Quote:


I can't speak for anyone else but do admit a fondness for 3dfx cards... Of course I remember when a 4 meg 2d card was the height of graphics power and still remember the first time I viewed a V1 in action over a buddies house... it was a Orchid V1 running Descent II and was the most stunning thing I ever saw.

I purchased one the next day.

Someone else mentioned it before- The jump from what was to 3dfx V1 was a lightyear leap in graphics quality that frankly hasn't been matched but is in some cases getting close.

Quote:


I collect them myself, I consider it a harmless hobby and have spent my money in worse ways and people collect worse things... In a way it's a tribute to what was.

It's a pity 3dfx went under, the hardware was good but in the end they went under due to bad managment and a marketing war they didn't understand.
Quote:


Again I can only speak for myself but I enjoy a certain esprit 'd corps that prevail among 3dfx owners... It was there in the old days and still persists to this day.

3dfx was a fun company to watch and own a product and deal with. There was a certain attitude there that was appealing that other companies lacked.

Quote:


Yup- I have a sweet new gaming box with a ATI 9800 Pro in it, with dual Canopus Voodoo II's.

My daily "work" box has a V5500 in it, for the work I do it's fast and the drivers are still great and work 10 times better then the cluttered Nvidia crap I was running for a while.

I could not even change the gamma for video in the detonator drivers without screwing up everything else! Nice work.

hmm hmm hmm, well really i cant think of any other computer item (as 3dfx items) that generate this much continued interest, part due to how good they where in their hey day, part due to there marketing (still cant get over there great retail boxes) and maybe part due to the fact they became the underdog and even thou they gave up in the end (but not till they came up with some wild stuff) they will still survive as long as we are here (and other forums) talking about them, using them and trying to upgrade them in anyway possible to keep them going, and i have owned other cards, i had a geforce2, 3 and 4, the 2 i gave to an old friend, 3 burned and crashed and 4 didnt give me any performance for what i paid, so i decided to get a v5500 (already had a v4500) to see what i could play and i realized, i enjoy alot of my so called older games, and i still get to play bf1942, and i realize i now spend as much time or more in the forums as i do gaming, and im happy about that

I've always had a 3dfx part in my main PC,  being on a rather low budget. Each 3dfx card has been an upgrade for me, and look at the pattern :

1999 : voodoo1
2000 : voodoo2
2002 : voodoo2 SLI
2003 : voodoo5 5500  (just a year ago )

That's why I have a voodoo5 in my main box (it cost me 50€ in new condition,  and I think it was better buy than a geforce 4MX 440SE  )

it still offers brilliant quality in Mafia or UT2003, and it's largely enough to play CS at 100 fps, so I'm quite pleased.

THE game who will make me upgrade to a 9700 pro or 9800 pro is Doom 3.

until that, I'm interested in all these amateur drivers and software, just because I always run a 3dfx card

Everyone's comments and contributions here add together to produce a justified answer as to why 3dfx is still alive.

I agree with every single one, because I believe these are the people that keep 3dfx alive.  This kind of loyalty and closely knit community helps to make everyone stand up and take note that 3dfx still has a presence today among many gamers.

For me, like gdonovan said (I think it was actually me that made the reference to this in the first place  ), the 3dfx Voodoo chipset was the most largely evolutionary advance in 3D arcade computer game graphics. There is no denying it.
There has never been such a huge leap in this area.
Ok, so we've had our pixel and vertex shading technology improved and the memory bandwidths are on the up, but none of these compare to the jump from your old ATI 2Mb 3D Rage Pro (which would stretch to 512x384 @ 25 fps for DFII; Jedi Knight ) to the Orchid Righteous 3D (running in an amazing 640x480 16bpp in a smooth Glide API running any game at 60fps! )
Every gamer who exxperienced the difference had to go out and buy one!   Today, I see the Radeon 9800 and I think "Yes, I'd love one, but I can manage without one".  The Voodoo was a must have! A neccessity!

When my dad and I went to buy my first PC for Christmas (back in '96) I knew NOTHING about computers.  I was 16.  I had just got out of the console area and wanted to try something different. Plus I needed something to help me with my homework (or so that's what my dad thought!  )
We got lumbered with an ATI 2Mb 3D Rage Pro.  At the time I didn't know how good the machine would be at playing games, but they also had another machine on show.  It was running Moto Racer on an R3D, and the graphics looked brilliant!
I asked the guy if our PC would be like that and he laughed saying:
"No, that has a Voodoo chipset graphics card inside.  Having that would cost you a LOT more!"

We never got the Orchid Righteous and I eventually forgot about it, until the Voodoo2 came out in late '97. I bought a Creative 12Mb and a 2nd one 3 months later. Those cards were my first Voodoo experience and I loved every minute of them! They lasted me right up until summer 2001.  They played every game at super fast framerates all the time! That's how good they were!

Still using the 3dfx cards is more nostalgia for me now, and going back to the old retro games and playing them with the best hardware around at that time to support them!

It is a shame that 3dfx went the way they did.  Given them another chance and a different strategy during their dark time and I am certain they would have come out head and shoulders above the rest! I mean look how early they developed blueprints for the Rampage technology! 3dfx were no slouches!

I love everything about 3dfx and always have (from the technology to the marketing retail boxes) and that dies hard!

It does have the terminolology doesn't it? 

I think a lot of vendors benfitted from 3dfx 'Words or wisdom' and  I see a lot of the same artistic styles on many boxes that undoubtedly originate from the 3dfx Voodoo2/3/4/5/TV series (noticeably the eyes or face art).

3dfx was a special company, its attitude to customers were different - not like "buy this card, we need your money" but "we made something and want to offer you for pleasure". 3dfx's commercials for example are just amazing, look of VooDoo box'es is cool - i guess this is what keeps me to 3dfx. btw i really enjoyed surfing http://web.archive.org/ archives gathering all info about 3dfx. I found there a pic "Join the coolest company on silicon valley" and it reminded me what keeps me to 3dfx