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PC Videocards - how times have changed....

I kept my 16MB Voodoo Banshee for years. I just had to keep turning down the settings on newer games to get it to play nicely. This went on until I got Jedi Knight II, and couldn't get the second level to work on any settings. Was a sad day.

Upgraded right up to a Radeon 9600Pro in my new system, and was utterly astounded by JKII in high res and settings, and then even more so by Far Cry!

Such a difference to what I'd been used to. It set me on the path of setting great store by high settings in games. Now, instead of turning down settings as games get more demanding, I just buy a new video card. Can't help thinking this isn't a great development on my part, but <shrug> there's no going back now...
 
strumpusplunket said:
I kept my 16MB Voodoo Banshee for years. I just had to keep turning down the settings on newer games to get it to play nicely. This went on until I got Jedi Knight II, and couldn't get the second level to work on any settings. Was a sad day.

Upgraded right up to a Radeon 9600Pro in my new system, and was utterly astounded by JKII in high res and settings, and then even more so by Far Cry!

Such a difference to what I'd been used to. It set me on the path of setting great store by high settings in games. Now, instead of turning down settings as games get more demanding, I just buy a new video card. Can't help thinking this isn't a great development on my part, but <shrug> there's no going back now...
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JK2 was incredible for its day - the levels were HUGE! Good memories :)
 
I still have my Voodoo 1 and the driver disc with the strange first person demo with the chinese dragon in that room lol.. :) i really loved my voodoo 1 and then the banshee on UT :O UT looks better in glide then DX lol and ran better i had them all voodoo 3 2000 - 3000 then a voodoo 5 which was like 10 feet long and 50 thosand fans haha

3DFX i salute you.
 
Those were the days, the 3DFX Voodoo, I always remember getting my first Voodoo card and playing Half Life 1 and Quake, seeing the "3DFX" logo spin around before the game started. I was shocked at how smooth the games looked and ran. Even more impressive playing at my mates house and he had two Voodoo 2’s.
Back then at least when you spent money on a top graphic cards you could play every game on the market maxed out at the time. Now you spend £450 plus a graphic and still can’t play a 3 year old game on max settings such as Crysis even with multiple cards.
 
malachi said:
Back then at least when you spent money on a top graphic cards you could play every game on the market maxed out at the time. Now you spend £450 plus a graphic and still can’t play a 3 year old game on max settings such as Crysis even with multiple cards.
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Thats not true at all. A single 5850, 5870, 470, 480 or even GTX285 will easily play Crysis maxed out at 1680x1050 with v-Sync and some AA. I play it at 1920x1200 maxed out on my 5870's, and with just one 5870 it's also playable at 1920x1200 maxed out, but with no AA.

In the late 90's i remember buying cards and not being able to max out some games at high res, half-life in particular.

Anyway, i prefer games like Crysis, that game is still pretty much the best looking PC game around even on a DX9 engine - as it's made purely for PC's. It makes the game last too.
Thanks to consoles they're holding PC tech and games back. All these consoles ports, while the PC versions often look better, it's not a massive improvement and they easily run on any half decent PC. There would be far more DX10 and DX11 games if it wasn't for consoles, that would actually make use of my hardware. I mean, i game at 2560x1600, and just one of my 5870's is enough to run 99% of new games maxed out at that res, often with some AA.
 
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iv-tecman said:
3Dfx was a company that, at the time, had a great product but forgot about marketing correctly. They were more interested in producing state of the art products and forgot that not everyone could afford to shell out the sort of money they were charging for high end PC kit….

I mean, the Voodoo 2 12 MB edition, in SLI mode was hugely expensive… But they didn’t really offer anything other at the time, I mean your choices were either 1 or 2 x 8MB Voodoo 2 or 1 or 2 x 12MB voodoo 2, SLI modes and they had no entry level cards.. They soon phased out the voodoo 1 in favour of new tech, and this left many consumers who couldn’t afford the prices of voodoo 2 buying Nvidia or ATI products that offered 2D and 3D on one card.. Much cheaper, and this, I’m afraid might have been why 3Dfx, with all the power their cards offered in the end failed… Its all well and good having the best product, but if its priced too highly for all but wealthy PC enthusiasts its not going to be long before order books are empty..

Nvidia did buy 3Dfx and made a fortune out of top end GPU cards using 3Dfx IP and also slowly used the top end GPU when it was replaced by newer tech as entry level GPU meaning their target audience for GPU was both budget and power consumers..

It really was a shame with 3Dfx, excellent top end products… They were just too far ahead of their time, and I also heard they weren’t very good with their accounts, and hence went bust..!!

I do find it hard to believe that ATI at the moment have the best all round video card solutions…. ATI in 1995 were horrible products… The Rage 3D was a truly horrific POS..!! It certainly is – how times have changed..
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tbh, back in the days of the voodoo 2, there really wasn't anything that could compete with it.

the other 2d/3d cards at the time were not the same, they didn't have all the extra effects that glide provided so the games simply did not look as good.

nvidia really couldn't complete until they released geforce, thier tnt cards were no match to voodoo cards.

3dfx were still doing well during the release of the voodoo 3, it was the voodoo 4 and 5 that really killed them
 
Cycrow said:
nvidia really couldn't complete until they released geforce, thier tnt cards were no match to voodoo cards.
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Have to disagree there, Quake 3's cleaner rendering* on TNT2 (i.e. 32bit) was again a big leap from 3DFX in my experience.

