Rumor has it that 3dfx has a new trick up their sleeve, and it has something to do with this:

[Hardware]

As I said mutiple times there is no need for GTS VS V5!
The V5 / 3dfx lost the war because of many wrong decisions (confirmed by dave,kristof etc)!

e.g.
0.25 vs 0.18
sdram vs ddram
multichip vs single
64mb vs 32 mb
no t&l vs t&l

even 3dfx admitted now they were wrong ony many points (they call nvidia just lucky because they did most things right thats childish for me)

the vsa100 chip is virtualy dead (not used anymore)
As speak for business the vsa100 was a fiasco

I hope 3dfx will survive long enough to get the rampage out!
3dfx needs badly money they have to sell out everything!

as the great pal "poster?" points out 3dfx will mostly fail to release the ramapge 2002 for one reason or another!



nvidia surpassed 3dfx in driver etc because they have big $$$ and a much larger driver team they can just AFFORD to do such things in a short time!
e.g. FSAA was pulled out from nvidia basically overnight! (and destroyed all 3dfx fsaa dreams!)

 

[NOX]

Hardware, did you catch any Marlins yet?

 

[Czar]

Ok, just got to work and its time to bitch a bit.

3dfx way of doing FSAA and nVidias way of doing FSAA are very alike, why do you think you get 2x performance drop when you put 2x FSAA on? Because the card has to either render the picture in 2x size or render it twice. 3dfx does FSAA by rendering the frame twice and rotating one of the frame a bit so its not in align with the main frame, thus making fsaa appearing. nVidia does this by rendering the frame 2x size and then convert it to the resolution you are using, thus making fsaa. So basicly its both software, its just that both use the cards hardware in some way, but the basic work is done by the CPU. I know I´m going to get flamed for this but thats part of the fun.

Anyway about HSR, like with FSAA, who cares if its software or hardware, as long as it looks good and plays good then we all are happy.

 

[Hardware]

Be careful Czar youn can be flamed by 3dfx zombies here!

 

[BenSkywalker]

nVidia's FSAA is considered to be hardware.

Don't know why that is such a big deal, every current hardware FSAA produces inferior results to software(including 3dfx's, ATi's, nVidia's, SGI's, and 3DLabs'/Intergraph's).

 

[Soccerman]

things that make me go hmm.. could it be that the Geforce cards are using higher quality textures (u know, above 3dfx's old 256X256 limit?)..

that's the only thing I can think of besides the problem being the V5 design itself. ahh well, without a sideby side comparison, it still looks sweet.. I'm not complaining here (though I'm lookin for some V5 action now..).

oh, exactly what API WERE u using? OpenGL? if so, then yeah, I can't find anything wrong (except it being 3dfx's fault) with the drivers/software...

if it was Direct3D... u should be ashamed of yourself! it looks horrid! it doesn't even work very well on my V3 (it doesn't crash, it's just not as good as the OpenGL implimentation).

 

[IBMer]

sdram vs ddram
multichip vs single
0.25 vs 0.18

There is nothing wrong with these things.

The V5 is already about as faster as the GTS even in some T&L games. With T&L, would you say these things would have been useless?

even 3dfx admitted now they were wrong ony many points (they call nvidia just lucky because they did most things right thats childish for me)

Dave and Kristof don't speak for 3dfx. They speak for themselves. When will guys learn this.

the vsa100 chip is virtualy dead (not used anymore)

Lovely Hardware, more BS with absolutely no proof. The VSA-100 is being used in helicopters, arcademachines, army simulators.... I don't see Nvidia's stuff being in any of this. The scalibility is a good thing.

I hope 3dfx will survive long enough to get the rampage out!
3dfx needs badly money they have to sell out everything!

More FUD. 3dfx is starting to make good business decisions. They are selling out things that they should have never decided to do on thier own in the first place. 3dfx should had never thought about bringing out the V5 6000 or making thier own cards in the first place. They are just correcting these decisions.

as the great pal "poster?" points out 3dfx will mostly fail to release the ramapge 2002 for one reason or another!

