3DFX users DEMAND Support

[sapiens74 0]

THis one just caught my eye. How can you demand support of a company who didnt even make the stinking card in the first place.

[DosFreak 2]

Exactly. Just alot of people who don't recognize that the company they bought their card from is dead & gone so they blame anyone they can for their woes. Deal with it people and BUY A NEW CARD. It isn't Microsoft's fault. It isn't Nvidia's fault. It's 3DFX's fault. Yes. It is.

 

 

 

YES

IT

IS.

 

[Brian Frank 0]

Yeah.

If you're mad cause you won't see XP drivers for your Voodoo, you have two options: Don't upgrade to XP, or buy a new video card.

Even if Nvidia decided to write drivers, it would be on technology they haven't created nor had to make work before. That could mean 3dfx users might get poor drivers, which they'd probably complain about and start up with something about Nvidia trying to screw them over, regardless of wheter this was true or not.

 

It would've been nice to see XP drivers for my Voodoo 3 3000 AGP, since it ran very well in XP considering its age. However, Nvidia is the only graphics company that I'm confident will provide good driver support that works in future OS's and is fast.

If 3dfx had done things differently, they could've been around still. But when their V5 and V4's got pushed back for release that gave Nvidia and ATI time to get newer and better solutions to market. In most cases Nvidia and ATI's cards beat 3dfx solutions. One of the many mistakes leading up to 3dfx demise, made by 3dfx. Not Nvidia.

 

Life sucks people, get used to it. Oh, and do you really intend to keep that Voodoo 2 for the next few years? You'll have something much better in a few years and forget about the lack of driver support.

[yakkob 0]

Geez guys,

 

Like Brian says, get a new vid card!

 

The Gef2MX's are only £40 for gods sake. Hardly a huuuuge outlay.

Get with the times.

[BladeRunner 0]

It is time to let it die.

3DFX had the 3D world in their hands, they ere the first and took a massive percentage of the market immediately with the orignal 4MB VooDoo card.

Then they got greedy, why let other people make cards with 3DFX chipsets on when they could make all the card themnselves?

Why fully adopt Direct3D & OpenGL when we can push GLIDE?

 

That was the end, the market share dropped, the company were swallowed by a much bigger company who basically wanted a few technologies from them (it was easier and probably cheaper just to buy the whole company).

The End.

 

3DFX is dead and it certainly doesn't pain me that NVidia are not interested in supporting or developing new drivers for these cards.

I'd rather see everyone over at NVidia working on the GeForce 4.

[zoooom 0]

You know what I find ironic about this post. I bet even if 3dfx were still in business they wouldnt have made drivers for xp yet. They were always terrible with their drivers... late, buggy etc. Do you guys remember the whole "leaked 3dfx win2k drivers" thing. Well they werent actually "leaked from 3dfx". I stole them out of their developer website because they used the user/pass admin/admin to get in. It was so lame. I would just go download them from their site give them to a few people on the 3dfxgamers messageboard via pub and another guy who used to hang out hear named chameleon "win2kbox.cjb.net". I was pissed that they had drivers ( btw they worked 10 times better then any other drivers out ) and they wouldnt release them for us win2k users. They just let them sit their for months. I think the driver team their was seriously out to lunch.

 

3dfx is dead now. You cant expect nvidia to continue to support older model video cards if they bought out 3dfx. 3dfx is out of business. If you want to use xp you should get a new card. Especially since prices have come so low now a days.

[AndyFair 0]

Not to mention the fact that nVidia didn't buy out the whole of 3Dfx, only selected portions of it's technology. They don't own the rights to the Voodoo cards, that's still with 3Dfx (or whoever) - and unfortunately 3Dfx have gone broke since the deal with nVidia. Sorry, but I don't see how that's got anything to do with nVidia.

 

At no point did nVidia ever say that they would continue to develop or support 3Dfx products - and I don't see why they would if they don't own the company...

 

 

Just my 2 cents worth...

 

AndyF

[ThC 129 0]

this has been said a long time ago from nivdia. THEY DIDNT BUY 3dFX. SO THEY DON'T HAVE TO SUPPORT USERS. They bought the propriatary technology that 3dFX used, not the cards, not the company. Just the technology. Why did they do this??? So they don't have to put up with whiney 3dFX users wanting drivers for outdated video products.

[Brian Frank 0]

Of course, if they did, 3dfx users would probably still complain that Nvidia is trying to screw them. Nvidia didn't make the chips or cards, and may not write good drivers because they've never done anything in designing the cards.

