What were the main reasons for the fall of 3dfx?

[moosey]

I just want to know some basic reasons why these guys went under. Did anything have to do with the development of the Voodoo 5 6000?

 

[GeForceG]

NVidia and ATI took over the graphic market. Mosly NVidia. They developed very good and powerful video cards. When 3DFX had the VooDoo 5 5500 64MB AGP, NVidia had their GeForce 256 32MB and it was way stronger then the Voodoo. ATI back then were aiming for at the video editing, TV/Video out, mulimedia stuff.

 

[PCHPlayer]

It actually goes a bit deeper. While 3Dfx was saying things like "You don't need 32 bit textures", nVidia was out developing chips with features that game developers wanted. At the same time 3Dfx was buying STB (I believe that was the company) so they could make their own cards instead of just selling chips. By the time the Voodoo 5 came out nVidia already had a quite powerful GPU. At this point 3Dfx was so far behind they would never catch up. So it kind of boils down to a combination of arrogance and bad business decisions.
ATI on the other hand was able to catch up due to their OEM sales to motherboard manufacturers. They had money to throw at the development of the Radeon chip family. It wasn't that long ago that most video chips on motherboards were either ATI or S3 (remember S3).

I'm sure there were other factors that others can chime in on. My post is from really old memories so I expect others to correct my inaccuracies.

 

[richleader]

I blame Khyron, the backstabber. :|

 

[Killrose]

Yeah, they shafted their product partners by buying STB and selling their own product exclusively. Released products late. Promised vapor-wear (the voodoo 6000,Rampage,ect.) that kept their own customers from buying their currently available product because the customers were being led to think something better was due out soon. And they had a greater than thou attitude.

It just goes to show you great drivers and product support are'nt everything, just part of the success pie.

 

[spanky]

<< I blame Khyron, the backstabber. :| >>



who?

 

[beegdawg]

PCHPlayer summed it up quite well. You had all of the main points. Not really any inaccuracies.

A few different points to highlight.

The 2 main reasons are:
1. Arrogance
2. Bad decisions

Arrogance:
PCHPlayer?s reference to the 16-Bit vs. 32-Bit is very accurate.
While 3dfx was claiming that the impact of 32-Bit color would reduce the # of FPS < 60, NVidia pursued that as a goal.

They were primarily a 3-D add-on card. Their big rig was dual VooDoo?s that would provide SLI (Scan Line Interleave). This is where one VooDoo would render the even horizontal lines and the other would render the odd, this resulted in really good performance.

At that time most of the games rendered in Glide(3dfx proprietary API that was very easy to learn and program for) and some used DirectX and OpenGL. Some DirectX to Glide and OpenGl to Glide wrappers came out and 3dfx had their lawyers contact the writers. Some good stuff.

Bad decisions:
They didn?t care for the differences in the VooDoo line from Diamond one of the lower quality manufactures to Cannopous, the Cadillac/BMW/Benz of the video cards. So they acquired STB to be able to manufacture all of their cards to ?ensure? better quality.
When they can out with the VooDoo 3, it was a feeble attempt in lieu of what NVidia produced. They had 3 variants of the VooDoo 3, 2000, 3000 and the 3500. They also included a TV tuner for the 3500. The only problem with their product was that it only supported 16-Bit color in games. This is where their claim for 32-Bit color wasn?t required since they rendered in 32-Bit and dithered back to 16-Bit.
They had high hopes on the VSA-100 chip, they were going to introduce 3 products, 4500 / 5500 and the external power supply requiring 6000.
The 4500 would have 1 VSA-100 the 5500 would have 2 and the 6000 would have 4. The problem with this design is that production costs were much higher than to manufacture a single chip like Nvidia was offering. The VSA-100 introduced some new technology know as T-Buffer, which included Motion Blur, Anti-Aliasing as well as a few other useless features. The Anti Aliasing was a big push then Nvidia did the same thing with their detonator drivers. It wasn?t as pretty as 3dfx but didn?t require anything special. You couldn?t utilize AA games on a VooDoo 2/3, at the time NVidia produced introduced the AA feature into the Detonator drivers, the GeForce chip was their flagship product and you could run it on a TNT (they didn?t recommend it, but it could be done). The VSA based products were several months late and Nvidia kept producing solid products that were arguably superior. The GeForce was the first to have a T&L engine too. Because of the delays in manufacturing and slow to release to the market, 3dfx which stood well above everyone else fell extremely hard. You can still get so called drivers where people have modified the installation and called them new releases at www.voodoofiles.com.

 

[cmaMath13]

My opinion is that 3dfx made poor business decisions.

In my opinion, they should not have tried to produce chips and cards (acquiring STB). This definately rubbed all other companies the wrong way (Diamond, Creative, Quantum, etc); not to mention killing competition.

I hated to see 3dfx fold.

