What is 3dfx Thinking?

[Ozymandis]

I don't know how many have seen the press release from 3dfx (and i am too lazy to link)but what the heck are they thinking? 600 dollars for a video card? I know a lot of Voodoo supporters have been complaining about the cost of the DDR GeForce but 600 dollars... that is ridiculous!! By the time the Voodoo4 is out Matrox should have announced their next card, and it should be an impressive one. I am waiting for Matrox, especially knowing that the Voodoo4 is going to be so expensive.

[PeTe]

Copy pastes are from www.voodooextreme.com

Well do you have to buy the MOST EXPENSIVE card that they make ? Voodoo5 5500 AGP sounds more like a GeForce killer to me.

".. The Voodoo5 5500 AGP will feature dual VSA-100 processors and 64 MB of total graphics memory. 64 MB of memory allows for higher resolutions and pixel depths with full-scene anti-aliasing and T-Buffer effects enabled, along with more memory available for texture storage. The board, which renders four fully featured pixels per clock, will deliver between 667 and 733 megatexels/megapixels per second fill rate and is expected to be priced at $299.99*.."

Thats about 1.5 times performance that GeForce does now, for the same price. Of course prices will drop, but still..

"..The flagship product of the VSA-100 architecture, the Voodoo5 6000 AGP, will feature quad VSA-100 processors and 128 MB of graphics memory. It will be the first consumer graphics product to break the one billion pixel per second fill rate barrier. The Voodoo5 6000 AGP, which renders eight fully featured pixels per clock, will deliver between 1.33 and 1.47 gigatexels/gigapixels per second fill rate. It is expected to be priced at $599.99*.."

That's 4 times the memory that GeForce has. And we all know memory isn't that cheap. Well how about pixels and texels.. 1.3GT/1.47GP ( GeForce 480M/480M ), that's like comparing my SAAB to a FERRARI.

If you get 3 times the performance+ 4 times the memory, the card will cost 3 times more too, thats just how it is.

You could easily spend $5000 for a video card, but who REALLY need's a card like that. If you need it, you have the money for it too.

Pe-Te.

Ps. Im really happy with my MAX, DH rocks.

[Snake-Eyes]

Sorry, PeTe, but based on the expected ship dates for the cards (March, wasn't it? not sure, I do know it's late first qtr. 2000), this is too much money for the 6000. I mean, nVidia will (or should be, if they continue the current trend) release the next iteration of the GeForce cards at about that time. And, correct me if I'm wrong, but the GeForce chip itself supports 128MB of memory. So nVidia's next offering (**speculating here, based on past precedents by nVidia**) will likely have up to 128 MB memory, smaller die size, as well as a higher clock speed. All these things, taken in quantity, should add up to about the performance available with the 6000- likely at closer to $400-$450 (allowing an increase for the memory cost).

Anyway, that's my opinion, and obviously the opinion of many others in the forum. Time will tell how things really pan out.

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Ace

[Kruzin]

And this has what to do with Matrox Hardware?

Please post this in the Soapbox forum, which Ant made last week for just this sort of thing, or in the General Hardware forum...