I'd love it if my Voodoo 3 saw XP drivers, however, I'm certainly not counting on it.

Nvidia is the only company now that I'm positive knows how to write drivers that don't suck. I'll stop here, before I rant about ATI.

[Maiar 0]

If they knew the cards would still be bought/used in the future it should never have been allowed to buy the company out without taking over the responsebility of support as well...

[CUViper 0]

Quote:

If they knew the cards would still be bought/used in the future it should never have been allowed to buy the company out without taking over the responsebility of support as well...

As has been said here many times, nvidia did NOT 'buy out' 3dfx.... nvidia purchased the right to 3dfx's intellectual assets, and then 3dfx, still responsible for their products and support, went out of business.

[Maiar 0]

Yes..but I can not believe that 3dfx/nvidia did not realize that this was going to happen..they knew they were history the day nvidia bought those rights.

As I see it, it is a nice, nasty, clever way to save some expensives

[Brian Frank 0]

LOOK, Dammit!

 

Nvidia bought just the technology--that is it!

They did not obtain anything else, or merge with 3dfx. The agreement between 3dfx and Nvidia was, FROM THE BEGINNING, that 3dfx would support the cards until they closed shop. Nvidia never was supposed to support 3dfx cards.

 

Plus, if they did, little weenies that believe every successful compay is evil would still ***** at Nvidia anyway, claiming they we're getting screwed.

 

To all you whiny, 3dfx users demanding support: Get a new video card, or don't upgrade to XP. Period.

[Maiar 0]

First, I wonder if there once was a evil 3dfx card which killed your bunny.. else I don`t understand why you are so emotional towards the subject but alas, I will repeat myself.

 

I do not believe that it was not known by both 3dfx and nvidia that 3dfx would ceise to excist after their -deal- with nvidia.

That means that I think they were well aware of the consequences, meaning, no more support in the future.

Knowing that, I think they (government?, institute-for-the-wellbeing-of-fluffy-raped-bunnies) should have forced nvidia to take over support wheather they like it or not, as a lets say, protection for the consumer..

 

Since this is not the case it will likely not be changed but to not try is to be sure not to succeed.

And since I like 3dfx cards (and bunnies) I will give it a little try..

 

Peace

[Brian Frank 0]

Getting the government in this would only make things worse. I'm not for completely free reins on businesses, but forcing a company to support a product it has not designed or written drivers for is not in the best intrests of the consumer.

Yes, it sucks that 3dfx was bought out, but they were going in one direction and everyone else was going another. They were late getting their products to market, which resulted in the V4 and V5 competing against cards that were a step ahead. The V4 was completely trashed by the GeForce 2 MX and any ATI Radeon. In some cases the V5 was beaten by the lowly GF2MX, and was clearly outclassed with the GF2 GTS and Radeon's.

 

The Voodoo 4 was a POS: it's just a Voodoo 3 3000 with 32MB of RAM. I couldn't tell you the difference between the two.

 

Oh, yeah, many of the former 3dfx employees--including the founder, Scott Sellers--are working for Absolute Morpheus, which has put out a GeForce 3 card.

 

The demand by 3dfx users would be like if Toyota died out and then Toyota owners would demand that Honda start making Toyota parts. Do you think Honda would do that? I sure wouldn't. Even if Toyota sold their designs to Honda, that would not hold them accountable to support Toyota's at all. If Honda bought-out/merged with Toyota, then, yes, Toyota owners would have a very good reason to demand support for their vehicles.

 

Nvidia had a good idea where it would have graphics for different consumer levels, so you didn't have to give an arm and a leg to have a good video card. ATI also is doing this. 3dfx attempted to do this too, but got their product to market too late. And it was due to issues with 3dfx cards themselves. It's not due to some conspiracy by Nvidia, unless you consider a conspiracy as being competetive and providing a range of video cards for different consumer levels.

 

More people voted with their dollars for Nvidia or ATI, not 3dfx. People buy what gives them the biggest bang for the buck, and if you bought a 3dfx card after 3dfx sold its technology, too bad.

[ThC 129 0]

BF is right. And anyway 3dFX caused their own demise by trying to take the manufacturing and card making process in-house. By ditching their vendors, 3dFX started losing money and couldn't produce cards that would be on-par with those of nvidia. By time the Voodoo 5 came out 3dFX was a generation behind when it came to video card technology. So you have your company losing money, so what do you do lay off some people. Well that didn't work, so 3dFX is still losing money. What do they do now?? Easy sell or die. So nvidia is like I dont need the hassle of all your products to support we just want some of the tech you use in your video cards. So nvidia bought the technology to 3dFX and 3dFX had some more money. Well at this point in the game 3dFX had pretty much lost so they closed up shop, cut their losses and went on.

