The tone of the board seems to be changing....

[Deeko]

Well, the Voodoo5 was supposed to come out before the GTS. It was meant to compete with the original GeForce, and it would have done quite well. The fact that it still competes with the next generation says something. I'm not saying it's ok that it was released so late, but remember what the technology behind the V5 was meant to compete with.

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

I would have to disagree with you there, if the voodoo 5500 comes out after the geforce 2 gts then IT IS competing with the geforce 2. The voodoo 5500 is 3dfx's best card and it competes with nvidias best card the geforce 2 (excluding geforce ultra)

 

[DaveB3D]

He is talking about what it was designed to compete with, which is the GF1. That being said, the fact that it does compete with the GTS is pretty amazing.

 

[Deeko]

Yes, that is exactly what I meant. Good call Dave

 

[HellRaven]

Ben, check the hot deals forum. You can get a retail V5 5500 for about $140 if you pricematch with staples. You can also get a retail one from buy.com for around $170 last I checked. The staples pricematch + coupon deal makes it come out to less than what the OEM GF2 cards are selling for and the V5 has a full warranty plus some goodies in the box. That is what he meant by the pricing.

Anyway, I think the V5 has turned out to be a great product despite some of the bad press it received from reviews and from people on the board. As always, it comes down to what is important to you. I am glad some of the bashing has died down. Now if the mod's could just get rid of hardware...

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

I don't care what the voodoo 5500 was designed to compete with, i care with what IT IS competing with. Don't you think that 3dfx might have redesigned a couple things with the voodoo 5500 when the geforce 2 was released? Anyways at the launch of the the voodoo 5500 it retailed for 250 bucks, which was a little bit higher than the geforce 2 cards. That being said, releasing a card that performs worse than its competition is not very smart at all!

 

[BFG10K]

Well I've certainly toned down my anti-3dfx comments of late, partially because of my failed upgrade experience with my GF2 MX. While I don't blame either 3dfx or nVidia for the problem I had, I did realise 3dfx have lot of things which can't be measured in terms of FPS performance. I am talking about their excellent stable drivers and hardware, excellent 3D 16 bit colour, excellent 2D image quality and a great control panel.

While I still disagree with their lack of features and multi-CPU design I will give them credit when it's due. And who knows, if the V4 drops in price significanlty I might just pick one up. It might turn out to be a bargain like the V3 was.

 

[Deeko]

Sudheer Anne, that's the point. It wasn't meant to compete with the GF2, but it does. And it's doing rather well lately. So are you saying that if you don't have a faster card you shouldn't release it? The Radeon is a little slower than the GTS, yet they released it, and it is doing very well. The V5 is a little slower than the GTS, it is doing well in retail, too. And look at how much the V5's speed has improved since it was released. It had been delayed enough, do you think they should have just delayed it more so they could add features, then it could've competed with the GF2u instead?

 

[pen^2]

deeko, that is from a technological viewpoint, not from a consumers viewpoint. to us gamers a kickass card 'if' came out earlier means nothing more than the oh-so-great bitboyz. if you must argue v5 is a remarkable piece of engineering than same should go for nvidia's single cheap matching or beating the 3dfx's dual chip solution. sure, they just took different apporoaches, but wouldnt it have been nice IF nvidia made a dual chip board with their current gf2 tech? (price issue asside)

edit: ok, my flame retardant suit is on

 

[RoboTECH]

Ben, although we tend to agree to disagree amiably, your last post was utter BS on several different levels.

Just thought I"d let you know.

BTW, I wasn't talking about just *this* board, I occupy (inhabit/haunt) several forums and newsgroups, and I agree with Deeko that there is DEFINITELY a noticeable shift in the amount of 3dfx bashing/support.

 

[BenSkywalker]

"Ben, although we tend to agree to disagree amiably, your last post was utter BS on several different levels."

