3dfx

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3dfx Interactive

logo
legal form Corporation
founding 1994
resolution October 15, 2002
Seat San Jose , California USA
management Ross Smith, Scott Sellers, Gary Tarolli
Branch microelectronics
Website http://3dfx.com/ ( Memento from February 1, 2001 in the Internet Archive )

3dfx Interactive was from its foundation in 1994 until the takeover by its competitor Nvidia in December 2000, a company specializing in the production of 3D - graphics cards , 3D accelerator cards and graphics processing units specialized.

history

Beginnings

3dfx Interactive was founded in 1994 by Scott Sellers, Ross Smith, Gary Tarolli in San José, California . Originally, the main work of 3dfx mainly on the market for arcade systems , the nascent market for 3D - hardware for personal computers has been taken as a second distribution channel for the Arcade products in the eye.

Equipped with almost 17 million US dollars in venture capital , 3dfx began work on its first product, the Voodoo Graphics chipset, in the year it was founded. Shortly before its completion in 1996, there was suddenly a market for 3D hardware for PCs due to a drop in prices for EDO DRAM memory chips . 3dfx rejected the plan to slowly adapt the technology and decided to bring the Voodoo Graphics chipset to the market for the PC platform right from the start.

Thanks to the Glide programming interface specially developed by 3dfx for the Voodoo Graphics , which offered game developers a simple and powerful interface to the 3D hardware, as well as the support of the OpenGL standard established by Silicon Graphics , the Voodoo Graphics soon enjoyed widespread acceptance by game manufacturers. Some games appeared exclusively for the Glide interface, of which a few even required a 3dfx card without additionally offering an alternative software mode. (A list of 3dfx games can be found in the section " Known games with exclusive 3dfx support or special 3dfx features ".)

In the shadow of the Voodoo Graphics

Texture Mapping Unit (TMU) of a 3dfx Voodoo² chipset
InnoVision 3DX5000TV with 4 MB memory (Voodoo 1)

In mid-1997, Greg Ballard was appointed as the new CEO of 3dfx. He was supposed to help the company, which was previously considered to be technology-centric , through marketing measures to build on the overwhelming success of Voodoo Graphics. At that time, 3dfx had a market share of around 60% in the sector of 3D accelerator cards for home PCs , so expectations for the future were correspondingly high.

In the first quarter of 1997, 3dfx announced a partnership with the then console manufacturer Sega . Sega commissioned 3dfx to develop a graphics chipset for the planned successor to the Saturn game console . In July 1997, however, this partnership was unilaterally terminated by Sega. The already completed graphics chipset from 3dfx was never produced. Instead, the choice for the graphics chipset of the console, later called Dreamcast, was the PowerVR 2 from NEC . 3dfx fought back in a lawsuit that ended in a settlement in mid-1998 .

In 1997 the Voodoo Rush , a 2D / 3D combination, appeared in 1998, the Voodoo² , this again as a pure 3D add-on solution. Although the Voodoo² was also a great commercial success, the dominance of 3dfx slowly began to crumble. Competitor Nvidia launched the Riva TNT chip in 1998 , which, with roughly equivalent performance, had a decisive advantage over the Voodoo²: It combined 2D and 3D functionality on just one chip. Two graphics cards (one each for 2D and 3D) were not necessary here, which led to a significantly lower price. Starting with this chip, Nvidia imposed a product cycle of just six months on the entire industry , so new chips from Nvidia were introduced twice a year - a pace that most of the industry could not keep up with.

3dfx went along with it at the beginning and presented the Voodoo² successor Voodoo Banshee , although it was also a 2D / 3D combination, but the breakthrough did not really succeed. The strong position of Glide was also lost, as Microsoft with Direct3D increasingly supplanted Glide, which was limited to 3dfx graphics cards.

