Why was 3DFX "SLI" better than modern "SLI" & Crossfire?

[SickBeast]

I remember owning a pair of 8mb Voodoo 2's. They provided close to double the performance of a single card, and the drivers worked without a hitch in every game. This cannot be said about modern-day SLI/CF. Crysis didn't even work in SLI at launch.

Nvidia owns the IP of 3DFX...so basically I'm asking "What gives?".

Why did 10 year old technology work better than what we have today?

 

[cmdrdredd]

the API was primarily Glide. The Proprietary 3d Engine from 3dfx.

 

[chizow]

Heheh ya, good times. Was heavily rumored that NV purchased 3dfx to help with SLI among other things, like better drivers and AA. Wish it were simple, but I think it has to do with increasing complexity with all aspects involved and timing issues. Even the V5 5500 (had one myself!) didn't end up scaling as well and it was essentially SLI on a single card. I believe there was a single-chip version, maybe the V5 4000 or the V4 4000.

 

[JAG87]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
the API was primarily Glide. The Proprietary 3d Engine from 3dfx.

Glide... boy those were the days. I never had a frame rate problem with my Voodoo 2 and games that supported Glide.

Direct3d and Microsoft have ruined gaming.

 

[RGN]

One of the primary benefits is that it worked in all architectures. For example, I could use SLI on an Intel chipset rig back in the day. I really liked my Voodoo2 SLI setup. In fact, I still have it somewhere.

 

[Avalon]

Originally posted by: chizow
Heheh ya, good times. Was heavily rumored that NV purchased 3dfx to help with SLI among other things, like better drivers and AA. Wish it were simple, but I think it has to do with increasing complexity with all aspects involved and timing issues. Even the V5 5500 (had one myself!) didn't end up scaling as well and it was essentially SLI on a single card. I believe there was a single-chip version, maybe the V5 4000 or the V4 4000.

Yeah, the V4 4000 series. I had a V4 4500 myself, and it was balls. Heh.

 

[Pacfanweb]

Still have a Voodoo 2 SLI setup in the attic. Worked great with Glide games. But Nvidia ruled with Open GL, though.

 

[Snooper]

I never went SLI with my 12MB Voodoo 2, but I STILL have that card sitting in my spare parts pile. That was such a revolutionary change in 3D graphics that I just can't bring myself to get rid of it, even though I KNOW that I will never use it again for anything.

 

[Mech0z]

For 2x speed to be possible you need to remember that EVERY other component must be able to tackle the extra load this brings, so if the CPU is almost capped with one card, it can prolly not take twice the fps without capping.

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: chizow
Heheh ya, good times. Was heavily rumored that NV purchased 3dfx to help with SLI among other things, like better drivers and AA. Wish it were simple, but I think it has to do with increasing complexity with all aspects involved and timing issues. Even the V5 5500 (had one myself!) didn't end up scaling as well and it was essentially SLI on a single card. I believe there was a single-chip version, maybe the V5 4000 or the V4 4000.

V4 4500 was the card. Still have one AGP and a PCI version of that card for a retro Win2k gaming box. AA in Final Fantasy VII and VIII is a thing of beauty.

 

[nullpointerus]

Originally posted by: Mech0z
For 2x speed to be possible you need to remember that EVERY other component must be able to tackle the extra load this brings, so if the CPU is almost capped with one card, it can prolly not take twice the fps without capping.

True, but with 2x GPU, image quality can be increased without losing fps.

 

[Mech0z]

Originally posted by: nullpointerus

Originally posted by: Mech0z
For 2x speed to be possible you need to remember that EVERY other component must be able to tackle the extra load this brings, so if the CPU is almost capped with one card, it can prolly not take twice the fps without capping.

True, but with 2x GPU, image quality can be increased without losing fps.

Yes indeed if all the graphics calculations are made by the GPU. Dont some physics change (Which I presume is CPU) when you crank up Crysis?

 

[Wag]

Because there were only a few games that everyone played with it. That probably helped as well.

Let us not forget that 3dfx's first dedicated combo 2d/3d card was a piece of trash.

 

[ViRGE]

It worked well because at the time rendering was simple. Rendering back then was basically just receiving texture data and triangles, and then mapping the textures to triangles and dumping it in to a buffer to be displayed. There was no pixel shading, geometry processing, transformation, modern lighting, etc, all of which are hard to split among GPUs. Such simple rendering on the other hand was very easy to split, you could have the cards work on alternating lines and achieve basically a 100% speed improvement. You can't achieve this kind of improvement with modern rendering techniques, there's too much going on that requires data from adjacent pixels and preceding frames, which reduces the performance improvement.

 

[nonameo]

The old SLI was Scan Line Interleave

the new SLI is Scalable Link Interface

Really, they're two entirely different beasts.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: nonameo
The old SLI was Scan Line Interleave

the new SLI is Scalable Link Interface

Really, they're two entirely different beasts.

yeah, one card drew the odd lines on the screen and the other drew the even (or was is horizontal and vertical?).

 

[Doctorweir]

Originally posted by: Wag
Let us not forget that 3dfx's first dedicated combo 2d/3d card was a piece of trash.

