You're not missing anything.

Voodoo cards are overvalued.

I held on to my V3 3000 until mid 2002, when I got annoyed of being mocked on LAN parties and bought a GF4 Ti.

So, a whole lot nostalgia and very little reality in Voodoo prices today.

You can walk over to the hardware store and by a NVidia card.
3dfx, no so much.

I'd assume, truckloads of TNT family cards were sold to people who could not afford a GeForce 256 just yet.

Minor factors, maybe: While Voodoo3 are known to make really fine DOS cards with excellent VGA output, well, early NVidias, not so much.

Also, all rather rare ones included, there were roughly a dozen different 3dfx cards over half a decade. And also a dozen different Riva TNT in two.
Which makes the few Voodoos even more iconic.
Having a somewhat clean product lineup without lots of marketing BS will apparently make you lose by market share, but boy will you become collectible 20 years after being bought up by your nemesis 😉

Cult factor, and some weird misleading belief that they scale to the moon (from Forsaken numbers). Also recent influencers trying to meme off the Voodoo2 (sometimes with misinformation of hardware support to promote their commercial game).

Note it's mostly the 3dfx cards that STB3dfx marketed as there's a lot of nostalgia for 3dfx's post-shark suffering years' marketing, for some reason. The Banshee and Rush are usually excluded.

On a very different note:
Deus Ex was released as late as mid 2000 and some visual effects in glide just won't be the same on other cards.
(as long as you won't mess around with all kinds of special drivers, wrappers, the lot down at the bottom of the rabbit hole)
Don't know about Deus Ex, but could tell you a spot in the first level of Unreal as an example.

The only difference in Deus Ex on GlideDrv vs D3DDrv i've seen is that D3DDrv adds more detail texture layers (which eat at the fillrate). There's no big visual loss.
Unreal however's a mess between versions as GlideDrv's had many visual changes with regards to multitexturing support since the initial release (when it was very bright on V2).

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-03-14, 22:32:

So, a whole lot nostalgia and very little reality in Voodoo prices today.

Glad it's not just me then, because I was quite shocked at the Voodoo prices I'm seeing. 😒

Minor factors, maybe: While Voodoo3 are known to make really fine DOS cards with excellent VGA output, well, early NVidias, not so much.

By excellent VGA output are you referring to DOS performance (2D/3D)? Or something else like video quality?

@moderator, sorry, off topic note: what had to be edited about my initial reply?
I don't mean to object, just new to the phenomenon. Can't remember, did I include an illicit hyperlink or misspell the n-word?!?
thx!

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-03-14, 23:13:

By excellent VGA output are you referring to DOS performance (2D/3D)? Or something else like video quality?

I meant video quality, like actual analogue VGA signal quality, provided by the RAMDAC - mostly important for CRTs.
That was crisp as a Matrox, with the STB Voodoos.
Some Nvidia could be a bit on the potato side there.

Also, very good 2d DOS performance and compatibility, but the Rivas had that, too.

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-03-14, 23:18:

I meant video quality, like actual analogue VGA signal quality, provided by the RAMDAC - mostly important for CRTs. That was cr […]
Show full quote

I meant video quality, like actual analogue VGA signal quality, provided by the RAMDAC - mostly important for CRTs.
That was crisp as a Matrox, with the STB Voodoos.
Some Nvidia could be a bit on the potato side there.

Also, very good 2d DOS performance and compatibility, but the Rivas had that, too.

Ah, great to know, thank you!

I can see the appeal of the VGA output if it does offer superior video quality over other cards of the era. Of course, I do remember using Matrox cards back in the DOS days and those were quite solid.

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-03-14, 23:15:

@moderator, sorry, off topic note: what had to be edited about my initial reply?
I don't mean to object, just new to the phenomenon. Can't remember, did I include an illicit hyperlink or misspell the n-word?!?
thx!

Well, it doesn't need to be something bad. For example, sometimes when the mood strikes me, I fix people's spelling and/or formatting. But thankfully, I am usually too busy 😀

I tend to speedread through every post on VOGONS... and your typoing "truckloads" as "trucklaods" offended my parsing. Simple as that. 😜

Stiletto wrote on 2022-03-15, 00:47:

I tend to speedread through every post on VOGONS... and your typoing "truckloads" as "trucklaods" offended my parsing. Simple as that. 😜

Moderator autocorrect is a thing here? That's amazing. 😁

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-03-14, 22:32:

I'd assume, truckloads of TNT family cards were sold to people who could not afford a GeForce 256 just yet.

They were very much the generic grade card in Pentium 4 class systems for the first 2 or 3 years of the century. I guess GF2 MX were too fancy.

