News Today is 3D graphics pioneer 3dfx's 24th death anniversary – platform still inspires gamers, enthusiasts, and makers long after Nvidia acquired the...

[Admin]

Seminal 3D graphics accelerator company 3dfx went under on this day, 24 years ago - but its spirit lives on.

Today is 3D graphics pioneer 3dfx's 24th death anniversary – platform still inspires gamers, enthusiasts, and makers long after Nvidia acquired the... : Read more

 

[Gururu]

A magic time to own one of those early voodoo cards on release. The feeling not since replicated 24 years later.

 

[Ogotai]

i still have 2 monster voodoo 2 12 megs cards, the g200 that went with them, as well as 1 or 2 2 voodoo 3s....

 

[thestryker]

I was too young (well parents wouldn't just hand me cash to buy them) for the peak era of the Voodoo 2, but definitely got to play a bit with a friend's machine that had a pair. I do have 2-3 of the cards that put 3DFX in the coffin before GeForce nailed it closed though. I'm not sure if I still have the TNT (Jensen brilliantly aimed at OEMs with this one), but I still have at least 2 of the TNT 2s including the fan favorite Diamond V770 Ultra.

I think what made that era was just how 3DFX came out of nowhere providing a complete 3D solution. Everyone else was forced to play catchup but we had a handful of years of varied companies trying new things because of it. Here's hoping Intel stays in the race and AMD decides they want consumer market share. I think there's plenty of room to have another good battle if they do.

 

[Elusive Ruse]

I remember deciding between a Voodoo 3 and a TNT2 32mb as a drop in upgrade to enjoy the new game that was all the rage called Max Payne. I ended up going with the latter.

 

[Sluggotg]

Back in the 90's I recommended buying buying 3dfx and Nvidia stock. When 3dfx bought STB so they could cut out the card manufacturers, I had to go back to my friends and tell them to ditch 3dfx.

I was blown away when I bought my first VooDoo 1 video card. When the VooDoo 2's came out, I bought a pair. Very exciting time to be a Computer Gamer.

 

[Pemalite]

Still have a 3DFX Voodoo 2 in my Retro PC.

 

[valthuer]

I remember deciding between a Voodoo 3 and a TNT2 32mb as a drop in upgrade to enjoy the new game that was all the rage called Max Payne. I ended up going with the latter.

Wise decision. If memory serves, Voodoo 3 didn't support 32 bit colour.

 

[King_V]

I remember being in the Riva 128 message board back in the late 90s.

I also remember one particular troll who would constantly post, to INSIST that 3dfx was going to utterly bury Nvidia. Mostly by responding to any counterargument with, and I quote: "GIGAPIXEL BABY!! HAHAHAHAHA!!"

Certain irony in that vs the reality that came to be.

 

[Syntaximus]

I owe PC gaming to the Voodoo 2.

Our first family computer (Gateway lol) had one thanks to my brother's savvy friend.
Coming from PS1 / N64 at the time, it was mind blowing to me.

 

[froggx]

I remember deciding between a Voodoo 3 and a TNT2 32mb as a drop in upgrade to enjoy the new game that was all the rage called Max Payne. I ended up going with the latter.

I ended up grabbing a Voodoo 3 at the time. I was coming from a riva128, which I found underwhelming at best, but the main reason I got the Voodoo was Glide. It had broad support and ran great. I had several games that required Glide to have hardware acceleration, with software rendering as the alternative, so a 3DFX card was pretty much a requirement for me. Kind of feels analagous to the way Nvidia uses Cuda nowadays.

Max Payne was a one trick pony. Bullet time loses its charm after you do it a couple hundred times.

 

[Kentmos]

Had a Voodoo 5 5500 AGP version. Boy what a card that was at that time!

 

[Ogotai]

Had a Voodoo 5 5500 AGP version. Boy what a card that was at that time!

its a shame 3dfx couldnt hold on a little longer, it would of been nice to see what Rampage was like and could of done....

 

[Elusive Ruse]

Max Payne was a one trick pony. Bullet time loses its charm after you do it a couple hundred times.

Not for a 16 year old 😆

 

[Eximo]

Still have my Voodoo 5 5500 PCI. Didn't have it when it was new, but picked it up on ebay in the mid-2000s when they were still cheap.

My first system had a voodoo 2 12MB in it, so I ended up with a lot of glide titles. Ending up doing SLI a little later, but quickly moved on to a voodoo3 3000. I used that well after its decline until I had to break down and switch to Nvidia. Though it has to be said that a lot of 2D gaming was still some of the best games at the time. So the 1MB video card was heavily used.

As someone mentioned compared to consoles at the time it was amazing. Only the glide equipped arcade machines matched PCs back then.

Now, Nvidia still owns the Voodoo name. They should bring it back at least as a one off product that does something related to graphics. Maybe some AI video tool?