3Dfx Windows XP Petition

[Philipp 6]

Thanks to Chris for this one: We, the dedicated customers and users of 3dfx products DEMAND that Nvidia support the customers of 3dfx Interactive. Last year, Nvidia purchased 3dfx Interactive (Their main competitor.), and have not lifted a finger to support existing 3dfx products. They basically bought out 3dfx to kill the company and boost sales of their own products. With the upcoming release of Windows XP, Nvidia has decided to shaft 3dfx owners by not creating compatible drivers for the new operating system. What does this mean? Well users of the Voodoo line of 3dfx card will not able to use all of the features that their card was intended for when they upgrade to Windows XP. Before, users had support for 3D API engines such as GLIDE, OpenGL and Direct 3D. With the new operating system, GLIDE and OpenGL support are gone and games like Quake 2 and 3 (which run under OpenGL) cannot be played by these users. Please sign this petition and DEMAND that Nvidia support these products. Nvidia MUST be shown that when that when they acquired 3dfx, they acquired their customers as well!

 

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[n4cer 0]

When NVIDIA purchased 3dfx's IP, the 3dfx cards currently on the market were to be supported by 3dfx. This was stated at the time of the purchase. Support (in whatever form, or lack thereof) was at the descretion of 3dfx.

 

In addition, NVIDIA did not acquire 3dfx (the company), they only acquired their IP. Again, support was a 3dfx issue.

[Brian Frank 0]

I wish there would be drivers for the Voodoo's under XP, cuz my V3 3000 ran very well considering it's age. However, I'm not getting my hopes up on seeing XP drivers. It would be nice, but I'd be surprised to see them come out.

I feel that it a lost cause on their part. If you have to go to XP, then get a different card. Plain and simple.

[Spyder 0]

I'm extremely surprised that NT Compatible would post B.S. like this and contribute to complete ignorance because thats exactly what this petition is based on. If these people did their research, they'd know and understand that Nvidia has no responsibility whatsoever for 3Dfx product support in any way, shape or form. Nvidia purchased 3Dfx's "intellectual property", which means the technology behind their products, not the products themselves OR the company for that matter. 3DFX liquidated the company and dissolved the assets to shareholders. The company died. It wasn't bought out by Nvidia! It was made clear that 3DFX would be solely responsible for driver upgrades and product support.

 

The fact that drivers haven't been supplied for WindowsXP is NOT Nvidia's problem! If these people want to point fingers, at least point the finger at the company at fault here: 3DFX!

[clutch 1]

LOL! It's funny, yet sad at the same time. Why should nVidia even bother to support anything from 3DFX? All those people that bought 3DFX products MADE their respective choices a while back NOT to get an nVidia product. Yet, nVidia is supposed to "support" their now-defunct competitor's product line because they bought them out? HAHAHAHAHA! I mean come on, think about it. Hell, it was hard enough to get 3DFX to support older product lines when they were in business, and most companies don't bother with them once they exceed 12-18 months in "age". NVidia has supported all their older stuff beyond the industry average for quite a while with the unified driver distribution, and there are tons of drivers to choose from for your particular use. Personally, I am just hoping that the new line from ATI is going to work half as well as advertised and will do some serious damage to nVidia.

 

3DFX is dead, and so is their product line. Try to revive something useful like the "SpaceORB". Now THAT was a kicka$$ controller...

[Brian Frank 0]

An army of idiots is a dangerous thing, Spyder.

Unless I'm wrong, Nvidia never said anything about giving any support from the start, and that driver support for 3dfx cards would be exclusively from 3dfx. I've heard about a movement to make drivers, but I don't think we'll see much from them.

If 3dfx had gotten the V5 and V4 out much sooner than they were released, they might have been in business still. Your competitors won't sit around until you release your killer product. If they're smart, they'll be working on an even better product to grab more of your market. That's what happened. Nvidia is making sure to stay on top of its product support, which I can't say for some of it's competitors.

I refuse to get another ATI card again if the product is hindered by drivers. While their DVD playback is supposed to be great, the ATI DVD software has caused problems in one form or another in the systems I've seen.

