 32-bit color.


@ the OP
I am actually surprised that a third party AIB has not licensed the brand from nVidia, who AFAIK.. still owns most (if not all) of 3dfx's trademarks.

 

[Elcs]

I disagree with bringing the Voodoo name back but these two companies need new names for their stuff instead of using numbers...

Riva TNT... the Annihilator (obscure name for a Creative Labs GeForce 1 GPU iirc) for examples.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I think that they should bring back the Voodoo name. Maybe as a budget line?

 

[PUN]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
I think that they should bring back the Voodoo name. Maybe as a budget line?

I was actually thinking of this as well, for the voodoo fans.
They can market it as optimized modern games and gaming for old glide games, etc

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: PUN
but they were still loved by millions during the time of their doomsday. I think people still think of Voodoo line as a gaming card.

Heh, the voodoo cards were the peak selling retail cards of their time, selling upwards of 10 million units by voodoo 3 and voodoo 5 (per generation).
Needless to say, nvidia and ati have both easily surpassed those sales since then, with nvidia selling something like 80 million 8 series cards world wide (retail + oem though).

They can market it as optimized modern games and gaming for old glide games, etc

No way, that'd be additional R&D and product lines. No point now, all the voodoo tech is way to old to integrate in. Glide support probably could be picked up, but there's no interest in it, and no real OS support now either.

 

[MarcVenice]

Voodoo has negative feelings attached to it ? I actually like the name, kind of nostalgic in a way. But then again, they'd be throwing away their old brand recognition, and make things even more complicated then they allready are, with the 8800gt, 8800gts, the old 8800gts, the 9800gt, which is the same as 8800gt, but the 9600gt, which is not the same as a 8600gt, etc etc.

 

[Billb2]

New drivers are still being developed.

 

[Klinky1984]

The Voodoo name was heavily associated with 16-bit only color at the time. The Voodoo4 & Voodoo5 were about as different from each other as a 4870X2 is to a 4870 vanilla. They're not really even different product lines, one just has 2 VSA-100 chips. They came out around the same time. Finally 3Dfx added full 32-bit output to their cards, but this was the last gasp from 3Dfx. The VSA-100 architecture wasn't scaling like it should & rumors of the need for an external power supply were floating around(which 6000 model actually would have required). On top of this nVidea brought out the GeForce & GeForce2 with HW T&L, greatly overshadowing 3DFx's accomplishments.

 

[lavaheadache]

I have thought this time and time again. I would so be interested in a Geforce Voodoo Monster card.. We could have a GVM 100, 200 and 300.. My Geforce Voodoo Monster 300 would annihilate any Radeon Hd card, lol

 

[taltamir]

with the cost of a budget video card today, and the amount of performance if gives over the best the voodoo had to offer, i see no reason why they even bother developing drivers for that.

 

[Tattare]

The names back in 1996-1998 rocked!
Monster, Voodoo. I liked the old Elsa Award Winner 32.

 

[nitromullet]

NVIDIA did try to pay homage to the 3Dfx legacy by naming their first new line after the acquisition the "GeForce FX" series, but they dropped the moniker with the 6-series because they wanted to put that disaster behind them. I doubt you will ever see NVIDIA name anything "FX" ever again.

 

[CP5670]

Originally posted by: Klinky1984
The Voodoo name was heavily associated with 16-bit only color at the time. The Voodoo4 & Voodoo5 were about as different from each other as a 4870X2 is to a 4870 vanilla. They're not really even different product lines, one just has 2 VSA-100 chips. They came out around the same time. Finally 3Dfx added full 32-bit output to their cards, but this was the last gasp from 3Dfx. The VSA-100 architecture wasn't scaling like it should & rumors of the need for an external power supply were floating around(which 6000 model actually would have required). On top of this nVidea brought out the GeForce & GeForce2 with HW T&L, greatly overshadowing 3DFx's accomplishments.

Glide support was always the biggest attraction of the 3dfx cards as far as I was concerned, and the main reason why I stayed with their cards. Many games back then ran faster or had extra graphical features on Glide, despite the 16 bit limitation.

I was hoping to see Glide capability on Nvidia cards back when they bought 3dfx, as there were still many Glide games at that point, but that never happened.

 

[Cirap]

NVIDIA already used 3dFX tech in a series of graphics card. they were called GeForce FX

and we all know just how successful they were relative to ATI's Radeon 9600, 9700 and 9800

 

[ch33kym0use]

I think that a new name would refresh the appearance of product line if needed. I remember when "GeForce" got everyone's attention, not just in name, but also in technology when combined and released to market. Although I think they chose and excellent product name in "GeForce". How are they going to top that? Some research into product name I suppose.

 

[Billb2]

Originally posted by: taltamir
with the cost of a budget video card today, and the amount of performance if gives over the best the voodoo had to offer, i see no reason why they even bother developing drivers for that.

It's just a hobby (running old stuff). And like most hobbies, the things done by the hobbiests often don't make any practical sense!