* Don't forget the yellow tint Voodoo had, plus noticeable noise on lightsources due to 16bit colour
 
ok cards first

Amiga 500plus:D OCS chipset
Amiga 1200 AGA
Rage 64 <--Piece of junky crud
geforce 2mx
geforce 4 4200ti <- first card of any worth 3d wise.
geforce 6200ti <- spankly lovely little card
geforce 7600gt <-pci-e time
Ati 3850 256meg <- first ati card in 7-8 years, damn you rage64:mad:
geforce 9600 <-the cheap made ones that with no and i repeat no speed control on the fan:confused:
nvidia 250 <- had to scrap that 9600 double time
ati 5850 <- I love this card its awesome, you you have the money i suggest you get one.

I keep that bloody 9600gt for 3 weeks, drove me insane, the bloody fan ran at 100% all the time (only two wires on the fan) some ass-clown at nvidia must have said to some OEMs 'hey guys you can save 0.005p a card by not putting a pwm chip on the card, *******. you could hear the card from all the way across the house. if you have never heard one of these cards, heres how to recreate the noise, get an empty coffee grinder then switch it on.
 
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Echo said:
Have to disagree there, Quake 3's cleaner rendering* on TNT2 (i.e. 32bit) was again a big leap from 3DFX in my experience.

* Don't forget the yellow tint Voodoo had, plus noticeable noise on lightsources due to 16bit colour
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well, not surprising considering the tnt2 came out a year after the voodoo 2 :P

at the time of the voodoo 2, there was nothing that could touch it
 
WTFShelley said:
ok cards first

Amiga 500plus:D OCS chipset
Amiga 1200 AGA
Rage 64 <--Piece of junky crud
geforce 2mx
geforce 4 4200ti <- first card of any worth 3d wise.
geforce 6200ti <- spankly lovely little card
geforce 7600gt <-pci-e time
Ati 3850 256meg <- first ati card in 7-8 years, damn you rage64:mad:
geforce 9600 <-the cheap made ones that with no and i repeat no speed control on the fan:confused:
nvidia 250 <- had to scrap that 9600 double time
ati 5850 <- I love this card its awesome, you you have the money i suggest you get one.

I keep that bloody 9600gt for 3 weeks, drove me insane, the bloody fan ran at 100% all the time (only two wires on the fan) some ass-clown at nvidia must have said to some OEMs 'hey guys you can save 0.005p a card by not putting a pwm chip on the card, *******. you could hear the card from all the way across the house. if you have never heard one of these cards, heres how to recreate the noise, get an empty coffee grinder then switch it on.
Click to expand...

good memory there, i cant remember every card i've had in the past :P

started of with several sis cards, back in the days of 386's
then i got a 3d monster 4mb
then an ATI Xpert@Play with an Orchid voodoo 2
Voodoo 3 3000
GeForce 3 Ti200
Geforce 4 4800 (i think)
Geforce 6800
Geforce 8800
then finally a Geforce 250, which i plan to upgrade soon

im sure i've missed a few of the earlier ones, my memory aint all that good :P
 
If we're naming cards now lol ...

I had lots of turdy cards before 1997 that i cant even remember, then:
Creative 3D Blaster Banshee 16MB (good, used a 3DFX voodoo chipset)
TNT2 32MB (ok-ish)
Geforce 4 MX420 (turd-ish)
ATI 9700 Pro (super)
Nvidia 6800 Ultra (great)
7800GTX (good)
7900GTX (good)
8800GTX (super)
9800GTX (alright)
9800GX2 (turd)
GTX280 (great)
ATI 4870X2 (good, when not crashing)
GTX295 (good)
ATI 5870 (good, would be great if drivers were better)
5870 Crossfire (good, again would be great if drivers were better)


Some other cards i've had for short periods of time, or had in cheapo PC's...
ATI - 9600 Pro, X1900GT, 4850, 4870,
Nvidia - Nearly all Geforce 4 motherboard variants, 6600GT, 7200GS, 7600GT, 8400GT, 8600GS, 8600GTS, GTX260
Intel - Many onboards graphics that are so poor they are not worth the effort of typing.

One thing i've learned from all this is NV generally have better drivers.
 
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ATI Rage 128 (turd)
Nvidia TNT 2 32Mb (Solid)
Nvidia GF 4 Ti4400 (amazing)
ATI 38something (lasted a week before I sold it)
NVidia GF 260 SP216 (very good)
 
My story

I bought a PC back in 2001/2 for £400, it had, 'I think', a Geforce MX440? 32Mb onboard RAM? Not quite sure; anyway, this card was allowing me to surf the NET, via AOL, (hahaha). I then went out & bought Unreal Tournament, (UT99 for the uninitiated). I remember loading the game up for the first time after installation and seeing DM-Liandri, (or was it DM-Tempest?), and actually DRIBBLING at the graphics! :D I ACTUALLY couldn't stop drooling, I was PHYSICALLY dribbling down my t-shirt at it. :D Haha,.. but after wanting to up the graphics to higher resolution than 640 x 480, it started to stutter quite badly. I upgraded to an FX5600, with a then amazing 256Mb of onboard RAM,. that was BRILLIANT! :) Yes, more dribbling, lol,.. *ahem... :p
I'm so very close now to buying a spanking brand new ATI Radeon 5850,.. which is no doubt going to make me dribble even more than my beloved XFX 8800GTS XXX did. :D :D
Hehehe. I love computers - but I wouldn't dribble in front of one,.. (shhhh lol),.. :p The moral of the story - Eye candy RULEZ!! :D
 
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