As Steve mentioned earlier with another 3dfx 'technology announcement', this time regarding FXT1. That's what 3dfx is calling their new texture compression technology, which is very similar to S3TC, but slightly improved (better quality and compression ratio). FXT1 is going to be open source and cross-platform, something that I’m sure pleases many, including Carmack. (There's a G200 OGL driver that was open source, John found a bug, and then changed 2 lines of code to fix it.) While S3TC isn’t exclusive to Savage products due to DirectX’s texture compression, DX itself is a Microsoft product therefore making it a Windows only thing.

It's free and not part of a proprietary API -- check out the site. Would be interesting to see if NVidia or ATi actually pick these up, but not likely.

With NVidia actually releasing a new product 3dfx has to do something right? Well they have another "technology" announcement that comes out from under wraps this evening. Hereis what the ExtremeHW guys sent me:

an update on 3Dfx's latest technology announcement, FXT1 Texture Compression. In a nutshell, it's slightly better than S3TC with an 8:1 compression ratio. Also, it's cross-platform, cross-API, and completely open source.

One of those 3dfx interviews you guys all love. Check out The Pulpit with Gary Tarolli

Excitement of the day you ask? New Voodoo3 drivers! YEAH! I AM STOKED! Grab them here. Thanks Rachel (yeah, a female reader!) So are they any faster?

Brian Burke of 3dfx has an interview at Tom's Vaporware? Thanks VE

Carried this one over from last night since it's so interesting. Firingsquad has a big interview with the CTO of 3dfx which asks all kinds of interesting questions. They talk about the next-gen stuff from 3dfx, the announcements from NVidia and S3 recently, and all kinds of other goodies. 3dfx seem nervous to you guys?

Not sure I've ever really linked one of these reviews. GameSpot takes a look at the fastest 3dfx card currently available, the Voodoo3 3500.

Firehawk over at VE has spotted some updated Voodoo3 9x drivers on 3dfx's page dispite the July 22 date saying that they "aren't really new, they just combine the OpenGL ICD 1.1 (Quake3 compatible) with the previous drivers into one WHQL-certified package."

Beyond3d has reviewed that all in one Voodoo3 3500 TV.

The Riva3D guys take a look at the state affairs from what they know about the hardware industry and apply it to 3dfx. My favorite part is when they say 3dfx may want to consider inventing a new proprietary API.

According to this Mortal Kombat page it looks like the Rampage (aka Voodoo5 from 3dfx) is indeed coming out in the first half of 2000 as stated by the 3dfx CEO on a recent CNBC news interview. How so? Well the next incarnation of MK plans on using that chipset in their arcade machines! Here is a chat log of the conversation with the MK developers. Thanks Andrew Ariens.

A new version of that much hyped WickedGL driver has been released. You have to register and go through a few things to get it but a lot of people feel it is worth the hassle to improve your Voodoo2 Quake3 framerates. Thanks VE

FiringSquad has a new Voodoo3 overclocking guide online.

In a follow-up to that whole Voodoo5 in 1st half of 2000 story posted yesterday, TigerInvestor has posted an interview with the CEO of 3dfx as well as the senior vice president of finance asking for clarifications on just about all of the statements that were made on that CNBC appearance.

...we have a big product coming out next year that we actually started a fairly long time ago. So I can’t say that we’re actually starting things earlier. We’re starting them more aggressively, perhaps.

Chris Danford was watching a little bit of CNBC and apparently Greg Ballard, the CEO of 3dfx showed up on the old toob and had a few things to say about 3dfx. Interesting to note that 3dfx stock dropped through the floor yesterday btw. At any rate here is what Chris sent in: (update: Here is a realaudio version of the interview, thanks Tungsten)

... Even more interesting, Ballard talked about a new product in development for 1st Quarter 2000.  He said that this product has been in development for "more than 20 months" and that it will be "the best graphics product ever" (I think that was the exact wording - the interview went by quickly). Strangely, Ballard seemed much more excited about next year's product than the soon-to-be-released Voodoo4.   It's possible that Ballard's intentions were only to spark investor enthusiasm and promote 3dfx stock (as most companies do when given the chance to appear on CNBC).

3dfx has announced their financial report for the last quarter, they turned out some record profits and it would have been even higher had the STB merger gone through a bit earlier.

Amer over at GameSpot has a bit more info on the upcoming NV10 chipset from NVidia and their cooperation with Guillemot. Apparently there wont be any "bin sorting" over at NVidia to sort through all the chips created for higher yield chips. (NVidia did this for the TNT2/TNT2Ultra chips, similar to what Intel does for their CPUs) Here's da quote:

It seems that nVidia might not be bin sorting (testing and releasing chips at different MHz speeds) the NV10 as it did with the TNT2 chipset, because Guillemot will only be manufacturing one NV10 board instead of two. In fact, while we were in their offices, top Guillemot execs had just finalized that board's retail name and box art.

Speaking of TNT stuff, HardOCP has cracked one open if you wanna see the guts.

Extreme Hardware has a new interview with Brian Burke talking about the T-Buffer technology.

3DSpotlight is offering up an interview with the PowerVR guys who are so darn proud of that Neon250 mentioned yesterday.

The 3DWars page features an interview with Keith Galocy of 3dfx which talks about the state of the 3D accelerator market and the role 3dfx plays.