Really? In my memory it shows the Voodoo 3 as having been the superior card regarding 2D image quality. Admittedly it lacked 32bit color support, but back in the times this drew too much power for most nVidia cards to render anyway.
Remember Ultima 9? Was only playable on a V3 with Glide...D3D plain sucked back then.

But well...with the V4/V5 came the nVidia performance takeover...

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: Doctorweir

Originally posted by: Wag
Let us not forget that 3dfx's first dedicated combo 2d/3d card was a piece of trash.

Really? In my memory it shows the Voodoo 3 as having been the superior card regarding 2D image quality. Admittedly it lacked 32bit color support, but back in the times this drew too much power for most nVidia cards to render anyway.
Remember Ultima 9? Was only playable on a V3 with Glide...D3D plain sucked back then.

But well...with the V4/V5 came the nVidia performance takeover...

Because 3dfx refused to believe that having a T&L unit on the GPU was useful. Also, They relied on proprietary technology that never got used. I forget exactly what it was called but it enabled motion blur among other things. No games used it, total flop.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Doctorweir

Originally posted by: Wag
Let us not forget that 3dfx's first dedicated combo 2d/3d card was a piece of trash.

Really? In my memory it shows the Voodoo 3 as having been the superior card regarding 2D image quality. Admittedly it lacked 32bit color support, but back in the times this drew too much power for most nVidia cards to render anyway.
Remember Ultima 9? Was only playable on a V3 with Glide...D3D plain sucked back then.

But well...with the V4/V5 came the nVidia performance takeover...

The Voodoo Rush was their first 2D/3D card, and it was by no means terrible. It was at least as fast as a Voodoo1, with integrated 2D.

I owned a Voodoo3 and it was a great card. Not as dominant in its time as my Voodoo2 was though.

In retrospect, had AMD managed to buy out 3DFX before nVidia did, they would be in much better shape today.

I would be interested to see how well the "old SLI" would do in modern games. Is it similar to the AFR mode of CrossFire? I'm assuming it just renders each frame interlaced, as opposed to every other frame, which is better for lag (plus it makes the resolution of each 'frame' more manageable).

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

Originally posted by: nonameo
The old SLI was Scan Line Interleave

the new SLI is Scalable Link Interface

Really, they're two entirely different beasts.

yeah, one card drew the odd lines on the screen and the other drew the even (or was is horizontal and vertical?).

Didn't 3DFx SLI have each card draw half the screen? One drew top half and other drew bottom half. Cards were connected by a floppy drive type cable, plus an external dongle to your main video card.

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: Doctorweir

Originally posted by: Wag
Let us not forget that 3dfx's first dedicated combo 2d/3d card was a piece of trash.

Really? In my memory it shows the Voodoo 3 as having been the superior card regarding 2D image quality.

The Voodoo Rush was their first 2D/3D card, and it was by no means terrible. It was at least as fast as a Voodoo1, with integrated 2D.

I thought the Rush was a bit slower (maybe lower MHz) and the 2D was just tacked on from a different video chip company that they bought.

The Banshee was maligned also, because it was slower than the Voodoo 2. It was almost the same, but had only one texture unit instead of two on the Voodoo 2.

IIRC both cards were kinda iffy on drivers.

Voodoo 3 solved both the performance problem and the driver problem.

 

[DrMrLordX]

The Voodoo Rush was indeed slower, especially if you had the legendarily bad Hercules Stingray 128/3D (aka the Stinkray 128). There were later Rush-based cards that were better.

Hercules eventually offered Stinkray owners a chance to mail in their 3d daughtercard (yes, the Rush was a card+daughtercard combo) for a Voodoo 1 card. Sad.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: DrMrLordX
The Voodoo Rush was indeed slower, especially if you had the legendarily bad Hercules Stingray 128/3D (aka the Stinkray 128). There were later Rush-based cards that were better.

Hercules eventually offered Stinkray owners a chance to mail in their 3d daughtercard (yes, the Rush was a card+daughtercard combo) for a Voodoo 1 card. Sad.

Ditto. The Rush was terrible. The 3D component didn't perform as well as the Voodoo 1, and the 2D component in the early cards were all terrible Alliance Semiconductor chips. You were much better off with a Voodoo 1 and a good Matrox card for 2D (or dare I say it, a ViRGE).

 

[Borealis7]

There should be a "Video Card History" thread for people to post their path through 3D (or 2D). Maybe i'll start one if i have the time...

 

[jzodda]

I remember those times very fondly. A matrox G200 for 2d and 2 8meg Megabyte Voodoo 2's in SLI

I was in gaming heaven back then.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: ViRGE
a good Matrox card for 2D (or dare I say it, a ViRGE).

:laugh:

I think I still have a PCI Virge/GX in the garage.

Originally posted by: Borealis7
There should be a "Video Card History" thread for people to post their path through 3D (or 2D).

My first 3D card was... a Matrox M3D. I think I got it for something like $40 AR.

Originally posted by: jzodda
I remember those times very fondly. A matrox G200 for 2d and 2 8meg Megabyte Voodoo 2's in SLI

I was in gaming heaven back then.

I built a system for a client BITD with an Nvidia TNT (or was it TNT2?) and two 12MB Voodoo 2 in SLI. He was really big into playing Nascar Racing and Grand Prix Legends, and was in some racing leagues online. Scary thing was that he spent as much money on his custom built steering wheels as on the video subsystem.