Voodoo 5 exclusive technology demo!

[NanoStuff]

http://jooh.no/root/web_pages/voodoo_doodoo.html

What, too late?

 

[manowar821]

HAHAHA Awesome.

 

[nanaki333]

HAHAHAHAHAHA!$#^!$^ I'm sold!

the Voodoo5 5500 AGP features dual 3dfx VSA-100? chips for more 3D horseshit.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Funny stuff.

The knocking of Voodoo 3 is uncalled for, though. While image quality was crap, it was a fantastic card in its day.

 

[legoman666]

Originally posted by: jiffylube1024
Funny stuff.

The knocking of Voodoo 3 is uncalled for, though. While image quality was crap, it was a fantastic card in its day.

Indeed, my Voodoo 3 2000 is still powering my file/print server.

 

[NanoStuff]

Originally posted by: jiffylube1024
Funny stuff.

The knocking of Voodoo 3 is uncalled for, though. While image quality was crap, it was a fantastic card in its day.

I remember when I first saw Porsche Unleashed in 32bit color. Before this I presumed all those millions of dots were just little flies in the air.

 

[CP5670]

The Voodoo3 had Glide, and that alone made it a superior choice for me. Most of the games I played back then were Glide only or had better performance or extra effects on Glide.

 

[sandorski]

booo, funny in retrospect, but oh so wrong factually.

 

[Schadenfroh]

nVidia fanboy with your Geforce and its precious hardware T&L. Hardly any games use hardware T&L, but there are tons of games that use GLIDE. The T-Buffer is a revolutionary piece of hardware that utterly slaughters the Geforce in not only features, but also IQ and FSAA quality. When the Voodoo5 6000 launches, it will be able to hold its own until RAMPAGE, the next revolutionary card from 3dfx which will ensure 3dfx's dominance of the future.

 

[Auric]

Proprietary APIs were silly. Glide especiallly so because it was essentially the key to 3dfx's nefarious scheme of controlling the market by paying developers to use it and then ripping off users with crappy hardware. They really held back advancement but thankfully the plan backfired due in large part to Microsoft's commitment to the Direct3D standard.

 

[Martimus]

Originally posted by: jiffylube1024
Funny stuff.

The knocking of Voodoo 3 is uncalled for, though. While image quality was crap, it was a fantastic card in its day.

That was funny, but to be honest, my Voodoo 5 had much better image quality than the Geforce 4200 card that I used for a little bit. It was night and day.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: Auric
Proprietary APIs were silly. Glide especiallly so because it was essentially the key to 3dfx's nefarious scheme of controlling the market by paying developers to use it and then ripping off users with crappy hardware. They really held back advancement but thankfully the plan backfired due in large part to Microsoft's commitment to the Direct3D standard.

Glide pushed the envelope. Not silly at all, at least not at the beginning.

 

[BFG10K]

Yep, it's a bit inaccurate but it's still LOL-worthy.

 

[venusiansky]

Not just being nostalgic, I still think that 3dfx offered the best quality product to date. Out of all the different cards I have owned/used over the years (Matrox, S3, Rendition, ATi, Nvidia), I never had any out-of-the-box problems with my Voodoo2 and Voodoo5. I think they wrote the most stable and optimized drivers, at least in my experience. I still have my Voodoo5 stashed away some where.

 

[BFG10K]

Well, 3dfx did have the distinction of offering RGSS which was far ahead of it's time. Even today you can only get that with multi-GPU setups, and only 2x at that.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: venusiansky
Not just being nostalgic, I still think that 3dfx offered the best quality product to date. Out of all the different cards I have owned/used over the years (Matrox, S3, Rendition, ATi, Nvidia), I never had any out-of-the-box problems with my Voodoo2 and Voodoo5. I think they wrote the most stable and optimized drivers, at least in my experience. I still have my Voodoo5 stashed away some where.

Yup, same here. Drivers always worked and somewhere my Voodoo5 is taking up space.

 

[Auric]

Originally posted by: sandorski

Originally posted by: Auric
Proprietary APIs were silly. Glide especiallly so because it was essentially the key to 3dfx's nefarious scheme of controlling the market by paying developers to use it and then ripping off users with crappy hardware. They really held back advancement but thankfully the plan backfired due in large part to Microsoft's commitment to the Direct3D standard.

Glide pushed the envelope. Not silly at all, at least not at the beginning.

In the very beginning, it could be said proprietary APIs were necessary e-vils. Everyone and their cat had one and it was a mess for users. Due to aforementioned software "investments", Glide outlived its usefulness as it was very limited and backwards, feature and quality-wise. If 3dfx had not "drank the Flavor Aid" they would have recommited their efforts to the emerging standard rather than clinging to their foolhardy scheme and thus might have survived. Then again, their hardware was just as inelegant and overly dependent upon the volatile memory market (for multiple chip configurations). It worked to their advantage with the Voodoo 2 (their sole successful product) as commodity prices plunged but decidely the reverse later.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: Auric

Originally posted by: sandorski

Originally posted by: Auric
Proprietary APIs were silly. Glide especiallly so because it was essentially the key to 3dfx's nefarious scheme of controlling the market by paying developers to use it and then ripping off users with crappy hardware. They really held back advancement but thankfully the plan backfired due in large part to Microsoft's commitment to the Direct3D standard.

Glide pushed the envelope. Not silly at all, at least not at the beginning.

In the very beginning, it could be said proprietary APIs were necessary e-vils. Everyone and their cat had one and it was a mess for users. Due to aforementioned software "investments", Glide outlived its usefulness as it was very limited and backwards, feature and quality-wise. If 3dfx had not "drank the Flavor Aid" they would have recommited their efforts to the emerging standard rather than clinging to their foolhardy scheme and thus might have survived. Then again, their hardware was just as inelegant and overly dependent upon the volatile memory market (for multiple chip configurations). It worked to their advantage with the Voodoo 2 (their sole successful product) as commodity prices plunged but decidely the reverse later.

3dfx had a lot more successful products than just the V2. If the original Voodoo failed, V2 wouldn't have seen the light of day, let alone at the unheard-of prices they commanded. Voodoo3 fought evenly against TNT2 for the most part. It was STB and the too-late Voodoo4/5 that brought 3dfx down.

 

[Auric]

Originally posted by: Arkaign

3dfx had a lot more successful products than just the V2. If the original Voodoo failed, V2 wouldn't have seen the light of day, let alone at the unheard-of prices they commanded. Voodoo3 fought evenly against TNT2 for the most part. It was STB and the too-late Voodoo4/5 that brought 3dfx down.

V3 was already dated and quickly relegated to the bargain bin because it failed to meet basic standards such as full colour and large textures. Also, it was not significantly faster but just finally integrated 2D properly unlike their previous failures. So, they may have pushed a lot of product but it was not profitable -ergo, unsuccessful.

Indeed, the year of the V2 was the only profitable one in the company's entire history and even then they only broke-even on previous losses -which would be understandable given the nature of a start-up, however after the V2 they just continued losing money until going belly up.

It was not just too-late products but poor products -the designs were inefficient and thus too costly to make. With good product, the vertical integration would have increased margins. Heck, with good product they could have secured operating capital. Hence the notion that they had some killer product on the verge of being released which could have saved the company being utter nonsense.

So, in contrast to the pop notion, I posit that 3dfx would have failed sooner without the STB aquisition (no AIB's would have bought their poor product at any profitable price). But that, in addition to the prevalence (nay, glut) of Quake clones at the time which could run in "fast 'n' fugly" Glide mode allowed the company to linger.

Good riddance to it all, I say... and three cheers for standards and competition within them.