Post specifics. Name the things that I stated that were wrong(OK, I had not seen the deal on V5s). There has been constant nVidia bashing on this forum dealing with 2D quality, FSAA, in game issues, and people running leaked beta drivers having problems. ATi has caught a lot of crap for their driver support and performance issues. There hasn't been a big shift at all, just the tone of the discussions have changed.

Do a few searches in the General Hardware forum and take an honest look at the amount of anti-XX threads and see for yourself.

 

[Wingznut]

I guess it's the different ways that people "bash" the video chip companies, Ben.

While people may camplain about the poor driver support, or poor 2d quality, etc... They don't just state "ATI (or nVidia) sucks!", like they do against 3dfx.

 

[BenSkywalker]

"While people may camplain about the poor driver support, or poor 2d quality, etc... They don't just state "ATI (or nVidia) sucks!", like they do against 3dfx."

While I do find that rare(even Hardware has a list of things he doesn't like about the V5), that isn't all that different then it has ever been.

BTW- I was just looking at one of the threads where someone had some comment about "Rambus and nVidia is suck" or something to that effect in their sig. It does go both ways, it just seems that some people are more sensitive when they see it going against "their" company.

 

[Soccerman]

"if you must argue v5 is a remarkable piece of engineering than same should go for nvidia's single cheap matching or beating the 3dfx's dual chip solution. sure, they just took different apporoaches, but wouldnt it have been nice IF nvidia made a dual chip board with their current gf2 tech? (price issue asside)"

there are things that aren't mentioned every time people bring up that dual chip vs single chip = single chip being more technologically advanced argument.

first of all, it takes alot of engineering to get dual chips to work predictably, reliably, and with as much of a performance boost as possible takes alot of work.

pay respect where respect is due. now that 3dfx has (actually they have for a while now) SLI tech on a card, or on seperate cards, they can concentrate on extra speed on a per chip basis.

they are even GOING BACK to that plan, because they have seemingly conqurred (spelling is off) that multi chip engineering, therefor can just 'cut and paste' it into newer chips.

ok, it's not that easy, but they don't have to R&D it every time do they?

now that they are focusing more on the chip design, they can do exactly that, focus on their chips.

so, what's my conclusion, as others have said, nVidia and 3dfx went different routes to get to the same destination (provide better graphics cards), however one should not say that one method is better then the other, till one understands in DETAIL what went into doing BOTH methods.

going one step further, there are only a FEW people on this BBS that are qualified, in my eyes, to form opinions on these topics, and share them with us. why? they understand a helluva lot more about these things then I do.

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

3dfx's decision to go dual chip is in my opinion a bad one. As more and more chips are added, heat becomes a problem. Not to mention the fact that the freakin card needs an external power source. That is definetely not the way to go. Nvidia is choosing the right path by going single chip.

 

[Pariah]

Sudheer, in the quest for the ultimate in performance, multichip designs are almost always the route to go, especially if cost is an issue. Take a look at the top 100 supercomputers on the planet. You won't find a one single CPU system on the list. Why not? Because the costs would be extreme to get a CPU to perform that high. The top few systems consist of 1000's of mainstream Intel CPU's strewn together. There are systems on the list using CPU's far more advanced than Pentium Pro's and Pentium II's, but the cost of building a system with off the counter parts is far far cheaper than going to exotic designs. Why run up huge R&D bills to satisfy your ego, when a less "advanced" chip coupled with another one will do the same thing at a lower cost?

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

Dual chip configurations are not bad. Problems start cropping up when you start adding more than just 2 chips. Dual Rampage chips on a .18um process will dissipate less heat and require less silicon then dual VSA-100 chips.

I honestly dislike the idea of an external of a T&L processor. Two GPUs is all fine and dandy, but 2 SAGEs units on top of that (or perhaps just 1)? Unless these GPUs have some sort of special feature that requires being external, I see no reason why it needs to be so.

*sigh* Oh well. I'll trust that 3dfx knows what they're doing.

