Voodoo Graphics coming back?

Interesting article about the former company 3dfX who made GPU's circa 2000 and have been absent for 20 years after nvidia bought most of their assets. What do you think room for 4 vendors in the graphics space? Likely this won't happen, you can't suddenly decide to make GPU's one day. It takes engineers and money also Nvidia has most of their patents. Maybe they just trying to sell merchandise or perhaps they can become a partner vendor like msi, EVGA, AsRock etc..

https://wccftech.com/gpu-maker-3dfx-interactive-teases-a-comeback-after-20-years-major-announcement-expected-next-week/

Proud owner of a Voodoo GPU here.

The market has only gotten worse since Nvidia took them over.

That would be interesting. I am not sure how they can compete after all this time or what they will bring to the table but who knows, a different perspective on things might be good for the industry.

Tbh, I might have ruled them out in the past.

However, I did the same thing when apple said they'd dump intel for their own CPUs, I rubbished the idea. But the apple M1 blew me away.

So maybe these guys may surprise me too.

Nvidia/ATI stuff isnt necessarily proprietary. 3dfx was and thats what made it a POS. So no, I would not welcome them back.

There was nothing like it when it came out. They pioneer the tech and that normally comes with proprietary. Nvidia heavily leans into proprietary tech.

The Voodoo2 was my first GPU. Good times…

Ah yes, Voodoo 2....the original SLI cards, with a whopping 24 MB memory.

God, remember when we used to measure stuff in MB?!?! Those were the days.

Yeah one of my first.

Think I had a Voodoo 2 at one point.

Something called a Riva TNT 2 or a Diamond something

3DFX cards were a huge leap for PC graphics at the time. It's hard to imagine what they might have up their sleeve to have the same effect on today's market.

Maybe GPU's you can actually buy?

Probably just a board partner type deal if it came to pass. That being said, I'd welcome it, especially if it was a true chipset+tech innovation business. Would be interested to see what came to the table

Was an exciting era for GPUs (and CPUs) back then. A wild west in many ways. When the Voodoo and TNT2 roamed the earth it was a mindblowing leap from what we had before

That certainly takes me back. Picked up a Voodoo 3 card back in 2000 I think when I was into PC gaming. I probably have it in a box somewhere still.

Voodoo 2 is the Pamela Anderson of graphic cards, before she become old and decrepit.

If it lights a match under Nvidia's ass, then cool. Anyhow, seems like a bad time to be trying to grow a tech business with the chip shortages and all.

It may actually be the best time.

NVIDIA is laying the smackdown on ATI in graphics cards its not even close right now.

Intel is getting squished by ATI why the f can't ati compete with NVIDIA when there doing fine against intel?

@zerothehero: 🥱

I always thought that they were an actual partner vendor. But if they become one, have good costumer service and warranties (like evga), i'd be interested in their stuff.

Ah, I once had a 16MB Voodoo 3D Blaster Banshee. Was so happy that I could finally play Descent 3.

In retrospect, I wish that I had kept that computer.

It's strange how popular the Voodoo Graphics was and yet the owner 3dfx Interactive didn't last that long and got bought out by Nvidia.

Among other mistakes, the decision 3DFX made to cut out board partners and be the sole makers of Voodoo video cards was dumb. All the board makers just said 'k' and started using nVidia chips.

Riva TNT was my first GPU, but a friend had a Voodoo 2. I remember playing GLQuake and Tomb Raider and being blown away.

Yes, the jump from Playstation Tomb Raider 2 to PC felt like 2 generation.

One of the first really impressive looking 3D games remember.

Oh man 3DFX...good times. running Quake 2 in software then switching to the 3DFX card...mind blowing stuff.

I would be surprised if they are making a new GPU though. its probably just a new brand of Nvidia GPUs from a 3rd party. making a new GPU architecture is...well...its not trivial.

It would be great to see another competitor though. Nvidia, AMD, Intel and 3DFX...sounds good to me :).

Yea, that and Unreal mind blowing shit.

Argue Unreal still legit sexy today even with its basic geometry.

I had Voodoo 2 as well, remember pulling it out of the closet to play Diablo 2 because the game ran so much better on Glide vs the later cards running on d3d lol

OMG I remember these, I bought two to get 800x600 resolution.

Nah, they just can't came with a GPU design of their own that's actually worth something suddenly. It takes lot of research, money, resources and time. If designing GPUs were so easy Intel would have brought out a decent one by now.

Pretty sure they are owned by nvidia.

@Gatygun: no. But most of their assets at the time were sold to Nvidia. Given the antiquated natureof those, it's actually probably irrelevant at this point to their ability to reboot the brand

Most other nostalgic brands including game IP's have been rebooted successfully like the Atari VCS for example. Voodoo would just be a branding perhaps one that a company like PNY or Zotac might use just to market some uniqueness to their RTX cards. Imagine if they used similar box art on top of it? But the branding could also be used to identify diversity in configurations...such as a 3080 RTX with different amount of VRAM or different Type/cheaper type? ...DDR 5 perhaps?

I don't know if cost cutting on VRAM type would gimp a 30 series to the point where it wouldn't be useful but personally I wouldn't mind seeing lower power laptop 30 series being made for desktops. That way, we have the option of utilizing the newest features and lower power supply options...then just call it a Voodoo graphics card!