3dfx Rampage: Coulda been!

"The TNT2 wasn’t as fast as the Voodoo3 on paper, but it offered faster Direct3D and (many times) OpenGL framerates than 3dfx’s offering."

What about the 3dfx beta one? didn't they have some hacked up one which pumped ass or some shit?


" Perhaps more importantly, 3dfx lost the marketing battle fought by nVidia in regards to 32-bit color support. Even though the TNT2 couldn’t necessarily run games at desirable framerates in 32-bit mode,"

I couldn't agree more!

"many consumers saw ’32-bit’ and noticed the numerical value to be higher than 3dfx’s claimed ’16-bit’ rendering and based their buying decision upon this fact."

True all too true.

I was using a GF2 Pro 64mb up until about 3 weeks ago, and the MAJORITY of games look fine in 16bit still - you can notice problems if you look for them yes.
You can also notice small problems if you DON'T look for them sometimes, yes.
but the speed vs image quality is so worth it, I was running most games @ 1024x768 medium detail at 60 fps - that's todays games on a card that is way back in yesterday.

A lot of people refuse to try 16bit at all, it's not desirable - and games like Doom 3 will look even worse in 16bit with so many passes but it is an option - after all it's HALF the data needing to be processed.

Finally - it's so true, 32bit - TNT series (1/ 2 / 2 ultra) = no go as far as I'm concerned - unless you run in 640x480 which is cobblers - the first real 32bit card was the GF1.

This is totaly random but semi-related. I was playing Half-Life the other day and I quit back to my desktop and all the settings were as they were in the game. I went to adjust it and noticed that it was set to 8-bit color. Is the Half-Life engine (Quake, after all) using 8-bit? I thought it was 16-bit color?

Wow, I wish the Rampage had made it to market. It sounds like it included everything you could want in a video card. He didn't mention anything about support for DX8 features, but I'm going to assume they were in there. That was the big push at the time the GF3 was in development, anyway.

As much as I supported Nvidia when 3dfx was struggling, I'm rather sad they went out, in the long run. They really did kick it all off for us.

Wow, this article contained a lot of uninformed bullshit.

20 + hardware lights and cell shading, T buffer, FSAA, blah blah blah...

First off, 20 + hardware lights would have been great....on a workstation card. People realized that using hardware lights required passing lots of triangles over the AGP bus, something that even today's computers have trouble handling. This is why people are switching over to ehancing image quality with less bandwidth intensive pixel shaders.

2nd, FSAA, T buffer, cel shading were all marketing gimmicks. They are certainly a subset of the things you can do with a GF4, a GF3 (with the possible exception of rotated grid anti aliasing), or a Radeon 8500. The Rampage certainly had no chance against GF3 if those had to be specifically supported on the card, as that would indicate lack of DX8 compatibility from the lack of a programmable pipeline.

Nvidia using 3DFX tech.

Technology wise, Nvidia probably took some of the 3DFX methodologies for doing low level rendering and applied it to their current product. Also, since Nvidia has former 3DFX and Gigapixel engineers, their thinking would certainly be reflected in NV30's design. However, you will never find anything identifiably 3DFX in NV30. All the technology will be too low level.

NV30+ will probably be capable of parallel processing so that Nvidia could break into the rendering farm and VR market ala Sony with the PS2 chip. However, the technology used would definitely NOT be SLI, as that technology pays no heed to the need to divy up the triangles on screen.

I hope I'm not the only one who noticed the entire part on Rampage is based on conjecture. NO ONE ever got official Rampage specs out of 3dfx or anywhere else. The specs that are quoted in that article are simply a rip from rumors people made up - I saw that exact set in fact. The only time 3dfx _ever_ said anything about Rampage was when they posted all that definition crap up on their web page by accident - and that was only some weird buffering scheme.

Remember what people said about the V3? "Oh, it'll be so fast it'll blow everything away." It was on the edge of not being able to compete with the TNT2 Ultra, and got slapped around by the Geforce256.
Remember what people said about the V5? "nVidia doesn't stand a chance, it has _two_ chips and it's coming out tomorrow!" The GeForce2 killed it when it missed its launch date, and it wasn't really all that impressive when it did come out.
Is it any surprise that 3dfx fanboys are saying the same thing about Rampage? It's even better - since 3dfx is dead, they can claim it's true, and no one can find the real truth and shut them up.

