Rampage?

[rexranger]

i already posted this at 3dfxliveson but i wanted to get anwers fast, (sorry Shaun) so i want you guys to tell me if this is a picture of a rampage or not. http://www.hwzone.it/html/zoom.php?id=1774&tabella=news&num=0&referer=/html/news.php?id=1774

i know 3dfx had the rampage in silicon but is this possible? i don't speak italian so i can't tell if the article i clicked on is related to this picure, which was off to the side, was for the same article or not. what do u guys think?

[Ailuros]

Yep it's a single chip SPECTRE (no sage) on a v5 PCB, that's why it looks so huge (credit goes to Vince :D ).

There's a big thread about it somewhere here on page 2 or 3.

Find it, it should answer most of your questions. :D

[rexranger]

thanks, haven't been around much lately, been real busy on my CAD project for the past month or so. thanks for the info!

[Madd Frog]

This is what AltaVista translates it into.

The adjective last is not used for case; it seems that these are the fotol of first sample the seed-definitive one working of the card 3dfx Rampage. They go back before to little days that NVIDIA acquired 3dfx; this card therefore nearly sure will not be never immessa on the market. Ricordiamone also the characteristics

[scottg26]

Originally posted by Madd Frog:
This is what AltaVista translates it into.

The adjective last is not used for case; it seems that these are the fotol of first sample the seed-definitive one working of the card 3dfx Rampage. They go back before to little days that NVIDIA acquired 3dfx; this card therefore nearly sure will not be never immessa on the market. Ricordiamone also the characteristics

i think the language it was in BEFORE it was translated was easier to understand............ :D

[Quackass]

where can you find out about rampage? will it ever be made? (3dfx sold the rights to some stuff to some people so..)

[Vince]

credit goes to Vince

Thanks, :-)

Ailuros21, While I'm at it... I noticed another problem you have, and wrote a long explination and the correct story, then deleted it :-)

'Rampage' in it's origional form wasn't ment to follow Voodoo3 like u stated. The project was started in early 1997 and was designed as a totally new raster core. It was suppose to be unveiled for the fall Comdex '98, and replace the Voodoo2 launched early that year. But, due to engineering and managment problems, it fell behind untill it was cancelled at a review meeting on the late Q4 of 1998.

Voodoo3 and VSA-100 were 'filler' products. Voodoo2 was an offshoot of Seller's "Black-Belt" chip for Sega of America. Banshee was a legit project, although really late due to the same problems that plagued 'Rampage' (Engineering, managment, ect)

Voodoo3 was a quick cover to keep the newly aquired STB plant in Juarez producing. Just another TMU added to Banshee with a die shrink.

There's still alot of debate about VSA-100 and if it was planned for or suddenly 'evolved' from a Voodoo3 4000.

All I know is that they had the full VSA-100 specs with 200mhz clock speed and Mitsubishi IMPAC-GE T&L engine presented at Immersion '99. So VSA-100 was conceived before then...

During this time, Emmett Kilgarif took over, raised his own staff and made 'Rampage/SAGE' what it is today. (I mean that in a good way - the mans a genius)

[ 04-29-2001: Message edited by: Vince ]

[Madd Frog]

scottg26, I laughed my ass off trying to read it in Italian, laughed even harder at the translation into English :D

[Ailuros]

Vince,
I appreciate the correction. I have the whole story copied that you posted once at B3D if my memory serves me well.

I tried to reproduce it here at work, just from what I remembered.

Thank You for setting the record straight.

[Ailuros]

All I know is that they had the full VSA-100 specs with 200mhz clock speed and Mitsubishi IMPAC-GE T&L engine presented at Immersion '99. So VSA-100 was conceived before then...

Vince,
This is the first time I run across that one. Why didn't they release it then with a 200mhz clock speed and a T&L unit?

Did they cut back the project just to avoid more delays? Or didn't it live up to their expectations?

[Seldzar]

From my understanding ailuros, they cut the t&l unit after nvidia released the specs on their t&l and the v5's was not even close. Not only that apparently it was crap. I can only assume the 200mhz clock was a wishful thinking, or assuming best yield for the chip.

[tron3dfx]

Nah, the yields weren't coming out even close to 200mhz, maybe a few here and there...that was right around the time we were having all those problems with even getting chips made in the first place (the infamous "chip" shortage) remember??

