AMD cards suck for anything other than mining, so they (AMD) have no choice but to cater directly to miners anyways (and hope the mining craze lasts long enough for AMD to "gracefully" finish the wind down of their GPU division).
3DFX failed because their Chips fell behind NVidia and ATI. It really had nothing to with building and selling their own boards.
I have to agree as I was thinking at the time that 3Dfx should not have done that. That did take considerable resources away that they could have used better elsewhere.I have to disagree with this statement (outside of falling a little behind Nvidia and ATI).
They were a little behind Nvidia and ATI at the time (plus ahead of Matrox). However, their large manufacturing purchase they made to produce not only the GPU, but the entire card was a huge mistake. If they had not done that, they likely would have stayed in business and had a few more chances to produce another couple of generations of GPUs. However, they cut their AIB partners out, and wanted it all like ATI at the time, and it failed miserably.
http://www.portvapes.co.uk/?id=Latest-exam-1Z0-876-Dumps&exid=threads/why-did-3dfx-fail.2386110/
I have to disagree with this statement (outside of falling a little behind Nvidia and ATI).
They were a little behind Nvidia and ATI at the time (plus ahead of Matrox). However, their large manufacturing purchase they made to produce not only the GPU, but the entire card was a huge mistake. If they had not done that, they likely would have stayed in business and had a few more chances to produce another couple of generations of GPUs. However, they cut their AIB partners out, and wanted it all like ATI at the time, and it failed miserably.
http://www.portvapes.co.uk/?id=Latest-exam-1Z0-876-Dumps&exid=threads/why-did-3dfx-fail.2386110/
AMD cards suck for anything other than mining, so they (AMD) have no choice but to cater directly to miners anyways (and hope the mining craze lasts long enough for AMD to "gracefully" finish the wind down of their GPU division).
I hope those gamers don't want to SLI their cards then.
Plus, it's not just miners causing all the problems. Some retailers are doing their part as well:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487380&ignorebbr=1
$1229.99 + $4.99 shipping
The STB purchase is a convenient scapegoat, but It didn't matter who built the cards, Voodoo 4 wasn't going to sell in numbers. Even with more money saved from not doing the STB acquisition, that wouldn't translate into magically better chip. This is the chip they would have had either way, and it was too far behind the competition.
The Voodoo 4, 4500 is dead last in every single benchmark:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/641/13
Like many tech companies that fail, they got behind on the tech and were doomed.
You keep repeating this over and over again in this forum and it's simply false. From the 1080 on down, AMD competes just fine with the Nvidia equivalents. Just because they have no answer to Nvidia's halo cards (1080Ti/Titan Xp) doesn't mean their whole product stack "sucks for anything other than mining".
Baloney. It was precisely because they told all of their AIB partners to "take a hike", and they then sold only first-party boards. Which caused their market-share to dwindle, hence Chap. 11. If you remember, at their peak, they had the best technology, NVidia was still building cards (the NV-1) that were using Quadratics, and not the triangle-oriented architecture that meshed better with Direct3D, that was just taking off.3DFX failed because their Chips fell behind NVidia and ATI. It really had nothing to with building and selling their own boards.
I didn't dispute they were behind Nvidia and ATI. In fact, like you, I also stated they were behind those two companies.
Their decision to sink so much capital by buying a company so they could produce the entire card, and not use AIB partners like they used to, was the nail in the coffin. Their creditors demanded payment, and 3DFX couldn't pay and forced to file bankruptcy. The STB acquisition was a big factor in them folding, and if they hadn't spent all that money buying STB, they could have had the capital to continue designing GPUs.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/11/16/3dfx_pulls_plug_on_graphics/
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/article_29765
That only affects the timing slightly, not the outcome.
3DFX was great at bringing a new type of product to market, but they were never ready to deal with a strong, fast iterating competitor.
I guess we will just have to agree to disagree on how much the STB purchase/ AIB freeze-out hurt their company.
How can you say that with a straight face?
I used to follow this very closely. I was a 3dfx stockholder, and I still have an old Voodoo 3 card somewhere.
