3dfx Doesn't Announce V4 Slip

yeah 38.... I play with a 450 and SLI at 640x480, and if I turn on dynamic lighting, I can SEE the framerate drop. (though would I be correct in assuming NV10 won\'t do dynamic lights for Q3 since they aren\'t vertex?)

heh, 33, seriously, think before you type. It sounds to me like you buy every card that comes out, and then get mad because the industry is moving forward. If you always want to be cutting edge, then you\'re going to pay for it.

Heh, and I can\'t believe you call the NV10 a crappy filler card till the next technology comes out. NV10 IS the next technology, even if you don\'t like the chip for some reason. (and all the while seeminly defending 3dfx, who give us SO many of the features we want...) What\'s with people\'s intense like/dislike of these companies anyway?

#33... ummm... You\'re ASKING for a flame. Makes TONS of sense that you\'d go out and spend a bunch of money on a couple vid cards that you find no value in and then bitch about having spent the money. It\'s also NOT NVIDIA who sets the prices for the boards that bear their chipsets. Go bitch to Guillemot and Hercules.

As for your TNT1 being a POS now, if I had a Voodoo2, I\'d take that POS any day of the week. I\'ve seen Q3 run on a Voodoo2, and all I have to say is \"ew\" and \"slow.\" The TNT may not be worlds better, but it\'d make me a hell of a lot happier than a Voodoo2.

As far as T&L are concerned, WTF do you know? Are you a developer? Probably not, I\'d assume. Bite yer tongue \'til final silicon ships and the *supposed* supporting games start to show up. Before either of the above mentioned events happen, you really don\'t know dick.

Yeah, maybe 3dfx didn\'t announce if they do or do not have T&L because they were still considering whether to put it on V4. I heard rumours of it being available as an add-on sometime ago. I would consider this delay to be T&L-related. I would seriously consider getting a non-T&L card next month, but not next February. I want a new card *NOW*, I skipped the TNT2Ultra and now I\'m ready to drop some serious dough. Then next year if a super-chip comes out I\'ll do it again and pass on the GeForce to the family :)

#31

Did you notice though how Billy said \"games in the NEAR future, like in the next 2 or 3 months\"

ALL the developers missed that part and started rambling on about how it will help them in the future or for their next
game or whatever. Who cares about next year. Do any of these same developers have games coming out
in the next 3 months that use T&L? No.

Yes, it will help in the future, but not today.

But my guess is that 3dfx went off and will probably dump a T&L engine onto
the card. If they do that, great. Will kick the GeForce out of the water.

Still, I wonder what nVidia can do with that GeForce. 480MegaPixels and it
only runs at 120 mhz. If they can clock it to 200mhz, its going to be FAST, FR wise too.

#20, where is this 5 to 6 month delay your talking about?
I dont see it. It wasn\'t supposed to come out until November anyways
so this is just a 2 or 3 month delay. Remember TNT? Remember
TNT2? No, those delays don\'t count anymore do they.

Now for the V4/Napalm. Obviously something is wrong. Does that
spell disaster at 3dfx? Hardly. It means they want to beef up the fucking card and
come back with something that kicks ass. Im happy. Means we will see more competition,
better cards and lower prices. BTW, everybody forget the Rampage? The secret true
NEXT GENERATION CARD? Is it real? Fuck if I know. But if it is, it will be to current cards, what Voodoo Graphics
was to the Diamond Edge 3d. (remember that?)

Every company gets relaxed and sits on their asses once they get successful. Matrox did it.
S3 did it, 3dfx obviously is DOING it now and I think nVidia is STARTING to do it. The GeForce
to me, is nothing more than a cranked up TNT2. I don\'t expect to see much faster frame rates with it,
probably in the 30 to 40% range. But um, sorry. Thats not enough for me. Not after having to spend, what?
500 canadian to get this new card and ditching my \"old\" Xentor 32 that I just dropped 300 on. Plus that Hercules TNT1
that is less than a year old since day of its release, and allready sucks shit? Sorry, but nVidia pisses me off. My V1 lasted 2 years, my V2 still works fine
too and its going on 2 years. ALL of nVidias cards have a product life of less than a day it seams, before they suck cock.