I really don't know the intimate details, either the TSMC didn't like us or the guys in charge (*cough*) were just being idiots... :eek:

[jukey]

Here's an idea, 3DFX management could be executed for their crimes against humanity. I'm thinking this is quite reasonable ;)

[Ailuros]

Castration would be a nice idea too. Better to see them suffer :D than dead.....hehehe

[jukey]

True, true... :p

[Vince]

From my understanding ailuros, they cut the t&l unit after nvidia released the specs on their t&l and the v5's was not even close.

The IMPAC-GE isn't 'crap', it was actually a good TCL accelerator for it's time, but had compatability problems and preformance in Gameswas bad. "Sucked" was a word used to describe it I think.

The Mitsubishi IMPAC-GE was a microcode programmable SIMD geometry engine that allowed for load-balancing with the host CPU. It was cool because it would scale with the CPU, thus it will never become a bottleneck when faster processors are released like in the GeFORCE family. So it acts like a 'turbo-booster' that always helpes to increase TCL preformance that your CPU can preform.

Also, if your qurious why 3dfx allowed the Voodoo5 5xxx series to only have AGP 1X support and the 6000 to have a bridge chip, it's because they were planning on using the IMPAC-GE as the bridge.

IMPAC-GE features a flexible "PCI/AGP to PCI" bridge that configures two asynchronous PCI and AGP busses and employs a direct memory access (DMA) control function. This allows IMPAC-GE to be used with most rendering controllers used in the industry

I can only assume the 200mhz clock was a wishful thinking, or assuming best yield for the chip.


Well, 3dfx was planning on a spread from 166mhz - 200mhz. With the huge OC potential of the Voodoo3 line, 200mhz seemed very reasonable for the optimized VSA-100. Unfortunatly, RAM prices limited them to the lowest speed, not the chip intself.

[Ailuros]

Vince,
weren´t those incompatibilities surpassable?
Or didn´t they have enough time to work around it?

---------------------
By the way I granted you a 5 score, because someone has the interesting habit to hand out ones.

At least Vince is one of the very well informed and decent posters, and definitely deserves better......

[tron3dfx]

Vince if I remember correctly we had a real hard time getting any Naplam chips to run reliably at speeds higher than 190mhz (reliably, that is), the consensus I got was that the yields were not as high as initially expected. I could be wrong but that's the info. I got... :D

[Dr. Feelgood]

Vince, have a 5 rating from me too. I agree with Ailuros.

[Vince]

Weren´t those incompatibilities surpassable?

Or didn´t they have enough time to work around it?

This really isn't a question I can answer for sure... 'cause I don't know. I know that it was 'in' for Immersion '99. (Along with the dual head V5 6K <drool> )Then, early that September I heard that it was cut because of difficulties. "ie. preformance sucked"

The IMPAC-GE was chosen because it was off the shelf hardware. The inhouse 'SAGE' was still over a year away remember. Mitsubishi developed the chip for the high-end OGL market with alot of influence from Evans & Sutherland AFAIK... wasn't ment for 3D gaming compatability.

I just don't know enough about this, you could ask the Anonymous Posters at B3D. They'd most likely know the full story.

Vince if I remember correctly we had a real hard time getting any Naplam chips to run reliably at speeds higher than 190mhz

This is probobly true... :-) AFAIK, Quantum3D was running their higher end chips @ 200mhz.

PS. Thx for the 5-rating!!!

[jukey]

A 5 for Vince from me as well, horraw :p

[JF_Aidan_Pryde]

What I am interested to know is, how exactly was the engineering team bad at 3dfx. I was always under the impression that the engineering was world class and the management was the piss poor part. (Triple alliteration!)

[Ailuros]

Originally posted by JF_Aidan_Pryde:
What I am interested to know is, how exactly was the engineering team bad at 3dfx. I was always under the impression that the engineering was world class and the management was the piss poor part. (Triple alliteration!)

Stay with that impression it's the correct one

:D

[JF_Aidan_Pryde]

ailuros, I wish I can but...
Given just HOW HARD it seems for 3dfx to release a darn product while nvidia can just go BOOM GF2, BOOM MX, BOOM ULTRA, BOOM GF GO.
I can't.

