3Dfx Rush Trade-In

There's been a great deal of speculation about 3Dfx and its two consumer chip sets: the Voodoo Graphics and the Voodoo Rush. To clear up the confusion of many who thought that the Voodoo Rush and the Voodoo Graphics were the same thing, 3Dfx is doing something that many companies would never do...allowing gamers to trade in their Voodoo Rush-based boards for a Voodoo Graphics-based board.

For a while, 3Dfx Voodoo Rush users have been complaining that certain games don't run as fast on the Voodoo Rush boards when compared to the performance of the Voodoo Graphics boards. Growing concern in 3Dfx's newsgroup support area was questioning what 3Dfx was going to do about it. Since there is so much talk out on the Web, Andy Keane and Chris Kramer from 3Dfx Interactive gave GameSpot News a call to inform us what's the real story.

First, the Voodoo Rush chip is a 2D/3D windowing solution. This means that it has a little more work to do than its sibling the Voodoo Graphics which does everything in a fast full screen mode.

Second, 3Dfx acknowledges that the GLQuake does run 5-7 fps slower on the Voodoo Rush board than it does on the Voodoo Graphics board. This is such a popular game that it seems to be the one most talked about. But the Voodoo Rush board definitely runs the popular GLQuake software well. The reason has to do with the way that GLQuake uses the 3D chip as aggressively as possible and the Voodoo Rush wasn't designed for running that type of processing as optimally as the Voodoo Graphics chip.

So Monday, Greg Ballard, president of 3Dfx Interactive, announced that unsatisfied Voodoo Rush users could send in their boards in exchange for a Voodoo Graphics-based board. Details on the exchange process will be announced on Friday, September 26.

"We're very up front with our users because we're focused on the gamer, they're our largest market," says Keane.

After talking with 3Dfx, we found one reply on the 3Dfx support boards that gives many an idea of how a few disgruntled gamers are reacting, " If this is true, 3Dfx's great customer support just keeps amazing me to no end! Really makes me feel good for supporting a company who seems to be ready to do anything to please their customers. Keep up the good work, 3Dfx!"