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the card that changed everything

definitely 3dfx

Back then i remember tomb raider with bilinear filtering and a smooth 60fps frame rate, along with GL quake, fatal racing, and ultimate race pro, it was a battle between 3dfx and powervr (i think powervr couldnt do bilinear texture filtering so it didnt look as good), that was the 1st racing game that made me say wow, i remember the sun glare effect in it lol. Oh and unreal tournament looked good then with the glide wrapper and s3tc texture filtering too

its got to be 3dfx, i still have a few of these voodoo 2 12mbs sitting around somewhere :p

edit does anyone remember MDK lol, POD racing, SiN (they worked good with 3dfx / glide 3d)
 
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Easily the 3DFX Voodoo 1/2. As already mentioned, the jump from software rendering to hardware acceleration was huge - nothing has come close since. It was so exciting back then as there were so many innovations coming thick and fast - makes today a bit of a joke really....oh, wow, DX10.....big deal :rolleyes: :) Plus, 3DFX were doing SLI while nVidia and ATi were still running around in their video card nappies. It was a shame 3DFX messed up in the end :(
 
I think 3dfx Voodoo had a huge affect on games industry. I rememeber when bought one for myself, it was incredible change, everything after that card was different. They even came up with sth a'la SLI solution, you could use two voodoo 2 connected to each other.. sweet...
 
me only being 17 i dont really know so much about all the older cards but i do knows the voodoo was something big.

But it just makes me laugh when you oldies say bout how you moved onto an 8meg voodoo 2 like it was a big thing.

I cant even imagin the sort of game that requires such little power :p Maybe pacman?
 
If you are looking at the overall picture, has to be the 3DFX Voodoo 1. I still remember mine being paired up with a Tseng Labs ET4000/W32 and that satisfying click when you loaded up a game and the Voodoo worked it's magic :)

In the era of modern 3D accelerators, I would say the 9700pro and the 8800gtx.
 
me only being 17 i dont really know so much about all the older cards but i do knows the voodoo was something big.

But it just makes me laugh when you oldies say bout how you moved onto an 8meg voodoo 2 like it was a big thing.

I cant even imagin the sort of game that requires such little power :p Maybe pacman?

You'd be surprised - we are talking low res 3d acceleration so it wasn't as demanding. We only had the PS1 as a competing 3d "power house" to be honest around that time so thats the sort of technology you can compare against.

It was also before the days of huge windows overheads, directx, 5.1 surround etc so there was a lot of "direct hardware bashing" to an extent which really made the most of it. Memory was expensive so was limited. Pc's were lucky to have a few MB of memory installed then. Early pc adopters will remember the joy of optimising the startup scripts in dos to optimise the available memory, especially base memory. :p

I remember playing GLQuake for the first time, and wing commander in proper 3d. :D

You young 'uns just don't appreciate how spoilt you are technology wise these days. :p ;)

I'll have to take some pics of the old cards to show you what you missed.
 
You'd be surprised - we are talking low res 3d acceleration so it wasn't as demanding. We only had the PS1 as a competing 3d "power house" to be honest around that time so thats the sort of technology you can compare against.

It was also before the days of huge windows overheads, directx, 5.1 surround etc so there was a lot of "direct hardware bashing" to an extent which really made the most of it. Memory was expensive so was limited. Pc's were lucky to have a few MB of memory installed then. Early pc adopters will remember the joy of optimising the startup scripts in dos to optimise the available memory, especially base memory. :p

I remember playing GLQuake for the first time, and wing commander in proper 3d. :D

You young 'uns just don't appreciate how spoilt you are technology wise these days. :p ;)

I'll have to take some pics of the old cards to show you what you missed.

im sure i will be saying the same to my children :P The ps1 was great, i always wanted one when i was a kid. but i had a nintendo instead and loved zelda to bits!

Now i think about it we did have a dos pc and some early windows ones. But i was really young and dont realy remeber it that much. That dos pc printer was hugeee though :p
 
Voodoo 3 by a mile, faster than V2 SLI and no need for an additional 2D card.

9700 Pro was quite a big leap in performance at the time but come on, changed the industry??
 
Voodoo as above

The 6800 GTS.. A massive leap of performance for a small price.

However, the 8800GTX is without a doubt the best ever card ever made. I've had mine early 2 years now and still no sign of any slowdown in any game except Crysis.
 
Gotta be the Voodoo 1.

I had a P120 with some 4meg graphics card at the time and I remember my mate getting a P166 with a Voodoo and it blew mine outta the water in performance terms. While I was playing along in software his blew away every game we could throw at it. Took me nearly 2 years to catch up when I upgraded and got a Banshee and a faster processor.

After the voodoo it has to be the first geForce card and since then like a lot of people have said its just been more of the same, just tweaks here and there, nothing really revolutionary.
 
3DFX Voodoo.

I remember seeing an article about GL Quake in an old CVG Magainze where they went to a lan party, playing at an internet cafe.

I came in to the scene a little later, purchasing a Creative 12MB Voodoo 2, that my friend then came to view - his mouth simply dropped seeing Quake 2 and Half Life 1 at the time.

Truly astounding stuff, and make games like Tomb Raider 1 and even Wipeout look far superior to their console versions.
 
Orchid Righteous 16mb?

I can remember the day I 1st played Jedi Knight in 3D on 56k....there when thing there I never seen before. It had to be pluged back into to the 2D card and a right pain to install....after that its got to be the Gforce 256


oh btw hello all :)
 
Easy, the 3DFX Voodoo 1

Spot on.

I remember playing Incoming, Turok, etc :D That click it made was switching to 3D mode :cool:



Orchid Righteous 16mb?

I can remember the day I 1st played Jedi Knight in 3D on 56k....there when thing there I never seen before. It had to be pluged back into to the 2D card and a right pain to install....after that its got to be the Gforce 256


oh btw hello all :)
Welcome aboard!
 
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