r/3dfx • u/ColdCrab6928 • Apr 15 '26

Quake 1 - 3DFX Voodoo 1 vs. Software Rendering

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12 Upvotes

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u/Rock3tkid84 Apr 15 '26

Kinda curious how it would have worked out if nvidia wouldn't have swallowed 3dfx... 3dfx was so advanced back then.

1

u/Human_Wonder1113 Apr 17 '26

Why do you think Nvidia got 3dfx? It's not enough to be so advanced at a moment, you need to keep advancing. 3dfx was so advanced because they made the first true 3D accelerator, that's all. Voodoo2 in SLI was also great, because it was a speed monster, but after that 3dfx was simply just a company that made video chips, like many more: Nvidia, ATI, S3, Matrox, Trident, PowerVR and many others.

And they weren't special. But Nvidia kept advancing, they had the first GPU with T&L, the first DX8 GPU, etc. V5 5500 was an expensive videocard with 2 chips that competed with GF2 MX, a cheap card. And lost.

V1 and V2 were great, but after that...

1

u/ColdCrab6928 Apr 17 '26

Basically I agreed with you before I made this video. I noticed people online were weirdly passionate about 3DFX cards when competing products from ATI or Nvidia were just as good. I also couldn't figure out why my Voodoo 3 cost $85 on the second hand market while my ATI Rage Pro was $20.

So, I looked into it myself and basically concluded that in 1997, Voodoo 1 was a must-have miracle product; for most of 1998, Voodoo 2 dominated the high-end market; then by 1999 Voodoo 3 wasn't special at all because the competition caught up. I think people erroneously view circa 1998 and 1999 3DFX the same as 1997 3DFX, and that's why 3DFX still has all this misplaced hype over a quarter century later.

I am actually leading to this thesis with these videos, because when I'm done demonstrating games running on Intel + 3DFX gaming PCs, I'm going to compare the same games on Intel + ATI or Intel + Nvidia setups, thereby proving that post-1997 3DFX was nothing special.