the card that changed everything

[jarvis82]

Voodoo without a doubt.

I had the Voodoo 2 in my PIII 800 (or maybe it was a 700, can't remember).

Voodoo 2 and Deus Ex. Match made in heaven...

 

[Shocky-FM]

Seems like it did ok?

It wasnt that bad, even with AA it was very competitive in titles around the time of launch, problem was it came out almost 6 months after r9700pro and was basically too little too late, also the noise didn't help and it didn't cope very well in DX9 titles which come out later, they also charged way to much for it.

It was also the first time ATI managed to take the top spot, can't really remember them being all that competitive before that, although the 8000 series wasnt bad, just not great either.

 

[YorkshirePadd26]

NV 6800 LE 128mb OEM Cheap as chips and ran Doom 3 almost as well as an ultra card.

NV 8800 GTX been out years and their still good.

 

[Mr Paul]

For those people that didn't say the Voodoo 1 you all WRONG damit!

 

[EvilOne]

Wonder why noones mentioning 4850 lol, it changed nvidia's pricing structure forever

 

[AtlanticP]

As Said, Voodoo 1 - Win

 

[layte]

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

Came from nowhere with astonishing performance and the first fully programmable pixel and vertex shaders ever seen in consumer level hardware. I would say it changed the industry.

 

[~>Dg<~]

9800 pro could play games after launch of five years still.wont get many cards do that.

 

[mmj_uk]

Came from nowhere with astonishing performance and the first fully programmable pixel and vertex shaders ever seen in consumer level hardware. I would say it changed the industry.

It didn't change the industry just because it was fast and and as for it's shaders they were really just the next evolutionary step from what the GF3 introduced and we were all expecting from NV30, incidently NV30 actually had FP32 support whereas 9700 Pro was only FP24 so if anything NV30 changed the industry more.

 

[Sh4rkie]

3dfx voodoo, anyone who disagrees is clearly a spring chicken and no idea the impact that card made. Even tho the Powervr was technically better it was let down by little or no support in games and drivers.

Before Voodoo we were all using Cirus Logic, Tridents, Kelvins, Diamonds, Orchids etc. Visually nothing compared to what the Voodoo card brought to the table.

Close the thread discussion over

 

[Sipha]

Another vote for the 3DFX Voodoo stuff, simply amazing in its time.

 

[jediadyrew]

Voodoo1 for sure. My 1st 3d card ever. Quake 2 in openGL was amazing!

Quake 2!

I remember so clearly the weekend my rich mate bought his 1st 3dFX card when the OpenGL patch came out for the original Quake, I can easily say I've never been so amazed since. Don't even think I bothered tuning in to Baywatch that Saturday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[lokiss]

Nailed on with the 3dfx, remember jumping from the diamond pro to the voodoo, then firing up quake in all it's new found super sleek glory.

Hello, welcome to the new world

Next power punch was the 256ddr for sure, anyone remembering quake 3 when it hit (demo and beyond) will tell you just how much that card was over every other (including the sd version)

Confused about the voodoo 3 though, bought one on day of release, wasn't much practicle difference between the v2/3 imho?

 

[queamin]

Quake looked so much better with voodoo,I was amazed but still remember quake 2 could not believe how it looked loved the lighting.
What was the demo/game that came with either vd1 or 2 was in incoming? (a guess)that look so good but got boring quickly.

 

[MooMoo444]

8800gt changed everything for me.

 

[Paul2506]

eeee quake,Them was the days

Does anyone else remember the acorn electron lol,Or am i the only old fart here

 

[layte]

It didn't change the industry just because it was fast and and as for it's shaders they were really just the next evolutionary step from what the GF3 introduced and we were all expecting from NV30, incidently NV30 actually had FP32 support whereas 9700 Pro was only FP24 so if anything NV30 changed the industry more.

no

GF3 was integer based which was pretty useless and just not flexible enough, it was not until the R300 that we got fully floating point shaders which made the big difference. NV30 was a big bag of fail, fast on old stuff, pathetically slow on newer games and released 6 months after the ATI effort. Only a die hard NV fanboy would try to claim otherwise.

 

[oweneades]

no

GF3 was integer based which was pretty useless and just not flexible enough, it was not until the R300 that we got fully floating point shaders which made the big difference. NV30 was a big bag of fail, fast on old stuff, pathetically slow on newer games and released 6 months after the ATI effort. Only a die hard NV fanboy would try to claim otherwise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_FX_Series

May want to read up on that:

Shaders

With regards to the much-touted Direct3D 9.0 shader model 2.a capabilities of the NV3x series and the related marketing claim of "cinematic effects" capabilities, the actual performance was quite poor.[5] A combination of factors combined to hamper how well NV3x could perform these calculations.

Firstly, the chips were designed for use with a mixed precision programming methodology.[4] A 64-bit precision "FP16" mode would be used for situations where high-precision math was seen as unnecessary to maintain image quality. In other cases, where mathematical accuracy was more important, a 128-bit "FP32" mode would be utilized. The ATI R300-based cards did not benefit from partial precision because they always operated at shader model 2's required minimum of 96-bit FP24 for full precision. For a game title to use FP16, the programmer had to specify which effects used the lower precision using "hints" within the code. Because ATI didn't benefit from the lower precision and the R300 performed far better on shaders overall, and because it took more effort to optimize shader code for the lower precision, the NV3x hardware was usually crippled to running full precision full-time.

The NV3x chips also used a processor architecture that relied heavily on the effectiveness of the video card driver's shader compiler.[4] Proper instruction ordering and instruction composition of shader code could dramatically boost the chip's computational efficiency. Compiler development is a long and difficult task and this was a major challenge that Nvidia tried to overcome during most of NV3x's lifetime. Nvidia released several guidelines for creating GeForce FX-optimized code and worked with Microsoft to create a special shader model called "Shader Model 2.a". This model leveraged the design of NV30 in order to extract greater performance and flexibility. Nvidia would also controversially rewrite game shader code and force the game to use their shader code instead of what the developer had written. However, such code would often result in lower final image quality.

 

[layte]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_FX_Series

May want to read up on that:

Even code specifically designed (and FP16) for the FX ran slower than equally optimised code on the ATI part. The FX was too late, too noisy and too slow. Thankfully Nvidia learnt its lesson and gave us the impressive 6800 chip. None of which were as impressive or revolutionary as the R300 debut.

Anyway, are you actually arguing that the FX was revolutionary and the R300 not?

 

[domthecondom]

The Vodoo 2

I was jellous because my mate dad bought him one

my dad just bought me 2GB harddrive a bit later i think

The Force 8800GTX was a big LEAP

I remeber playing Q2 on my PC, god knows what card i had and it was all pixelated and then my mates dad bought my mate a Vodoo and OMG i couldn't belive Q2 was the same game on his PC