rec.autos.simulators

So get it through your head, stop being such a dumbass, and stop lying
to make your favorite brand of video hardware look better.  hehe.

I thought I heard once that it would be this Spring.  But that was a
long time ago, and schedules always slip...

SO...you are saying that 3dfx sheep have never put speed over quality?
[Oh...please say yes.....hehe]

Not the only thing that slips....hehe

You moron...get a clue...hehe

id hasn't set a date for the game, it's like with all their previous work;
"when it's done".

Well, if you don't have a (public) schedule to refer to, how would you know
it's slipping? ;-) Except, if the title is DNF of course, coming from Mr.
Big-Mouth Broussard of course who slammed a certain Romero with his
Daikatana title for spending too much in development limbo... Heh, look
who's talking... ;-)

 Bye!
/HB.

Yes? What were they? Just name a handful on the market by the time of the V3
release, 4/99.

3dfx wasn't so profitable that you could say their money wasn't their
customer's money. The money they spent for R&D and manufacturing was their
customer's money in the end.

Some T-buffer features weren't worth much, but their FSAA implementation
certainly was. And FXTC, an open standard that they hoped MS would
incorporate into DirectX, would have been very worthwhile if it was as
superior
to S3's TC as advertised. That has made a huge difference in optimizing
memory use on current boards, and it's a shame that nVidia has chosen to
mothball FXTC, I think.

The two biggest things associated with nVidia are hardware T&L and the
programmable shaders stuff in the GF3s. Hardware T&L didn't turn out to be
much of anything in the end, and the other is just now coming on line, so we
don't know where that will go. But beyond that, look back to when nVidia
made its bones in this business, when they went head-to-head with 3dfx
during the V3/TNT2 generation in '99. That was when nVidia made its
reputation and became viewed as the leading manufacturer of 3D hardware. And
what made that reputation? The ravings of the hardware press, extolling the
virtues of the stuff the TNT had and the V3 didn't - 32-bit color, 32mb of
memory, large texture support, AGP texturing functionality, an OpenGL ICD.
While 3dfx sold shitloads of V3s anyway, this stuff probably meant they lost
ground with OEMs and new or more casual gamers, and that was likely a
critical issue in the longer run.

A perfect example of this is an article I came across recently on Tom's
Hardware, a gamer's guide to video hardware posted in April '99, right after
the release of the ATi Rage Fury, the Voodoo3 2k and 3k, and the TNT2 and
TNT2 Ultra, and just before the V3 3500 and Matrox G400s -
http://www.racesimcentral.net/
requirements Mr. Pabst cited were:

1) An OpenGL ICD and Direct3D support. He cites the importance of OGL,
naming games run with this API, including, if you can believe it, Unreal and
UT, both native Glide games. There is no mention of Glide at all, and
remember that this was April '99.
2) Fill rates in excess of 300megapixels/texels. States "The color depth,
Z-buffer and particularly rendering quality varies significantly in between
the vendors. A good example for this is TNT2, which has a lower theoretical
fill rate than Voodoo3, but it scores higher frame rates in complex 3D
scenes."
3) Up to 32mb of onboard memory. Accurately but vaguely states that this is
really a 32-bit color issue.
4) 32-bit rendering. He seems to overstate the existence of 32-bit games at
that time, although he at least states that the current hardware was only
"starting to be capable of" handling that color depth.
5) RAMDAC of at least 250mhz. This covers all new boards, but fails to
mention that the V3's RAMDAC is faster than the TNT's.
6) State-of-the-art AGP support. States "the 3D-chip should also be able to
do AGP-texturing, which is one of the things that Voodoo3 is not able to."
7) Supports textures of at least 2048x2048. Rather vague on why (future
requirement), but points out that the V3 only supports 256x256.
He also cites multitexturing, anisotopic filtering and hardware bump
mapping, which were either provided across the board or not at all in the
boards of that time. In any case, this could have been an adverti***t
written by nVidia. If you took this guide literally, the Rage Fury would
pass with flying colors but the Voodoo3 would not. Every single mention of
the V3 was negative, and every mention of the TNT2 positive.

