Well as much as I'm not really all that surprised to see 3Dfx finally go down, I am saddened by their demise.

(Thanks to Dillinger for making my comical idea a reality. Appreicate it bud!)

Just for those of you who don't keep track of the news, on December 15/2000 3Dfx, originator of the 3D video card for the home market announced the sale of their assets to nVidia corporation. Read the entire story here.

I figured that 3Dfx had doomed themselves when they decided to go their own way about two years ago and make their own video cards, as well as the chipsets. Previously 3Dfx had manufactured chipsets and relied on companies such as Creative Labs, Diamond and Guilemot to manufacturer and distribute the boards. Taking over the board making process was a bold move, but I seriously wondered how well they'd do with STB. STB has been making OEM boards for one hell of a long time, and had made a variety of retail Voodoo, nVidia & S3 boards. I was never terribly impressed with their video cards as they really never seemed to have anything to recommend them above anyone else's, other than the name. Black Magic had to have been the coolest name for a Voodoo board, perhaps even beating out the Diamond Monster series. Many people regarded 3Dfx as complete bastards for deserting their long standing partners especially Diamond, who were the first ones to take a chance on 3Dfx and make boards for the Voodoo1 chipset. I personally just regarded the change as simply another business decision and not an effort to screw anyone over. In the end however, it seems that my initial feeling of doom on their change in direction was correct.

I think that one of the major things that turned me off 3Dfx at the time of their change over was the fact that they dropped all support for the old STB boards. That's right, they bought out STB and then screwed their customer base over by refusing to support the nVidia boards that STB had been making in the past. When 3Dfx bought out STB in my opinion they bought the duty to support their old boards for the warranty period. Screwing your customers is not a good way to announce your intentions for the future.

I certainly hope the fact that nVidia has no real competition right now, save perhaps ATI (And I'm sorry I just don't trust ATI and their drivers from hell.) won't make them get lazy. That's basically what happened to 3Dfx. They were king of the hill for so long that when someone else (Ex. nVidia ironically enough) came along with a really strong product (TNT2) and proved they were a viable alternative they simply couldn't seem to deal with it. At first I believed the Voodoo hype and disdained the nVidia cards myself, cradling my Voodoo3 close to my heart... But then Rune came along with his TNT2 and showed me how good everything looked WITH decent framerates.... And I got a GeForce shortly thereafter. It's been over a year and I'm still in love.... It took damned near that long for 3Dfx to bring out something to compete. 9 months in the computer industry, especially in a fast moving sector like the graphics acceleration market spells death. 3Dfx also ignored little things like 32 bit colour and hardware T&L. While the rest of the industry was ranting and drooling trying to get their product shipping with those features, 3Dfx was busy trying to come up with a proprietary way to blur your graphics. The Full Screen Anti-Aliasing was a very cool idea, but nVidia booted them in the face when they announced that users of their cards could now do it in their drivers. Du'oh. It's not as fast, but it certainly took the wind out of 3Dfx's sails.

Regrettably, a company can only sit around and talk about their wonderful products so long without actually producing anything wonderful and stay in business. Without the apparent ability to innovate and actually bring their products to market, 3Dfx has sadly fallen by the wayside. Hopefully someone else steps up to take their place, and nVidia does something useful with the technology and ideas they've purchased or at least doesn't get stagnant. If not, someone else will come along and kick them in the teeth, just like they did to 3Dfx. And I'd hate to have my heart broken that way again.