Actually I say it will probally be out by Christmas or the beginning of next year. This is because now other people will be manufacturing the cards and not 3dfx. They have a better likelyhood of sucess. Creative Labs will deffently want to get their cards out there before Guillimont and so on.

 

[DaveB3D]

Hardware, do you have the slightest idea of what the things you are rattling off? Sigh..

0.25 vs 0.18

Does mean jack when it really comes down to it. The primary limiting factor that I've found in overclocking the boards is the memory. So is a mute point.


sdram vs ddram

Again, no point at all. V5 doesn't need DDR memory. It uses SLI to gain additional bandwidth.

multichip vs single

A lot safer design. Safer in the fact that if memory makers can't pull through, 3dfx can still jump ahead without having to worry about it.

no t&l vs t&l

Not needed right now. T&L gains you some frames in the lower resolutions currently, but that is it. You hit a fill-rate limit too early.


even 3dfx admitted now they were wrong ony many points (they call nvidia just lucky because they did most things right thats childish for me)

No, I don't think 3dfx has ever said this.


the vsa100 chip is virtualy dead (not used anymore)
As speak for business the vsa100 was a fiasco


Bull. There are a LOAD of V5 and V4 boards out there in peoples computers. It gives really good performance, no question about that. And as we've gone over lately, the newest drivers have the performance up there with anything else. Also add to fact that arcade systems use them and even the US goverment. That itself says something.


as the great pal "poster?" points out 3dfx will mostly fail to release the ramapge 2002 for one reason or another!


That guy is clueless about it.


nvidia surpassed 3dfx in driver etc because they have big $$$ and a much larger driver team they can just AFFORD to do such things in a short time!
e.g. FSAA was pulled out from nvidia basically overnight! (and destroyed all 3dfx fsaa dreams!)



Hardly. It is interesting because everyone points to 3dfx when they talk about stability. Hrmm.. Must mean 3dfx has better drivers.. maybe a better team (hoping my friends at NVIDIA don't catch this )



3dfx way of doing FSAA and nVidias way of doing FSAA are very alike, why do you think you get 2x performance drop when you put 2x FSAA on? Because the card has to either render the picture in 2x size or render it twice. 3dfx does FSAA by rendering the frame twice and rotating one of the frame a bit so its not in align with the main frame, thus making fsaa appearing. nVidia does this by rendering the frame 2x size and then convert it to the resolution you are using, thus making fsaa. So basicly its both software, its just that both use the cards hardware in some way, but the basic work is done by the CPU. I know I´m going to get flamed for this but thats part of the fun.

Not true. With NVIDIA's 2x1, for example, you are only getting anti-aliasing in the horizontal. So all vertical angles get no anti-alasing. In the 1.5x1.5 I'm pretty sure that there are worst-case angles that don't get any AA either, but I'd have to double check that.


Yes, at 1024x768 4xFSAA my V5 looks great in Homeworld, but at the same resolution, my GF2 also looks awesome, and the colors seem to be more vibrant then my V5.

Adjust LOD bias and adjust gamma.



In short my question is if you think that it is accurate to classify the Geforce's AA as "software AA" based on the technicality that parts are being run on non-specific hardware units? And if so do you feel that the V5's AA could still be called "hardware AA" using the same guidelines?

Also do you feel it is/not misleading to the general public to refer to the Geforce's FSAA with the generality as software AA? Given the negative image & generality of it being inherently inferior as a result? Even if it has little or no effect on usage/performance(hypothetically speaking, I am not arguing here that it is or isn't a serious issue on the Geforce series).

What hardware/software does the geometry rotation on the V5?

Ok, they both do operations in hardware. The difference is that V5 hardware was designed to do it, and the GTS has instructions that tell it to use the existing hardware in certain ways to achieve AA. Everything is done in hardware, including the jitter.