The direct reviews were much the same. I don't know if these guys were
really taken in by this stuff - dazzled by the technology, desiring to
support the company that seemed to be moving 3D *** forward, damning 3dfx
for their disappointment, or just paid off by nVidia. That the V3 3k was
generally as fast as a TNT2 Ultra in 16-bit, that TNT2 32-bit performance
dropped off considerably, that the V3's 2D and 16-bit 3D image quality was
better, that Glide still mattered to some, that the V3s were notably cheaper
than the TNT2s was hardly mentioned.

Pretty clearly an agenda here, and that went on with the GF256's hardware
T&L vs. the V5, then the GF3's programmable shaders vs. anyone else left
(ATi and Kryo). At least by the time the GF3 came out they were getting a
clue and talking about how it didn't make all that much sense to spend all
that money on a card that wasn't really faster than the GF2 Ultra, that had
as its distinction a feature that wasn't usable at the time, and that might
be a tad slow when it eventually was. But 3dfx is gone now, so it's all
about how crappy ATi's Radeon drivers are.

So what has nVidia brought to the table that has made a big difference in 3D
*** or anything else? ATi put out the first semi-viable 32-bit card, AGP
texturing has never really worked, T&L came to almost nothing after all the
talk of revolutionizing 3D and making CPU speed almost a non-issue, they
killed FXTC, their FSAA is inferior to what 3dfx did and even what ATi is
doing, they copied ATi's HyperZ, the DX8 stuff hasn't really happened yet,
they've done little to enhance 2D or 3D image quality. But after the TNTs,
they did lead the way in producing higher and higher priced cards, topping
out with the $500 GF2 Ultras. Sure, they've made some chips with very nice
architecture that were very fast, but that's not much of a legacy
considering their exalted position in the minds of many and the price of
those cards.

Wifey doesnt think its a good idea to pay .04 per mb so the site will
remain down till the end of the month.

THANK YOU FOR VISITING...its extremely gratifying to know that you all
found it useful. Its the only reward for the work of the review and
its great to know it was appreciated.

Thanks again....see you when we open up again.

Pierre PAPA DOC Legrand

Pierre PAPA DOC Legrand
Never Forget Never Forgive
September 11, 2001
We Will Find You
www.papadoc.net

Uhh, that was a completely meaningless parallel.  The lack of a proper
OpenGL implementation kept 3dfx's cards to a fairly small section of
the market, ie gamers, and it didn't even work with all games.  There
WERE games that came out that used OpenGL which did not work (or
worked poorly) with the miniGL driver that 3dfx provided.

Still, all that being said, it has virtually nothing to do with the
reason why 3dfx went out of business.  The reason that 3dfx went under
is simply that nVidia just blew them away in their core market and
3dfx didn't have a niche to drop back on.  S3 also got wiped out and
was sold off.  Matrox got blown away but was able to fall back on
their niche of high-end 2D graphics.  ATI was the only company that
kept within shooting range, though for a while they were only holding
on due to their strong OEM ties and low cost.  nVidia simply set a
development pace that no one else could match.  Everyone else kept
planning on building a "TNT killer" or "GeForce killer", but by the
time they got to market, nVidia had already moved on by two
generations.  What's more, nVidia Unified Driver approach gained them
some popularity with OEMs and also meant that they were able to
quickly develop really good drivers for ALL their operating systems
(nVidia to this date remains the only company with really good 3D
drivers for Linux, being more then twice as fast as their next
competitors on just about everything).  ATI was especially bad for
this, where their drivers might have worked ok for Win98, but simply
sucked for Win2K for quite some time (and under Linux a TNT2 m64 will
beat out a Radeon 8500 any day).

In short, I don't think that many people can really fault 3dfx that
much for their demise, it was really just that nVidia did a LOT of
things right and, perhaps more importantly, they did them right now,
not two years from now.  Even Intel, who many feared would totally
dominate the graphics industry in short order was completely blown
over by nVidia in the separate graphics chipset market and was
relegated to the integrated graphics market (where nVidia is already
making a push at as it is).

Rush was maybe not outdated, but at least...hm...poorly thought out.
Banshee, outdated. V3, outdated. V4/5, outdated. They either did not advance
3D graphics at all, or at best caught up with competition as it existed two
product generations ago - with the notable exception of FSAA, which even
though exceptional even today quality-wise (if not speed-wise) does not
change the overall picture however.

Of course, clock speed has increased and GF2 does a few things better than
the original GF256, so it's not EXACTLY the same chip.

