Nvida Graphics Card Rise to High End Graphics(faster graphic chips)

What was the main factor of Nvida going from a middle class graphics card to higher end graphics cards ?,,answer acquisition of 3dfx Interactive Intellectual property rights and there engineers now working for Nvida. I'm not going into 3dfx and who made the company or it management.If you look at the timing of Nvida offering faster do all graphics cards. you'll see.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3dfx_Interactive



Cheers
3Fees

 

3Dfx, ah the good ol' days. I still own a pair of 8MB Voodoo 2's.

 

Yep, I used to use voodoo's and banshee cards from 3gfx. even did SLI back in the day.. the voodoo 5 was the last of their stuff I used before switching to Matrox / Nvidia and I actually miss how much better driver support was back that decade and a half ago.

think there is a voodoo 3 sitting on a shelf next to a Matrox Millennium and 3D daughter card

 

Not to mention how efficient the GLIDE API was, well at least compared to DirectX 7 at the time.

I remember buying my very first 3DFx Voodoo card, thinking that this whole "3D gaming" was just a fad, but my interest (as usual) got the better of me, and bought a new 3dfx Voodoo card for about $400 at the time (probably close to $800 today), but Descent 2 (my fav game at the time) was awesome with it. It was like going from VHS SD to 4k in one fell swoop. It was phenomenal. I convinced several friends to pony up for one too and they resisted greatly at first because of the cost, until I showed them on my computer (P4-66MHz lol) at the time, then thanked me after they saw how awesome it was.

 

I remember getting a Diamond Monster back in the the day. I wish I still had it.

 

This is completely wrong. By the time Nvidia bought 3DFX, they had already surpassed them. 3DFX were unable to keep up with Nvidia. That is clearly seen by the Voodoo 5000, 3DFX was resorting to stupid things that failed.

3DFX stalled after Voodoo 2. TNT was already catching up to Voodoo 2 and TNT 2 nearly doubled performance, closing gap on Voodoo 3. From there on out, it was game over for 3DFX. GeForce 256 is the first GPU as we know them today, Nvidia was the first to create something that had hardware support that was once done on CPU. Not 3FX, not ATi, or Matrox, it was Nvidia. Nvidia's GeForce was the first GPU that paved the way for what we have today.

You're assessment of Nvidia is completely wrong.

I owned both Voodoo 2 and Voodoo3 connected to a Matrox 2D card. But looking back at the demise of 3DFX, it's a lie to even imply that it was 3DFX take over that set Nvidia to high end graphics. By the time 3DFX take over was done, both Nvidia and ATi had faster and superior cards, with hardware video support. They were not just hardware for gaming, but for entertainment and CAD. 3DFX was just gaming. Sorry, 3DFX was not the reason.

Nvidia's rise was due to taking advantage of manufacturing process. You can clearly see every year when they die shrinked, they gained almost 50% performance boost, with almost 2x number of pipelines etc. They also were revolutionary with hardware T&L support and what we now call shaders. Nvidia was just so far more advanced and ahead of 3DFX, 3DFX could never catch up.

 

Then the ride on 8500 came along to show nvidia they had competition and then the 9700 came out to show them they had serious competition.

 

I loved my 3dfx cards. The Voodoo was the first card to show what was possible. TNT was the end for them. I still remember salivating as I was waiting for the Dynamite TNT2 Ultra to ship.

 

Man, those were the days when I could build computers just for the heck of it ha. I was a big fan of the Rendition Verite, think Creative Labs made the card with the chip, and then I later got a version from Diamond. Loved Voodoo's as well and had a 3DFx SLI setup, but kept pulling for the then underdog. And now they are all gone anyway ha. I'd be curious to see how many of these cards I still have buried in the basement.... the last of the beasts before I went laptop was the ATI 9800 Pro if I recall.

 

3Dfx were going for bigger is better design, Nvidia had lean designs that cost little and performed well.

 

And by Voodoo 5, GeForce 2 was more powerful.

 

I think ATi was very competitive from the beginning. Rage 128 was no slouch and 9600/9800 etc with HDR also were revolutionary. But in a bad way. HDR/Bloom is terrible.