 

[NOX]

<< if it was Direct3D... u should be ashamed of yourself! >>

LOL...I wouldn't do that, both cards were using OGL.

To be honest, my V3 was very hard to beat in HL/CS, and I had a hard time pulling that card out of my machine. It wasn?t has fast as the GF, but it produced a nice image and fast game play.

You know, what I?m planning on doing is taking all my cards (Riva TNT, Riva UTNT2, Savage S4, Voodoo2, V3 3000, and when the time comes, my GF2 and V5) and putting them all in a class case in my home, like a display case. That would be neat looking back on each card and remembering how each card was so great when they first came out, and today?s cards which are just getting faster and better (though some my disagree with the faster and better part). Hehehe?

 

[Hardware]

dave please stop your 3dfx pr crap!

kristof 3dfx:

I keep hearing this and I can think of a few incorrect decisions but they don't seem to fit in with this discussion topic. So what wrong decisions did 3dfx make and how could they know in advance that they were bad ?

One of the bad moves I know is that they put way too many eggs in one basket, actually to some degree you could say that NVIDIA made the same mistake. 3dfx and NVIDIA (at the GF1 time) were putting everything on one single product : VSA-100 and GF1. Neither company had fallback products. 3dfx is now, be it late, fanning out into other things like the TV Tuner. NVIDIA is now also fanning out with Motherboards, sound, etc... But essentially NVIDIA is still building on its &quot;one&quot; core product (the base GF1 core). If the next core fails all the other products, except for the sound, still depend on it. So both need fallback and both now are making those moves, 3dfx in multimedia and NVIDIA in sound. Not doing this fanning out is what I call a mistake, and 3dfx has been suffering from this mistake &quot;big&quot; time. If GF1 had seen a glitch (whatever kind) then NVIDIA would have been hurting in a &quot;very&quot; similar way, since they had no real fallback either.

Now what other incorrect management decisions did they make ? Were the multi-chip, .25, and SDRam bad decisions ? Can we call them management decisions ? Point is IMHO this could have worked just as well as selecting single chip, .18 and DDR. The difference is that .25 and SDRam were certainties while .18 and DDR weren't. Naturally 3dfx failed to execute their idea, and this failure in execution has hurt them. But who do you blame for that ? What went &quot;really&quot; wrong in the execution ? Was the multi-chip idea to blame for it ? Was it an old tool they used ? Was there a bug in a library ? Did the fab f..k up ? Did they fail to secure enough production ? Did a single engineer fail to fix a bug ? Point is we'll probably never know. But if they had executed the .25, SDRAM and multichip - it &quot;could&quot; have been sound decisions.

So what did management really do wrong ? What are the factual mistakes they made ? Today its easy to say multi-chip was bad, but if you trace back to the start you have to admit that it could have worked just as well... at least thats what I think.

So please enlighten me on what went wrong... what did management do that was soo bad ?

Leaving the chip market is also arguable a bad move, they pretty much handed all deals to NVIDIA since ATI and Matrox don't sell to board makers. S3 left the market and Imagination hasn't been very successfull - so what could Creative Labs and others do ? But how did 3dfx reason about it... they saw their margins getting smaller and smaller, more companies more competition more different Voodoo2 products... in the end competition was soo huge it ate away the 3dfx profit too. So they reasoned: single source, we determine the price, we maintain the full profit margin. Seems like 3dfx allowed itself to be squased by Creative Labs while NVIDIA maintains high prices no matter how many deals they have. So did they screw up there, probably.

To me it seems like 3dfx is acting more and more like Videologic. Videologic has been suffering bad management decisions for a long time (at least according to its investors). Videologic also had huge costs (made a loss for many years in a row IIRC), they also make boards and they have nice technology but they fail to execute on time to compete. Videologic has re-structured into IP business and 3dfx seems to act in similar ways. 3dfx is re-structuring, they are talking about IP licensing. So they look quite similar to me.

