Man I Hate 3dfx

[dfloyd]

Stupid company spoiled me so bad I am having a heck of a time trying to choose an upgrade. My Voodoo, Voodoo II, & Voodoo III worked perfect in every single game I tried.

Now I have to look at well works good in this game but not this one. Why did they have to be so stupid at marketing.

Sorry, just still in the process of trying to upgrade (STILL) and reading every forum under the sun. Seems everything has short comeings in one area or another. Guess the golden days are gone.



/me hums the Beatles tune to Yesterdays.

 

[EMAN]

Geforce 3 would probably your next upgrade or wait for Radeon 2 and kyro 3.

 

[sandorski]

Hehe, I hear ya dude!

 

[Dark4ng3l]

Soo little people can trully understand us 3dfxers.

 

[Rand]

One good thing you could always say about 3dfx is they always had rock solid drivers.

 

[Instigator]

true, true

 

[nutxo]

my first card was a v3, it worked with everything,.i didnt have to load a ton of different drivers or upgrade my drivers weekly. I recently sold my gf3 and a friend loaned me a v4 4500 until i get a new card, the color is great on this thing and i dont think nvidia will ever get close at the rate they seem to be going :-( I miss 3dfx

 

[BFG10K]

3dfx's driver support was legendary, as was the compatibility of their boards.

 

[Remedy]

My V5 just died tonight too, Damn Artic silver Epoxy and 2cooltek Cu HSF kit, grrrrrrrrrr. I dunno if i should even go look for one , probably just pick up a kyro2 this week. This G400MAX aint cutting it for gaming right now..:|

 

[Clevor]

Well, I got all the cards ('cept a Geforce3 and KyroII, which I don't think are worth trying), such as the Voodoo5, Radeon 64 VIVO, Geforce2 Ultra, Matrox G400Max/G450. I don't have to say one card is better because that's all I got, or because I dumped one card for the one I'm using now. Since I'm running AGP/PCI combos, I can switch almost on-the-fly thru the BIOS and compare.

The BEST image quality I've ever seen is a Voodoo5 set to HIGH quality settings using V5Launcher, e.g., LOD -2.0, 4xFSAA, etc. It craps on a Radeon and it's 128-tap anisotrophy. The latter is nothing more than an LOD BIAs tweak short of producing shimmering and distortion of perspective lines.

Only problem is, frame rates with the Voodoo5 set this way are not playable (by playable I mean >60-70 fps at 1024x768x32 bit at everything set to High in QuakeIII Arena). Perhaps a Voodoo6 or Rampage would have allowed that.

Then there's the FSAA. The Voodoo5 has enough power to run most games at 1024x768x16 bit and 2xFSAA. Nothing comes close to it. It's amazing how it alleviates the jaggies yet textures and details are still crisp. You haven't lived till you've seen Serious Sam or Half-Life with it.

3dfx absolutely HAD to come up with a workable FSAA because as is the case with the Radeon, the visuals are so sharp it's distracting. The Radeon is too sharp and contrasty for it's own good, so the jaggies are terrible, and forget about its FSAA (full of s _ _ _ anti-aliasing). And it plain doesn't have the polish of the Voodoo5 on the QuakeII-engine and older games, where everything has a nice silky texture and sheen to it. As for the Geforce, frame rates are amazing, but there's the soft image quality and rather dull palette. And the gamma is just too dark and unacceptable on all the older games (even relatively new ones like Crimson Skies). If you don't know, there are still new games coming out based on the QuakeII engine.

Yep, it's too bad 3dfx is gone. I really doubt ATI or NVIDIA will ever approach such unsurpassed image quality, perfect gamma, and workable FSAA for years to come.

 

[Mykex]

Clevor, Though I wish they never went under Im sooo glad they didnt get the 6000 out the door. It prolly would have started at 600$ and I would have bought one just to have a vidcard with its own PSU.

 

[kmmatney]

I "upgraded" my Voodoo3 to a Radeon LE. Most games work OK, but man, I really miss the glide support. 3dfx cards were great - I never worried about games not working, and didn't have to upgrade the driver every week! Everyone raves about the Radeon's 2D, but the Voodoo3 was a little better (IMO). I also use Win2K, and that may be why my radeon LE (set up as a normal Radeon DDR) doesn;t seem to outperform my Voodoo3 by all that much.

 

[ALstonLoong]

thats was truth ! i am using voodoo5 right now ....still having a hard time to choose my future videocard.I will wait for the radeon2 ..... should be better ..... ofcourse the price will be much higher .

 

[ALstonLoong]

the only bad thing is about the size of v5 .......too big and hot.

 

[merlocka]

Well, after enjoying Voodoo2 and Voodoo3 for a while I'll finally have the chance to take a look at the Voodoo5 first hand. I just traded for one and I'm looking forward to checking it out and comparing it to my other cards (unfortunatly, I had to trade a few of them to get the V5 )

 

[Plester]

always happy to beat the 3dfx drum.

i was a nVidia owner from the tnt-gts, the whole 500lb gorilla thing made me sick so i sh!t-canned the gts and picked up my first 3dfx card - a used v3 2k that cost $35. what a great card. wickedGL made Q3A look great, and compatablity was the best. but the radeon le beckoned, but as Clevor says, the compatability turned out to be iffy, weekly driver revisions that didn't seem to improve things and FSAA that plain sucks = bye, bye radeon. next up was nirvana in the form of a V5500 - the best!!! this thing ain't budging for a long time, bitter sweet tho. if only things hadn't turned out the way they did...

 

[Rand]

<< Everyone raves about the Radeon's 2D, but the Voodoo3 was a little better (IMO). I also use Win2K, and that may be why my radeon LE (set up as a normal Radeon DDR) doesn;t seem to outperform my Voodoo3 by all that much. >>



I agree, the Radeon has very good 2D especially compared to the crap 2D common to most NVidia cards but even since the Voodoo Banshee 3dfx had fantastic 2D quality.

I've always felt the V3 and above were second only to the Matrox G400/450 in 2D quality, and better even then the Radeon's 2D.

*I feel that the V3 3000 and above had very slightly better 2D then the V3 2000 though. Perhaps due to the faster RAMDAC.

 

[Dark4ng3l]

Too bad it's a bit late now. It's sad how people always realise the good things that came after the source is dead.

 

[Remedy]

Damn mine died last night and i'm thinking about getting another one, till something better comes along. It might be the only card some of us need till DX9 comes out...

 

[kazeakuma]

Luckily I have two 5500s. One's a spare in case the other dies. Don't ask how I got the second one. Now if only they did SLI

It's a pity how 3dfx went under, but life goes on. The only current worthy successor to my 5500 is a GF3, which incidentally I have but for some reason use the 5500 more.....

 

[Deeko]

I find this to be amusing...back in the day of the GTS/V5 wars here at AT, there were very few people willing to defend 3dfx(I was one of them)...where were all of you back then when it was me, Robotech, Wingnutz, and maybe a few others against everybody??

 

[kazeakuma]

Wasn't registered back then
too lazy to participate. Although the GTS does whip the v5. It's just that if the V5 was released ON TIME it would have been the sweetest product.

 

[Deeko]

Its been too long, but I remember I used to have lots of arguments against that statement

 

[Dark4ng3l]

LOL I always defended 3dfx with you guys, but in those days I spent my time defending 3dfx at the 3dfxgamers forums.

 

[kazeakuma]

haha deeko. I think I saw them all anyway. FSAA! FSAA! A pity all those other nice T buffer effects never got used. The only other one is the motion blur q3 test and sure it looks cool but you can't even play it.