Support NeoGAF

[SlimeGooGoo]

.

 

[Lucky8BB]

People exaggerate the quality of Voodoo graphics.
In the very beginning was nice to see filtered textures, but it didn't worked actually well for some games, some looked better without the filtering. The advantage it had was industry support in the chaos that was the market during those days, but 3DFX chips became very obsolete very fast while the competition not only managed to achieve improvements to performance but also to visuals. Then Voodoo 4/5 came lacking some basic features, no wonder 3DFX died, Voodoo success was a one hit wonder.
People back in the Voodoo 3 days were better served buying low end TNT2 cards.

Voodoo "magic" wasnt just about texture filtering. Glide games were running at higher resolution (240p vs 480p) and color depth (256 colors vs 16 bit if I'm not mistaken), additional details in some games (fog, more detailed car models with transparent windows etc.), and even with these improvements performane was still much better than in software. The only issue was slight blur on voodoo cards (because of dithering filter) but I think dithering filter was necesary back then, because graphics cards were just too slow for true 32 bit color rendering, and 16 bit color without dithering was just ugly. I bought TNT2 later on because of 32 bit color support, however I still had to use 16 bit color in most games.

 

[Deleted member 17706]

Are the 2020s going to be the era of 90s nostalgia? I'm down.

 

[Epic Sax CEO]

Voodoo "magic" wasnt just about texture filtering. Glide games were running at higher resolution (240p vs 480p) and color depth (256 colors vs 16 bit if I'm not mistaken), additional details in some games (fog, more detailed car models with transparent windows etc.), and even with these improvements performane was still much better than in software. The only issue was slight blur on voodoo cards (because of dithering filter) but I think dithering filter was necesary back then, because graphics cards were just too slow for true 32 bit color rendering, and 16 bit color without dithering was just ugly. I bought TNT2 later on because of 32 bit color support, however I still had to use 16 bit color in most games.

For a brief moment Voodoo was good, but like I said that moment was brief.

 

[base]

Not happening guys.

 

[Elios83]

People exaggerate the quality of Voodoo graphics.
In the very beginning was nice to see filtered textures, but it didn't worked actually well for some games, some looked better without the filtering. The advantage it had was industry support in the chaos that was the market during those days, but 3DFX chips became very obsolete very fast while the competition not only managed to achieve improvements to performance but also to visuals. Then Voodoo 4/5 came lacking some basic features, no wonder 3DFX died, Voodoo success was a one hit wonder.
People back in the Voodoo 3 days were better served buying low end TNT2 cards.

Not true.
Voodoo1 and Voodoo 2 cards were simply far ahead of everything else back in the time.
If you could afford two Voodoo 2 in SLI... you could play at 1600*1200 at good frame rates.
With Voodoo 3 they were still frame rate king especially with Unreal engine based games supporting Glide but they were starting to lack some image quality features like 32 bit color, texture compression and bump mapping.
Voodoo4 and 5 were supposed to compete with the Geforce256 but they had tape out issues and they ended up to compete with the Geforce 2 GTS. Back then development cycles were terrific, 6-12 months later you could already deliver on the market something way more powerful.
Voodoo 5 5500 ended up being a much better card than what it was supposed to compete with and it was the first card to offer high quality multi sample anti aliasing but it didn't have T&L and pixel shaders (that by the way were still in their infancy and not much useful).

They were killed by the catastrophic decision to ditch their traditional partners to make their own boards instead of selling chips to different board manufacturers. That increased costs and reduced their market in a moment when they were also late with the next chip.
Too bad they went bankrupt a few months before they could ship their next card (Rampage+Sage).

BTW I think this whole thing of 3dfx being back is just a scam.

 

[Ivan]

If you could afford two Voodoo 2 in SLI... you could play at 1600*1200 at good frame rates

1024*768 was maximum rendering resolution for voodoo 2 sli and 800*600 for a single card.

