A Nice Little Walk Down 3DFx Memory Lane...

[jeepers]

Hi y'all,

Here's an article I found over at Digit-Life that spills the beans about what 3DFX was cooking up at the time of its demise.

As hard as it is for me to admit, since I've only ever owned 3DFX cards, I believe the company deserved to crumble because they were no longer "pushing the envelope" of technology the way NVidia has. The only great innovation on 3DFX's part, IMO, is AA.

Check it out for yourself and post you thoughts on this thread!

http://www.digit-life.com/articles/3dfxtribute/index.html

[JF_Aidan_Pryde]

First of All
That article is old news.

2) Spectre had more technology than the NV20 and you are saying nVidia pushes more technology?

I could post the specs sheet for Spectre and Fear but that's only for my bro and I.
:D :D :D

[msan_msw]

From what I understand the V4/V5 line was just a stop gap money maker for 3dfx as their bread & butter was the Rampage. Feature creep and other things just kept pushing the card further into the future to the point it buckled the company. I'm suspect of an article that says 3dfx didn't have features or were lacking in that area... They just didn't get them out. This thought just popped into my head too. 3dfx looked at what the gamer needed 'now' rather than in the future i.e their 16bit/T&L ideas. I feel they were correct but that doesn't sit well with the gaming community and especially with Nvidia fans. There's a difference between what features are available and what people actually use (AA being a big one and a good counterpoint).. However, at the time (no hindsight bias) I think AA was more important that T&L when the companies were battling it out.

On that note I heard that 3dfx was only a few months away from getting the Rampage chip to silicon. Total rumor but it did stick in my mental hard drive.... Too bad for 3dfx...

[Seldzar]

They actually did have silicon, it was sage that just came back from fab. Rampage itself was up and running OGL and DX without any major issues =-(

[Ailuros]

hey guys,

whatever it was or would have been, it's gone now and absolutely no use.

Jeepers I wonder though did you actually read the article, or where you just quickly brushing through?

What exactly do you mean just AA?

Not that it matters but it would have been a very strong competitor to the GF3.

I don't see where that article indicates that Spectre's highlight would have been only FSAA, but if for now some reviewers recommend a GF3 for Quincunx, (2x OGMS + 5 tap blur filter), I don't see what genuine RGMS (in 2x and 4x ) would have hurt.

Oh and the article is completely inaccurate in the products planned after Spectre.

What's the use though? It's just vaporware...

[rhink]

Its 2x RGMS, not OGMS on the GF3 ailuros. 4x is still OGMS. 4x RGMS on a rampage would have been impressive, I am sure...

[Ailuros]

do you mean Quincunx is equivalent to RGMS as in a similar output to 2xRGMS, or is it actually Rotated Grid.

The way I understood it, it is Ordered Grid and with the use of the 5-tap blur filter, gives an equivalent IQ quality to RGMS. (Corrections always welcome).

According to what I've heard from "insiders" the real strength of Spectre would have been a combination of RGMS and 32tap anisotropic filtering, as in the best IQ/performance relation. What I'm not sure of is, if they meant single chip or dual-chip Spectre (latter having a higher possibility to have minimal performance drop with AA/aniso, due to double fillrate).