 

 

Do you hear people whining that creative doesnt support Aureal?? No, but they did buy out Aureal and all their technology.

 

This is the way the world works, why take the things that are dragging a company down when you can take their propriatary technologies and use them for your own good giving you bigger profits.

 

 

So you whiney people that were stupid enough to buy a 3dFX card well thats your own fault. Also any video card over 4 months is outdated anyway, so you are asking for support for outdated technology, which is a waste of assets to do.

[Maiar 0]

I partly agree,..

 

I am not saying all this because I am so sad 3dfx is dead and nvidia sucks blabla but because I feel this is not the way to treat consumers..you can not expect all consumers to be up to date to the current economical state of the company they are buying their product from.

What I still believe is that 3dfx should have had a bit more responsebility towards their client in letting them know that their product was likely not to be supported in the future and true, nvidia can not be held responsible for that but because of that I would have prefered that one way or another, the support was forced in the -take over- (cant find a better english word)

If only 2 guys were maintaining the drivers..

 

It is not fair to say that if someone who feels he/she is not getting what she/he deserves and request additional support or simply disagrees and wants to be heard is therefore a whiner, think a bit broader then that please. Else we all will disregard eachothers opinion in no time and have a nice little fight at hand

 

It was probably inevitable that 3dfx was going down but a bit more concideration for especially the new 3dfx card owners would have been in place.

And yes, I too felt mostly the same way with Aureal.

 

Until Unreal2 is released I can live with my current card anyway..

 

Love and glee

[JP- 0]

Actually as nvidia bought 3dfx i would really like to see glide implemented in newer versions of the detonator drivers. I mean what do they have to lose by doing this? Of course this will never happen but wouldnt it be great if it did.

[Sandaasu 0]

This just happens people, adn this isn't the first time. I must say I was pretty unhappy when Aureal went down and was bought out. I had a Vortex 2 card I wanted to use user Win2k. I lived with the trouble for a little time, but eventually just got a new board. I suggest those with 3dfx cards do the same, you can get a Geforce 256 or 2MX quite cheap now.

 

It would be nice for Nvidia to comput with 3dfx drivers, but they really have no resposibility to, and as an over of an Nvidia based video card, I'd rather see them concentrate on their own hardware. Including Glide in the Detonators would be a nice touch though.

 

It is interesting to note that XP seems to get along beter with that Vortex board. It's not fully functional, but it doesn't go out like it did under 2k.

[Brian Frank 0]

M4Carbine: Nvidia did not buy 3dfx. Nvidia bought 3dfx's technology, not the entire company. If they had, I would've expected them to put out drivers.

[JP- 0]

They buy there technology you say? Well im sure glide must be classed as 3dfxs 'technology'.

[BladeRunner 0]

Yes, Glide is classed as 3DFX technology.

However as it's a non-standard API (Supported only be the 3DFX chipsets, unlike Direct3D & OpenGL) this would again mean supporting outdated and dead products.

[Bursar 0]

True, outdated and dead, and if it meant a delay on any of nVidias core products, then I would say forget GLIDE. However, I've got some great old games that I'd love to play again, and software rendering doesn't really cut it.

 

Maybe I'll have a search round for some GLIDE emulators. There must be a couple about and with the CPU and graphics power available, they should run at reasonable frame rates.

[JP- 0]

I also have loads of cool glide only games that i want to play but i cant see it happening Also on the subject of glide wrappers, i have tried loads of them trying to get glide games working, but they all seem to be made with ultrahle in mind, so they may work fine with that but i have yet to get 1 single game running correctly

 

If anyone has any success with wrappers can you let me know pls

[INFERNO2000 0]

newegg.com has a leadtek GF2MX200 w/ TV out for 52 shipped.

 

There's your upgrade--it surpasses the Voodoo3s..and probably the 4 and 5 with new drivers(+ TV-out).

 

 

I'd like to see legacy support for the cards, just enough to make them work in XP...but oh well. Let's remember the cards in their glory and retire them ceremoniously. Let them die gracefully.

 

 

 

Or, run it on a Linux box! Linux has had FANTASTIC drivers for 3dfx's Voodoo 3. It's still got some strength in there.