O wow. T&L or is that T&A? :) What games use it? Unreal? No. Quake3? Barely. My P3 can handle
the triangles in Q3 with out a problem. Its going to be atleast a year before we see
games that start to use enough polygons in a scene for T&L to be worthwhile. BUT, a few hundred more MegaPixels,
would make a difference TODAY, and in every game that comes out for the next year.

Don\'t get me wrong. T&L is the tech of the future, but not this year. More like this timie next year, and personally, by then
nobody who buys a GeForce will even have it. It will be shit.
GeForce today is what the Voodoo 3 was 3 months ago. Just a crappy filler card until the next technology
comes out.

GeForce=Taking it up the ass
3dfx=Something a hell of a lot better, or so we think.

Anyways, thats just my 200 cents. Im sure the guys with noses up
nVidias asses will flame away.

BTW, I own 2 nVidia cards and only 1 3dfx card at the moment. While
the TNT2 is good, I still think I got fucked over on value.

#31, I was just going to mention that article. It\'s pretty startling how *all* the developers questions basically said \"T&L yay, fill-rate nay\". I can imagine what 3dfx people must have felt like when they saw this, and perhaps this was one of the reasons for the \"delay\"... I dunno, I think they canned their non-T&L chip. Bringing a non-T&L chip so late to market would be suicide (for the chip), it wouldn\'t make any sense. It would even make them look bad.

hey, i wanted to get an athlon with a V4 to play Q3 on it THIS YEAR.
now 3dfx comes up with that shit.
THIS SUCKS.
that Ge-force migt be the better buy, since 640x480 is nuff for me, so i don\'t care much about its somewhat limited fillrate (480 mpix/sec compared to about 1000 the v4 may have) because fillrate matters more at higher resolutions...

Holy cow, 3dfx-bashers are having a field day with this! What the morons don\'t realize is that they will just have less choice if 3dfx goes under. Let\'s just have ONE graphics company ok?

#10 I\'m with you, I think 3dfx just slipped so much with the Voodoo4 that they scrapped it and are concentrating on the Voodoo5. I bet there\'s a lot of \"reorganizing\" going on at 3dfx right now.

Basically this whole thing makes my life easier, now I know I\'m getting a GeForce this fall/winter, even though it doesn\'t seem to be that much better than a TNT2, and will probably be expensive as hell. Then I can wait until the V5/NV15 come out and I can wait until the prices fall down.

Actually phong12 is correct, and for those of you who still enjoy 3dfx blowing sunshine up your asses... bend over.

8 3/16 - how low can it go?

This company is now officially in the trash - get out while you can the glory days are looonng ago.

IT looks like 3DFX has finally lost he 3D accelerator battle. They are skipping an entire product cycle due to incompetance, they blatantly tell their stock holders that they are a bad company, and all they can say is that they \"expect\" their product to be the fasest when it comes out, in March.

Didn\'t they expect the card to ship next week? Well I expect that the 3DFX engineers are fucking shitting their pants out of fear for nVidia and SGI now. In march the GeForce 2 will be almost coming out, prolly fucking waste the 3DFX for fillrate, and push a few hundred million polys per second with those SGI guys there now. 3dfx is FUCKED hard now. They are blatantly no longer the speed kings, and by the time their next product comes out will have been beaten by every other graphics company there is. And their hideous \"T-buffer\" effects won\'t get them very far in the world of 500,000 polys per scene.

\"OH HELLO, MY NAME IS T-BUFFER! I AM BRINGING HOLYWOOD TO THE DESKTOP! (which I\'m not) I AM NEVER GOING TO COME OUT, PEOPLE DON\'T EVEN CARE ABOUT ME. I CREATE HIDEOUS GHOSTING AND BLURRING EFFECTS. I\'M A FUCKING MORON.\"

Recap: 3DFX really fucked up and they will pay for it with their stock prices and with humiliation from the entire graphics community, and from game developers with their lack of T-buffer effects.

This _IS_ going to be a GeForce chritmas.

ugh!! I refuse to buy that card until they change the name back to NV10 dammit!!!!!

Wow.... this gives Riva a clear win for this generation of cards. Even if the Voodoo4 outperforms the GheyForce, Riva will have a 3-4 month lead on development of nextgen stuff.

