Why did 3DFX fail?

[StinkyPinky]

I bought Voodoo and Voodoo 2 cards (and later SLI). They were absolutely brilliant. However they started to have imitations and once the Geforce 2 came out I never looked at 3dfx again.

On top of that, most of the voodoo cards only did 3d and you needed a 2d card to still do 2d stuff which was a real expense. Once Geforce caught up in performance it was game over imo

 

[SlitheryDee]

I think nvidia basically whipped them starting with the RIVA TNT and then every product cycle after that for a while. Given their dominance of the market for such a long time, you'd think they'd have the capitol to turn things around, but they collapsed instead. That says to me that the real tale is one of poor management toward the end.

 

[SlickSnake]

The Voodoo 5 5500 not only partly needed an external power connector, but it completely burned out some brands of MOBOs it was installed into, right after installation. So by the time this card came out, their QC and R&D department were pretty much history already.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

The funny thing was that ATI really sucked bad in the Voodoo 1, 2, 3 era. They relied on OEMs and mobile and integrated solutions to carry them through. But dang when the Radeon 64 came out, it spanked that GeForce 2.

With that said I remember owning a Voodoo 3, a Radeon All-in-Wonder, a Radeon 7500, Radeon 4850, 5830, 6850, 7850. Oh wow. AMD fanboi alert. Ok i had a GeForce 7800 GT at some point.

The Voodoo 5 6000 not only partly needed an external power connector, but it completely burned out some brands of MOBOs it was installed into, right after installation. So by the time this card came out, their QC and R&D department were pretty much history already.

At that time it was a lot of power because the AGP spec couldn't pull that much power. I can't imagine something pulling THAT much power if the fans are so dinky:

TBH it likely pulls a small amount of power compared to today's cards. It's kinda like how people say how hot the Athlon Thunderbirds got (like 10 seconds and they fry without a cooler?) or the P4s, but in all honesty, systems today pull a huge amount of power. We've just gotten better at idle temps so they idle well, but if anything a PSU of 300W or 350W was huge in 2001. Today's CPUs have solid protection and same with motherboards where fan failures or temperatures too high trigger an emergency event.

 

[zanejohnson]

The funny thing was that ATI really sucked bad in the Voodoo 1, 2, 3 era. They relied on OEMs and mobile and integrated solutions to carry them through. But dang when the Radeon 64 came out, it spanked that GeForce 2.

With that said I remember owning a Voodoo 3, a Radeon All-in-Wonder, a Radeon 7500, Radeon 4850, 5830, 6850, 7850. Oh wow. AMD fanboi alert. Ok i had a GeForce 7800 GT at some point.


At that time it was a lot of power because the AGP spec couldn't pull that much power. I can't imagine something pulling THAT much power if the fans are so dinky:

TBH it likely pulls a small amount of power compared to today's cards. It's kinda like how people say how hot the Athlon Thunderbirds got (like 10 seconds and they fry without a cooler?) or the P4s, but in all honesty, systems today pull a huge amount of power. We've just gotten better at idle temps so they idle well, but if anything a PSU of 300W or 350W was huge in 2001. Today's CPUs have solid protection and same with motherboards where fan failures or temperatures too high trigger an emergency event.

not at all, PC's today are WAY more efficient..

check this out...
this is a peltier cooled Pentium D 930 i had a long time ago....look at those temps...that machine sounded like a jet taking off.....it was fast though (for it's time)

smaller = more efficient.....chips will just keep getting cooler and more efficient for a while..... until we move off of copper interconnects and onto optical interconects........ (then we'll see some heat, and shear raw power like we've never seen as well)

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Man, this thread makes me want to put together a classic build just so my Canopus Spectra 2500 and Canopus Pure3D II can get along together again

 

[stormkroe]

I was 3dfx to the core, but I remember watching an interview with some head honchos where they snickered like little girls when asked about nvidia's move to transform and lighting. They cockily assured the interviewer that TnL was unimportant and that Voodoo's 'T-buffer' was the path if the future.
That was the start of my migration to nvidia.

 

[blurredvision]

I, too, was 3dfx to the core. That was back when I got my first job in high school and had a paltry paycheck to blow on computer hardware. I managed to get two Voodoo 2's and SLI'd them together. I still have those bad boys in the top of the closet.

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

I loved my Voodoo 2 SLI setup in 1998 . . .

