Why did 3DFX fail?

[Nukemann]

Why did 3DFX collapse in the late nineties? Someone refresh me on this?

 

[Skel]

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3dfx

Despite its success, 3dfx made several key missteps during its history. The first was a failed collaboration with Sega, with whom 3dfx was to develop and supply video hardware for the Sega Dreamcast console. Sega would instead choose industry competitor NEC for the project. The second was its acquisition of STB Systems, then a major supplier of video cards. With STB, 3dfx would no longer license its technology to OEMs to release their own versions of 3dfx hardware. The Voodoo 3 was the first 3dfx product to be produced solely by 3dfx. The company no longer received revenue from partnerships with other manufacturers, who started producing cards based on chipsets from 3dfx rivals such as Nvidia and ATI. The Voodoo 3 and its successors the Voodoo 4 and Voodoo 5 faced stiff competition from rival hardware, eventually leading to 3dfx's bankruptcy in 2002.

 

[Newell Steamer]

3DFX Interactive??

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3dfx_Interactive

Despite its success, 3dfx made several key missteps during its history. The first was a failed collaboration with Sega, with whom 3dfx was to develop and supply video hardware for the Sega Dreamcast console. Sega would instead choose industry competitor NEC for the project. The second was its acquisition of STB Systems, then a major supplier of video cards. With STB, 3dfx would no longer license its technology to OEMs to release their own versions of 3dfx hardware. The Voodoo 3 was the first 3dfx product to be produced solely by 3dfx. The company no longer received revenue from partnerships with other manufacturers, who started producing cards based on chipsets from 3dfx rivals such as Nvidia and ATI. The Voodoo 3 and its successors the Voodoo 4 and Voodoo 5 faced stiff competition from rival hardware, eventually leading to 3dfx's bankruptcy in 2002.

 

[ElFenix]

short answer: ran out of cash.


constant diversion of engineering resources that should have gone to its big product going to side projects; trying to dictate to the market rather than roll with it (lack of 32-bit, specifically); no idea how to sell to OEMs (see the previous, OEMs love checkbox features) once it decided to become an add in board maker (and once it did it left a lot of other companies, that did know how to sell to OEMs, running to nvidia as their sole option for survival).


i think that nvidia's first 2 products being flops helped it become successful as it learned from its failures. 3dfx had major wins, easily the best product in the industry, with its first 2 major products, so didn't have to learn anything about the market until it was too late.

 

[KB]

Exact same question was asked in 2006

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=1881482

 

[Skel]

3DFX Interactive??

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3dfx_Interactive

:thumbsup::thumbsup:

 

[nageov3t]

lack of support for DirectX?

interesting read from 2000 -- http://www.sharkyforums.com/showthread.php?72576-An-excellent-commentary-on-what-happened-to-3Dfx

 

[Hugo Drax]

The purchase of STB killed them.

 

[norseamd]

there are more than a few articles about this very topic

 

[moonbogg]

They saw the Titan Z coming from 20 years away and they just folded. Why try?

 

[waffleironhead]

F stb. Had a tv tuner card and that thing never worked right ever.

 

[norseamd]

They saw the Titan Z coming from 20 years away and they just folded. Why try?

they morally submitted to the righteous N-V-D-A

 

[mmntech]

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.

 

[Thebobo]

Why did VHS win over Beta

 

[master_shake_]

Why did VHS win over Beta

same reason everything wins over anything sony tries to put in the market...

sony's proprietary hardware is expensive and there are better more adopted devices.

umds, memory stick, md, all come to mind.

 

[ImpulsE69]

they morally submitted to the righteous N-V-D-A

Double anal gets you every time.

 

[zanejohnson]

it's a shame too, because in the days of Voodoo 2 SLI, and the beast that was hailed the Voodoo 3 3000, they HAD NO COMPETITION.... and they were responsible for OpenGL (in a sort of way) GLIDE (a proprietary to 3dfx chipsets 3d graphics HAL is what became modern OpenGL..

if they would have stayed around i'd imagine we'd have faster, more powerful GPU's/FPU's by now, because DirectX would have competition.

 

[mmntech]

same reason everything wins over anything sony tries to put in the market...

sony's proprietary hardware is expensive and there are better more adopted devices.

umds, memory stick, md, all come to mind.

