The Rise and Fall of 3dfx: A Voodoo Story

This article recounts the legendary story of 3dfx Interactive and its Voodoo graphics cards. Starting with a group of engineers leaving Silicon Graphics, they built a company based on affordable, high-performance 3D acceleration, forging close ties with game developers. They quickly dominated the PC gaming 3D market in the late 90s. However, strategic missteps (like entering the motherboard market and a failed Sega Dreamcast deal), coupled with the rise of competitors ATI and NVIDIA, led to 3dfx's acquisition by NVIDIA in 2000. Despite this, Voodoo cards and the Glide API left a lasting impact on PC gaming history and laid the groundwork for the modern GPU industry.