Ah well... I am curious how the next gen of all companies will do... wonder where each company will end. People have lost faith in 3dfx and its understandable, we'll see what Spectre brings: the end or the re-birth. What do you people expect of Spectre to compete ? Does it have to beat NV20 in all playing fields : Performance, Features and Prize ? Or will one of those do ? For example ATI competes mainly with Features at the moment. KYRO competes a bit with Prize... where do you expect 3dfx to be - since right now they don't really compete in any field (prize, performance, features) ?

My pal mr poster:

quote:
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Originally posted by Kristof:
Care to elaborate on those misguided decisions ? What are they and Why are they misguided ?

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I was hoping that nobody would ask as now I have to spend lots of time composing a reply. I mentioned some of these already, but I try to explain myself this time.

Multichip scalability

This was the source of all the trouble. It misfocused the project as the there was no need to seek solutions to make individual chips fast (just throw in some more!).

They underestimated the complexity of interchip communication (at least partial reason to v5 lateness and v56k troubles) and probably the related driver issues .

The mainstream solution (v5) is double chip, which is horrible costwise, hence bad margins and high prices. For multichip to work financially, the mass market product should definitely be a singe chip.


Synchronized core/memory

This is related to above. 3dfx totally underestimated how fast high speed DDR would become cost effective. With their synchronized design, they were unable to take advantage of the high speed memory as it become available.

Nvidia was initially critisized for having a fast core that was seriously hampered by the memory bandwidth. Now they are selling about the same chip with huge premium as the Ultra. Great stuff businesswise.


0.25 process tech

This was supposed to be easy and well known and some 3dfx rep was actually ridiculing nvidia for choosing the more advanced tech for geforce. They had troubles getting their complex design to work with the old process (contributing to initial delays) and in the long run, it has become very ineffective cost wise.


T-buffer

Ok, no one will agree with me here, but I consider T-buffer a major hack. FSAA should not be done in the video out level. The hackiness actually shows up when trying to get screenshots and in lack of windowed FSAA. Please note that I'm NOT critisizing rotated grid, thats obviously the right way to go. This somewhat academic argument, businesswise what they did here was clearly the right thing.


Lack of high quality OpenGL drivers

There is clearly a decision to put engineering resources elsewhere. While gamers don't care, developers and businesses do. What game developers use in their dev machines today is what gamers have in their machines tomorrow. If 3dfx had bothered do this work early, it would now be much easier to develop drivers for Rampage and other upcoming products.


(apparent) Discontinuety from VSA to Rampage

Some people want to see revolutionary tech. However while less sexy, evolution is usually more effective and much easier to accomplist. Witness how far Nvidia has come by incrementally improving their product. I don't expect NV20 to be a revolutionary either.

3dfx has fallen so far behind that they must try revolutionary generation leap with rampage. Everything is supposed to be new. This means that they must deal with all the complexities at the same time instead one at time. I'm afraid this will overhelm them and cause delays and other problems.

Witness how long it took nvidia to understand how to effectively drive their T&amp;L hardware. Now they understand the issues and can consentrate on other things.

Ok, I'll stop now. I think there were some other things I had in mind too, but I have already happily forgotten them.


quote:
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IMHO If things would have gone to plan (read no 6+ month delay for whatever reasons there have been) then things would have been different, 3dfx would have had low to high-end products. The 6 months delay set the window &quot;wide&quot; open for NVIDIA.

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I think in that case VSA might have been moderately successfull and 3dfx would be in better financial position now. Nvidia would still be dominating.

