3dfx making a comeback, 4th GPU player in the market?

[Zarax]

I was under the impression that between them, nV and AMD hold sufficient IP to prevent any other party from getting into the GPU market.

Don't Intel license some of AMD's IP in order to make their iGPUs? And presumably now their dGPUs.

I don't think anyone without the $billions to license those IP would be making any kind of modern PC GPU.

I guess they could go with PowerVR for something (much) less powerful.

AFAIK the only players that have a snowball's chance of going back to making gaming GPUs are Matrox (still alive making niche cards) and VIA (owns S3 IP, plans to make some iGPU for Zhaoxin IIRC).

Both IIRC have some kind of IP sharing agreement with AMD but the chances of them woking on GPUs are approximately the same of Texas Instrument resurrecting the Cyrix brand to compete with Intel and AMD.

That said, Zhaoxin is the actual concrete example for nearly impossible things happening in the semiconductor world, so never say never...

 

[arc@css]

I'd like to think so but can't see it happening.

Hope I'm wrong.

 

[varkanoid]

I'd like to think so but can't see it happening.

Hope I'm wrong.

They posted another tweet with a picture of all the old Voodoo boxes saying we are bringing all these back.
Bit of an odd message as if you brought them all back they wouldnt fit in most modern PC's as we have no AGP or PCI and be quite rubbish.

 

[humbug]

Actual cards? i hope so......

 

[Rroff]

They posted another tweet with a picture of all the old Voodoo boxes saying we are bringing all these back.
Bit of an odd message as if you brought them all back they wouldnt fit in most modern PC's as we have no AGP or PCI and be quite rubbish.

Possible they'd bridge them to PCI-e and on smaller format taking advantage of newer electronics. I don't really see the point.

Got to be fake since 3dfx is nvidia property now so nvidia website would have info.
Its a new twitter account so reeks of fakeness.

nVidia don't own everything - however it doesn't look like any of the original 3Dfx people seem to be involved in this.

 

[varkanoid]

Possible they'd bridge them to PCI-e and on smaller format taking advantage of newer electronics. I don't really see the point.

Cant believe you actually were thinking of a way round it as though its real.

 

[Rroff]

Cant believe you actually were thinking of a way round it as though its real.

I actually find that side of it interesting - I know a couple of people who enjoy the challenge of deducing the functionality of obsolete ICs and coming up with pin compatible replacements, etc.

 

[Freddie1980]

For those interested ARM and PowerVR are both based in the UK with UK engineers making the UK the top county in the world for GPU R&D and GPU IP.

Their Graphics IP though I believe is built around OpenGL rather DirectX which is required for PC gamers. Even still though they could produce low/mid cards for Linux or Steam machines.

 

[Monkeynut]

There was a hobbyist who made a customer Voodoo 6000 board for four VSA-100 chips - you can actually get the chips cheaply from China and assemble a board if you wanted to. I think there'd be a hobbyist market for the 6000 as a replica card, but you'd need to cobble some drivers together. I know there were modified Windows XP drivers floating around for it, but doubt you could even get them to install on Windows 10.

 

[Rroff]

Their Graphics IP though I believe is built around OpenGL rather DirectX which is required for PC gamers. Even still though they could produce low/mid cards for Linux or Steam machines.

People wrote wrappers, etc. so I doubt creating a DX driver component would be overly impossible. nVidia own most of that IP though so it would have to be either built from scratch, an nVidia sponsored effort or built on top of something like the nVidia Kepler IP license.

If there is anything real to this it wouldn't surprise me if it was an attempt at a kickstarter to create a 3Dfx themed card using something like the nVidia Kepler IP as a base.

 

[Zarax]

Unless... This is going to be a crazy speculation and I have nothing to back it up but...

What if this is a market segmentation trial by Nvidia?
Think about the prices going up and our collective lamenting of the sub $300 market being effectively abandoned by both players.

3DFX could become Nvidia's "budget brand", likely recycling older (and cheaper!) nodes to sell "better than integrated, but not for real gamers" cards without damaging the main brand premium image.
Again, this is crazy speculation but it's what it's done all the time by other players (think Xiaomi and Poco), cheap but effective.

 

[Rroff]

Not a bad idea but IMO they wouldn't use the 3Dfx brand for that - if it is nVidia it would probably be something a bit special, a multi-core/MCM card or something would be appropriate given the 3Dfx heritage. Probably revive something like the RIVA branding for a GPU like that.

 

[Pottsey]

Their Graphics IP though I believe is built around OpenGL rather DirectX which is required for PC gamers. Even still though they could produce low/mid cards for Linux or Steam machines.

They do DirectX as well and the other API's and high end right up to console, professional and desktop even have hardware Ray Tracing which they did before AMD or Nvidia. Its been done before and it can be done again, if someone wants to enter the desktop market they can get the IP from ARM or PowerVR and bypass any IP problems from Nvidia or AMD. Granted its very unliekly to happen, just its a path that turns it from near impossible to possible.

 

[varkanoid]

Dunno whether this is coincidence but I was checking out the twitters account followed and there are over 200 mainly tech and GPU related but the first follower it added was.... Nvidia.

Also find it strange Nvidia has not come out and commented or slapped them and reported them to Twitter for pinching their IP ?

Unless they know its fake and cant be bothered as people trying 3dfx.com just drives them to their website.

 

[B@Th*nG]

as nice as it would be for there to be better competition I suspect it's more likely to be a budget brand of nvidia.

 

[willhub]

The 4050 and under will be 3dfx I bet.

 

[MCFC_ANDY]

ah memories of popping into dixons to pick up the latest voodoo card, takes me down memory lane for sure, hope its something special, though not getting hopes up too much

 

[Cadder]

I got to "Prepare for an major announcement..." and concluded that it is likely tripe.

 

[StrongSad]

ah memories of popping into dixons to pick up the latest voodoo card, takes me down memory lane for sure, hope its something special, though not getting hopes up too much

Absolutely this!!!

Ah, they were the days, Jumpers for goal posts, Graphics cards on the high street...

 

[Nelly]

ah memories of popping into dixons to pick up the latest voodoo card, takes me down memory lane for sure, hope its something special, though not getting hopes up too much

That's exactly what I did when I purchased the 3dfx – Voodoo 5 5500 64MB, I think it cost around £250 at the time. I had the ATI All-in-Wonder Pro 4MB PCI for 2D and STB Blackmagic 3D graphics card - Voodoo 2 - 12 MB for 3D before that around 1997 in a pre-build from Dan Technology, I blew about 2 grand on it - image quality was great even then.

I had the Nvidia Elsa Gladiac GeForce 2 GTS 64MB and Nvidia Creative 3D Blaster Riva TNT2 32MB prior to the 3dfx Voodoo 5 and those Nvidia cards had horrible image quality, I can't believe people kept buying them. ATI and 3dfx totally destroyed Nvidia when you compared image quality, I think this is part of the reason why Nvidia cards seemed on par with speeds, as they coudn't perferm in terms of the image quality.

Infact, we had to wait till 7-years later to have decent image quality from Nvidia when they released the legendary 8800GTX around 2007, which I bought.

Like I said, ATI and 3dfx totally destroyed Nvidia in terms of the IQ prior to that. I was kinda gutted about when 3dfx went under and the tech went over to Nvidia including majority of the engineers. A case of what could have been.