Defunct GPU manufacturer 3DFX have (maybe) announced a comeback on Twitter, more in an announcement this Thursday

[Beerzerker]

7 hours ago, Murasaki said:

That would be pretty cool actually! But im sure it wont matter because Windows 10 will crap on it.

If it's based on the older AGP slot that would probrably be it's meant for true retro-systems based on actual older hardware so Win 10/11 woudn't be a factor.

If so, at least I'm set to do it if I want - Got everything else except for the card itself already here.
However as said above, I'm not sure if my wallet is ready..... 

With the likelyhood this was a hoax all along I'm not gonna hold my breath over it.

[marldorthegreat]

On 7/31/2021 at 4:24 PM, Vulkan HeStan said:

I remember a student tricked people over here (UK) into thinking Woolworths were coming back. Alas it wasn't to be

 

This seems like another prank/social experiment of similar scope

If there is any way to hype up the british population, this is what you do. 

[poochyena]

13 hours ago, Murasaki said:

Unless theres dozens of warehouses full of new-old stock

seems likely to me. Its hard to even giveaway old tech, and trashing it in bulk often costs extra

[Chilly32bit]

Very interesting that someone would try this. No clue if this is correct, however. If so, someone tried to do it literally today but either failed or cancelled it..

[X-System]

10 hours ago, Mel0nMan said:

What I want to happen is a PCIe x1 Voodoo card for retro games. Fits in any modern computer but is able to natively run older games without VMs, Windows 9x emulators, etc. Probably not the case but would be interesting to see...

You can to build a retro PC with 3Dfx card like I do my retro PC (Pentium III with 2x 3Dfx Voodoo2 SLI in modern case box and 15" DELL LCD display)

 

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, X-System said:

You can to build a retro PC

what is it with retro systems and dangling cables? Haha. 

 

(i had a similar issue when trying to revive a 2007 dell system… still "working on it" lol)

[atxcyclist]

Yes Please. I just came across my old Voodoo 3 2000 AGP in a box the other day, it was in a Duron 600 system that I built in 2000. I have many fond memories of that system, like playing Unreal for the first time in Glide mode. 

[SansVarnic]

3dFX was purchased by NVIDIA, dont they still own the 3dFX Trademark?

If not, this would be a cool thing. I loved 3dFX as they were the best.

 

*edit

Would be the funniest and would make my day if they came out the gate stomping on Nvidia and AMD.

[RejZoR]

It's possible they'll just pull HMD move... HMD bought rights to use name "Nokia" and is now churning out China made devices with Nokia stamped on them.

 

New 3dfx may just as well just be an AIB like ASUS, Gigabyte or MSI and just make cards with 3dfx and Voodoo branding, but they'll just be Radeon and GeForce cards. Because creating a graphics company from nothing that makes entirely own GPU's is pretty much impossible at this point. Intel could pull Xe because they are already a huge machine that once did this in the past. Whatever newcomer just can't do it. It's just not possible unless they have some insane magic trick up their sleeve that will make AMD and NVIDIA look like noobs. But they'll suffer from driver issues like new companies always do and till they'll get that sorted, AMD and NVIDIA will copy whatever they'll be doing.

[hishnash]

On 8/1/2021 at 3:51 AM, Master Disaster said:

Its possible this is real but under what scope? Its not like they're gonna build their own hardware so at best its just going to be another Partner for Nvidia GPUs.

PowerVR were making noice a few months ago about making a desktop card, maybe they have opted to leverage this old brand (their GPU IP is quite competitive and could put a good amount of pressure on AMD and nVidia given that they need less memory bandwidth for the same perfomance they can use much cheaper memory letting them target a lower price point.

[StDragon]

6 hours ago, hishnash said:

PowerVR were making noice a few months ago about making a desktop card, maybe they have opted to leverage this old brand (their GPU IP is quite competitive and could put a good amount of pressure on AMD and nVidia given that they need less memory bandwidth for the same perfomance they can use much cheaper memory letting them target a lower price point.

That would be interesting. Though from the looks of things, they're hanging on licensing tech to SoC development. If PowerVR actually made a real dGPU, it would be interesting where it would rank in performance.

 

Anyone remember Rendition and the Verite series? That tech was about as proprietary as 3Dfx's. Not at all surprising as the only real viable APIs were OpenGL and DirectX; even then it's wasn't 100% solid in reference. Probably because Glide and RRedline were pushed early on.

[Murasaki]

I was digging through the tweets and someone said "Physx cards, but for ray tracing". That sounds cool tbh.

[StDragon]

14 minutes ago, Murasaki said:

I was digging through the tweets and someone said "Physx cards, but for ray tracing". That sounds cool tbh.

