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Is 3DFx stuff losing liquidity?

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First post, by Bruno128

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There are a few notable examples of vintage hardware commanding price premiums and 3DFx was one of them gaining from about mid-2000s (rediscovering interest on German forums, 3rd party drivers etc) onward.
Yes the scrappers will of course still ask top price for them but they are living in 2016, building 1.4 tualatins on 440bx and all that.
With the definition of vintage pc getting more and more vague and young people growing older the “must have” is not so “must” anymore and the market starts reacting to demand change?
In one of the videos Phil talks about how the socket7 was once considered “too new” by the community. Then it was the hot thing for slowdown capabilities. Now P1 MMX is being phased out. Is the writing on the wall what happens next? Or do the legendary murky colors and inability to do hw tnl override that?

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Reply 1 of 28, by Grem Five

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I'm not sure if I'm reading your post right.

As with most things that can become collectable and demand higher prices at some point those prices will begin to drop again as financial situations change and age groups change. Items fall into peoples collective nostalgia zone will change with the ages of people. Seems like there has been a bit of an up tick in people asking more questions about P4 and later systems, these dont fall anywhere on my radar of nostalgia. <shrug>

I have been into classic cars and I remember when '40s and 50's cars commanded higher prices that slowly gave in to 60's cars commanding higher prices and then on to 70's and even 80's and 90's cars. Not to say the older stuff cant command a higher price but for the people those machines were nostalgia are probably to old to drive them and to most others while being cool, nostalgia tends to drive items to their highest prices.

I figure even if my collection which I enjoy could earn me a nice profit now that in 15 years + if they ever pass out of my hands end right back in the hands of elec recyclers where they were saved from in the 1st place as old junk.

Such is the nature of fads and nostalgia.

"Nostalgia old people crack" ..... cracks me up when I hear people in there 20's and 30's refer to nostalgia, I tell them they are to young for that.

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Reply 2 of 28, by The Serpent Rider

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The prices will likely stabilize and only go higher naturally, with inflation. It won't go down though.

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Reply 3 of 28, by Cosmic

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Bruno128 wrote on 2024-12-03, 17:57:

In one of the videos Phil talks about how the socket7 was once considered “too new” by the community.

I found this part interesting. My first complete PC build was around 2007 and included a Q6600 and an 8800GT, yet those parts go for chips on eBay right now (about $10 for the CPU and $30 for the GPU in a quick search). Eventually I suspect those will be sought after as the crowd who grew up on them ages into a period where they want to relive the Vista/7 boxes they played games on as kids. For me, I was already mostly an adult and I consider them modern, so I don't have much interest in them. I focus on 486 and Pentium 1-4 since that's what was hot when I was a kid.

Eventually, I suspect the current wave of retro PC nostalgia will wind down. Just as I think Core2Duos are too new and 8086 and earlier 70's stuff is too old, I bet Pentium 1-4 stuff will be "too old" as there won't be any more generations who grew up on them. I look at "ancient" IBM mainframes and S100 backplane systems and say "wow, that's so cool, but I would never buy those parts". I think it will happen again. There will be some enthusiasts who want to push hardware they've never seen before, but eventually it will be relegated to history and few will be interested enough to buy make new builds out of them.

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Reply 4 of 28, by myne

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Nostalgia generally only works on people who were alive at the time.

90s kids as a role aren't buying up 60s muscle cars.
They're buying their childhood dream car.

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Reply 5 of 28, by analog_programmer

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The Serpent Rider wrote on 2024-12-03, 23:22:

The prices will likely stabilize and only go higher naturally, with inflation. It won't go down though.

Plus the fact that many of currently working 3dfx cards will become damaged beyond repair in future. Less working cards on the second hand market while there's demand for them leads to higher prices.

Aside from 3dfx videocard's high prices, I'm in shock with the current prices for cards like Verite 1000/2x00 and PCX1/2. And there's not much demand for those, they're just rare.

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Reply 6 of 28, by chinny22

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I also think the classic car market is a good comparison as it has been around longer then computers.