[tron3dfx]

The engineers were world class (still are! most of the best ones work for Nvidia now), make no mistake about that...the management was completely screwed from the time that 3dfx purchased STB (whom I was working for at the time), a couple of months after the merger was complete 3dfx fired all the major OEM cordinators, these were STB people who had spent years building relationships with all the biggies, Dell, Compaq, etc. That was the first fatal mistake and one that eventually led to our downfall as a company. We never recovered from that, and it was all management, the engineers had absolutely nothing to do with it...

<sigh> sad but true :mad:

[tron3dfx]

Originally posted by JF_Aidan_Pryde:
ailuros, I wish I can but...
Given just HOW HARD it seems for 3dfx to release a darn product while nvidia can just go BOOM GF2, BOOM MX, BOOM ULTRA, BOOM GF GO.
I can't.

--the products you mention are virtually the same chips with different clock speeds and variations on a central T&L theme...remember that Nvidia NEVER considered full-scene-anti-aliasing a big deal until we (3dfx) started hyping our T-Buffer, then it was front page news...I'm not bashing Nvidia's cards, but our cards were always superior in quality and craftsmanship and compatibility (IMHO)...

Are we still going to live by Nvidia and the so called "justified" need to pump out new cards every six months just to satisfy the idiots who think they have to have something new??? Who the hell wants to spend 3 to 400 bucks on a freaking video card EVERY six months??? (And who can afford it?) I can get an Athlon 1GHz with a top-of-the-line Asus A7V133 M/B, 256MB Crucial PC 133 CAS 2-2-2 ram, WD 40GB 7200 RPM ATA 100 HD for less than a freaking "Ultra", and I'm supposed to buy this every six months?

Sheesh, Anandtech just published some cheesy ass article about how Nvidia no longer "needs" to put out new cards with higher clock speeds and more hyped up T&L engines because the competition has already been driven under, time to relax now...

Idiotic comments like yours, I'm truly and terribly sorry to say, quite frankly make me want to vomit on your shoes

:mad: :mad: :mad:

[tron3dfx]

also, my apologies for the rant, nothing personal, just old "3dfx" issues I have, errrrggg

oh yea, and I still hate Nvidia, can you dig it? :D :D :D :D

[GrimFaceOfReality]

Who the hell wants to spend 3 to 400 bucks on a freaking video card EVERY six months??? (And who can afford it?) I can get an Athlon 1GHz with a top-of-the-line Asus A7V133 M/B, 256MB Crucial PC 133 CAS 2-2-2 ram, WD 40GB 7200 RPM ATA 100 HD for less than a freaking "Ultra", and I'm supposed to buy this every six months?


:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

1) OEM's cycle is 6 month. Nvidia's cycle in also 6 month. Oh boy, might there be a connection between the two?

2) No everyone can or wants to upgrade in the came time every year. You are not supposed to buy video card every six month. And (shocker) most people don't do that. Rational people upgrade when the performance improvement justifies the cost. My friend upgraded his GF DDR to GF2 Ultra last Xmas. I am looking at GF3 right now. 12 month cycle leaves the company very vulnerable the moves by competition.

No one is forcing anyone to buy a new card every six month! But you can. You have the choice. Choice = good.

I am pretty sure you know that 3dfx was going to switch to 6 month cycle as well. I wonder why.

[Ailuros]

Tron,

aidan is just frustrated that's all.

I agree on the 6-month cycle part, but then again what aidan mostly meant is that NVIDIA executed, one department 3dfx lacked seriously for a long period before it's demise.

Apart from product quality, improovements, pushing the envelope etc etc. ( I'd like to quote Sharks' recent excellent post here from the "why NVIDIA is not loved" thread to insert,but the majority has read it already), all that matters is who can win the impressions.

Think back, last year's product line. NVIDIA pumps out all the products Aidan forementioned in a blink of an eye, while it took 3dfx 9 months delay to show the v5 and with the budget v4 offering even much later behind.
There wasn't much hope for the v4 to gain any ground against the MX. Not with it's delay, not with it's price and not with it's feature list. No matter what anyone can oppose to that, the average gamer who doesn't care about brand names or anything else will pick up what appeals better and is first on the shelves.

The low-end is where the revenue lies and while the v3 2000 was a kick-ass seller in 99', I can't say the same for the v4.
Compare m64 or vanta to MX. The results are obvious.......