Now that would be interesting. What's old is new again. So the 3Dfx does ray tracing better than both Nvidia and AMD as in add-in card.

Speaking of physics, because such a card would do nothing but ray tracing, I'm guessing the physics would be done in CPU. The irony is that Nvidia bought PhysX and rolled up their IP into the GPU from what was a dedicated PCI card 15 years ago. 

[RejZoR]

55 minutes ago, StDragon said:

That would be interesting. Though from the looks of things, they're hanging on licensing tech to SoC development. If PowerVR actually made a real dGPU, it would be interesting where it would rank in performance.

 

Anyone remember Rendition and the Verite series? That tech was about as proprietary as 3Dfx's. Not at all surprising as the only real viable APIs were OpenGL and DirectX; even then it's wasn't 100% solid in reference. Probably because Glide and RRedline were pushed early on.

S3 had S3 Metal and it was amazing API back in 1998/1999. I got insane framerates out of otherwise underwhelming S3 Savage3D graphic card. And since almost all Unreal Engine games supported S3 Metal, I had amazing experience with huge amount of games and I could even enjoy high resolution textures thanks to S3TC. S3 Metal was probably best thing after Glide back in the day. Too bad drivers and hardware had quite some issues.

[Guyver1]

ahh the pleasant rush of nostalgia where I went out and purchased my very first graphics card which was newly released and was the best card on the market at the time (Voodoo3 3000) and the best GFX card on the market cost me £128..

 

How times have changed (3090 owner)........

[Mark Kaine]

Heh, a physics card that adds raytracing and a DLSS like thing for older cards would probably sell like hotcakes, too bad this whole thing looks fake af…  

[Murasaki]

Love this ad lmao

 

[hishnash]

8 hours ago, StDragon said:

That would be interesting. Though from the looks of things, they're hanging on licensing tech to SoC development. If PowerVR actually made a real dGPU, it would be interesting where it would rank in performance.

Due to having a long history of focusing on the low power (pref/W) angle they have possibly of building cards with a much higher perf within the same power/thermal envelop. People think perf/W is all about mobile but in fact it is even more important in the high end situations were you end up being limited by your heat/power density problems. 

 

What we have not seen them do to date is developer any DX drivers (they have VK drivers). Without game devs getting on board doing large changes to the render pipeline it is going to be hard for the TBDR GPUs to really show their advantages. 

 

8 hours ago, Murasaki said:

I was digging through the tweets and someone said "Physx cards, but for ray tracing". That sounds cool tbh.

Would be quite limited in how it is used, having the RT compute on a serrate card would limit the RT operations (you would don't be able to evaluate within any regular shaders) (would work for the DX style NV/RT api where you do dedicated RT parse but not the VK one). 

[Murasaki]

On 8/1/2021 at 4:49 AM, FakeKGB said:

Update:

A new tweet has been added with the poll "You all wanna see a new 3dfx Voodoo card?"

I was so looking forward to the results of that poll, now this and I think one more tweet is gone. This sucks.

[tkitch]

22 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

They bought it, but I think something ran out this year and Nvidia didn't renew it.  Tom's contacted Nvidia and are awaiting comment.

Intel shoulda swiped it, just to be hilarious when their cards came out

 

[Bitter]

So now Falcon Northwest is in on it too?

[TOMPPIX]

 

[Dujith]

23 minutes ago, TOMPPIX said:

*snip

So is it bad if an "investement" company does not show up in a simple Google search? Also.. wtf sound systems?

[Master Disaster]

37 minutes ago, TOMPPIX said:

 

This makes no sense, when 3DFX filed for bankruptcy the only asset they had left was their registered names, Nvidia bought everything else.

 

This is basically another Atari situation, a shitcrawler has bought up the name and is now going to slap it on everything in the hopes they can make a quick buck off the name of someone that used to be popular amongst the people who are responsible for the current retro boom.

 

I'm calling it now, they'll pump out marked up cheap AF Chinese crap with the 3DFX logo on using the old adage "throw lots of shit at the wall and see what sticks" until they've totally destroyed the name.

[Wh0_Am_1]

Well after making the assumption that they somehow did manage to retain or regain their trademarks and are a seperate entity from Nvidia, they will most likely be board partner for either AMD or Nvidia, as if they had the financial assets to produce any GPUs of any meaningful worth we probably would have heard something a long time ago, or if they are currently gathering such backing or assets by the time they ever make it to market, the market will probably be too lean with Nvidia, AMD, Intel, and etc. all battling for market share for any such company to make a return on my investment. But yeah it would be the funniest if they came out like that