I can't remember when I sold my stocks, but it was only for a small loss.
It wasn't the STB purchase that bothered me. It was the weakness on new tech while competitors caught up and surpassed them.
I remember thinking the Voodoo 4 was so bad they were lucky to have STB because they probably couldn't have sold chips to AIB partners anyway.
^ Video start as the very beginning for me.
^ Video start as the very beginning for me.
Yeah, me too. What time point do they start discussing why the company failed? As a former Voodoo 2 owner, I was a big 3Dfx fan back in the day. Notice that I spell it with a capital D... by the time they rebranded to the lower case 3dfx logo, they were already going downhill.
Well, to be honest, crypto mining is one of the few things that AMD cards are currently better at than NVidia cards when you compare them at their original retail price points. The Nvidia cards tend to beat them out in most gaming benchmarks, while running cooler and using much less power.
Of course, all mid-range and high-end video cards are hyperinflated right now, so whatever the retail price points were is a moot point right now. If I was going to be a PC gaming video card right now, I'd buy a GeForce 1050. Not because it's a great card, but because it's price hasn't been jacked up my miners and it's the only one I could afford at the moment.
I just can't understand people spending over $1,000 on a 1080ti for mining, when they would be lucky to make $3 a day mining Ethereum with them. That's a pretty long time to wait to get a return on your investment, and there is still a good chance that the crypto market could crash in the next few months.
1:49:30
They discuss it quite a bit, with several of the panel talking about it, so they discuss that for at least 10 minutes or so.
Great video. Tanks.I found a very long video with 3dfx leadership where they discuss the entire history of their company, plus when asked what caused them to go from industry leader to bankruptcy in such a short time, they answered with this (I have it set to start at that question):
https://youtu.be/3MghYhf-GhU?t=1h49m30s
When I try to post it using the media embed button, it removes the time start, so I'm just linking directly to it. It's really a fascinating discussion panel.
Well, everyone at the table was apparently against the decision, and some of them were the same guys responsible for the chip side, and there is a lot of finger pointing after a failure.
IMO, the were never going to make that tech transition transition even with another year or even two of life.
Voodoo 3, was only 16 bit, had low res textures, wasn't that great a 2D card, and when Voodoo 4 came out it was behind everyone.
I think is mainly wishful thinking that whatever they had next would solve their problems.
You either have the chips people want, or you don't, and buy Voodoo 4, people didn't want 3dfx.
It was rumored that the Rampage chipset (which would have been Voodoo 6) would have resolved those issues. They ran out of cash long before it was ready, though. I'd like to think that at least some of that IP ended up in a GeForce product at some point.
From the bit of the video I watched, pretty much the only thing they used from 3dfx was the SLI marketing.
You think that "story" is true?
Let's be honest here, Nvidia (or AMD for that matter) don't really care who buys it, as long as they are selling it to someone.
There is no possible way to stop miners without having custom firmware that looks for mining patterns that would stop the mining programs, which can easily be done, yet, they don't do this, since they love selling cards.
Micro Center has been doing the 3rd card is $10,000 for >6 months now, as if that is gonna stop miners from paying people to pick up 2 at a time, they are STILL mostly out of stock.
Nvidia already sells specific cards by themselves via their site, if they do this for their whole line, all their AIB's will be pretty pissed off.
Right now, the whales are bypassing the retailers, and ordering directly from the AIBs, which is how they can get drop shipments. AIBs LOVE that, more $$$ for them.
Retailers will get small batches, and that is about it.
Not true. They released a card in 2011 based on the 3dfx IP they bought: The 3dfx 3D Voodoo 590
https://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/voodoo-revived
Seriously though, they probably used some of it in designing some of their GPUs. Outside of SLI, I doubt they use much of it all this years later, but who knows for sure outside of their engineers/management.
They wouldn't have bought the IP from 3dfx before they went bankrupt if they didn't want it. They also didn't want the IP to be sold off in bankruptcy proceedings to their competitors.