 

[Lucky8BB]

Not true.
Voodoo1 and Voodoo 2 cards were simply far ahead of everything else back in the time.
If you could afford two Voodoo 2 in SLI... you could play at 1600*1200 at good frame rates.
With Voodoo 3 they were still frame rate king especially with Unreal engine based games supporting Glide but they were starting to lack some image quality features like 32 bit color, texture compression and bump mapping.
Voodoo4 and 5 were supposed to compete with the Geforce256 but they had tape out issues and they ended up to compete with the Geforce 2 GTS. Back then development cycles were terrific, 6-12 months later you could already deliver on the market something way more powerful.
Voodoo 5 5500 ended up being a much better card than what it was supposed to compete with and it was the first card to offer high quality multi sample anti aliasing but it didn't have T&L and pixel shaders (that by the way were still in their infancy and not much useful).

They were killed by the catastrophic decision to ditch their traditional partners to make their own boards instead of selling chips to different board manufacturers. That increased costs and reduced their market in a moment when they were also late with the next chip.
Too bad they went bankrupt a few months before they could ship their next card (Rampage+Sage).

BTW I think this whole thing of 3dfx being back is just a scam.

I agree about Voodoo 1-2 part, but when it comes to V5 I remember using shaders and T&L on my Geforce 3, so these features werent useless for sure.

 

[Elios83]

1024*768 was maximum rendering resolution for voodoo 2 sli and 800*600 for a single card.

You're right. 1600*1200 was the max res supported by monitors back then. After 25 years my memory is rusty still the point remains Voodoo 2 was already terrific by itself and in SLI it was just crazy.

I agree about Voodoo 1-2 part, but when it comes to V5 I remember using shaders and T&L on my Geforce 3, so these features werent useless for sure.

Geforce 3 was never a Voodoo 5 5500 competitor, it was a gen ahead.
Voodoo 5 5500 was supposed to compete with the Geforce256 but they had to fix a few unexpected bugs that needed a new tapeout and they ended up competing with the Geforce 2.
Geforce 2 had just some very primitive form of non-programmable shaders and T&L was kinda useless if something like the PS2 could still throw more polygons on the screen.
It was with the Geforce 3 and the first programmable shaders that those features started to be useful but 3dfx unfortunately didn't make it that far.

 

[justiceiro]

The hoax, i mean, dream lives on

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

Lol. If this is anything except a sticker that gets slapped on some Chinese OEM’s Nvidia/AMD cooler, I will be shocked.

 

[Lucky8BB]

You're right. 1600*1200 was the max res supported by monitors back then. After 25 years my memory is rusty still the point remains Voodoo 2 was already terrific by itself and in SLI it was just crazy.

Geforce 3 was never a Voodoo 5 5500 competitor, it was a gen ahead.
Voodoo 5 5500 was supposed to compete with the Geforce256 but they had to fix a few unexpected bugs that needed a new tapeout and they ended up competing with the Geforce 2.
Geforce 2 had just some very primitive form of non-programmable shaders and T&L was kinda useless if something like the PS2 could still throw more polygons on the screen.
It was with the Geforce 3 and the first programmable shaders that those features started to be useful but 3dfx unfortunately didn't make it that far.

You have mentioned pixel shaders specifically, so I thought you were talking about Geforce 3, but now everything is clear . Geforce 2 had primitive type of programmable pixel pipeline called "Nvidia Shading Rasterizer" and this feature was indeed not used in many games. If I remember correctly only "Evolva" and "doom 3" used NSR for some effects. I think these tech demos also use NSR.

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

FUCKING MEGATON. Voodoo 6 PCI in development!! I think I stillhave a motherboard in my basement with PCI expansion slots.

 

[Epic Sax CEO]

It's a prank, and calling out the "manchildren" that are still searching for these things.
That CEC 2022...

 

[demigod]

I was jelly of my friend that got it back in like 96 or 97. He got his card in a pre-built by alienware and it was freakin expensive. Pretty sure I had a voodoo banshee some time in 2000, it wasn’t top of the line iirc. Honestly I can’t wait, i’ll get a card from 3dfx. Hope they deliver.

Edit : damnit is this a prank? Brb while i kill someone.