ViRge was definitely a disappointment for many. Most people who bought one bought it because it was a 3D card, but it was the kind of card that supported features only to be able to say on the box it supported them (I call them "checkbox" features). People who did research knew it wasn't a gaming card and in no way compared to any gaming 3D card and so avoided it. As a result, pretty much anyone who owned one felt duped. That particular card was pretty much at the dawn of 3D as a technology, and technically supported 3D features, but wasn't fast enough to utilize any of them at any sort of reasonable framerate when playing a game.
I put that kind of thing in the same category of the GeForce 4 MX cards. I can't remember how many people I talked to who had one of these and was extremely disappointed, but the information was out there. It shouldn't have been surprising that you buy a GPU that's basically a shrink of a 2 generations old low end chip (GeForce 2 MX) and couple it with 64 bit memory that it would perform like garbage. The Ti 4200 was a TON faster, but not all that much more expensive, so people who researched would save up for the Ti 4200, so the only people who owned a GF4MX card were those who felt duped. But, to be fair it was far more difficult to do that kind of research in ~2000 than it is now.