November 13, 2000

10:27 PM

A year after the original announcement and after enticing its fans for months, 3DFX screwed them over today by cancelling the V5-6000. [More]
posted by Steven Den Beste (18 comments total)

Now this was a really weird graphics board. It used an external 50W power supply (and dumped all that heat into the case of the computer) and it was so long that it stuck into one of the HD bays in most computers. With four VSA-100 chips on it, each having 32M of RAM all to itself, it was going to be the most powerful graphics card available -- until NVidia released the NV-20 in about 4 months, at a much lower price.

It's been a turkey from the beginning, but 3DFX fans have been waiting for it with extreme anticipation (how to you spell "baited breath" properly?). There was a rumor that there would be a momentous announcement about it at Comdex, and most of the Voodoo web sites were expecting a release date and pricing. They sure didn't expect this.

Probably this was wise. But it also means that 3DFX has now ceded the top end of the graphics market to ATI and NVidia and are now relegated to second tier, until they manage to get Rampage out. Unfortunately, that will be about the time NVidia gets the NV-20 out, and everyone expects NVidia to stomp 3DFX again in all of performance, price and power consumption.

NVidia is making money hand-over-fist. 3DFX has been losing money continuously for about three years. I think we're about to see some shakeout.

posted by Steven Den Beste at 10:37 PM on November 13, 2000

Steven Den Beste has posted 172 links and 615 comments to MetaFilter ....the highest ratio of links to comments among the entire membership!


posted by murray_kester at 4:57 AM on November 14, 2000

Steven, it's "bated breath".

Murray, work on your math. :')
SDB link to comment ratio: .28
plinth link to comment ratio .51
(as an aside to an aside, I've been trying to keep my link to comment ratio no lower than .5, how's that for anal?)
posted by plinth at 6:27 AM on November 14, 2000

3dfx has *fans*?

I don't get that. I mean, an OS or a programming language or text editor or something behaves very differently depending on which one you use. You learn how to use it and make an investment in it.

And then you fill web forums with advocacy, to protect your investment. ;-)

With a graphics card, when it's starting to get old you just replace it with something else, don't you? Does it matter who makes it?

posted by BobInce at 6:47 AM on November 14, 2000

(as an aside to an aside, I've been trying to keep my link to comment ratio no lower than .5, how's that for anal?)

I can't believe anyone pays attention to stuff like that. How many people just checked their ratio?

Norm (.0933 ratio)


posted by norm at 8:48 AM on November 14, 2000

I'm pretty sure I've got the lowest ratio. But that's because the only websites I ever go to are other weblogs.
posted by Jart at 8:57 AM on November 14, 2000

What are we looking for? Low comment to posting ratio? Or high? :-)

*I* wanna know who has the highest posting to length-of-membership ratio...
posted by baylink at 9:09 AM on November 14, 2000

I think Matt should add a page with user stats like this. Most links, most comments, highest/lowest ratios, etc. etc.
posted by daveadams at 9:34 AM on November 14, 2000

Regarding fans, you'd be surprised. NVidia versus 3DFX has caused as much heated discussion as OS/2 vs Windows vs Linux, or PC vs Mac.

There are dedicated web sites for both: Voodoo Extreme for 3DFX is just one of many; NV News for NVidia is also one of many.

posted by Steven Den Beste at 9:36 AM on November 14, 2000

NVidia versus 3DFX has caused as much heated discussion as OS/2 vs Windows vs Linux, or PC vs Mac.

Hey, stop with the topic drift, Steve. We were talking about comment-to-post ratios, and you're trying to throw us off track.
posted by daveadams at 10:46 AM on November 14, 2000

Maybe I
posted by Steven Den Beste at 11:16 AM on November 14, 2000

should make
posted by Steven Den Beste at 11:16 AM on November 14, 2000

lots of
posted by Steven Den Beste at 11:16 AM on November 14, 2000

posts to
posted by Steven Den Beste at 11:16 AM on November 14, 2000

get my
posted by Steven Den Beste at 11:16 AM on November 14, 2000

ratio down.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 11:16 AM on November 14, 2000

Steve is right about the GRX card fans. I used to go to these lan parties where except for my buddy and myself, everyone had 3Dfx cards and would chide us on their (at the time) lackluster performance in UnrealT (of course, I'm a Q3 fan, but that's a different issue).

I still remember the time I went there after Nvidia released some drivers that gave me a %30 speed increase and I was outperforming some of their boxes with better cpus. Ah well.
posted by john at 11:47 AM on November 14, 2000

Wow, Steve, that was more annoying that baylink's posts.
posted by daveadams at 12:04 PM on November 14, 2000