I believe that VSA's lateness was due to wrong technical decisions. It was not something that just magically happened.


quote:
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I am also not sure about your 2- and 3-way marketplace. Never underestimate the competition and there is more than just 3dfx and ATI. Matrox is still kicking, Imagination technologies also is, S3 remains in two of the markets NVIDIA wants to compete in (Laptops and Integrated). So 2-way is a bit over simplistic... definitely don't forget the famous BitBoys they have been beating NVIDIA for over a year now

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I think that the marketplace is currently two-way. ATI and NV are the only significant players. 3dfx (and everyone elses) volumes are too low to register in the radar. I hope that 3dfx can get back to the battle.

3dfx is getting attention (this post included) as much as it does only because of historical reasons.

Phew.


i suggest all nvidia and 3dfx supporter should read this!



One of the best threads over 3dfx and nvidia!

 

[ndee]

Hardware: Why don't you understand that Dave ISN'T TALKING FOR 3DFX! Sure, maybe his heart beats more for 3Dfx than for nVidia, that's understandable, but when he talks, he names FACTS, and not only this &quot;0.18 vs 0.25&quot; stuff.

Hardware, please be more tolerant

 

[DaveB3D]

Hardware.. I'm going to chew you out REALLY bad one of these days.. when I do you aren't going to like it at all.. Just a warning.


Kristof 1) does not speak for 3dfx and 2) has not even started working at 3dfx yet. He is still in Belgium waiting for his visa. SUCK IT DOWN!



So tell me something Hardware.. can't post for yourself? Gotta quote other people you moron? Huh? Everything said here has already been address @ Beyond 3D you dork.

EAT IT!

 

[Sohcan]

<< dave please stop your 3dfx pr crap! >>

His opinions are his own, and regardless if I or anyone else agree with him, he has a right to post them. I hardly consider you a qualified candidate to judge who can and cannot post here.

 

[DaveB3D]

I find it funny that I'm the one with the &quot;pr crap&quot;.

Consider the following:


Hardware says things all of the time. Like in this case here. In other cases he says things that are obviously wrong. So I give sound, reasonable answers to those claims. Hardware comes back and says I'm spilling PR crap. However, he cannot seem to be able to answer my &quot;pr crap&quot; on his own, so he quotes someone else. Now the problem with that as well is that sound answers have already been given to the quote me made. So why is he quoting it at all? I come up with two reason: 1) he can't answer for himself do to an obvious lack of technical understanding and 2) he is such a fanboy that he insists on saying something.


My thoughts anyway.

 

[RoboTECH]

what's the differce between an &quot;nvidiot&quot; and an nvidia &quot;fanboy&quot;?

a fanboy (ala Matt from 3dgpu.com) is one who likes their company, but doesn't feel the need to rip others to shreds

an nvidiot (ala Hardware) just obviously has a serious hardon for a company, and spends his waking hours trying to dig at others for whatever ridiculous reason

 

[Soccerman]

&quot;just obviously has a serious hardon for a company&quot;

LOL.. funny line..

 

[Wingznut]

Actually, he just needs attention. He can't seem to garner enough by writing insightful, intelligent posts, so he takes the easy way to get people's attention. By trying to incite them.

 

[IBMer]

One of these days, we will prove that Hardware is really Derek Perez.

 

[Hardware]

who is derek perez?

 

[Sunner]

I thiknk we should just let Dave and Hardware fight it out in one big 3dfx zombies vs nVidiots slugfest.

And maybe we could let Bubba and Derek in there too, sorta like one junior and one senior fight

 

[DaveB3D]

hehe.. that could be entertaining.

 

[Hardware]

strange enough I am no nvidiot ( didnt have a gts !) (just a ddr for office work)

 

[Truro]

I don't read hardware's posts anymore. When I see his handle, I skip to the next thread. Try it, you know there's nobody home anyway.

 

[Hardware]

turo: you are welcome to skip me!

 

[bluemax]

We shall now try to convince Hardware that 3dfx *IS* capable of producing a good video card (and the 5500 IS a good card.)
We will be using tact, sound mind, well planned arguments...
and a swinging bright, shiny object on a piece of string.