Article on 3dfx's unreleased hardware

Just imagine if they had gotten that Rampage out way back when, better then GF3 performance, it would have owned and all cards after it would have to compete with it.

Apparently it seems rumored they did have a deffered rendering card planned for the future? I hope someone, NVIDIA maybe, I don't care who, picks that up. We need to get away from immediate mode renderers. The Kyro would have also been a contender for this, but well, they are having problems too, heh.

So far it's rumored the NV30 uses some of the gigapixel and 3dfx tech, some of the rumors have been the external T&L thing. But we won't know for sure of course until it's announced, and unfortunetely that's looking like a ways off.
 
Yeah, would have been great to see Rampage...damn nVidia :devilish:

I just think things would have progressed a bit faster if the single-chip companies would have had to compete with the power of a multi-chip card, even if they'd have it beat on price and profitability.

If NV30 is indeed a multi-chip SLI setup, that's basically validating the whole 3dfx strategy, which I doubt is something that fits into their marketing plan.
 
Dolemite said:
Yeah, would have been great to see Rampage...damn nVidia.
Click to expand...

Why damn NVIDIA when 3dfx put 3dfx out of business? All NVIDIA did was snatch up the assets when they were available for sale. NV25 has some technology/influence by 3dfx engineers, and NV30 should display even more.
 
Brent said:
Just imagine if they had gotten that Rampage out way back when, better then GF3 performance, it would have owned and all cards after it would have to compete with it.

Apparently it seems rumored they did have a deffered rendering card planned for the future? I hope someone, NVIDIA maybe, I don't care who, picks that up. We need to get away from immediate mode renderers. The Kyro would have also been a contender for this, but well, they are having problems too, heh.

So far it's rumored the NV30 uses some of the gigapixel and 3dfx tech, some of the rumors have been the external T&L thing. But we won't know for sure of course until it's announced, and unfortunetely that's looking like a ways off.
Click to expand...

Perhaps PowerVR strikes back with Serie 5 ? www.hardware.fr claims Serie 5 ist already in development and is a DX9-chip. It should be ready 1. half of 2003. ANd with some luck we will see a Serie 4 part (Kyro3) too :)!

CU ActionNews
 
Brent said:
Just imagine if they had gotten that Rampage out way back when, better then GF3 performance, it would have owned and all cards after it would have to compete with it.
Click to expand...

well, imaging that would be the same as imaging that Pyramid3D would have been released in schedule on autumn 1996. Propably that would have changed things very much and perhaps 3dfx wouldn't been were it was later.

and yes, Pyramid3D would have owned all easily back then. programmable pixel and geometry pipelines, HW T&L, 2 two textures per pass and EMBM.

or how about Rendition's experimental V3300 and V4400 chips? with eDRAM and Microcode programmability they would easily ruled everyone else.

So... what I am saying? I am trying to show how useless this "if, if, if" kind of speculation with chips from the past is. It is as useless as speculating that if human would never had invented the wheel... (at least "c~o~n~f~o~r~d~a~b~l~e t~r~a~v~e~l~i~n~g"would have a bit different meaning when you have cubes in the place of wheels.)

no one can surely say what would have been happened IF Tritech, Rendition or 3dfx would have finished their projects to the market on time. That's almost impossible, because market changes based on products coming out. (you need to visit on paraller universe to find out surely where we would be now if Pyramid3D (or others of those lost chips) would have came out. And afaik, that's not possible yet.) ;)
 
Nappe1 said:
no one can surely say what would have been happened IF Tritech, Rendition or 3dfx would have finished their projects to the market on time. That's almost impossible, because market changes based on products coming out. (you need to visit on paraller universe to find out surely where we would be now if Pyramid3D (or others of those lost chips) would have came out. And afaik, that's not possible yet.) ;)
Click to expand...
Wasn't that rumored fabulous new chip by Infinity Inc. able to do just that? ;)
 
You could have IEEE 1394 onboard but that would only be needed in DV style products like the AIW or Personal Cinema.

A lot of the info from 3dchipset seems as valid as the rumours that were posted previously (i.e. take with a huge mountain full of salt).

900MHz DDR? This seems the most plausible of the rumoured specs but who is producing 900MHz DDR in volume right now or plan to in a few months? Highest I have seen is 800MHz DDR by Samsung IIRC.
 
Wouldn't be the first time Nvidia digged up an exotic and rare RAM for their top of the line card, so I don't really doubt the 900MHz figure, especially since NV30 is most likely still 3-4 months away, as for the rest... *cough*
 
I think I posted this in the reply above in the wrong thread but its related so I'll keep it here :p
Read the 3dfx article and... erm... didnt really see the point of it at all.

All the info in th article has already eben discussed several times and with a lot more info.

Also some of the article is very wrong especially the statement to the likes of:

Voodoo3 was faster than TNT2 except in D3D and most OpenGL games... er that leaves what? Glide? LOL
 
Dave said:
A lot of that article is incorrect, unfortunately.
Click to expand...

Dave, could you please elaborate ?
Im quite tired of 3dfx fanboys all around in every fourm even 2 years after 3dfx death, im sooo pissed every month there's a new article written on some crappy 5 hits/day lame site that explains how Rampage was so cool, then those zealots read that crap which is pure speculation and start to flood forums with garbage....

I think someone should stop this and say things CLEARLY how they were going to be, otherwise when we have NV50 and R500 3dfx zealots will be still around saying how Rampage would of kicked both :(
 
Im sure you arent aware of the fact that in almost every forum ppl did talk about Talion graphics, and even after NVNews update (as, they use paint and are 4 ppl) still those zealots actually continuted to believe it was real ?

Theare are lots of ppl that think with a 4-Person team and MSpaint you can de-throne Million dollars/Thousand employeers companies, all you have to say is "3Dfx", that's the quite sad reality ;)
 
I just have to say that it wouldn't really surprise me if the article was quite accurate about 3dfx's products.

But, I do have to say that I would have still been disappointed at 3dfx's products. After all, they would apparently only focused on the rendering quality, and not new features for programmers to play with. This, I feel, is perhaps the greatest thing about nVidia. Since the GeForce, they have shown significant improvements with their new video cards in all three areas: performance, rendering quality, and featureset (Quick notes...from this breakdown, aniso and FSAA lie under rendering quality, not featureset...T&L, shaders, bump mapping, etc. would go under featureset).
 
I thought it was a good read. Nothing wrong with a good read from time to time. As far as accurateness, doesn't matter to me cause 3DF/X is outta here.
 
Chalnoth,

Moot point now but I don't think so. Digit life has still an article about Rampage and the likes in it's archive.

In all fairness and from all the advanced info I've reading especially here at B3D is sounded like a very competitive product to both NV20/5 and R200.
 
Are 3dfx employees still under NDA's regarding Rampage, Fear, Mojo, etc.?

3dfx maybe gone, but it'd be interesting to find out where they thought they were going technology wise. Sure there was supposed to be "Gigapixel tech", but how was it used, performance estimates, etc.
 
Weren't a lot of their employees picked up by nVidia anyway? At least the ones that would have known what was going on. So I'm guessing those people would now be covered by their nVidia NDA's since nVidia owns the 3dfx tech.

My guess anyway. I bet there are folks out there who have an opinion and are at liberty to voice it, though. Why we haven't heard from them, I dunno.
 
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