Pre war cars have dropped in demand in the last 20 years or so.
Main reason would be as the generation of people that have an attachment for this era are dying reducing demand.
However cars even from the 2000's are really starting to increase in value as this era of people are starting to reach their midlife crisis 😉

so yes, eventually demand will drop but only when the generation that grew up with the computers also die.
Pre Pentium computers still command high prices, hell even 8 bit machines aren't cheap,
But you will see newer hardware become more desirable as well due to that person who was born in the mid 80's who's first real gaming PC was a P4 wants to recreate that rather than a P3 or earlier that has no nostalgia value.

Reply 7 of 28, by Horun

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Yeah. But things can be odd where a later generation wants to experience something they only heard about. Things like a 1969 Camero or 1970 AR Cuda have dropped a bit but still are wildly expensive so would not use muscle car era as example....
One current Example of where things can go where no one expected: There has been a resurgence in the gen-z era (hate those terms, ie. born late 1990's-2010's) to experience things their parents/grandparents talked about that they rarely/barely or never experienced. Vinyl record sales are on the rise because more of that generation than any one else, supposedly because they want to experience what that era of analog audio is all about, and seems they like it.
That also creates a demand for turntables and amps/receivers to go with (have seen older turntables triple along with older receivers/amps that have true turntables inputs since 2017).
Price also does have to do with inflation and rarety.... but also odd trends seem to effect things.
As far as 3dfx stuff... they just barely went three years mainstream (1997-2000ish) of a hayday so yes is getting rare, specially with their bad habit of failure....

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Reply 8 of 28, by Shponglefan

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Horun wrote on 2024-12-04, 03:09:

Vinyl record sales are on the rise because more of that generation than any one else, supposedly because they want to experience what that era of analog audio is all about, and seems they like it.

CDs, too, apparently. My Gen-Z niece has a CD collection, and I've teens at the local thrift shops and music stores buying CDs.

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Reply 9 of 28, by myne

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Hipsters exist in every generation.

It's why fashion has a roughly 30-40 year cycle.

We're about due for parachute pants, hypercolour tshirts, and happy pants - before descending into heroin chiq, and grunge2.0

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Reply 10 of 28, by VivienM

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Cosmic wrote on 2024-12-03, 23:48:
Bruno128 wrote on 2024-12-03, 17:57:

In one of the videos Phil talks about how the socket7 was once considered “too new” by the community.

I found this part interesting. My first complete PC build was around 2007 and included a Q6600 and an 8800GT, yet those parts go for chips on eBay right now (about $10 for the CPU and $30 for the GPU in a quick search). Eventually I suspect those will be sought after as the crowd who grew up on them ages into a period where they want to relive the Vista/7 boxes they played games on as kids.

If you want to relive Vista/7, you can go substantially newer/faster than a Q6600/8800GT, though.

I love LGA775. I've owned a number of LGA775 systems, especially with 45nm C2D/C2Qs. At one point, my entire immediate family had 45nm LGA775 systems. Etc.

And yet... I think PCI-E LGA775 will never become retro-legendary unless the world runs out of Sandy/Ivy Bridges, if not newer. PCI-E LGA775 makes for a decent XP system, but not the best XP system. PCI-E LGA775 makes for a period-correct Vista/early 7 system, sure, but unless you really care about period-correctness, it is nowhere near the best. An Ivy Bridge dual-boot system will get you a killer XP + Vista/7 system (+ triple boot into modern Win11... maybe. My recollection is that 24H2 doesn't like something about that setup, maybe the BIOS booting - 23H2 was fine)... perhaps at a higher-cost than PCI-E LGA775.

(AGP LGA775, I think is a different story - those 45nm-friendly, etc i865 boards are retro-legendary, and for good reason...)

Same thing with the 8800GT. Legendary card back in the day, I had one. But... what can it do today that newer/better cards can't do?

Reply 11 of 28, by VivienM

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Horun wrote on 2024-12-04, 03:09:
Yeah. But things can be odd where a later generation wants to experience something they only heard about. Things like a 1969 Cam […]
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Yeah. But things can be odd where a later generation wants to experience something they only heard about. Things like a 1969 Camero or 1970 AR Cuda have dropped a bit but still are wildly expensive so would not use muscle car era as example....
One current Example of where things can go where no one expected: There has been a resurgence in the gen-z era (hate those terms, ie. born late 1990's-2010's) to experience things their parents/grandparents talked about that they rarely/barely or never experienced. Vinyl record sales are on the rise because more of that generation than any one else, supposedly because they want to experience what that era of analog audio is all about, and seems they like it.
That also creates a demand for turntables and amps/receivers to go with (have seen older turntables triple along with older receivers/amps that have true turntables inputs since 2017).
Price also does have to do with inflation and rarety.... but also odd trends seem to effect things.