I do hope that ATI does get their drivers straightened out or Nvidia will remain on top. Doesn't matter how good the hardware is if the drivers are bad.

[Spyder 0]

Brian, I couldn't agree more!

 

At the time when all the hoopla was going on, alot of websites ran interviews with David Perez, Nvidia's PR man. (dont know if he's still there or not)

 

At any rate, this issue was raised back then, and Perez said time and time again in every interview that the deal with 3Dfx was for their technology, and that driver and product support would still be in 3DFX's hands.

 

Hell, I even recall a FAQ posted on Nvidia's website about it back then saying the same thing. How many times and how many different ways do they need to say this before people understand?

[Brian Frank 0]

I think some people just choose to be ignorant, regardless of the facts out there.

[PsychoSword 0]

As far as I know nVidia didn't purchase the customer service part of 3dfx anyways did they? But, I still don't like nVidia and won't buy any of their products anymore.

[thestickman 0]

I bought a V4500 2 days before Nvidia bought 3dfx. I'm using a Gf2mx 400 now and like it. Kids have the 4500 on a win9x box.

 

Worse case is Nvidia won't do anything. Best case is folks who bought a card thinking they would have support for a while get drivers so they can run XP.

[clutch 1]

Basically, it comes down to the desire to put resources into something with little or no return. In addition, part of the agreement was that 3DFX *would* in fact support their own hardware until the company was dissolved. 3DFX fell, so what. I had 2 of their Voodoo2s (the first was $300, and the second was $50) and I really liked them. However, they couldn't hang with the big boys anymore so they fell by the wayside. NVidia grabbed what they wanted, and left the rest behind. Now, I think SHS had posted something about the WickedGL peeps claiming that nVidia had the rights to their D3D APIs for the drivers, and that they chose not to release them. Welp, seems like a good call to me, as that would put support squarely on nVidia (do you think MS will take those calls? Think again) when there are any issues. The only thing that I could see them doing, is simply releasing anything they have (which I don't really know WHAT they have) to the open source community so they can fiddle with it if they like.

[Brian Frank 0]

I don't think we'll see anymore driver updates from 3dfx. If they do appear, the best bet is to hope that a 3rd party comes through. I doubt we'll see that happen.

Nvidia is not responsible to hold up 3dfx end of the bargin. If they do hold anything that could help 3dfx owners, they have the right to do what they wish with it. They have no obligation to support 3dfx cards, even if they were given the choice to do so.

[DosFreak 2]

Quote:

I think some people just choose to be ignorant, regardless of the facts out there.

Ignorance is bliss. - From Somebody

Ignorannce can be a powerful thing. - DosFreak

[borgzilla 0]

Thanx to Philipp for posting this news. However I don't want anything from nvidia not even drivers.

[Maiar 0]

I can only hope this will have some positive effect

[CUViper 0]

You know what I'd like to see? Real Glide drivers for my GeForce2! I know, there's wrappers out there.... but an 'official' wrapper from nvidia or a real driver would be awesome....

[donald 0]

I Just went from a Voodoo 3 3500 to a Geforce 2 Pro due to the lack of drivers, and I have a question if 3DFX have been disolved then how come in my local stores (I tried PC World, Dixons, plus local retaillers) 90% of the stores i looked in had a Voodoo card either a 4 or 5.

 

So who is providing the support for these cards since they are still being sold? When I asked in PC World (and there is no way i believe anything from them ;() they said NVIDIA has said they will support the cards.

 

So does anyone have an exact answer?

[Brian Frank 0]

Part of the agreement between 3dfx and Nvidia was that 3dfx would continue to support their own cards until the company died. Nvidia never has to do anything in the way of support.

 

I'd guess that that that PC World store didn't get the message: 3dfx is dead, so buy the Voodoo's at your own risk. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Nvidia to put out 3dfx drivers---products for which they are not experts on or designed---which have no guarantee that Nvidia may be able to get them to work well under XP, and face stubborn 3dfx users who will expect the V5 to compete with the GTS and up. I personally think the V5 is the best match to a GTS, but there are still some situations where a GF 2 MX outperforms it.

