Why 3dfx failed: Losing its way It’s pretty clear where the turning point was. 3dfx decided to play the vertical integration game. In December 1998, 3dfx paid $141 million to purchase STB Systems Inc., one of the more highly regarded graphics card makers. This put 3dfx into the business of producing graphics cards, not just the chips that went on them. This was key to what happened to 3dfx. 3dfx left every other maker of graphics cards with nowhere to turn except to start buying chips from Nvidia. The other maker of viable 3D accelerated chipsets at the time was ATI, and ATI also made graphics cards.