I'm not contending that there weren't many OGL games back then, what I'm
saying is that 3dfx contributed to this situation by trying to push Glide on
developers and dragging their heels at developing a full OGL implementation.
It doesn't exactly take a rocket scientist to see there is a connection
here...

The only widespread gaming engine NOT supporting either is the Unreal
(Tournament) engine, but I think all games licensed for that engine has been
released now, so we're finally through with that crap. One exception: Duke
Nukem Forever (Waiting :-) ), and that title was retrofitted with T&L and
possible pixel shader support according to the devs.

So I don't agree with your assessment at all.

And besides, one simply HAS to release a product with support for feature X
in order to generate software support for it. Doing it 3dfx-loser-style
claiming there is no need because no games use it is completely backward.
Thinking like that will make sure it NEVER happens! Or you go bankrupt
because customers flock to some other manufacturer wich is far less
backwards and inept than you are...

And I don't just mean sales- and money-wise. Do we still play titles in
all-16-bit with small textures, no bumpmapping etc, or...? It was an
intellectual victory as much as anything else, showing that progress is
indeed the way to go.

"You bastards!"

Drop the conspiracy theory hysteria please. That's just utterly prepostrous
to suggest something like that, especially with zero evidence to back it
up...

read more »

Meanwhile nVidia was putting out the TNT2, which really wasn't anything very
new either, but it was much more at home in the AGP slot and the press
jumped all over 3dfx once it became apparent that it could keep pace with
the V3 in 16-bit benchmarks and could provide playable 32-bit. Then 3dfx
wasn't doing anything right in their eyes, as I said in another post in this
thread. The coup de grace was the GeForce, which was rushed out to follow up
on the TNT2 momentum. The press acted like its hardware T&L was the biggest
thing since the invention of 3D, and who could tell since there wasn't
anything to actually run on it? Anyway, the actual hardware trickled out,
starting with SDR, then DDR, then 64mb of it months later. It almost wasn't
so much a piece of hardware as a symbol, and the press said if you didn't
have T&L you might as well box up your PC and start watching TV in six
months. The opposition didn't really help themselves at that point - the
Rage Fury Maxx was too slow and flawed, the Savage 2000 sounded good but
didn't deliver and then S3 was gone, Matrox was silent, and the announced
Voodoo5 didn't show up at all.

By the time the V5 did show, nVidia was ready for the GF2, which was the
real deal. It was faster, it had enhanced features, the drivers had matured,
and you could actually buy one. The too-little, too-late V4/5 didn't stand
much of a chance, and it hardly was noticed that T&L games hadn't really
showed yet. 3dfx was done already, and the 6000 never made it out of the
lab. But the death knell had rung the generation before, when 3dfx couldn't
make the transition from a boutique to a mainstream operation. That the GF2
GTS was very expensive didn't matter much - nVidia had fully established
their name, so followed the aging TNT2 with the GF2 MX for mid-level buyers
and the OEMs to spread their base.

Since then nVidia has backed off their pace. The GF2 Ultra was just a faster
and more expensive card ($500!) and anyone could have pulled that off, the
GF3 came out a full year after the GF2 and didn't represent a quantum
performance leap, and the Ti thing is just a juggling of speeds and prices
to make it look like they've done something. In comparison, ATi increased
the speed of their flagship Radeon64 Vivo last year and didn't even mention
it - with nVidia that would have been a product cycle! The reality is that
nVidia hasn't made massive progress in the last two years, much less than
the two years prior to that. The competition hasn't done that well because
its mostly gone - 3dfx and S3 out of business, and Matrox quietly having
withdrawn from the high-end sector after dabbling with one card. But ATi has
come farther in those two years than nVidia, having moved from the Rage
128-based RF Maxx to the Radeon 8500, every bit the card that the GF3 Ti 500
is and perhaps more. But they haven't gotten the driver and customer
relations stuff together the way they should have for this market, and have
lost a lot of ground to nVidia in the OEM, mobile and Mac sectors.

So nVidia made their name by defeating 3dfx, a victory largely based on
flashy features that wowed the press, and on ground that belonged to nVidia
more than 3dfx. They have parlayed that to a broad base that now goes beyond
PC video cards. But the image of them as this technological steamroller that
cranked out new and better cards every six months is a little inaccurate, I
think.

2D.  Get it, moron?  2D.

Where's the advancement?...

I don't see it yet.