Anyone notice how most of the graphics boards companies from 3dfx's era are gone?

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Fox5

Veteran
Seems like it wasn't a very profitable business. Not only did it bury 3dfx, but all the IHVs that nvidia built its lifeblood off are gone. The only current companies that I remember being arouund in 2000 that make their own boards are ATI and Matrox, and Matrox pulled out of the 3d graphics market and ATI has given Sapphire free reign.

Most of the companies nowadays have either risen from the ashes of the old companies (I hear XFX came from the remains of STB and 3dfx), or come in from other, similarly cutthroat low margin markets. PNY makes memory, and there's quite a few motherboard makers getting involved.

3dfx was the most notable name to go down during that time period, but it seems that the graphics board makers as a whole were unprofitable. Yet despite most of nvidia's partners going out of business, they were easily able to find new partners to sell chips, and have remained profitable year after year.
 
On the contrary. It was a very profitable business. This led to a lot of competition and short product cycles. The problem was if you miss a single product cycle you get a serious loss of revenue. Miss two cycles and it's hard to survive and each new design requires a lot of capital.
 
3dcgi said:
On the contrary. It was a very profitable business. This led to a lot of competition and short product cycles. The problem was if you miss a single product cycle you get a serious loss of revenue. Miss two cycles and it's hard to survive and each new design requires a lot of capital.
Click to expand...

Well, that explains 3dfx's failure (though ati and matrox both missed several and survived...well not sure about matrox's current financial state but they exist), but what about all of nvidia's partners? There were certain brands that you expected to see with the launch of every new nvidia chip, across multiple skus, and it doesn't seem like any exist anymore. The only names I see now that I remember from back then are Asus and Powercolor, and they definetely weren't major video card brands during the geforce 2 era.
 
ASUS sure was a big name when the various GF2 incarnations came around. Not sure before then tho, GF256 or TNT. I'm pretty certain they didn't make vidcards at the time of the Riva128.

Dang... 1996 to 2006, it's been just a short decade, but think back of what games and hardware looked then and anyone can see it's been a LONG decade! No ATX, no AGP and barely any PCI (ISA - bleckk!), no USB, EDORAM (or FP DRAM) on 30-pin SIMs which were worth their weight in pure gold... CPUs cost an arm and a leg for the performance varieties (and those we got were horrible by today's standards), no DVD, CDRWs cost half a fortune, 3D accelerators all sucked until the voodoo came, and even that was terribly limited in features and the 2D passthrough cable sucked too.

Frankly, it was all a load of giant SUCK 10 years ago, basically. :D

Wonder if today's hardware will suck as bad in 10 years as that of 10 years ago does now. Frankly, I don't quite think so. It'll suck real bad I'm sure, but it won't be total, complete and utter crap.
 
10 years ago though, you could trust noname PSUs and memory, and noname keyboards weren't half as bad (nowadays noname RAM is only suitable to make your PC beep as hell on boot, and noname PSU will do 11V instead of 12V and die within a few monthes)

PCI was there and RAM was 72 pin (actually I had one SDRAM PC66 slot, and later I was using a 32MB stick in it along with two 16MB FPM sticks :))

I get your point though :)!

Still, AT instead of ATX, DIN keyboards and ISA slots meant almost full backwards compatibility (yes, I wish I had at least one ISA slot if I want to plug in an old NIC or serial/parallel port extension or whatever)
 
10 years ago we had most fun gaming, Was that Quake year? Civ 2 pfft... golden days and the hardware was great for the time. Actually for a long time gamer it is hard for games these days to be as good and as engrossing as the games of the day than. Well in principle those gaming experiences than were at least as good as or even better than those today, given that they were breaking the new ground, while those today merely rehash it most of the time. Some rehashes are realll good mind you (like Civ 4 :mrgreen: )
 
Fox5 said:
Well, that explains 3dfx's failure (though ati and matrox both missed several and survived...well not sure about matrox's current financial state but they exist), but what about all of nvidia's partners? There were certain brands that you expected to see with the launch of every new nvidia chip, across multiple skus, and it doesn't seem like any exist anymore. The only names I see now that I remember from back then are Asus and Powercolor, and they definetely weren't major video card brands during the geforce 2 era.
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I was thinking that making the chips was very profitable. I'm not so sure how profitable the board companies are because it's hard for them to add value above what another vendor offers. These days because there are only two big chip makers each should be a little more able to handle slip ups. Matrox, S3, XGI, PowerVR, and 3dlabs still exist but they all have meager market share and some operate in extremely niche markets. They have an uphill battle and it might take a big slip up from Ati or Nvidia for them to gain significant market share. Matrox, PowerVR, and 3dlabs aren't gunning for the mainstream at the moment but of course that could change in the future.
 
I thought Matrox let most of its 3d graphics division go, PowerVR seems to have management that doesn't find value in the high end (that, or the few cards powervr released had to be severely discounted so they would be competitive....anyone have the margins on those?), and I don't think 3dlabs ever tried for the high-end.

