Right, I forgot the Rush, probably because it was so damned forgettable. I
didn't mention the nVidia Riva 128 either, which was much the same and also
paled in comparison to the V2.
The first GeForce256 wasn't really all that much faster in terms of
framerates in its first version, with 32mb of SDR memory, than a TNT2 Ultra.
The chip was slower (120mhz vs. 150 to 175) but the expanded pipelines more
than offset that, and the memory was at 166mhz, SLOWER than the Ultra's 183.
It was adding DDR memory and, since texture compression wasn't in play, then
later 64mb of it that really made the card, which is the same old basic
story - high fill rate (via the core structure) and high memory bandwidth.
3dfx was staggering under all of their changes and losing money, and had
gone down the road of a multichip solution, in part to deal with the memory
bandwidth issue. On top of all of that they couldn't add DDR to the mix
while trying to get the delayed V5 out, and had nothing left after that. But
it might have been close - what if the 5500 had come out in the late fall of
'99 against the first GF, and the 6000 against the GF 64mb DDR in early '00?
The 6000 was absurdly priced but at that not much more than the high-end GF,
would have crushed any GF in benchmarks, and the 5500 beat the GF SDR and
was about equal to a DDR. Then maybe another round, probably coming up
against the GF2 Ultra, and a V6 might have been a lot faster, have DDR
memory, texture compression offsets the 32mb per chip price limitation, T&L
to placate the press, and even a twin chip card could have badly beaten the
Ultra. Then what? Didn't happen, of course, but could have changed
everything. Maybe we'd be playing at 1600x1200 with 16X FSAA at 100fps if it
had, Voodoo, Radeon, GeForce or whatever...
I don't know that I'd see it quite that way. nVidia had a notable OEM share
as early as the Riva 128 but no real 3D rep, while 3dfx didn't really
seriously try to move out of the 3D add-on or upgrade sector until they
started making their own boards with the V3 - they came from different
sectors. During the V3/TNT battle, nVidia was much more successful at moving
into the 3D gamers scene than V3 was at moving into the OEM market, in part
because nVidia had already made inroads with the TNT and in part because
OEMs won't switch allegances as quickly as gamers, and I don't know if the
Voodoo name and rep meant good things to them. Matrox was and is a 2D
business market company, and dabbled in higher-end 3D stuff only once, with
the G400. ATi started seriously trying for the *** sector with the
Rage128/Rage Fury, which was supposed to go up against the TNT and Banshee
but was late to market, and then the RF Pro and RF Maxx with the same
results. They only scored with the Radeon, but weren't terribly far off
(outside of the drivers) prior to that, maybe six months. But they had all
the other consumer bases covered already - OEM, Mac, mobile. They've
expanded into mobo chipsets and consoles the same as nVidia, and now are
moving into 3D workstation. But nVidia's gains in every sector are
impressive any way you look at it.
Agreed. We just need a third player to make it all really work for us.