As early as 1996, 3dfx introduced the Scan Line Interleave (SLI), a technical process that made it possible to couple several graphics chips or cards based on Voodoo Graphics, Voodoo 2 and VSA-100, which alternately calculated the image lines. At the end of the same year, the first models with 3D shutter glasses came on the market, but these required monitors with above-average performance that could display a refresh rate of 120 Hz. With standard monitors (75 Hz), users quickly got headaches, sore eyes and discomfort.

In 2004 Nvidia took up this idea and the name again with the Scalable Link Interface , even if this works fundamentally differently from a technical perspective.

From chipset to card manufacturer and back

While work on a “real” successor to the Voodoo² was in full swing, 3dfx made an important strategic decision: To give the 3dfx and Voodoo brands a stronger market presence (up until now, Voodoo chipsets were on a large number of products from different manufacturers under different brand names was sold), they no longer only produced the chipsets, but complete graphics cards. For this purpose, at the end of 1998 3dfx bought the American graphics card manufacturer and former customer STB Systems , which had previously also installed 3dfx chipsets on graphics cards and had strong connections to the important OEM market, for around 140 million US dollars.

Voodoo 3 3000

Due to the existing infrastructure - STB already had its own production facility in Mexico at that time - 3dfx was now able to manufacture graphics cards itself. 3dfx immediately stopped selling graphics chips to other manufacturers, thereby losing important partners in the industry who were now switching to chips from competitors. The decision to forego important sales partners such as Diamond Multimedia or Creative Labs in the future was received with mixed feelings within the industry and on the stock exchange. Many see it retrospectively as the first step towards the final demise of 3dfx.

The end of 3dfx

On December 15, 2000, all 3dfx patents and naming rights were acquired by Nvidia. In addition, around 100 employees were taken on. 3dfx had made a loss of around US $ 280 million in the last two fiscal quarters. In the interests of shareholders, Nvidia's offer of US $ 70 million in cash and US $ 42 million in shares was accepted.

Since 3dfx scared off the arcade games market and industrial partners by terminating cooperations in order to concentrate on the console and PC sector and to market its own end customer products, the 3dfx spin-off Quantum3D developed in parallel, which after a short time turned into established military simulator sector. Until the end of 3dfx, Quantum3D was the only licensee of 3dfx and manufactured military simulators, heads-up displays and render farms based on the 3dfx chips long after the end of 3dfx.

Nvidia acquired all trademark and patent rights (this also settled some legal disputes) including the GigaPixel technology, which was only bought on March 27, 2000, and the DirectX -8 graphics chips (in development) Rampage / Sage .

3dfx kept the factory in Mexico and all (finished) card stocks. However, these were soon processed. 3dfx Interactive filed for bankruptcy on October 15, 2002.

3dfx was last also a registered trademark of Nvidia in Germany , protection ended in 2016.

List of announced and released 3dfx products

Graphics chipsets

Graphics cards

  • Based on the Voodoo2 family
    • Voodoo2 1000 (1998)
  • Based on the Voodoo3 family
    • Voodoo3 1000 (1999)
    • Voodoo3 2000 (1999)
    • Voodoo3 3000 (1999)
    • Voodoo3 3500 TV (1999)
    • Velocity 100 (1999)
    • Velocity 200 (never released, prototypes exist)
  • Based on the VSA-100 family
    • Voodoo4 4000 (never released)
    • Voodoo4 4400 (never released)
    • Voodoo4 4500 (2000)
    • Voodoo4 4800 (never released, prototypes exist)
    • Voodoo5 5000 (never released, 30 prototypes existed, 15 are still known today)
    • Voodoo5 5500 (2000)
    • Voodoo5 5800 (never released)
    • Voodoo5 6000 (never released, approx. 1400 prototypes existed, approx. 80 are still known today)
  • Based on the VSA-101 family
    • Voodoo4-2 4000 (never released, prototypes exist)
    • Voodoo4-2 4200 (never officially released, prototypes exist)
    • Voodoo4-2 4800 (never released, prototypes exist)
  • Based on the Rampage family
    • Specter 1000 (1 rampage chip, never released, 20 prototypes existed, 4 still known today)
    • Specter 2000 (1 Rampage + 1 Sage chip (T&L), never released)
    • Specter 3000 (2 Rampage + 1 Sage chip (T&L), never released)
    • Specter 4000 (4 Rampage + 1 Sage chip (T&L), never released)
  • Based on the Fear family
    • Fear 1000 (never released)
    • Fear 2000 (never published)
    • Fear 3000 (never released)
    • Fear 4000 (never released)
  • Based on the Mojo family
    • No plans on the part of 3dfx

