Who remembers this when playing PC games with 3D support..!!

The thing I will remember forever from 3dfx (or 3DFX as it was known in the beginning) is the massive difference between a Glide optimized game and running in DirectX

I had a Voodoo2 8MB, Voodoo3 3000 and a Voodoo5 5500 ( I remember buying the Voodoo5 5500 for silly money knowing a GeForce card was fater and cheaper but still didn't buy that, I was a fanboy that didn't want to give in)
 
I remember saving up for ages to buy myself a Voodoo 2 when I was younger.. I used to play Quake 2 a lot and the difference my Voodoo 2 made to it was staggering! I was blown away by the graphics at that age! :)
 
yep, had the original 4MB piggyback card alongside my 4mb S3 Virge 3D......OOOOH YEAH!

went out and excitedly bought Ultimate Race Pro to play on it :D

 
I remember when I bought Shadows of the Empire for the PC and the bloke in the shop pointed to the "3D Card Required" logo on the box and asked me if I had one.

How times have changed.
 
I also remember being asked if I had a decent 3D card when I picked up WipeOut 2097, I used to buy games like they were going out of fashion back in the mid 90's....

I used to remember seeing all those big boxes in the stores, rows and rows of PC titles.... You walk into most game stores nowadays and you hardly see any PC games...

Yet, you log into Steam and there is hundreds to select, and you buy it download it and play it...

times have indeed changed. Digital downloads are going like 3D cards... Without a 3D card, you can't play PC games. soon without an Internet connection and a digital PC games purchase client (such as Steam) you'll not be able to buy PC games..!! lol
 
iv-tecman said:
I also remember being asked if I had a decent 3D card when I picked up WipeOut 2097, I used to buy games like they were going out of fashion back in the mid 90's....

I used to remember seeing all those big boxes in the stores, rows and rows of PC titles.... You walk into most game stores nowadays and you hardly see any PC games...

Yet, you log into Steam and there is hundreds to select, and you buy it download it and play it...

times have indeed changed. Digital downloads are going like 3D cards... Without a 3D card, you can't play PC games. soon without an Internet connection and a digital PC games purchase client (such as Steam) you'll not be able to buy PC games..!! lol
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I'm really struggling to find any decent PC games at the moment. It's quite ironic that there aren't any decent games which really push the graphics, yet we are getting £1000 graphics cards for sale now :rolleyes:
 
peterattheboro said:
I'm really struggling to find any decent PC games at the moment. It's quite ironic that there aren't any decent games which really push the graphics, yet we are getting £1000 graphics cards for sale now :rolleyes:
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Well not to be too controversial but you can thank Xbox360 and Direct X 9 for that..!! Endless Console ports with upped resolution and lack of DX10 or DX11 support have resulted in PC gamers not getting anything to benchmark their systems against apart from Crysis and just recently Metro 2033.

The bigger money is in the consoles, we still get one or two titles though that make some GPU’s worthwhile..

Crysis 2 is looking to be one of them, as I said.. Metro 2033 was another. Sadly, yep a £1000 GPU just doesn’t make sense anymore.

Heck, a Q6600 with a ATI 5850 would destroy pretty much all games released up till now… Even Metro 2033 a known system killer can still run at 1920 x 1080 on a Q6600 clocked at 3.2 with 4GB ram and a 1GB 5870 at a decent FPS rate..

Oh well, least its not as expensive to maintain a top end PC at the moment… When a three year old socket can still pump out decent res and FPS with the most recent titles using a sub £300 GPU..

Try that five years ago.. Yep, times are changing..
 
Ahh yes, my first real 3D graphics card purchase was a 3dfx Voodoo3 16MB PCI for around £60 on ebay. What a difference that made from a crappy onboard ATi Rage 2MB. Finally I was able to play games like Quake II and Final Fantasy VII to their best. The Glide wrapper for the first Quake game turned it into something that looked so different as well.
 
What still surprises me today is the fact that deferred rendering hasn't caught on and ATI/Nvidia are still using the brute force approach to rendering.

PowerVR never really became good compettition and just when 3dfx started with deferred rendering in their BETA driers they folded soon after.
 
iv-tecman said:
Heck, a Q6600 with a ATI 5850 would destroy pretty much all games released up till now… Even Metro 2033 a known system killer can still run at 1920 x 1080 on a Q6600 clocked at 3.2 with 4GB ram and a 1GB 5870 at a decent FPS rate..

Oh well, least its not as expensive to maintain a top end PC at the moment… When a three year old socket can still pump out decent res and FPS with the most recent titles using a sub £300 GPU..

Try that five years ago.. Yep, times are changing..
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Too true. My 8800GT and X2 6000 can still play Crysis. Bought that card 2 years ago for about £100. If I buy todays equivalent of an 8800GT for £100 then i'm sure i'll be fine for another couple of years.

What IS the point in spending £1000 on a GPU? :p
 
Dutch Guy said:
PowerVR never really became good compettition and just when 3dfx started with deferred rendering in their BETA driers they folded soon after.
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I still remember how there was the competition between PowerVR and 3dfx on who will power the graphics for Sega's Dreamcast/NAOMI. In the end it was PowerVR due to the cheaper cost, but it still managed to produce some outstanding titles and the Dreamcast versions of Quake III and Unreal Tournament held out very well.
 
I remember getting a specially recoded Mechwarrior2 that could use my PowerVR card. Just the game itself was worth buying the card on it's own. And to this day is the best MW game i have ever played

The one thing that PVR had over 3dfx at the time was that MW2 ran in 1024*768 :p
 
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