S3 or XGI might make another grab for the high end at some point, but they both seemed to fall so short of that goal when they tried. They seem to have competent hardware...except when it comes to shader performance. They might be better off going for a niche market, like say inside a VIA PC appliance. I don't think VIA has anything like that currently, but they're in a good position to offer a cheap, low form factor, low functionality device. It could run Windows embedded. I think VIA has its own graphics division though.

Anyhow, there's never really been more than 2 companies in the top end market. At the time 3dfx was making its mistakes, ATI was firmly in low cost PCs, integrated graphics, and laptops, and while 3dfx made the mistake of trying to break into those markets, ATI barely took anything from 3dfx's bread and butter, the high end. Of course, as 3dfx showed, apparently the high end isn't that bready or buttery as it couldn't sustain them, while ATI did quite well off of the lower cost but higher volume stuff. Matrox made 1 or 2 cards that were interesting to high end gamers, but didn't really break into 3dfx's turf either (though once again, I think 3dfx made a grab for matrox's turf and failed), and it was really only nvidia who took away 3dfx's market-share, everyone else just prevented 3dfx from gaining more in other markets.
 
Actually, 3dlabs tries for the very high end, just not gamers. At one time Nvidia, Ati, 3dfx, Intel (Real 3D), and Matrox were all significant players with reasonable market share. Today is a little different with only Nvidia, Ati, and Intel having significant market share. I agree concerning Matrox's fate and I would guess PowerVR's management does see value in the high end. They just know it's a difficult place to make a stand and there is more opportunity to shine in the mobile space.

I guess I'm saying it's not just about the top end of the market, but the market as a whole. Currently only Ati and Nvidia have significant market share for discreet graphics cards and they even own the console market. It's currently much narrower of a field than anytime previously.
 
That's certainly true, while the high end market hasn't changed too much, ATI and nvidia both definetely expanded their influence.

BTW, didn't ATI buy Intel's Real 3d division? Though if they did, who produces Intel's integrated graphics now? Well...I'm sure Intel has plenty of engineers who are more than capable of making a rather basic chip with no vertex shaders and very limited pixel shaders, engineers with the skills to make low end ASICS seem to be a dime a dozen.
 
Uhm, I see lots of companies from that time still around: Asus, Abit, CreativeLabs, Terratec, Powercolor, PNY, GigaByte, AOpen,...

Some went away, but definitely not "most" of them.
 
_xxx_ said:
Uhm, I see lots of companies from that time still around: Asus, Abit, CreativeLabs, Terratec, Powercolor, PNY, GigaByte, AOpen,...

Some went away, but definitely not "most" of them.
Click to expand...

I don't remember most of those companies being involved in video cards back in the Geforce 2 era. Does Creative Labs still make nvidia based cards?
Asus I think had just gotten into the business. Don't remember Abit, Terratec, PNY, Gigabyte, or AOpen at the time. I remember most of the names, but no in relation to video cards.
Powercolor was in the asian and european markets only at the time.
PNY didn't get in till the geforce 3 era (that I can remember), though it made some geforce 2 titanium cards.
 
I miss Diamond Multimedia.

The industry is quite new and there have been consolidations, takeovers, liquidations etc. This is pretty normal for a developing industry.
I remember ISV's like Ocean and DiD and Microprose - they all gone too.

Me go cry now. :cry::cry::cry:
 
Fox5 said:
That's certainly true, while the high end market hasn't changed too much, ATI and nvidia both definetely expanded their influence.

BTW, didn't ATI buy Intel's Real 3d division? Though if they did, who produces Intel's integrated graphics now? Well...I'm sure Intel has plenty of engineers who are more than capable of making a rather basic chip with no vertex shaders and very limited pixel shaders, engineers with the skills to make low end ASICS seem to be a dime a dozen.
Click to expand...
Ati didn't buy Real 3d, but they hired a group of engineers that used to work there and Intel has a group in Sacramento that develops the integrated chipset.
 
Fox5 said:
I don't remember most of those companies being involved in video cards back in the Geforce 2 era. Does Creative Labs still make nvidia based cards?
Asus I think had just gotten into the business. Don't remember Abit, Terratec, PNY, Gigabyte, or AOpen at the time. I remember most of the names, but no in relation to video cards.
Powercolor was in the asian and european markets only at the time.
PNY didn't get in till the geforce 3 era (that I can remember), though it made some geforce 2 titanium cards.
Click to expand...


ASUS did business back then, I think I bought an ASUS TNT1 actually and I remember that Powercolor at least had a Voodoo 2-card out around that time.
Abit didn't do videocards back then and I'm not sure that Gigabyte or AOpen did anything like that either. But there were always cheap cards from Leadtek around the time of the GF2/GF256, they're still around, right?
 
ASUS manufactured ATi-cards 10 years ago, I have one Mach64CT from ASUS :)
PowerColor had Voodoo1 (called Evil Knight) - I have never seen this card, so I'm not sure if it was ever produced. But they had Rush (Evil Rush), which was quite common. Gigabyte had Banshee (GA-630, 2nd fastest banshee; the best one was from Diamond).
Leadtek produced Banshees too (WinFast S310)...

Some (incomplete) lists are here: Asus, Leadtek, Gigabyte, PowerColor
 
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