[tron3dfx]

All very true, which is why I apologized for my rant :D

Oh, I still hate Nvidia, hehehehehe :eek: :eek: :eek:

[THX]

So do I Jarrod. And after buying a GeForce2 I hate them even more. Its good for just a small handful of things like Tribes 2... But thats about it. Truth is, its a huge piece of shit.

[JF_Aidan_Pryde]

Hi Jarrod! Nice to have you drop in again.
Cool rant too. ;)
I realise that the GF/MX/PRO/ULTRA are same damn thing but what I was really wondering is why 3dfx didn't do that as well.
To vary clock speed/memory speed was easy as pie as it seemed, yet 3dfx seem to take so much effort just to execute a product.
What ailuros said pretty sums up what I meant.
Was it because 3dfx management didn't want it that way or Engineering never had those intensions?

hey, don't puke on my shoe, I hate nVidia just as much as you do! And thanks for the support back at 3dfxgamers.com.

ciao

Aidan Pryde

[JF_Aidan_Pryde]

And btw,
The main reason I did question the Engineernig team's quality in the first place is the execution problem. Was it an engineering problem or management?

[John Reynolds]

Originally posted by THX:
So do I Jarrod. And after buying a GeForce2 I hate them even more. Its good for just a small handful of things like Tribes 2... But thats about it. Truth is, its a huge piece of shit.

Well, I wouldn't go that far but after having tried out an Ultra with probably more games than your average 3-4 reviewers combined, I came away thinking that Nvidia was truly the MS of the 3D market: they took a clearly inferior product and, through superior marketing/PR efforts, successfully sold it over the competition. Inferior 2D, inferior image quality (in the majority of games, not that handful of titles that're slowly trickling out that really support T&L and/or Dot 3), inferior stability, inferior compatibility, requires driver shuffling, etc.

But that's just MHO. Hopefully the GF3 is a better product.

[Vince]

The main reason I did question the Engineernig team's quality in the first place is the execution problem. Was it an engineering problem or management?

It's like the Chi White Sox right now.. Amazinly talented team, but with no leadership there gettin their ass's kicked by teams they utterly destroyed last year when they won the division. (I was at the game where they lost 16 to 6, what would we have done without Marguritas and Peanuts?)

There needs to be strong leader who know how to, quite frankly, kick ass and take names. Looking back, 3dfx problems started with Ballard and his OEM descisions. Asshole had to have Banshee, by the time they stopped respining it, it was 8 months later. Due to stuff like this (and they fact that they knew he was a ****ing moron), in 1999 a huge chunk of 3dfx's engineering talent got up and left for nVidia.

So, when you loose a large amount of vital people, it hurts scheduals and the like.

[John Reynolds]

Originally posted by Vince:
It's like the Chi White Sox right now.. Amazinly talented team, but with no leadership there gettin their ass's kicked by teams they utterly destroyed last year when they won the division. (I was at the game where they lost 16 to 6, what would we have done without Marguritas and Peanuts?)

There needs to be strong leader who know how to, quite frankly, kick ass and take names. Looking back, 3dfx problems started with Ballard and his OEM descisions. Asshole had to have Banshee, by the time they stopped respining it, it was 8 months later. Due to stuff like this (and they fact that they knew he was a ****ing moron), in 1999 a huge chunk of 3dfx's engineering talent got up and left for nVidia.

So, when you loose a large amount of vital people, it hurts scheduals and the like.

And the fact that management would feature creep projects to death didn't help either.

But you hit on something, Vince, that's rarely discussed online, probably because most people weren't too aware of it. 3dfx suffered personnel loses like crazy. It was like a constantly revolving door. And it went beyond engineering, too; key departments like PR and developer relations completely turned over in '99 and early '00. Some of the people who had been with 3dfx early on and helped make it what it was left in droves.

[GrimFaceOfReality]

John, it was discussed online, unfortunately most such discussions were carried out in the usual Nvidia Vs 3dfx format (every other words is "sucks").

[GrimFaceOfReality]

tron, THX;

You *hate* a company? Please.

[JF_Aidan_Pryde]

What's the employee's view on Tarolli and Sellers?

[JF_Aidan_Pryde]

I've been thinking, the REAL people we should be hating shouldn't be nVidia, they were just smart and ruthless. The Real SCREWERS are the bedoozed 3dfxf management people. I'm sure there was a good management guy or two but people like Ballard should be lynched. I would like to know more stupid things management did.

