Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2020]

[London Geezer]

My first card was an ATI 3D Rage 2, wtih texture filtering !

When 3D cards had no fans on them.

 

[Karamazov]

Kids these days be like "What's a MHz?"

At the time i was so proud my atari lynx had more MHz than the SNES ans the Genesis.

 

[goonergaz]

Ah, fond memories of slapping a 3DFX Voodoo card in my PC and playing Tomb Raider

 

[London Geezer]

Ah, fond memories of slapping a 3DFX Voodoo card in my PC and playing Tomb Raider

For me it was Turok. With those ugly low res but bilinear filtered textures, which at the time was the best thing I'd ever seen in a video game.

 

[BoardBonobo]

Ultimate Race Pro on the PowerVR. Made my Millenium plus Voodoo2 look so murky

 

[Xbat]

My first 3d accelerated was a Riva 128. If I remember correctly I was rocking an MMX 166 mhz or 233mhz can't remember exactly.

 

[cheapchips]

I don't know why, but I really disliked the quality of 3DFX graphics. I think I might just have prefered unfiltered textures when they were so low res.

 

[Lalaland]

Power VR PCX1 and a Matrox G200, pure power baby

 

[Rootax]

Aaah, I remember my Matrox M3D (Power VR) and then Neon 250 (Power VR Series 2). I was a big fan of TBDR. In my young mind, it was the smartest way to do things

 

[PSman1700]

First time exiting the space ship in the first Unreal, on a voodoo 2. Was such a wow-moment, hard to imagine now but never been as wow-ed since by graphics. The soundtrack was amazing too. For gameplay itself.... it was good i think, but certainly not the best at the time, more a tech demo for me, didn't even finish it.

Love these retro episodes, was the golden age of gaming. I see it's sponsered by Nvidia, have seen them doing this on facebook aswell. Nice idea prior to the Ampere launch.

 

[goonergaz]

Power VR PCX1 and a Matrox G200, pure power baby

Oh yeah - didn’t Matrix bring us bump mapping?

 

[Lalaland]

Yes they did! And the only place I ever saw it was in the tech demo that shipped on the disc until much, much later

 

[Karamazov]

the first powerVR card came bundled with rave racer, i was so jealous, as a PS1 player who loved the RR series, that game never came to the PS1.
had to wait for the PSP version to enjoy the tracks.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

I had a S3 card which was my first 3D card. When the RivaTNT came out I skipped it however I nabbed the replacement which was a Creative RivaTNT2 Ultra and the graphics then really blew anything else on the market at that point in time. I think only the 3DFX cards came close or were a bit better.
After that I got a Geforce.

 

[see colon]

I went from a Voodoo 1 to a TNT, and then back to 3Dfx with Voodoo 3, and then I took a left turn and got a Powervr Kyro and 2 Voodoo 2's. Had that setup for about a year, maybe a bit more, then stopped messing around and got a Geforce 3. But that PowerVR/Voodoo 2 setup was so awesome. Not because the performance was ground breaking, but the drivers had really modern features and settings. Also, had I not had a Kyro, I wouldn't have been a member at deferred power (a Powervr fan site/forum), and that was my gateway to Beyond 3D. I should dig that card out and put it in my Windows 98 computer.

 

[AzBat]

Love the memories. Seems like a century ago, but only a quarter. I had almost every kind of 3D chipset up until 1999/2000. Never liked the NVIDIA cards & still sore they bought 3Dfx. PowerVR, Rendition & 3Dfx were my favorite ones. Though my Oak Warp 5 was so cool. Too bad it wasn't real fast. Sold my collection about 10 years ago though. I have pics to look back at though.

Tommy McClain

 

[AlNom]

First 3D accelerated card I had was a Voodoo Banshee then Geforce 2MX. I was never at the forefront of performance (*cough* money).

 

[AzBat]

At least you didn't have the Voodoo Rush. The Banshee was much better.

Tommy McClain

 

[pjbliverpool]

First 3D accelerated card I had was a Voodoo Banshee then Geforce 2MX. I was never at the forefront of performance (*cough* money).

Snap. Loved that Banshee. The GF2 MX was a huge step up but I realised fairly quickly how low end it was relative to the full GF2 when trying to max out Quake 3 (those incredible graphics!). Those were the days when I thought £200 was a lot to spend on a graphics card. How I miss them.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

First 3D accelerated card I had was a Voodoo Banshee then Geforce 2MX. I was never at the forefront of performance (*cough* money).

Geforce 2MX was my second 3D GPU but my first actual card. When I bought my Gateway PC around July 1998, the Riva128 was the optional onboard GPU upgrade for the system I bought - a PentiumII/400, 96mb RAM, DVD drive - I was so PCMR back then. The 2MX was just an insane upgrade when I got and cheap when I got it. I recall it being around £60.