I remember reading this at the time and being really impressed. Took me a long time to find this article again. Enjoy.
Thanks for the good read I really enjoyed owning 3DFX GPU,s shame they were purchased by NVidia. 3dFX sli would have been so much better some game devs should read this 3DFX were aiming for 120fps back then not the sorry 30 some game devs are aiming for now
3DFX were awesome up till nvidia came with geforce 2, and voodoo 4 and so on were awful, had the voodoo 3 3500 TV, was amazing card at that day.
I remember this article too. Amazing to look back now and see how cutting-edge 3DFX were and how relevant and relate-able the technology is even now. If memory serves me correctly this would have been around 1996/1997. I worked in a privately owned computer store around this time and every man and his dog wanted a 3DFX card. We sold hundreds of new computer systems off the back of some Unreal, Quake and Tombraider demos that ran on some of my builds at the front of the store. Good times.
Funny how Pray had first screenshots around Duke3D and still it didn't come out until 2006. Such nostalgia trip... Die by the Sword had such awesome controls and for some reason nobody have tried to copy it to this day (to my knowledge).
I loved my voodoo2 12mb cards sli. I had about 6 of them... Every computer I had back then would have a matrox card for 2d and 2 Creative Labs Voodoo 2's sli'd. Playing quake 2 at 1024x768 at 75fps was awesome stuff...
Nvdia didn't purchase 3dfx (which was already bankrupt) but their Industrial Property an trademarks. You should inform better about the fall of 3dfx. On the other hand, the article says clearly 3dfx was aiming for 60 fps arguing 120 fps is too much for the human eye. Lol.
I take exception to that claim. On paper, yes the specs were better, but the Detonator drivers were awful back then, and 3dfx GLide drivers were mature, not to mention 3rd party tweaked drivers specifically for certain games. There was a whole article on Tom's Hardware if IIRC, comparing the IQ and framerate of nvdia vs 3dfx cards on Quake 3. With 16-bit textures the Voodoo render looked better with the GLide drivers than the TNT with 32-bit. Even the TNT2 couldn't match a Voodoo 3 in real-world performance in most popular games of the time. It wasn't until the GeForce 256 that the drivers were working well enough and the card was powerful enough to eclipse 3dfx. Also at this time D3D was starting to eclipse OpenGL and GLide games, which was a big advantage to Nvidia hardware. Initially most of the popular games were released with builds or patches specifically for 3dfx hardware, which allowed 3dfx to stay competitive for a year longer than they otherwise would have. I haven't bothered to check any of what I just posted, but I think overall it's right. This is just my memories of those days.
Used to own Stealth III s540 video card and couple of voodoo's, Bring back royal memories, I remember Playing the 1st unreal back then, septerra core, Planescape torment,drakken,etc. Good days.
Omg, I played pretty much every game in those screenshots - damn I am getting old XD I personally never had a 3DFX although I did want to get one - I was rocking a Riva TNT2 back then, I think it was like 200 bucks cheaper then the 3DFX cards if my memory serves me right. After that I went Geforce 2 and never really got a chance to get a 3DFX as by the time of my next upgrade they were all but gone. Edit; Skipped the Geforce 3 series and got a Point of View Geforce 4 Ti 4200 .. sigh good old days.