 

[ElFenix]

not at all, PC's today are WAY more efficient..

check this out...
this is a peltier cooled Pentium D 930 i had a long time ago....look at those temps...that machine sounded like a jet taking off.....it was fast though (for it's time)

smaller = more efficient.....chips will just keep getting cooler and more efficient for a while..... until we move off of copper interconnects and onto optical interconects........ (then we'll see some heat, and shear raw power like we've never seen as well)

the biggest change on the desktop is that the fans and heatsink fin area are much larger and way better designed. 60 mm heatsinks are rinky dink little things with barely any fin area and a fan that does nothing but shoot a bunch of air at a wall and hope it moves away. most cases had a single 80 mm fan exhausting air. a single 120 mm fan is bigger than 2 80 mm fans put together.



the voodoo5 didn't have any more transistors than a geforce. 3dfx didn't trust that TSMC could actually meet its deadline for TSMC's new process tech. well, TSMC did, so the gamble nvidia took in using a new process paid off. if TSMC hadn't hit what it'd said it would, nvidia might not be around.

 

[GTaudiophile]

So many good memories! I remember the anticipation of a new card launch. nVidia would release. ATI would counter. Vice versa. It was war.

Now all we care about are phones...

 

[AdamK47]

Back in the so called day, I remember it being a 3 way fight between Matrox, 3DFX, and PowerVR. Of those, only PowerVR is still around. They found a nice, untapped niche for mobile graphics. I don't know what the hell happened to Matrox.

That was before I really learned computer hardware. I remember seeing the Voodoo and PowerVR cards on display in Staples, but I had no idea what they did at the time. First GPU I ever bought was the original Radeon.

I don't remember much of a fight between Matrox, PowerVR, and 3Dfx. In 2000 those companies were attempting to find relevance when nVidia and ATI started to really trounce them.

 

[classy]

They changed gaming forever. Long Live 3DFX...........

 

[Fritzo]

I think those assessments are wrong. 3DFX failed because they only developed one core, and they poured all of the core's resources into speed instead of picture quality. Instead of making new cores, they just kept upgrading their cash cow and making it faster.

The problem was the core was only 16 bit, and all of the competition was making 32 bit cards. This was fine at first, because PCs at the time couldn't handle 32 bit color.

However, PC's started getting a lot more powerful, and pretty soon 32 bit color was the thing to have. 3DFX didn't have a core that could handle 32 bit. They started doing goofy marketing saying things like "Well, through some software bullcrap we actually produce 24 bit color, and they eye can't see all those colors anyway..."

The fact that they sat on their hands instead of doing R&D is what ruined the company.

 

[Larnz]

I was huge into Tribes 1 back then and I upgraded from a voodoo 2 using glide in game to a TNT32 and it was a much worse experience. Glide was really smooth where the move to opengl seemed to be for the worse at the time.

Anyways one thing is for certain, 3dFX box design/marketing team > Nvidia/ATI's. the Voodoo range always had such awesomely awesome box art work just look at the pic up their ^.

 

[zCypher]

I remember playing UT on my Voodoo Banshee back in the day. I remember seeing how much better Glide looked, but in the end, I can't say I'm surprised about how things ended up playing out. Still, good memories.

 

[cbrsurfr]

I loved 3DFX. I still have a Voodoo 5 5500 mouse pad on my desk. The Voodoo 4 sucked and the Voodoo 5 was too little too late. Their older architecture and reluctance to move to DDR didn't help. I still owned one though. I remember the voodoo 5 6000's going for big money on ebay.

I still refuse to buy Nvidia to this day. They bought the remnants of 3DFX and killed their SLI on a single card technology.

 

[JackBurton]

The death of 3DFX was a sad day in my life.

 

[Fritzo]

I was huge into Tribes 1 back then and I upgraded from a voodoo 2 using glide in game to a TNT32 and it was a much worse experience. Glide was really smooth where the move to opengl seemed to be for the worse at the time.

Anyways one thing is for certain, 3dFX box design/marketing team > Nvidia/ATI's. the Voodoo range always had such awesomely awesome box art work just look at the pic up their ^.

Ha! I was BIG on Tribes. There was a national competition and I actually got in the top 50 players in the country back then.

Wow the hours I wasted

 

[RadiclDreamer]

I had a voodoo 2, voodoo 3 3000, and a voodoo 5 5500 (still have it AND the box). I always thought their glide implementation stomped opengl

 

[RadiclDreamer]

I still refuse to buy Nvidia to this day. They bought the remnants of 3DFX and killed their SLI on a single card technology.

I'm pretty sure there have been more than a few "nvidia sli on a single card" choices out there.

 

[halik]

my current mousepad

 

[Fritzo]

I'm pretty sure there have been more than a few "nvidia sli on a single card" choices out there.

Nvidia still uses SLI cards.

 

[SlitheryDee]

Nvidia still uses SLI cards.

It stands for "scalable link interface" instead of "scan line interleaving" now though. I guess that's still the most obvious remnant of 3DFX. An acronym that evokes fond memories of awesomeness, yet isn't even really the same technology.

 

[TreVader]

No hardware T&L. The Glide API was already the main reason why voodoo was so dominant, once OpenGL and Direct3D started becoming reasonably viable alternatives, and especially when hardware T&L came out on the Geforce 256, it was over for 3dfx