Nevertheless, the Voodoo 3 graphics cards didn’t completely correspond with the Mainstream, nVidia's TNT2 chip could do something more: It was able to handle 32Bit Rendering as well as textures more largely than 256x256 bit. However, it wasn’t the TNT2 chip but its successor, which should push the king of the throne.

 
 

In June and July 1999 3dfx gained a foothold in the sector of the Apple computers for the first time. There were indeed already Banshee and Voodoo 1 based graphics cards (Villagetronic MacMagic, MacMagic 540, MacPicasso 7xx), however, only then Macintosh driver for Voodoo 2 and 3 were published.

3dfx found with Villagetronic a partner in the Apple segment (Voodoo 3 chips can be found on the MacPicasso 8xx and 9xx cards), however, the outled was rather small in the comparison to the PC business.

 

MagMagic
MP750

Still in July 3dfx dared the grasp again towards the OEM market and presented the product row Velocity: A minimized version of the Voodoo 3 chip set should offer the possibility to the complete system manufacturers to build in low-priced 3dfx graphics cards into their systems. The success of these products was missing. Therefore, only one of the two announced graphics cards found ist way on the shelves of the dealers, the Velocity 100.

 
Velocity

On 30 July, one week after the appearance of the TNT2 Ultra of nVidia, the flag ship of the Voodoo 3 graphics cards was released:  The Voodoo 3 3500. With higher chip and memory clock cycles, video in and out function as well as a built-in TV-Tuner 3dfx brought a multimedia-monster on the market like it was only known from ATI's All-In-One graphics cards. With its price of 249 USD the card was surprisingly not very favorable, returned to 3dfx again some attention.

 
Voodoo 3 3500

The autumn should become turbulent: Briefly after the publication of the Voodoo 3 2000 and 3000 for the PCI interface, nVidia brought a new product on the market, which should pressurize 3dfx like never before: The GeForce 256 chip.

 

Accelerated by Microsofts Direct3D graphics interface and the new feature Transform&Lightning (TnL) as well as to the game Quake 3 as reference object the graphics card threw a large shade on 3dfx in the scene. Fast acting was in demand and 3dfx announced a new superchip: the VSA100.




 

V3 2000
V3 3000
GeForce

At the same time CEO Greg Ballard back out of 3dfx, its successor became Alex Leupp.

 

Already on 15 November Q3D announced with the AAlchemy a supercard based on the VSA100 and two days later the first prototypes were seen at the COMDEX. The as Voodoo 4 4500, Voodoo 5 5000, 5500 and 6000 called maps were however still far at this time from a final product.

 

Nonetheless, also nVidia still got ist attraction: With the GeForce 256 DDR nVidia increased increased its lead on the Voodoo 3 family again clearly and announced at the same time already the successor GeForce 2.

A.Leupp
VSA100
Family
AAlchemy
 
2000  

The year 2000 should simultaneously become the fate year and the end of 3dfx. From the for the end of 1999 or beginning of 2000 announced VSA100 products nothing could have been heard for months.

 

 

In March 2000 3dfx bought in the chip manufacturer Gigapixel and expected as a result new technologies and markets. Afterwards this became together with the purchase of STB and the eternally moving development of the Rampage chip one of the largest loss investments of 3dfx.

 

Only on 5 May 2000 the first Voodoo 5 5500 appeared on the market, however withdrawn three weeks later because of problems with the current supply.

The revised version appeared then only at the 9.Juni on the market, but the Voodoo 5 should not be allowed success: Despite the 32-Bit Renderings, a exzellenten image quality, textures up to 2048 on 2048 pixels and a price of 50 USD under the nVidia flag ship GeForce 2 GTS the graphics card sold itself only moderately. nVidia had won by their open business policy at reputation with the gamers and game developers, whereas 3dfx had already gambled away a majority of its sympathies.

 

V5 5500
 

In the summer 3dfx became for the first time consciously how badly it stood for the company: Despite the Voodoo 5 5500 for the Apple Macintosh the capital of the company melted.

As the first emergency measure the supermap V5 6000 as well as its smallest brother V5 5000 were deleted from the register.

At the end of August 3dfx suffered a further setback in form of a complaint on the part of nVidia to a patent law injury, this right controversy dragged on up to the buying up of 3dfx.

 

5500 MAC
V5 6000
Prototype
V5 5000
Prototype

In October 3dfx tried with a last attempt to bring still money into the empty cashes, they brought the Voodoo 4 4500 on the market and were thereby one year too late.

The graphics card had a good price/performance ratio, however it was already too late, besides nVidia announced the GeForce 3 for January 2001.

3dfx worked feverishly on the VSA101, a revision of the VSA100 with DDR support, which should return lost performance. Last desperate steps were introduced with announcements over the sales of STB and presenting a new business structure.

 

In the middle of November 3dfx sold a majority of its licenses, also these for the SLI technology at Q3D to get again little money into the cash but it should not be enough.

On the black Friday, the 15 Dezember 2000 3dfx was bought up by its competition nVidia for the sum total by 112 million USD (70 of it in bar, the remainder in shares).

 

3dfx disappeared from one day on the others from the market.

V4 4500
 
VSA101
Prototype
 
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