93
The 3dfx Voodoo Worked So Well Nobody Saw the Problem (playstationcouch.com)
submitted 11 hours ago by gorpo65@lemmy.today to c/retrogaming@lemmy.world
33 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The 3dfx Voodoo wasn’t the first 3D card, or the most complete. It was the first that made games feel smooth. Four years later, Nvidia bought what was left of the company. What went wrong? #Voodoo #Gaming

top 33 comments
sorted by: hot top new old
[-] zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 3 hours ago

The site just touches on it a little, but the Nvidia TNT that came out in 98 (but what felt like forever after the Voodoo 2 was already out) was supposed to be MUCH faster than it was. The original specs ended up being what the TNT2 card had, and it was a large difference and would have trounced the Voodoo 2. I bought the first TNT on the market, ironically released by STB that 3DFX bought right after, and it had the original specs on the box. If that had happened today I am sure there would have been a lawsuit.

[-] brave_lemmywinks@lemmy.world 6 points 4 hours ago

A friend of mine had one and he was so proud of it. At the time I didn't have the notion of it, or how groundbreaking they were.

[-] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 3 points 2 hours ago

They were magical. When I got my first 3D accelerator (Voodoo 2, 8 MB) I would just marvel at how quickly the weapon switching worked in Jedi Knight.

[-] Henryterd@feddit.online 4 points 5 hours ago

the passthrough cable setup is so weird looking back. a second card just for 3d with a vga cable looping out the back, and it still felt like magic

[-] Varesti@lemmy.zip 35 points 9 hours ago

I always remember the boxes being really trippy.

[-] CatpainTypo@lemmy.world 6 points 4 hours ago

I had one. I really remember the click as you booted a 3D game as the S3 graphics card switched off and display switched over to the Voodoo1. It has a cable bridging the display connection on the back. The Voodoo2 could do 2D graphics as well which killed quite a lot of cards like the S3.

[-] HouseWolf@pawb.social 20 points 8 hours ago

We really did just give up designing box art one day didn't we? Now you're lucky if they even give you a render of the card inside, normally it's just a black box with a flat logo.

[-] UnityDevice@lemmy.zip 4 points 8 hours ago

The OG galaxy brain.

[-] Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club 38 points 9 hours ago

I was there, 3000 years ago.

My shelves still feature two 12MB Voodoo 2 in nostalgic reminder of the good old times.

[-] Strider@lemmy.world 1 points 39 minutes ago

Nice, I didn't keep them.

But did you use wicked3d glasses? 😁

[-] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 2 points 3 hours ago

I'm still slightly mad that my parents got me an 8 MB Voodoo 2 instead of 12 MB. And I couldn't even formulate my frustration because I didn't quite understand VRAM yet.

Still, Unreal never looked better.

[-] Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club 1 points 1 hour ago

Omg Unreal is epic, those marble corridors still look legit today.

With two Voodoos you could run it in 1024×768.

[-] zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

I, painfully, had to buy my friend a Voodoo 2 card while I had a crappy Riva 128 because I owed him money. He then proceeded to show me how awesome GLQuake was and I couldn't run it.

[-] Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club 1 points 1 hour ago

Don't worry, you can buy a Voodoo 2 today for the price of about a 3070 or something :''(.

(and yes, mine are my retirement plan ... no, not financially, for gaming, bcs soon having 12/24MB of vram will be far beyond the reach of normal pleb)

[-] ace_garp@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago

Big SLI energy.

[-] Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club 2 points 1 hour ago

Big SLI energy,
smol ATA floppy data cable.

[-] truxnell@quokk.au 10 points 9 hours ago

I'm gutted, I tried to add heatsinks to the RAM in mine and I fried it.

I wish I kept my old boxes/hardware now. At least I still have my old consoles /boxes I guess

[-] HerrVorragend@lemmy.world 17 points 9 hours ago

Back in the day, 3dfx was like magic. I had a PC with the horrible S3 Virge card and when I got a cheap 3dfx card, suddenly my old PC was good enough to play the newest games smoothly!

[-] zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 3 hours ago

The S3 Virge was called a 3D-decellerator back in the day because games ran slower using it (though prettier) than with software rendering. Always made me laugh.

[-] sleepmode@lemmy.world 18 points 10 hours ago

The marketing was catchy and everywhere. I remember doodling the logo in class without understanding or really caring what a graphics card was. Same for Amiga advertising…

After inheriting the family PC and taking it apart years later, I discovered it had a TNT-based card. It was such a solid piece of hardware for a long time in computer years. Used it until it failed and replaced it with an MX400 that wasn’t much different.

[-] TBi@lemmy.world 8 points 9 hours ago

I remember the TNT and the detonator driver release which massively boosted performance.

3dfx was great too.

[-] absGeekNZ 7 points 9 hours ago

I had the voodoo 2 card.... I played quake, quake 2, quake 3 all on the same card.

[-] creamfresh@lemmy.world 11 points 10 hours ago

Nice write-up. At the time I only had a N64 and never realised how short this era was. Must have been quite exciting for hardware enthusiasts, nowadays 2 years come and go and nothing's happened.

[-] zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 3 hours ago

It was super exciting. We were constantly modding everything, running hacked experimental drivers to get some game to work or get some performance boost was fairly normal.

[-] FridaVanMercury@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 10 hours ago

I had one of these, it was such a massive difference, made playing Quake 2 and 3 actually possible on my hardware.

[-] RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 6 points 10 hours ago

To be fair, the N64 was ahead of most PCs at the time, antialiasing wasn't a common option on PCs at a comparative price point, but on N64 it was default.

[-] creamfresh@lemmy.world 3 points 9 hours ago

I was a kid and was only bummed that video and sample-based audio was out of the question in most cases.

[-] MurrayL@lemmy.world 5 points 9 hours ago

Is it though? Very light on details, doesn’t really dig into any of the technical stuff in any meaningful depth. Reads like it was written with a lot of ‘help’ from AI, honestly.

[-] creamfresh@lemmy.world 3 points 9 hours ago

Well it's concise and not a deep dive. A few sources would have been nice, but AI detectors say none was involved, also style doesn't match.

[-] jet@hackertalks.com 5 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

This feels like a ai generated article

The language is very claudeish

[-] cevn@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago

Strong agree

[-] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 hours ago

Article? This is some d00dz random blog. And even then, we don't know if it's a real human or not.

Okay, maybe it's a real human. No bot would produce a midia kit like this.

[-] jqubed@lemmy.world 6 points 10 hours ago

That’s something I’ve wondered about occasionally. I remembered them being the big thing, and then they just disappeared.

this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2026
93 points (95.1% liked)

RetroGaming

30694 readers
229 users here now

Vintage gaming community.

Rules:

  1. Be kind.
  2. No spam, AI slop, or soliciting for money.
  3. No racism or other bigotry allowed.
  4. Obviously nothing illegal.

If you see these please report them.

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Xylinna@lemmy.world
Tenthrow@lemmy.world
gts@lemmy.world