Comment on How did it come to be that only two companies supply all of the world's PC graphics chips?
False@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Intel never really tried to be a real competitor until a few years ago. 3dfx had market dominance in 90s but then basically committed suicide. There were a few other smaller manufacturers in the late 90s and early 2000s but they never really had significant market share and couldn’t keep up with the investment required to be competitive.
3dfx had market dominance in 90s but then basically committed suicide.
Very true. They committed suicide when they bought STB so that they could manufacture their own video cards. They didn't just focus on chip R&D they needed to manufacture and market their own video cards instead of letting board partners do it.
Yeah, I remember Matrix, PowerVR, Number9(?)... But probably R&D became too costly, and despite DirectX leveling the field a bit some were forced to step back, or sell.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
As I remember it, it was Nvidia that killed 3DFX, Nvidia had an absolutely cutthroat development pace, and 3DFX simply couldn’t keep up, and they ended up being bough by Nvivia.
But oh boy Voodoo graphics were cool when they came out! An absolute revolution to PC gaming.
mereo@piefed.ca 2 weeks ago
We cannot forget that 3dfx went under when they bought STB to manufacture their own video cards instead of letting their board partners do it.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Maybe you are right, but I think they did that because they thought that would help them remain competitive, keeping the profit share that would normally go to board vendors, allowing them to sell cheaper while still making money, and compete better against Nvidia.
Maybe I remember it wrong, but I think Voodoo was already dying with Voodoo 2.
False@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Nvidia helped but 3DFX released a couple of bad products in a row.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
IDK, I think it was because they couldn’t keep up with Nvidia, I bough the Voodoo 2 already at about half price.
After that it was basically lights out for Voodoo.
Intel has somewhat the same problem I think, because their GPU reasonably is good and for the customer it’s a competitive product.
But for intel, the GPU chip probably cost 3 times as much to make as for a comparable Nvidia or AMD, because Intel requires a twice as big GPU to be competitive!
That means that Intel is probably not making any profit from their GPU division.
Same with Voodoo, they simply couldn’t keep up to make a profit, they had to compete with Nvidia that quickly surpassed 3DFX, and since Nvidia were better Voodoo had to be cheaper, but they couldn’t make them cheap enough to make a profit from them.
It’s not that Voodoo got worse, because obviously they didn’t. But Nvidia had a development cycle that was unheard of at the time. It wasn’t just 3DFX that couldn’t keep up. It was also S3, Matrox and ATI. And ATI were by far the biggest GPU maker at the time. ATI however made a strong comeback as the only competitor to Nvidia mainstream performance desktop graphics and gaming, and then ATI was later bought by AMD.