I think a big part of that has to do with something very simple: generally speaking, newer things are better, at least for daily use. CDs are better than vinyl; fuel-injected cars are better than carbureted cars; ink jet printers are better than dot matrix; LCD monitors are better than CRT monitors; digital photography is better than analog photography; Windows NT is better than Windows 98SE; word processors are better than typewriters; etc.

So, if you lived through a particular era, you have all the trauma of having lived through the old way of doing something. And an appreciation that the newer ways solved those problems. Take, say, analog photography: it was just wonderful spending big money on an expensive roll of film + processing, putting it in a crappy camera with a lousy viewfinder, and discovering two weeks later that, oops, everybody's head is cut off from your photos. Digital photography fixes all those issues.

The younger generations who never lived through that era, well, they don't have that trauma. And so, for them... there's something... endearing... about the quirks of the old ways. It helps that generally speaking, the lower end items of the old era remain forgotten, e.g. I doubt any analog photography enthusiast would be using my elcheapo late-1980s 35mm camera. No, they'd be using a good 35mm camera, the kind that preteens would never be allowed to touch in the late-1980s. And so if you have the better equipment from the old days, and you're not trying to use it for anything other than fun (e.g. would you take pictures at an important family event with an analog camera in 2024? of course not, at least not unless you knew someone else was taking pictures with a digital camera...), then suddenly your view of the old technology is a lot more positive.

Reply 12 of 28, by Bruno128

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VivienM wrote on 2024-12-04, 04:01:

The younger generations who never lived through that era, well, they don't have that trauma. And so, for them... there's something... endearing... about the quirks of the old ways.

I loved this bit. We have good community tested/picked drivers/BIOS versions today as well as documentation etc. Makes things seem easy in retrospect.

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Reply 13 of 28, by Unknown_K

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Both the Verite and PCX cards were important in the history of 3D gaming. The Matrox M3d (PCX2) can be used with other cards and scale well with faster CPUs. The Kyro I/II cards are also interesting to have.

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Reply 14 of 28, by douglar

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After 2010, it got harder to find physical media and things like the DMCA make device hacking legally grey.

So in 2030, it is going to get a little challenging for PC users to find those steam games. Hard but manageable. In 2040 when someone wants to run their favorite 32bit IOS game? Maybe find a working device that was never upgraded?

Reply 15 of 28, by VivienM

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Bruno128 wrote on 2024-12-04, 06:54:
VivienM wrote on 2024-12-04, 04:01:

The younger generations who never lived through that era, well, they don't have that trauma. And so, for them... there's something... endearing... about the quirks of the old ways.

I loved this bit. We have good community tested/picked drivers/BIOS versions today as well as documentation etc. Makes things seem easy in retrospect.

And the stakes are so much lower if vintage stuff fails.

If I break (or if Win9x spontaneously breaks) the PII 300MHz that's sitting open on my floor because, well, my Gotek floppy emulator got caught in the Canada Post strike, who... cares? It's not like I'd be breaking the $2500+ family computer that parents are also relying to do work...

And we have the Internet. We have each other. We have decades of accumulated knowledge. 30 years ago if you screwed up your CONFIG.SYS or lost a driver floppy you were on your own.

Reply 16 of 28, by soggi

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chinny22 wrote on 2024-12-04, 01:08:

However cars even from the 2000's are really starting to increase in value as this era of people are starting to reach their midlife crisis 😉

Not only...it's also because the cars from back then don't already have all this electronic cockpit computer stuff (navigation system with big display, driving assistance systems). I don't want to play computer (in this concrete situation), I want to drive a car which should do what I want and not do it on its own. So I'll hopefully never buy a car from ~2010+ - I like the 90s and 2000s cars, they can have all what you need. I need to "feel" the street while driving, so I know how to handle/react correctly.