Model data

Overview of the most important 3Dfx chip versions
model Month year Graphics processor (GPU) Graphics memory
interface Clock rate
(MHz) 		Fill rate
( MT / s) 		Size
( MB ) 		Clock rate
(MHz) 		Memory bus Bandwidth
( GB / s)
Voodoo Graphics 10/1996 SST-1 50 50 4 or 6 50 64 bit × 2 0.8
Voodoo rush 10/1997 SST-96 50 4 or 6 50 64 bit × 3
Voodoo2 03/1998 SST-2 90 180 8 or 12 90 64 bit × 3 2.16
banshee 09/1998 banshee 100 100 8 or 16 100 128 bit 1.6
Velocity 100 04/1999 Avenger 143 8th 143 128 bit 2.29
Voodoo3 1000 04/1999 Avenger 125 16 125 128 bit 2.0
Voodoo3 2000 04/1999 Avenger 143 286 16 143 128 bit 2.29
Voodoo3 3000 04/1999 Avenger 166 333 16 166 128 bit 2.66
Voodoo3 3500TV 04/1999 Avenger 183 16 183 128 bit 2.93
Voodoo4 4500 09/2000 VSA-100 166 333 32 166 128 bit 2.66
Voodoo4 4800 never VSA-100 166 333 64 166 128 bit 2.66
Voodoo5 5000 never 2 × VSA-100 166 666 32 166 128 bit × 2 5.31
Voodoo5 5500 06/2000 2 × VSA-100 166 666 64 166 128 bit × 2 5.31
Voodoo5 6000 never 4 × VSA-100 166 1332 128 166 128 bit × 4 10.6

Well-known games with exclusive 3dfx support or special 3dfx features

Games that have at least one other 3D accelerator (Direct3D, OpenGL or proprietary )

  • equivalent or better
  • from the factory or by patch

are not listed here .

3dfx card is required, otherwise the game will not start, i. H. there is neither a software mode nor support for other 3D graphics cards, not even via patch

Exclusive 3dfx support in addition to software mode, i.e. H. neither support of Direct3D or OpenGL nor direct support of other graphics cards, not even via patch

Support of other cards or interfaces, but with exclusive 3dfx features

  • Wing Commander: Prophecy ( lens flares only with 3dfx, these were later made possible by an unofficial patch also for Direct3D mode)
  • Descent 2 (transparency effects, 3dfx patch required. First there was a patch for S3 chips; these can be emulated by virtualization programs such as Virtual PC and DOSBox , although the programs have not been designed for emulating 3D hardware acceleration)
  • Unreal had water effects that looked far better under Glide than under Direct3D.

Emulation of 3dfx cards

Since a number of well-known games only support 3dfx cards, some are even mandatory, and with others all effects could only be displayed with 3dfx, so-called " Glide Wrappers " were written, which map the commands from Glide to standards such as Direct3D or OpenGL. This makes it possible to run such games in their original quality on modern graphics cards that do not inherently support Glide. The resulting projects such as Openglide for OpenGL, dgVoodoo for Direct3D and Glidos (for DOS games, both standards) can be downloaded free of charge (Openglide, dgVoodoo) or as shareware (Glidos).

Web links

Commons : 3dfx  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b SEC filings, Form 8-K: Bankruptcy or receivership , updated October 21, 2002, retrieved August 17, 2007
  2. ↑ a b Bankruptcy Court decision on the value of 3dfx (DJVU) April 30, 2008. Retrieved December 25, 2010.
  3. ↑ Entry 3dfx in the trademark register