Pride Goeth Before a Fall
When V2 SLI was considered the pinnacle of 3D gaming excellence, what was 3dfx’s next step?  To aspire for greater technological heights?  To dare to dream the dreams of a madman who walks the fine line between genius and insanity?  Not quite.  The strongest focus I can recall was on branding their card and company.  “Hey everybody, remember us?  We’re a good brand!  Don’t forget to buy from our brand!  Along with brand loyalty, please don’t pay attention to our competition’s advanced products.  Thanks!”

That’s right folks.  While other companies were pushing the technological envelope and adding nifty gaming features like dual head displays and 32-bit color, 3dfx decided to say 16-bit was good enough and essentially made a faster SLI on a single board.  Eventually the final V3 had some nifty TV-out features, but that was too little too late.

Bad Scheduling
When NVIDIA brought out the GeForce and said, “Moore’s law is for wimps,” they meant it.  NVIDIA practically brought their new product cycles down from once a year to twice a year.  What did 3dfx have to fight back?  Their brand name and the promise of Voodoo 4 and 5 in a few months, and the Voodoo 3 on the shelves STILL DIDN’T HAVE 32-BIT COLOR.  This situation reminds me of the immortal words of Captain Picard that have frequently been repeated as a sound effect on a local radio station.  “Not good enough, damn it!  Not good enough!”

Tomorrow’s Technology Today
So 3dfx’s final flagship cards had the T-Buffer, a hardware implementation of a few nifty OpenGL features.  It reminds me of the theory that if any modern-day man except MacGyver were thrust into the past, he’d be totally useless there.  What good would skills like programming and auto body work do when you’re leaving your Neanderthal-like cave on a quest for fire with Oog and Ogg?  Not a whole lot.

Likewise, the T-Buffer was a unique turnaround from 3dfx’s V3 line.  Instead of making the card inadequate through the exclusion of a very important feature (32-bit color in the V3), they over-engineered the card with exclusive T-Buffer stuff that few gamers were working on at the time.  It could be months before anyone actually implements the T-Buffer technology into a game, longer if NVIDIA doesn’t use that technology from 3dfx in their next card.

It doesn’t help that full scene anti-aliasing took a huge bite out of the framerate.