 

[DaveB3D]

The reason for using a multichip solution is very simple really. You can do the same thing with less. Now that might sound a bit odd (2 chips is more than 1 after all, but consider). When the GTS first shipped it was using the latest and greatest in terms of memory technology. So in other words, they were on the very edge of technology. Now with the V5, it was using considerably older technology. Yet with that, both boards had/have identical bandwidth. Now the question arises: "what if 166 MHz DDR hadn't been avalible when the GTS shipped?" Well basically NVIDIA would have been screwed because they would have been much more bandwidth limited than they are. In other words, they would have had a really powerful chip that had absolutely no performance difference than a GF1. By going multi-chip you can ensure this will never be an issue. You can use older memory technology to achieve the same thing as the latest and greatest, or you can double up the latest and greatest and get something with 2x more power and more bandwidth than any single chip solution.

Heat really isn't an issue. The only thing is that the inside of your case might be slightly warmer. Nothing big. It has nothing to do with each chip.

 

[RoboTECH]

Ben, when I say "bashing", I'm talking about people who have never used a card criticizing it for stuff they have "read in a review somewhere"

I mean, how many dolts were cheering when the 6000 was announced as being "dead"?

How many of these lovelies were cheering when 3dfx seemed to be going down the tube?

How many thought that 3dfx was "dead" because they were outsourcing their boards.

Perhaps you're a bit more sensitive about the negative nvidia stuff, I dunno, but people aren't *bashing* nvidia cards, they're bitching about stuff they don't like that they discovered while *using* the cards. there's a big difference between "complaining" and "bashing", IMHO.

 

[Wingznut]

What's wrong with an external power source. Is "external" really the correct term, anyway? It just uses another plug from the power supply.

At least you have no worries if the motherboard can supply enough power.

I really don't see any drawbacks.

 

[pen^2]

man, after all what do we have all those kick ass monster cooling setup on our cases? unless we are stuck with some crappy compaq cases i really doubt heat really is an issue... also agreed external power source is a good fail-proof solution, nothing you should complain about. but i still maintain 'if's don't mean jack to us... who cares 'if' v5 came out earlier? IT DIDNT!

 

[Weyoun]

ok, syure the example of the VSA-100 being late to the market is a constant one and sure, it now competes against nVidia's latest and greatest (ok, disregard GF2U). But you people are overlooking something, what if 3dfx was on top of their execution? Where would nVidia be right now?

Ok, we've already covered the issue of disregarding what ifs, but there's more to it. All 3dfx has/had to do is speed things up in the development area now, and I'm sure the example of the VSA-100 was a one off. I'll eat my hat the day 3dfx screws up their execution this badly again.

So in the end, the question is, was the VSA-100 the best example of execution/engineering 3dfx is capable of? I highly doubt it. Ask yourself that. I didn't think so. I dont know about you, but i seem to think 3dfx will be picking up their act with the rampage...

 

[RoboTECH]

well, I think what is going on here is that once the hype of the benchmarks died, and the prices came down, a lot of people who had already read the numerous crappy reviews (like I did) picked up a 5500 for the cheap price.

After using it for awhile, they said (just like I did), "hot damn, this card is pretty damn cool!" so they come here (and other forums) and see peeps bashing 3dfx and say "no more, the card kicks, shuddup you mouth!"

Anywya, vsa100 was as much an experiement as anything. It was the "warmup" for rampage.

for their own sakes, rampage better kick royal ass.

 

[LarryJoe]

First off, arguing about what video card is better is just plain stupid. That said, I think that the tone has changed because people are realizing and accepting that 3DFX is the underdog, instead of defending their cards til death. They have the slower card, a poorly run company and a former reputation of arrogance that opened the door for nvidia to squash them.

Now 3DFX is more like the AMD of a few years ago with the K6-2 line and people rooting for them. I hope they make it.

LJ

 

[madthumbs]

Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing 3dfx go under. I don't like a proprietary API being an influence on what card I want to buy. 3dfx kinda ruined the gaming industry by going their own way with Glide. It helped them, but hurt us as consumers.