 

[Mavrick007]

There was alot of problems with manufacturing the Voodoo 6000. Have you seen any of the specs of it? Wow, it's huge and very expensive to produce with the 4 gpus and expensive 128megs of ram(at the time). You can even see some engineering samples up for auction on Ebay now too.. crazy prices though and the funny thing is that a GF3 would probably beat it to pulp.

I think it was all due to GREED.. 3dfx ended up wanting all the pie instead of sharing with the rest of the manufacturers so they bought a company(STB, being quite inferior to other cards of the time), called it their own and tried to keep all the profit to themselves. They fell into money problems and then had to go under.

Hehe And guess who picked up their leftovers.. Nvidia(who owns the rights to their tech now). The End

 

[spanky]

just wondering... was ATI interested in buying 3dfx's ip after they went under? imagine ATI & 3dfx vs nvidia. WOW!

 

[rickn]

There is a very simple answer. They didn't listen to what their customers wanted.

 

[richleader]

<< expensive 128megs of ram >>



It was SDR, not any more expensive than the DDR on the GTS at the time, especially the 64mb versions. How expensive are 128mb S3 boards?

While the 6000 might get maimed in the fps department in Quake III, remember that 2xfsaa on a Voodoo often approached the 4x fssa on an nvidia solution. So imagine 8x fsaa in Quake III on a 6000. I think Reverend of 3dpulpit had screenies once, they were *that* good.

On the otherhand, Reverend's comparison of nvidia to 3dfx in Giants showed a destinct inferiority in then future, but now current, shading functions, such as bump mapping.

And no one got my Robotech joke? What kind of tech board is this? :Q

 

[Boogak]

I'm surprised no one's mentioned the fact that 3dfx didn't have a big OEM presence. IIRC, while they were huge in the retail video card market, that slice of the pie is tiny compared to selling video cards to OEM computer mfgs like Dell, Gateway, Compaq, etc. In fact, I think that was one of the big reasons why they did end up buying STB. Back then STB was a pretty big player in the OEM market, and 3dfx knew it needed that OEM market to remain viable. Unfortunately, their products didn't have the big fancy tech specs that OEM mfgs want in their video cards so they can splash it in bold in their ads (32mb memory! 32bit color! GPU! etc) so 3dfx still didn't win any big OEM contracts.

So in the end, it was 3dfx's "inferior" products and nVidia's breakneck product release rate that killed 3dfx because 3dfx couldn't keep up with the fancy technology OEM mfgs crave.

<-- Not an Nvidia fanboi. I had a Voodoo1, Voodoo2, Voodoo3, and bought a Voodoo5 but returned it a week later when 3dfx announced they were closing shop. Just stating the sad facts...

 

[zephyrprime]

I got the Robotech joke! Seriously though, it seemed to me that 3dfx hit a big stumbling block in acquiring STB and that caused their products to be late. Mean while, nVidia was cranking out the chips like nobodies business. Plus, I think their engineering was just being surpassed by nVidia and is evidenced by the fact that the Vodoo 6 had to resort to using 4 processors to compete with nVidia cards with 1 processor.

 

[Killrose]

<< And no one got my Robotech joke? What kind of tech board is this? >>



Where is Robotech now day's? Last I heard he was shipping off to Korea or somewhere was'nt he?

 

[Clock2theMax]

Just for reference, the Rampageand the Spectre/Daytona were to be single chip cards...also, the V5 6000 was produced in greater quantities than were originally suspected, hence the availability of them on eBay recently...and yes, a functioning V5 6000 does quite well, but still won't compete with a GF3, probably more like a GF2 Ti...the pricing for those 6000s IMHO are simply outrageous, garnering as much as 2K in some instances...a nice piece of history, but not that nice...
And why did 3dfx go down if they were so good?...well, they forgot about their customers, they lost that loyalty base that initially took them to the top...things like 3dfxgamers.com were neglected and towards the end we even had to struggle for good WHQL drivers...the tight-knit sort of family atmosphere of early years was gone, Scott and the boys were only concerned with looking for the big score...they thought they had found it with STB...guess that was wrong...all those missed production schedules in a vain attempt to revive that ailing company closed the lid on their casket...sort of...the website is still up well past February 19th, still refusing to die...like the legend and mystique behind 3dfx i suppose...

 

[Gosharkss]

There is a long list of Video card companies that eventually fell by the side of the road.

Artist Graphics
Cornerstone (we changed our focus to monitors / SW and good thing we did)
Cirrus logic
Chips and Technologies
Creative LABS (Changed focus)
Elsa
Miro
Number Nine
Intel (got out of the graphics chip market)
Sigma Designs
S3
STB
3D-LABS (I think they are still in business)
3DFX

Why have so many graphics chip companies bit the dust? Its not just 3DFX. The graphics card market is brutal, low margins and high expectations. Will ATI and NVIDIA make this list?

 

[sandorski]

STB and their attempt to be the sole producer of cards, that's what caused all their problems. It cost too much and took too much time and focus to implement.

Though it's true that 3dfx poo pooed 32 bit, they were right in doing so. GPU's were still unable to power 32bit in a sufficient manner with the TNT/2, besides, 3dfx's 16bit was very close to Nvidia's 32bit in quality.