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Reply 17 of 28, by chinny22

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soggi wrote on 2024-12-05, 10:37:
Not only...it's also because the cars from back then don't already have all this electronic cockpit computer stuff (navigation s […]
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chinny22 wrote on 2024-12-04, 01:08:

However cars even from the 2000's are really starting to increase in value as this era of people are starting to reach their midlife crisis 😉

Not only...it's also because the cars from back then don't already have all this electronic cockpit computer stuff (navigation system with big display, driving assistance systems). I don't want to play computer (in this concrete situation), I want to drive a car which should do what I want and not do it on its own. So I'll hopefully never buy a car from ~2010+ - I like the 90s and 2000s cars, they can have all what you need. I need to "feel" the street while driving, so I know how to handle/react correctly.

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soggi

I find it funny when people say "I love driving" then say they say they how much they love all the driving aids and typically have an auto.
It's not really driving is it, maybe "I like steering" is more accurate?

Personally I also prefer manual cars, never used cruise control, guess I'm a control freak. Will admit I do find the rear parking sensors useful though. (I typically drive station wagons)
but I can understand the "iPhone generation" liking the infotainment system and that's fine but even they are complaining that having all A/C, Radio, etc controls buried in a touch screen is not as safe or user-friendly physical buttons on a dash you don't have to look at to control. I know the VW Golf made the return of physical buttons a selling point a few years ago, really hope everyone else does the same

Reply 18 of 28, by kingcake

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myne wrote on 2024-12-04, 03:29:

Hipsters exist in every generation.

It's why fashion has a roughly 30-40 year cycle.

We're about due for parachute pants, hypercolour tshirts, and happy pants - before descending into heroin chiq, and grunge2.0

Trends are moving so fast now that they all overlap/get out of sync. That's why today's fashion is a crazy mishmash of styles. You won't see major trends coming around like that anymore. That was back during the glacier like pace of monthly magazines. Now it changes in 30 seconds increments on tiktok.

Also, the 90s revival already recently happened, with gen-z wearing Nirvana shirts. You're way behind.

Reply 19 of 28, by soggi

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chinny22 wrote on 2024-12-05, 23:38:

I find it funny when people say "I love driving" then say they say they how much they love all the driving aids and typically have an auto.
It's not really driving is it, maybe "I like steering" is more accurate?

Yeah, that's right...and I also find it's important that you know how your car reacts and what 800-2000 kg can do when they crash into a crash barrier with 160 km/h f.e., or even worse. Driving means you have all of this in your mind, steering means you just use the car (or any other vehicle) w/o understanding how it's moving through the physical world.

chinny22 wrote on 2024-12-05, 23:38:

Personally I also prefer manual cars, never used cruise control, guess I'm a control freak. Will admit I do find the rear parking sensors useful though. (I typically drive station wagons)
but I can understand the "iPhone generation" liking the infotainment system and that's fine but even they are complaining that having all A/C, Radio, etc controls buried in a touch screen is not as safe or user-friendly physical buttons on a dash you don't have to look at to control. I know the VW Golf made the return of physical buttons a selling point a few years ago, really hope everyone else does the same

For one day I had an (semi) automatic car (a Smart with Tiptronic), that was terrible...you had to tip on break first to drive backwards and it automatically shifted gears badly (it was in 2rd when I would chose 4th)...on vacation I drove two other automatics which were OK (f.e. a Toyota Landcruiser). Also never used it, but cruise control can be very useful when driving highway for hours with 130 km/h f.e. - so you can prevent your foot and leg from aching, OK it also increases the chance to fall asleep while driving. Yeah I like to switch CD titles with the buttons at the steering wheel...that's also something I dislike at work, not having buttons on some production machines, only touch displays - you always have to look where you touch which is extremely annoying, because you can't look at the process while tipping on the touch screens.

BTW I'm not against iPhones/CarPlay/Infotainment stuff, but these proprietary big display navigation systems are totally idiotic...after some years they get extremely slow and you don't get any update, but they are still in your cockpit wasting a lot of place. I would prefer to use my iPhone, iPad or any other as navigation system if I need one (mostly I don't) - and they always have the latest map updates and I can use the App I want to use (Apple Maps, Google Maps or whatever).

kind regards
soggi

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