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-03-14, 22:15:

Hunting through listings for retro graphic cards, I'm a little surprised that Voodoo-series cards are so pricey in comparison to […]
Show full quote

Hunting through listings for retro graphic cards, I'm a little surprised that Voodoo-series cards are so pricey in comparison to TNT/TNT2/GeForce based cards.

From what I remember of the era of these cards, at the time the TNT through GeForce cards were considered the top end of 3D performance. I did a quick scan through old issues of CGW just to confirm, and sure enough the nVidia-based cards were generally at the top of their 3D card roundups.

I get that Voodoo cards do have native Glide support, but by '98-00, pretty much everything was Direct3D/OpenGL by that point.

So why the demand for older Voodoo cards but not for the TNT or early GeForce cards? Seeing older Voodoo cards going for hundreds of dollars, but TNT/TNT2/GeForce cards at under 50 bucks, I feel like I'm missing something.

Basically for several reasons, amongst which are:
- Great compatibility with DOS games
- Great compatibility with ss7 boards (both PCI and AGP) which happen to be amongst the most popular machines to build DOS rigs around.
- Great name, who wouldn't want a graphics card called a voodoo 😜
- Glide support, obviously
- Unique as in good versatility and performance of the 3D add-on Voodoo cards

I'd probably not bother with 3DFX for current prices however. €50 for a TNT2 seems expensive to me as well btw, I'd probably just stick to a TNT2 M64, Vanta or probably GF MX.

Stiletto wrote on 2022-03-15, 00:47:

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-03-14, 23:15:

@moderator, sorry, off topic note: what had to be edited about my initial reply?
I don't mean to object, just new to the phenomenon. Can't remember, did I include an illicit hyperlink or misspell the n-word?!?
thx!

Well, it doesn't need to be something bad. For example, sometimes when the mood strikes me, I fix people's spelling and/or formatting. But thankfully, I am usually too busy 😀

I tend to speedread through every post on VOGONS... and your typoing "truckloads" as "trucklaods" offended my parsing. Simple as that. 😜

lmoa 🤣 😜

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-03-14, 22:32:

You're not missing anything. […]
Show full quote

You're not missing anything.

Voodoo cards are overvalued.

I held on to my V3 3000 until mid 2002, when I got annoyed of being mocked on LAN parties and bought a GF4 Ti.

So, a whole lot nostalgia and very little reality in Voodoo prices today.

You can walk over to the hardware store and by a NVidia card.
3dfx, no so much.

I'd assume, truckloads of TNT family cards were sold to people who could not afford a GeForce 256 just yet.

Minor factors, maybe: While Voodoo3 are known to make really fine DOS cards with excellent VGA output, well, early NVidias, not so much.

Also, all rather rare ones included, there were roughly a dozen different 3dfx cards over half a decade. And also a dozen different Riva TNT in two.
Which makes the few Voodoos even more iconic.
Having a somewhat clean product lineup without lots of marketing BS will apparently make you lose by market share, but boy will you become collectible 20 years after being bought up by your nemesis 😉

TNT2 M64 and Vanta kept on being used as budget cards until GF MX took over that role. There's some surprisingly late TNT2 M64 cards to be found.
I'm less sure about (perhaps even die-shrunk?) proper TNT2s, but I wouldn't be surprised if such cards exist.

Yes, TNT2 had multiple packages with different lithography.

I don't think so. I prefer to play glide games on a 3dfx card. And 3dfx no longer exists so you have that as well.

You have to remember that 3dfx is what made 3d games a reality and not that many cards were produced compared to the flood of TNT and Geforce cards that came later from many different companies (while later 3dfx were all STB cards).

Not sure the original Geforce 256 SDR/DDR cards are that plentiful either to be honest.

Boy am I glad I got my voodoo 1 and sli voodoo 2 12mb cards back when they were somewhat cheaper cause right now the prices are a tad ridiculous.

The reason I see voodoos being so pricey is probably due to the cult following people have mentioned, I'd imagine alot of people felt 3dfx were hard done by and there is a somewhat loyal fan base who borderline worship them.

Other reason being that they tend to be more niche compatibility wise thanks to glide, compared to having a regular direct3d or opengl card so there's less substitutes which makes them seem more dear.

Kinda reminds me of the gravis ultrasound situation in some ways (minus the ultrasound not being such a roaring success), so combine desirability and cult following sprinkled with a bit of nostalgia and yeah you probably end up with the market in state it is.

Other reason being that they tend to be more niche compatibility wise thanks to glide

That's hardly an issue, because Glide can be successfully wrapped/emulated for a very long time now.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-03-15, 05:31:

Other reason being that they tend to be more niche compatibility wise thanks to glide

That's hardly an issue, because Glide can be successfully wrapped/emulated for a very long time now.

Sure but some people like to play with original hardware , if that wasn't the case people would just stick to pcem or dgvoodoo and save thier money.