3Dfx

3Dfx was a company which specialised in the manufacturing of 3D graphics cards and processors. In late 2000 they underwent one of the most high-profile demises in the history of the PC industry.

They were formed in 1994, and two years later in 1996 released their Voodoo graphics chipset. This became popular because it offered more acceptable levels of performance than competing products (which performed no better, if not worse, than software rendering engines). It was notable because of its lack of 2D-display support; it functioned as an addon card to an existing 2D video card.

In August 1997, 3Dfx released Voodoo Rush, which was basically a Voodoo chipset with a separate vendor's 2D chip on the same circuit board. Unfortunately it performed worse than the Voodoo, was complex to make and had poor quality 2D graphics. The result being that it was a flop in terms of sales. A few months later, the Voodoo Rush was dropped.

In 1998 they released Voodoo's successor, the Voodoo 2. This was basically the same as Voodoo, but it had a second texturing unit installed and a higher clock-rate. It also had the capability to work in Scan-Line Interleave (SLI) mode, which involved connecting two boards together, thus (theoretically) doubling performance. A problem with the Voodoo 2 was the fact that it required 3 chips (the geometry unit and the 2 texturing units, all of which were on separate chips), whereas competing products such as the ATI Rage Pro and the Nvidia Riva 128 were all single-chip products even though they had an integrated 2D core.

Near the end of the year, 3Dfx released Banshee, which was basically an overclocked Voodoo with an integrated 2D core. This became quite popular with OEMs, but considering it's performance was nearer a Voodoo than a Voodoo 2, it never really caught on with enthusiasts.

In mid-1999 the Voodoo 3 was released, which was at heart a dual-core Voodoo 2 with Banshee's 2D core. It was a compelling solution, since an SLI configure Voodoo 2 took up 3 slots, including the 2D card. However, given its design legacy it lacked support for several technologies that its competitors, ATI, Matrox and Nvidia had since integrated. Just prior to the launch of Voodoo 3, 3Dfx bought out STB Technologies[?], which was one of the main graphics-cards manufacturers at the time.

Their next (and as it would turn out, final) product was code-named Napalm. Originally, this was just a Voodoo 3 modified to support newer technologies and higher clock speeds, with performance estimated to be around the level of the Nvidia TNT2[?]. However, Napalm was delayed, and in the meantime Nvidia bought out their GeForce card, which shifted most of the computational work onto the Graphics chip. Napalm would have been unable to compete with GeForce, so it was redesigned to support multiple chip configurations, like the Voodoo 2 had. The end-product was named VSA-100, which stood for Voodoo Scaleable Architecture.

The two initial products were the Voodoo 4 4500 (single chip) and the Voodoo 5 5500 (dual chip), with a third, the Voodoo 5 6000 (quad chip) due to be launched later. But by the time the VSA-100 based cards made it to the market, the second generation Geforce cards had arrived, which offered substancially better performance. The Voodoo 5 6000 might have been able to compete with the Geforce 2, but it never got to the market, due to a severe bug resulting in data corruption on the AGP bus.

Neither of the Voodoo 4 or 5 products sold well, and by the end of 2000, with certain bankrupcy approaching, 3Dfx were bought by Nvidia, and ceased to exist as a company. Most of the design team that were working on Rampage (the codename for what presumably would have been Voodoo 6) were transferred to the team working on what has since become the Geforce FX series.

3Dfx's decline is a matter of debate, but it is most often attributed to managerial prioritising of research and developent. Voodoo cards were typically highly expensive, and left the mid and low end of the market to ATI and nVidia, nVidia chose short development cycles whereas 3Dfx pursued lengthy development cycles, and nVidia and ATI cards had better colour and 2D support. The Rampage card, which 3Dfx put much effort into but never was able to bring to market, is said to have been technologically several years ahead of the competition - had 3Dfx been able to sustain enough revenue to bring the Rampage project too fruition, it is possible 3Dfx may have still dominated the graphics market today.

Additional Resources

• http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/3dfxdemise/default.asp -- an article about the demise of 3Dfx.
• http://www.voodoo6000.com -- an information site about the unreleased Voodoo 5 6000.
• http://accelenation.com/?ac.id.123.1 -- an overview of the history of 3D graphics chips.