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It seems enthusiasts are quite interested in 3dfx GPUs for some reason --- lots of NOS parts with detailed documentation available? There was this not too long ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32960140

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Maybe you're too young, but in the late 90's 3Dfx was so hot. They weren't the first GPU, but they were the first to break out and make it big in the PC space. The difference between software rendering and hardware accelerated Voodoo graphics was nuts. It was mind blowing. Once one of your friend's had a Voodoo card, software rendering was never enough. You had to get one too.

Between the release of the Voodoo 3 and Voodoo 4/5, NVIDIA would eat 3Dfx's lunch, but not (at first) by having better tech. They just built momentum by consistently releasing new cards every six months like clockwork, whereas the Voodoo 4 and Voodoo 5 cards were feature-oriented releases stuck in development hell. 3Dfx was still the sexy hotrod brand, although NVIDIA's market share kept growing. Then the GeForce 2 came along and it was clearly better than any 3Dfx offering, while people were tired of waiting for a new Voodoo card. The rest is history.

OMG i loved my 3dfx vodoo 3 card. I had a 20 port hub and we would basically have roaming LAN parties. You brought back a lot of good memories here.

I agree except for Nvidia not having better tech. Riva TNT was not on 3dfx level, but GeForce was groundbreaking. 3dfx managed to match it with Voodoo 4/5 although it didn't get great press after all the delays, but then GeForce 2 came out and 3dfx was toast. At the time, a big angle was also that 3dfx made its own cards and Nvidia just did the chips for dozens of manufacturers, so it had the advantage there. But that's a bit of survivorship bias IMHO because e.g. Apple also does everything today and vertical integration is touted as their advantage. In the end either your tech works and has a market fit or it doesn't.

Pretty crazy how Nvidia grew from that to a top 5 company in the world in 25 years.

Let's also note that Before Voodoo3, 3dfx had other board partners.

Also should note that back then, AFAIR ATI and Matrox only sold full cards.

Nvidia also allowed, relatively, a lot of customization of their boards back then. My first GF2 had VIVO and even LCD shutter 3d glasses for a CRT.

> Let's also note that Before Voodoo3, 3dfx had other board partners.

This is what killed them, they bought STB and couldn't actually afford to keep it all running.

Got to agree here, in fact what I remember is that the Riva TNT 2 already was the smart pick vs. what 3Dfx had out at the same time, even though Voodoo was the cooler brand and had all that previous goodwill.

I had a Voodoo 3 3000, friend had a TNT2. If the game supported Glide and/or had a minigl driver available it blew the TNT out of the water. Direct3D-games however the reverse was true.

Riva TNT was affordable.

And since back then any hardware accelerated solution that was supported by games was millions of miles ahead of software rendering... that was enough.

I was so pissed off, after managing to buy a Voodoo, having to come back to the shop and replace it with a Riva TNT, because for some odd reason it wouldn't work on my PCI bus.

I mentioned the GeForce 2 in my comment :)

Apple was also on its dying legs at the time, and their stellar rise was even faster.

I remember cutting grass for neighbors during the summer when I was 11 to save up money for a 3dfx voodoo2 8mb card to put into my parents computer (packard bell 200 megahertz pentium). The driving force behind this obsession was a foldout ad in pc gaming magazine with a screenshot of the game Unreal. I remember my Dad (who was very non-technical at the time) trying to talk me into one of the other cards at CompUSA (a PowerVR if I recall) and I was explaining why I wanted the 3dfx (I'm sure I was regurgitating whatever I read on HardOCP).

We got home, figured out how to install it and the drivers ,and booted up Unreal. Amazing moment in my life, and probably one the main reasons I ended up being a software developer. Tweaking settings, learning commands in the 'in-game terminal', understanding basic networking to help pick servers, tinkering with the level editor. PC Gaming was an amazing introduction to 'How Computers work' with a really motivating example. I feel like my kids completely miss that because they just play games on an ipad which completely insulates them from any of it.

I was a gamer in the 90s, chatted with id via IRC when they were developing Doom, loved Quake, but didn't get a 3d card until the Voodoo 3 came out and was lucky enough to be able to afford a Voodoo 3 3000 when it launched. I installed it, fired up Quake 2 and, exactly as you say, my mind was blown. Colored lighting, moving lights, smooth shading, etc. It was incredible. I've never experienced such a visceral reaction to a big leap in computing power before or since. I'll always remember that afternoon seeing what it could do. I was mesmerized.

I'll never forget the first time I booted up GLQuake. The mid/late 90s was a really special time in gaming getting to watch 3D games really get off the ground.

For people of a certain age, 3dfx is iconic. As a teenager, you read a bunch of reviews about how great it was. This was before widespread broadband and there wasn't much PC gaming content on TV, so you didn't really know what it looked like. After months/years of saving you finally bought one, put it in your PC, started up Quake 2, and it was f**ing amazing.

GeForce came along soon enough and made it obsolete, but never had the same mystique.

Yup! And when V2 came out, I had two of them, if memory serves. The 3dfx Voodoo II was awesome for the longest time.

I still remember being jealous of the kid at computer camp with the two SLI Voodoo 2s playing Unreal.

SLI being "scan-line interleaving" at the time. Not to be confused with today's "Serial Link Interface"

> Not to be confused with today's "Serial Link Interface"

Scalable Link Interface.

And it's not available today either. The last cards that used it was the 1000 series. The 2000 and 3000 cards used NVLink, but that's disappeared from the 4000 series, too.

The 3DFX jump was almost the same as playing games badly rendered from the GBA (or maybe the first Nintendo DS games) to the quality of the PSP.

Or, as a better example, compare the V-Rally game for the GBA with Ridge Racer for the PSP.

Deus Ex and Unreal could run under a 3DFX card. The jump from a software rendered Quake (or just any software rendered Unreal game) to a hardware rendered one was pretty noticeable.

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