What did you think of 3dfx?

[Dio]

As usual, any thread on 3dfx technology splits the board quite heavily. So I'm just interested to see how it splits...

 

[Dio]

Damn! Forgot

'I was screaming like I bought a Banshee' as one of the options!

 

[Tagrineth]

I voted option one. Of course, if you're only familiar with the Voodoo line, you're going to be disgusted. Little innovation there, overall. It's really all about Rampage as far as groundbreaking, dizzying technological prowess goes 8)

 

[Dio]

Of course, I'd never have guessed YOU voting option 1...

 

[andypski]

I voted option one. Of course, if you're only familiar with the Voodoo line, you're going to be disgusted. Little innovation there, overall. It's really all about Rampage as far as groundbreaking, dizzying technological prowess goes 8)

I disagree.

I think it's all about Voodoo Graphics as far as dizzying technological prowess goes. Everything after that...

 

[RussSchultz]

I voted number 3, though I disagree with the "savage3d was faster" part.

 

[Tagrineth]

I voted option one. Of course, if you're only familiar with the Voodoo line, you're going to be disgusted. Little innovation there, overall. It's really all about Rampage as far as groundbreaking, dizzying technological prowess goes 8)

I disagree.

I think it's all about Voodoo Graphics as far as dizzying technological prowess goes. Everything after that...

As I said. Voodoo line vs. Rampage. If you count the never-released and still somewhat nebulous Rampage... VG just can't compare.

 

[Dio]

At the Savage3D launch legendary S3 evangelist John Carsey was leaping in the air shouting "We beat 3dfx" after the 3dfx engineers had confirmed there wasn't any cheating on the voodoo2 demo system.

Their response was "You aren't running SLI". S3's response was along the lines of "Our board already costs half what yours does, you want us to use two?".

 

[Evildeus]

As I said. Voodoo line vs. Rampage. If you count the never-released and still somewhat nebulous Rampage... VG just can't compare.

Rampage what is it? An NV30 like chip (just kidding... just kidding argh )

Option 2

 

[Psikotiko]

I hope no one votes nº 5

 

[Ilfirin]

As the poll is in past tense I voted for A, since at the time I was a deluded ignorant child. Now I'd say B.

 

[RussSchultz]

Well, the savage4 certainly wasn't as zippy as the V3.

 

[Tagrineth]

At the Savage3D launch legendary S3 evangelist John Carsey was leaping in the air shouting "We beat 3dfx" after the 3dfx engineers had confirmed there wasn't any cheating on the voodoo2 demo system.

Their response was "You aren't running SLI". S3's response was along the lines of "Our board already costs half what yours does, you want us to use two?".

Their only success, with their first and last decent release...

 

[nutball]

They were great (ie. the best). Then they weren't great (ie. not the best). Then they went out of business. That's my vote.

 

[Dio]

Well, the savage4 certainly wasn't as zippy as the V3.

The basic one certainly wasn't except on UT, but it did do 32 bit, and 16-bit was getting rather old by then.... for quake-heads only.

The Extremes were significantly faster I think, but they never really got shipped.

The 16-bit thing brings up another GDC moment: at GDC in Voodoo3 vs. TNT2 year, nvidia had some very hawaiian shirts. "Chris, I know your board does 32-bit colour but did you have to get them all on one shirt?"

 

[Randell]

Well, the savage4 certainly wasn't as zippy as the V3.

no but with an 128bit memory bus and decnt core speed - 166/166, rather than 143/125, it would have competed very well as its IQ was excellent (fast 32bit and fast trilinear and the original S3TC+Metal combo for Unreal/UT of course)

 

[Mummy]

Hum.. there is no "Cant it die in peace and stop bothering our asses out ?" option.

 

[Evildeus]

I hope no one votes nº 5

Too late

 

[andypski]

As I said. Voodoo line vs. Rampage. If you count the never-released and still somewhat nebulous Rampage... VG just can't compare.

Sorry - can't bring myself to count nebulous and never-released stuff. I've seen far too much of that in my time in this industry. Everyone has, at some time, had various pieces of 'killer' technology kicking about - usually the stuff that's really worth anything, and turns out to be implementable, sees the light of day.

Voodoo on the other hand was as real as it gets.

 

[LeStoffer]

Pretty good chips, but too slow to react to a rapidly changing market.

Someone should have given the business management a crash course in the importance of the OEM market and tjeck-list features. Retail sales? Blah!

Anyway, I was pretty happy with the Voodoo2 after the Riva128 letdown, so for me it's a shame they aren't around anymore. I have no opinion on Rampage though...