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3DFX Revisited
Ace's Hardware has a pretty nice article up in which they take a trip back into time and show us how things went really messy for 3DF/X and how the graphics business changed over the last couple of years
Nvidia launched the Riva TNT2 in spring 1999. This was mostly a minor tweak of the TNT1 but it finally delivered the clockspeed they originally promised for the TNT1, again directly addressing the biggest perceived flaw in their previous product head on. The card was an instant hit with OEMs, as it was just like a TNT1, but faster, with more memory -- better in every way.
3Dfx launched Voodoo3 almost simultaneously, which fixed their mistake with Banshee by offering Voodoo2 SLI level performance with an all in one 2D and shared memory package. 3Dfx received a significant amount of negative press for basically repackaging Voodoo2 with a 2D unit and adding no new features. They responded by downplaying their lack of feature set saying speed is the only important feature. They also began their descent into creative marketing with the mention of things like "22bit effective color." This was also known by some as the "Speed is King" campaign, and sparked a very long debate over whether raw framerate or image quality was more important for games.
Anyone find this to be sounding quite familiar ? I see similar statements between ATI and nVidia these days where nVidia has taken the speed-way while ATI combines speed with graphical quality :)3Dfx launched Voodoo3 almost simultaneously, which fixed their mistake with Banshee by offering Voodoo2 SLI level performance with an all in one 2D and shared memory package. 3Dfx received a significant amount of negative press for basically repackaging Voodoo2 with a 2D unit and adding no new features. They responded by downplaying their lack of feature set saying speed is the only important feature. They also began their descent into creative marketing with the mention of things like "22bit effective color." This was also known by some as the "Speed is King" campaign, and sparked a very long debate over whether raw framerate or image quality was more important for games.
In other news:
2 Comment(s)
TresPasseR
Nice article, almost got nostalgic there. :p
Zembla (old)
Ah well, dunno if you're aware of how the development of these cards resulted in the distinct differences between both...? nVidia started creating a flexible chip following their own standards (NV3X), and trying to create a new generally accepted standard besides DirectX (they thought they could do that, apparently they couldn't, DirectX still is the standard)... so nVidia stopped caring for DirectX, didn't go along with the DirectX boat, made their own standard in which flexibility was the big issue... So nVidia's chips are real flexible... ATi paced along with DirectX standards, was at every DirectX meeting there was, and complied to the DirectX norms and thereby ensured maximal DirectX compatibility and performance (though the first according to some customers is sometimes a bit far off ;)) Anyway, ATi chose speed instead of flexibility...
I wouldn't just bring it down to ATi being better than nVidia because nVidia fails to provide good quality... ATi 's chips are better in their regards, nVidia's chips are better in thèir regard...
Sidenote: nVidia of course stopped developing the standard, and started to try to be compatible with DirectX norms, they were a bit late to start doing so, and they didn't want to just forget about their hard work, so they continued working on their NV3X GPU, only modified it.
nVidia's card can handle up to 1024 applications per PS2.0 shader, while ATi can handle only up to 96. However, games like Half-Life 2, only use a maximum of maybe 12, DX9 can't go higher than 64 applications per shader anyway.
So again: ATi is speed, nVidia is flexibility, an overkill flexibility that will be useless until they start increasing applications per shader etc.
BTW, this is just what I heard, it can be wrong... but the source is credible