And, please, do not go "oh you're just a fanboy of another company" so you can casually dismiss what I've just said. I've bought 3D graphics cards from every major player: Matrox, nVidia, ATI, 3dfx. I could care less about where the chip's from - I just care what it does. 3dfx's high point was the Voodoo2. After that, they consistently made crap trade-offs that nVidia (and to a lesser extent, Matrox) pounded them to the ground for. The final straw was the Voodoo5 - they traded performance for image quality at a time point where people had perfectly fine image quality and didn't really want that much more, especially not when it would entail a 3 month delay and extremely-reduced frame-rates to go with it.

Let's see: 3dfx was 3+ years ahead of everyone else... or the given Rampage specs are total BS. I think the latter is far more likely. Don't get me wrong, the Rampage might have been a perfectly good competitor, but claiming it would have 12.8gig of bandwidth when they're just hitting that with cards today is just showing how gullible people can be when they want to believe something.

-Erwos

3dfx lost it when they started downplaying 32 bit color and hardware T&L. They had inferior image quality, and they claimed that SPEED as the only thing that was important. Too many people (myself included) would rather have GREAT image quality at a slightly slower framerate than something that's fast and ugly. Following THEIR logic, since 16 bit was faster than 32 bit, well SHIT, why not just play all games in 8-bit color, since THAT would be faster too.

It's a semi decent article until you read lines like "its entirely possibly nvidia will be stubborn and not use 3dfx technology" this implies that 3dfx tech is better then nvidia and nvidia wont have it in there products based on 3yr ago rivalry. Newflash dude they bought 3dfx & there patents/technology for a reason. There is no "stubborness" about it.

-The SAMe

3dfx vs Nvidia??? TNT2 vs Voodoo3 3000??? Plz advice, I want to upgrade my S3Virge :p

Andy

To 3dfx’s credit, the VSA-100-based video cards had significantly better image quality than their GeForce2 counterparts. (3dfx had vowed to improve the image quality beyond their competition following all the snubbing incurred from the 32-bit vs 16-bit debate months earlier).

So this was a classic case of marketing beating the better quality product?

Mr Zegers certainly seems to be painting that picture. Not that im a nvidia fanboy but i felt the geforce2's image quality to be better than the v5 in q3a. In 32bit mode of course...

Anyone remember that ebay auction of a voodoo 6000 or was it this rampage card, last year i think it was? just wondering what card it actually was and how much it went for.

With the release of the Voodoo Graphics chipset (and later the Voodoo2) 3dfx had put a headlock on the then-feeble competition
Yes, and when the competition wasn't feeble, they were not the best company. End of story.

Sounds like junk to me. Given what happened with the Voodoo5 line, had this card actually happened we'd be seeing:

1. 3d graphics about a year behind current quality due to horrible drivers and proprietary trash (GLide).
2. 3dfx computer cases with two ATX power supplies.

Bring on the 3dfx fanboys.

32 bit was over rated in games, 32 bit had a major hit on frame rates for the min visual diff, but marketing sells dooooodes.
3dfx had the better tech, but chimps for top end managers :(

a.limey ex 3dfx gamers forum member/fanboy.

53, Me too....

wow what a totally awesome article. i had no idea that the v5 chips were still supported like that ... 3dfx looked better than nvidia's cards in the beginning anyway

i kinda wish the rampage had been released...it would've stomped nvidias poop.

*opens drawer and dusts off 2 v5 5500's sitting under some papers*

*pours out 40oz King Cobra*

Quite an interesting read, really....

would have been nice not to have 3dfx die.

Sounds great and all but what kind of price are we talking about? It can be mightier than the Geforce 3 and cost $650 when the Geforce 3 debuted around $500, right?

Well, that kind of puts a hole in their dinghy anyway.

means the chip exists physically in silicon (not the card, just the chip)

thats a shame. i really wish they woulda been able to pull it out, it sounds like they had a killer part

good read

Quick comment: 3dfx managment SUCKED, 3dfx engineers ruled, and Rampage looked to be HOT HOT STUFF!