UMD gets a bad rap but back when flash was still expensive, it was a cheap way to put big games on a mobile device. The movies however? Dumb idea.

Sony's obsession with proprietary hardware has done them no favours though. Look at the Vita and it's damn overpriced memory cards. They're trying to sell class 6 NAND at enterprise SSD prices.

 

[master_shake_]

UMD gets a bad rap but back when flash was still expensive, it was a cheap way to put big games on a mobile device. The movies however? Dumb idea.

Sony's obsession with proprietary hardware has done them no favours though. Look at the Vita and it's damn overpriced memory cards. They're trying to sell class 6 NAND at enterprise SSD prices.

according to linus at LTT the firmware updates for his sony camera are behind a paywall...

 

[mmntech]

according to linus at LTT the firmware updates for his sony camera are behind a paywall...

Haha, and they wonder why their business is sinking.

 

[Topweasel]

3DFX Screwed up in every way possible a company that went from small to one of the biggest companies in a market could.

1. Sat on their laurels. Voodoo 1 through the Voodoo 5 6000, was basically the same 3D chip. You could always say that AMD and Nvidia use the same core architecture for several generations. But they change it up, they add more modules, adjust features, increase memory bandwidth. Not 3DFX for their whole life it was pretty one chip with minor adjustments.

2. They heavily relied on proprietary tech. They took and open standard (OpenGL) manhandled it to make their own (Glide). It was OK when it was the only thing in the game (Voodoo) it was understandable when they were the fastest by far (Voodoo2). But by the Voodoo3 with G200/G400 and TNT2 putting up just as fast numbers with OpenGL. Development using Glide tumbled so fast and any non-Glide game ran so poorly that most Voodoo 3-5 sales were based on the Voodoo name and not any level headed purchase.

3. They wanted the Lions share of profits. So they purchased a so-so IAB in STB and kicked out all other IABs out of the game. Some folded, others went to Nvidia. Who like 3DFX weren't silo'ed like ATI and Matrox. Now all of sudden instead of seeing 15 different 3DFX cards, 4 Nvidia cards, 2 Matrox cards, and 1 ATI card on the shelf. The buyers saw 2 3DFX cards 10 NVidia cards and so on. Things where already shifting in Nvidia's favor and 3dfx basically gifted sales to Nvidia.

4. Waaaaay to slow to react. Unlike Intel when they saw danger in AMD's Athlon and Athlon 64 options. Intel quickly came out with some competitive options while they developed a killer core architecture. Those closed wounds for a bit at different periods of time while they waited to drop the hammer. 3dfx just paniced left and right. When the 3 basically flopped they added a few features to stem some complaints, over clocked it a little called it the Voodoo 4, then kept adding chip after chip to the Voodoo 5 line (released at the same time as the 4) till they had one that was competitive. All the while they did have a new powerful chip coming out in Rage which the tech was later became the Geforce5 FX. Little bit of the tech went into the 4, but the core of what 3dfx was hoping to accomplish went into the 5. Rage basically birthed today's current processing units. But they waited till the Geforce launch to even start it and had no way to stop the bleeding because they became to big to fast and saw almost all their lead in the industry disappear almost as soon as they spent all their savings. All without anything up their sleeves.

 

[Rakehellion]

16-bit color

 

[amdhunter]

16-bit color

And low res textures.

 

[silverpig]

My first video card was a Voodoo 1. Then an S3 Savage4, then a Geforce 256 DDR. I was pretty into all the reviews and benchmarking back then. The forums were alive with the whole 3dfx vs nvidia flame wars, as were many other forums.

Basically, in terms of features, 3dfx stuck with 16-bit colour (although they sort of had 22-bit or something like that as well), and while they were slightly faster than the TNT2 cards in OpenGL and 16 bit, most cards were fast enough to play games in 32 bit, so there wasn't any point. Other cards were able to do things that the 3dfx cards couldn't, and that was basically it.

Furthermore, the cards weren't set up to scale well. Instead of making a faster and more efficient chip, they just bolted more chips onto a card, to the point where the Voodoo 5 6000 needed it's own external power supply, wouldn't fit into most cases, and was so big and unwieldy that I don't think any of them were ever sold retail.

 

[Imp]

Aww... I still remember jerking off to the Voodoo 2 cards. 3D only. You needed a separate 2D card to run "regular" stuff.

I only ever had the Voodoo 3 and it lasted a while.