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Why' does it still sell 105 bucks??

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Because of all of us die hards that refuse to let go. Not only that, but they own in Opengl and glide based games.
 
So you want to know the story of the demise of 3dfx huh? I can attest that all of these preliminary "guesses" are incorrect. The true story of the demise of 3dfx has nothing to do with Nvidia's tnt2 squeezing them out of the industy. Gone as well are the allegations that they didnt know what their customers wanted, or that their failure to support 32bit color in the voodoo 3 line put them out of business. The truth is, that just like the AMD of today, 3dfx was plagued with financial problems that they found themselves unable to dig themselves away from.

#1 First and foremost, you have to understand that from a manufacturers standpoint, there is not much money in this industry. Research and development costs, as well as production costs, technology liscensing costs are much higher in the 3d gaming hardware portion of the industry than in most. Since the technologies in these cards are developed faster and more aggressively each time, these costs skyrocket. That, coupled with the fact that in reality, the sale of 3d gaming cards is a very miniscule amount when compared to the sale of 2d office application cards, should bring to light that although you paid $300 for your nice Geforce 4 when it came out, Nvidia didnt make very much money on that at all. Especially on a card that will have a peak sales for 6 months, then will virtually never be heard from again. Then a new (even bigger) bill is generated for R&D, technology liscensing, and production costs for the new line of cards that wont make much money. Its a brutal industry, and you cannot rely on just these sales to keep your company successful. If ever one of your competitors takes a bit of your market share, there could be dire consequences.

The thing that makes money for these companies, is the production and sale of the POS cards that none of us would even consider putting in your gaming system. Its the ATI rage line, and the matrox 2d cards that make the money believe it or not. Those $30 video cards are what keeps companies like ATI and Matrox around. They spend very little on R&D for those cards, and sell them for $30-$50 for the next 5 years to HUGE oem manufacturers like Compaq, Dell, etc before they have to start developing something new. And if you sit there and honestly think that Nvidia is a big dog in the industry, you got another thing comming. Nvidia doesnt gross half of what ATI does, simply because ATI is "the largest producer of video cards on the planet." ATI has only "officially" been in the 3dvideo industry for a little over 2 years, the RAge Fury Maxx was their first "official" 3d gaming card. But they sure caught up to the industry veteran Nvidia pretty quickly didnt they? Ever wonder how they did that? They paid for it with hard earned money, thats how. They make more money than anyone, and they spent that money where it counts, the research and development dept.

3dfx failed because they didnt do anything but 3d gaming cards. They didnt have a line of smaller products like ATI, Matrox, Nvidia do. And when other companies began to give them the squeeze by offering competition in their market, the miniscule amount of money the company had to operate on, soon depleted.

We wont even go into how the 3dfx fanboys (just like the amd fanboys) hurt the company with all of the negative publicity they brought. Even when 3dfx did try to sell its lower line of cards to major manufacturers, they were laughed at and the doors were closed in front of them. No major manufacturer took them seriously due to their support for a fan base that did nothing but promote negativity in the industry by slamming every other product on the market. Major manufacturers began to gain the opinion that 3dfx is fine for the techy home user, but not for use in a serious oem market. Another problem that they have in common with AMD. Hopefully amd wont become another 3dfx.

Well, thats part of the 3dfx saga. Hope you enjoyed it.
 
i was just wondering what happened to them... it makes a ton of sense really... too bad that so many good companies have to die out like that... :rolleyes: i guess that's business though
 
3dfx will always rule!!!! and now ever than never

3dfx+nvidia=geforce fx........ you all now that now!

3dfx wasn't completely dead after all (lol)
 
I just got my Voodoo5 PCI back from a rig I built for someone they ran short on money so I stuck it in there for em ..Glad I have it back though ..lol pluss I paid over $300 for that card for that reason alone it's worth holding on to...:p
 
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