[minigunner]

We all remember this, do we not?

http://boards.fool.com/Message.asp?id=1250006014663000&sort=postdate

Please note the date.

Originally posted by sickof3d:
3dfx's problems for the last 2 years are not in any way attributable to earthquakes, part shortages, vendor problems nor even product design. You have to blame the Companies Management. Ballard forget to attend his Business 101 class and Leupp has not done what needs to be done. Only time will tell if it can change but the feedback I have from the employee's at 3dfx is that they have little faith that Leupp can turn the Company around. He sit's in office too much and waits for things to go wrong before taking action. ala Randy. Randy should have been gone as soon as Leupp took over. Every Operations employee could have told Leupp that if he would have only asked.........


We all now know that this is true... however what did people say about that at the time?

Originally posted by Vince:And Sick-of-3D did work for 3dfx, but doesn't any longer. he was probobly firred and is obvioulsy a disgruntled ex-employee. He's always been negative and pist off.

He's like a post office worker anyday of the week, AK-47 and all.

His comments have already been overlooked as bogas by the fools board, I mean 1 engeneer working on silicon checking/FAB relations is impossible, not to mention crazy. Please take it with a grain of salt.

Oh and did I mention he's been out of the 3dfx loop for... ohh 6+ Months? Ya, bet he didn't post that


Some 3dfx supporters shut their eyes and clogged their ears when it came to any negative info about 3dfx.. until it was too late. They were in denial about the management, the exodus, the financial difficulties to the last moment. All whistle blowers were dismissed as disgruntled. And then come the black Friday, they were the ones yelling “Who knew?”.

[ 05-01-2001: Message edited by: minigunner ]

[JF_Aidan_Pryde]

I think Leupp didn't do too poorly.
He put the brakes on the VSA respins and stopped further Rampage feature creep.

What I really want to know is which IDIOT scared away the investor. According to Anonymous Poster, 3dfx already aquired the funds they needed to get rampage out the door and keep on going, but management did something stupid and scared the investor away. Just this one damn mistake costed everything. :mad:

[JF_Aidan_Pryde]

Did Ballad get fired or did he stay till the end? Who was before or and after him(if any)?

[ 05-01-2001: Message edited by: JF_Aidan_Pryde ]

[minigunner]

Ballard was 3dfx CEO before Leupp.

[minigunner]

Let me put it this way: Leupp blew it. Granted, when Ballard left the company was already screwed up. But it was Leupps job to pull it out, he had many opportunities to do so and he failed to act on them. He also paid $182 million for GP and that was waay too much, considering the shape of the company.

[JF_Aidan_Pryde]

If thats the price that they had to pay, then they make the right choice.
It wasn't just about tech, it's about the engineers. How much people have 3dfx lost in the Ballad Exodus? Too much. Gigapixel was one long shot but worth it.

[Vince]

How much people have 3dfx lost in the Ballad Exodus? Too much. Gigapixel was one long shot but worth it.

I'm not sure, but I've heard that upwards of 70% of the engineers left 3dfx during this time. I don't know which projects they came from specifically if ytour wondering.

Minigunner,

He also paid $182 million for GP and that was waay too much

it was a stock swap (ie. no cash) valued at $182M, 3dfx GAINEDsomething like ~15M in onhand cash from GigaPixel.

All whistle blowers were dismissed as disgruntled. And then come the black Friday, they were the ones yelling “Who knew?”.

Or maybe the Whistle Blowers don't go hurting their own side... investor loyalty is an interesting concept, huh? :-)

[ 05-02-2001: Message edited by: Vince ]

[Ailuros]

not necessarily Aidan...... Here's where my dumb little mind throws out dumb ideas. Why not manufacture cards on Gigapixels behalf? Something similar what you see in the kyro today and the Imagination Technology/PowerVR/ST Microelectronics business scheme....

One thing I don't know is if the GP1 and GP2 were flawless designs and were able to find a place in the market......

3dfxintroduces the Hydra 2000 hehehehehe :D

(hey I'm sober...... :D ) ROFL

[Vince]

And it went beyond engineering, too; key departments like PR and developer relations completely turned over in '99 and early '00.

Huh? 3dfx actually had developer relations?

Oh ya, the 'Secret Website'. Doh!