Also, I still haven\'t heard of any solid specs being released for the Voodoo4, which puts it in the same category as the Glaze3D: vaporware. When we start hearing about some credible specs, maybe we\'ll believe it. But until then, 3dfx can\'t do jack about comparing their \"product\" to Riva\'s.

I\'ll be getting a GeForce. No point in waiting on 3dfx.

MID MARCH? MIIID MAAARCH!??!!? I thought this damn thing was supposed to compete with NV10!! I mean, I *guess* it would be nice if the delays are to add some features (T&L especially) but seriously, they just knocked their asses totally out of the picture for a while.

Wasn\'t the Rampage scheduled for Q1?

I\'m betting 3dfx was afraid that the V4 would totaly bomb against the NV10. And has scraped thier plans for Napalm altogether. They are instead combining thier efforts to push Rampage on to the market as fast as they can.

For those of you that want to read that e-mail, there it is:

From: Greg Ballard <**@3dfx*.com>
To: \"\'Michael Potter\'\" <*mi*ch*ael*_g_potter@h*otma*il.c*om>
Subject: RE: V4 delay announcement
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 11:46:34 -0700

Michael,

There is no press conference scheduled, nor is there a \"formal\" announcement being made. We have started today to inform investors that we have determined that Napalm will not ship in the 4th quarter or if it does, too late in the quarter to have a meaningful impact on revenues. We now expect it to ship in mid February with an outside chance of mid March. We expect that when it does ship, it will be the leading performance chip in the market.

The chip is now back on a more predictable schedule with all the previous problems having been resolved. There is always risk, of course, from this point on but we feel very good about the chip at this point. We spent many more months in the back end that we thought was going to be required and, literally, time ran out for a reasonable shot at 4th quarter volumes.

We are guiding people to expect losses in Q3 and Q4 as our revenues will stay roughly the same (maybe down 10% in Q4) but with gross margins declining significantly. Q1 and Q2, however, we believe will be very strong quarters with a return to profitability.


~KK
Oh, and I am also saving for an Athlon based system to be purchased later next year -- hopeflly 1 Ghz. ;-)

SLI still rocks! :-)

Since mid-1998, I have run all the games I play (including Q3A) at 1024x768 and on the Canopus Cards it looks amazing. (They were the only ones who included an in-game gamma correction utility with their drivers). And now that I\'m spoiled, I couldn\'t upgrade to a card that didn\'t run at that resolution with screaming framerates and all the effects turned on.

Since neither NV-10 or Voodoo4 appear to be an all-inclusive solution, I think my honed skill of \"waiting\" will have override my urge to upgrade again. However, over the past year I\'ve updated my processor twice for less than it cost to buy a TNT2 Ultra. :-)

Currently, I\'m running a Celeron 366 PPGA @567 Mhz at 2.0 volts at home, and I\'m happy as a pig in mud. (I also have a 500 P-III at work with a TNT1, but even it can\'t compare to my SLI rig -- I have to run it at 640x480 with the same settings as my Voodoo2s to get non-laggy framerates in heavy Q3A battles. I guess I\'m just rambling now to convince myself waiting another 6-8 months is really worth it. :-)
That would mean it\'s been 2 years since I\'ve updated my 3-D video card.

~KK

Oh yeah, and it\'s also interesting that April was the month that the Voodoo2 came out - If Rampage came out in April that would be cool.

Mid-February? That\'s probably going to hurt 3dfx a bit. If the GeForce comes out in October, then that means 3dfx will be four months behind. Give it another 2 months, and Nvidia will have another part out...

My advice to 3dfx is to scrap the .20 micron part, and move their development resources into their .18 micron part. Who knows, they might be able to squeeze a Geometry processor in there afterall, and we\'ll all be happy.

Next April that is :/

I have decided to wait for Rampage or NV-15 and invest the money I would have spent this holiday season on a new card. Meanwhile, I\'ll be very content with my Canopus SLI rig that has gotten me by at 1024 x 768 quite nicely this past year :-)

~KK

how do you buy stock ?
i\'d like to do some trading for fun with a $50 heh :)