The Voodoo 5 5500 was superior to the original GeForce and offered what is still considered to be the best FSAA available in a consumer level vidcard. Of course everyone from Nvidia to gamers dismissed FSAA as a useless gimmick, nowadays everyone has or is implementing FSAA and holds it in high regard.

Towards 3dfx's end, many consumers had grown to resent them. Though I believe 3dfx was correct in not implementing certain features that many wanted, the old saying still seems to apply, "the customer is always right", even if giving them what they want results in a half assed product.

We may never see another 3dfx like vidcard/chip maker again, and that is truly sad.

 

[merlocka]

And no one got my Robotech joke

I'm with ya... where is that guy these days. I still remember him going through about 4 Geforce's until he found one he liked... all of a sudden, Voodoo5 was a POS and nVidia was wonderful.

As far as 3dfx going under...

They failed to attract the OEM interest. This is mainly due to the fact that nVidia and ATI had all the feature checkmarks.

The Voodoo3 was an excellent card at the time. I actually agreed with their assessment of 32bit color. They would have been in good shape if the VSA100 had come out earlier.

Their failure was in the execution of the VSA100 chipset. They had many layout problems in getting the multi-part solutions working.

Their management sucked.

Hypothetically, if you remove the Banshee from ever existing and replace it with a (albeit lower clocked) Voodoo3, and move everything in the 6-9 months it would have been a whole different ballgame. They spent too long resting on the laurels of having the highest performing solution in the clumsey SLI Voodoo2.

$0.02

 

[richleader]

<< The Voodoo3 was an excellent card at the time. I actually agreed with their assessment of 32bit color. They would have been in good shape if the VSA100 had come out earlier. >>



Yup, I agree. The 22bit post filter put it ahead of the competition, the card had superior 2d, and you couldn't beat the price:

$99 for a voodoo 3 3000

With:

Unreal
Need for Speed III
Decent III 3 level (ok, this was useless)
+coupon for Unreal Tournament

For anyone who was contemplating buying UT at the time, the card was a nobrainer.

A good bundle and a better price could have saved the Voodoo 5.

 

[Boogak]

<< Voodoo 5 5500 was superior to the original GeForce >>



LOL, it's a good thing the GeForce2 was already available by then Once again proving the point that 3dfx just couldn't keep up with nVidia. I agree with your other points though, I still can't believe how gorgeous 2x AA was in NFSorsche Unleashed with my 5500.

 

[richleader]

<< LOL, it's a good thing the GeForce2 was already available by then >>



Only by a few weeks though.

I was so set on getting a Voodoo 5 for FSAA and great performance in the then upcoming Ultima 9 :disgust: I know! But when I first read that the geforce 2 would have limited FSAA features, I was like, ok then! I was dissapointed at first, with the card though, the FSAA really WAS limited at the begininning.

Still haven't gotten Ultima 9 though.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Corruption, centralized power, lack of quality output on goods, inability to keep up with foreign technologies ... Oh wait that was the reasons for the fall of Communism.

 

[jiffylube1024]

<< just wondering... was ATI interested in buying 3dfx's ip after they went under? imagine ATI & 3dfx vs nvidia. WOW! >>



Maybe true but remember it takes a long time to impliment another company's technologies. nVidia is trying use some of the 3dfx features but it's always "next release".

Yeah, the points above explain the fall of 3dfx pretty well. Their 16-bit quality was excellent (with 22-bit rendering quality) and the V3 series were great cards, but their merger with STB killed them, as well as their inability to meet a product deadline (contrasted with nVidia's drive to meet deadlines and create their famous (infamous in the eyes of rival manufacturers) 6-month product cycle). The V5 was truly the gladiator that would have competed with the GeForce in september (what year was that again? 2 or 3 years ago?), and even compete pretty well with the GF DDR, but it came out in spring of the next year after the GF2 was released. The GF2 was really the nail in the coffin for 3dfx; the V5 was more expensive than the GF2 after a short while (due to the # of manufacturers making GF2 cards, driving down its price vs. the fixed price for the V5). Also, the V4 4500's performance sucked, and it was beaten badly by the later-released GF2 MX. The GeForce 2 Ultra was the final proof of nVidia's dominance, and as it was released, many potential V5 6k buyers were swayed, and nVidia's claim to the performance throne was indisputibly theirs.

Since 3dfx was primarily a gamers' card, they couldn't land any major OEM contracts, and that is another major factor in their demise. ATI on the other hand, stood by and watched its Rage 128 cards get pummelled time and time again by the offerings of 3dfx and nVidia. However, since ATI was the biggest manufacturer of graphics cards (and the OEM king), they had a solid financial base to build on, and keep trying until they made that magic Radeon card. The Radeon finally put ATI almost on the same performance level as nVidia, although it would take a year or two later until they actually matched nVidia's current offering with their Radeon 8500).

 

[AaronP]

I think it was a mistake to buy STB and start making their own cards.