 

If your not going to move to XP, 3dfx cards will work fine, but I wouldn't use them for any normal operation. Backup, yes, but not for primary use any more. The cards are a bottleneck, especially the V4: it's just a 32MB V3 with no TV-out function.

[clutch 1]

Quote:

I Just went from a Voodoo 3 3500 to a Geforce 2 Pro due to the lack of drivers, and I have a question if 3DFX have been disolved then how come in my local stores (I tried PC World, Dixons, plus local retaillers) 90% of the stores i looked in had a Voodoo card either a 4 or 5.

So who is providing the support for these cards since they are still being sold? When I asked in PC World (and there is no way i believe anything from them ;() they said NVIDIA has said they will support the cards.

So does anyone have an exact answer?

That would have more to do with the distribution chain in your location than anything else. Here in the US, some stores pulled their 3DFX stock immediately and began seeking their return credit while there was a company to get that from. Now, in retail (and some other market segments) there are *generally* 2 main price points that a distributor can fall under:

1. Buy products for price X, and get return/RMA support from the manufacturer (you will see this a lot in most things)

2. Buy products for price *Y* (10% or more in price reduction, in general) and get *NO* return/RMA support from the manufacturer (you will see this in items that have a low fatality rate, or the cost of processing returned items is more than the item is worth to either of the parties concerned).

I remember an auto parts retailer in the US did that for automotive/light truck batteries, as they simply cost too much to keep shipping back and forth and generally made it to their life expectancy with little fuss. In your case, a distributor could have chosen to get the cards for as cheap as possible and forgo the possibility of return, since the hardware segment sees price drops so often they were probably looking for a cusion to pad their profit margins in the future. Another scenario could have the distributor knowingly buy all the stock they could get their hands on for an incredibly reduced cost ("fire sale" liquidation) and hope they could move the inventory to people that wouldn't know any different (similar to what GM is doing with Oldsmobile right now).

So, does this answer your question?

[Down8 0]

Quote:

LOL! It's funny, yet sad at the same time. Why should nVidia even bother to support anything from 3DFX? All those people that bought 3DFX products MADE their respective choices a while back NOT to get an nVidia product. Yet, nVidia is supposed to "support" their now-defunct competitor's product line because they bought them out? HAHAHAHAHA! I mean come on, think about it. Hell, it was hard enough to get 3DFX to support older product lines when they were in business, and most companies don't bother with them once they exceed 12-18 months in "age". NVidia has supported all their older stuff beyond the industry average for quite a while with the unified driver distribution, and there are tons of drivers to choose from for your particular use. Personally, I am just hoping that the new line from ATI is going to work half as well as advertised and will do some serious damage to nVidia.

3DFX is dead, and so is their product line. Try to revive something useful like the "SpaceORB". Now THAT was a kicka$$ controller...

I don't really care either way, since I own an S3 card now, and plan on upgrading with an ATi card, but...

I wonder if the sentiments would be the same if HP decided not to support any Compaq products.

Yeah, I didn't think so.

-bZj

[clutch 1]

Big difference, Compaq still makes a viable product that makes money, not to mention that it would be a "merger", and not an "accquisition". Now, the SpaceORB that I spoke of was from a company called SpaceTEC and they were "accquired" by LabTec. SpaceTEC had a meeting at a hotel with its employees one morning, and the few manager types that were there pointed to a list on the wall and stated "if you see your name on the wall, you can come back to work".

 

Now, when something happens that fast, you can expect to not see any sort of support. Labtec expressly stated that they would support the product for the interim, until they decided what they would do with it. Three months or so later, they bailed on the line entirely. Hmmm, that sounds familiar here. In this case, I expected to see no support, and I have 3 SpaceORB controllers that will not work in Windows NT/2K/XP because they never got a chance to make drivers for them, and they refused to release the source code. Now, here you have nVidia that bought out the assets, and NEVER EVER EVER stated that they would support the 3DFX product, while 3DFX stated that they themselves WOULD support the product as long as they were viable.

 

So, there is a big difference in the comparison, and I just wanted to make sure it was clear.