Weirdest actual 3D card for PC's
- Thread starter DeanoC
- Start date
CI said:Hi!
Been lurkin' around for quite some time and couldn't resist this thread...
I vote for Jazz Multimedia's Bonnie & Clyde (V2200) which has both an AGP and a PCI connector on each side of the PCB.
Can't find any pics of it , only this article:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2067861,00.html
I almost bought one of those things. I had a v2200 already though.
DeanoC said:
No, you are probably thinking of the technology that Number Nine were planning when they turned belly up -- a board based on a reprogrammable PixelFusion chip (named FUZION 150). The Ticket to Ride (board name: Revolution 3D) and Ticket to Ride IV (boardname: Revolution IV, I have one of those) were fixed function processors competing with Matrox G200 and G400, respectively, if I'm not mistaken. Number Nine was probably one of the weirder companies out there.
When we are talking about "forgotten chips", don't leave out Tseng Labs' ET6300, a version of their speedy 6000/6100 2D chips with some added 3D functions. It never saw the light of day, the company went under and the assets were bought by ATI IIRC.
DeanoC said:
AFAIR it was a V2200 board with a Fujitsu Pinolite geometry engine handling fixed function T&L. The end results weren't all that impressive given the new wave of TNT & V2 chips coupled with faster PII CPUs. They abandoned the project, although Rendition/Hercules had a number of prototypes.
Well, for one, I doubt the Ticket to Ride IV was around to compete with the Matrox G400. That card was released not long before the GeForce 256 was announced. I had thought the last Number Nine product was out around the time of the original TNT.mangrove said:
I bet these cards competed against the original Matrox Mystique and G200 cards.
I thought the number 9 product was based on the Savage4?
Chalnoth said:
You are right (and wrong) -- I checked it out. The Revolution 3D was out before the G200, but the original Mystique (there were three of them IIRC) is even older. The Revolution IV was out a year before G400, and competed favorably in some cases with the G200. Thanks for the correction.
RussSchultz said:
That depends on which Number Nine product you are thinking of ;-) The SR9 was based on Savage4, and was arguably Number Nine's last shipped product. #9 had a long-time tradition of producing S3 based boards, but also produced their own chips. The Imagine 128 series were famed at the time of their introduction for their 2D speed and quality, had external IBM ramdacs, and *drumroll* also had full-blown Cirrus Logic VGA processors on board for text mode and VESA support -- the actual #9 processor did only do Windows GUI acceleration! As the Imagine 128 Series 2 processor incorporated some OpenGL support (think "original Matrox Millennium" in level) this gets my vote as one of the stranger 3D decelerators.
Man, I'm getting warm fuzzy feelings with all the recollecting going on.
Like Dio, I also have a Oak Warp 5 reference board. It was remarkable at its time. I also remember the S-MOS PIX(SPC1515) board. I remember seeing it at E3 or GDC. A guy had attached a chain to it and hanged it around his neck. Man, was it small. One chip on PCI PCB and that was about it.
I would also like to say that the first PCI and VLB 3D boards were Paradise Tasmania 3D and 3D Blaster, respectively. They were also 3D only and used loopback cables. 3Dfx and PowerVR didn't have the first. Though PowerVR was the first to not use a loopback cable.
I would also agree with Joe about the MPACT. Chromatic made at least 2 chips, MPACT and MPACT 2 3DVD. I don't think the first one was ever released. It was just enough to get noticed by Diamond and STB to use the 2nd gen.
The combination of the Voodoo Rush and Alliance Semiconductor's ProMotion AT3D was also kind of strange. I believe the AT3D itself had some 3D functionality, but it was turned off in favor of the Rush. Though the price it shipped at was amazing. I don't remember the price, but I do remember Intergraph flooring me in their one-on-one briefing at E3.
3Dfx wasn't the only company creating a board with a separate 2D and 3D chips. VideoLogic also made the Apocalypse 5D that used the PCX2 and Tseng Labs ET6000.
Another forgotten chip was the IXMICRO Twin-Turbo 128-3D. I don't know much about it, but I seem to remember something about them trying to put it on CardBus card for notebooks. They weren't the only ones that had that idea. I seem to remember Rendition making a CardBus prototype card based on the V2200. Other than Margi Systems I don't think there have been any companies that have tried doing a graphics board on CardBus.
Speaking of the Rendition based-boards, another strange card was seeing Sierra release a Verite V1000 graphics board having not ever release any hardware before. I believe Canopus made the board, but Sierra put their name and brand on it, and packaged 3 full versions of Sierra games along with a shareware copy of Quake. It was last time I ever saw a game company release hardware. Another strange Rendition board was the V1000 reference board. It used a red PCB, and I think that was the first time I had ever seen a non-green PCB. After that I seen somebody make a cobalt blue PCB.
Canopus, also made a niche by making the Total3D. A Verite v1000 board with a LCD shutter glasses connection and 3D audio enhancement. The first and last of it's kind I believe. Though Metabyte later brought back wireless 3D shutter glasses for their Voodoo2 board. It was special in that the game didn't have to include built-in support and thus would run on almost any Direct3D or QuakeGL game.
Further looking at Canopus, I saw something that I forgot all about. They had a RIVA board called the WitchDoctor that used a "reverse" pass-though connection for Voodoo2 users. They made this so the monitor would hook straight to the RIVA board and thus provide better 2D quality by not going through the Voodoo2.
If you use Archive.org and look up Dimension3D.com you can still get to all the company press releases I linked from my archived site. You can also look at my Chip Overview pages. Looking at it, it showed some chips from companies like Brooktree, Philips Semiconductors, Samsung Electronics, Sigma Designs and Silicon Reality.
With all that said, I still believe the Bonnie and Clyde rank up there as one of the strangest cards.
Maybe somebody should go through this thread and write down all the contenders and then make a poll?
Tommy McClain
Like Dio, I also have a Oak Warp 5 reference board. It was remarkable at its time. I also remember the S-MOS PIX(SPC1515) board. I remember seeing it at E3 or GDC. A guy had attached a chain to it and hanged it around his neck. Man, was it small. One chip on PCI PCB and that was about it.
I would also like to say that the first PCI and VLB 3D boards were Paradise Tasmania 3D and 3D Blaster, respectively. They were also 3D only and used loopback cables. 3Dfx and PowerVR didn't have the first. Though PowerVR was the first to not use a loopback cable.
I would also agree with Joe about the MPACT. Chromatic made at least 2 chips, MPACT and MPACT 2 3DVD. I don't think the first one was ever released. It was just enough to get noticed by Diamond and STB to use the 2nd gen.
The combination of the Voodoo Rush and Alliance Semiconductor's ProMotion AT3D was also kind of strange. I believe the AT3D itself had some 3D functionality, but it was turned off in favor of the Rush. Though the price it shipped at was amazing. I don't remember the price, but I do remember Intergraph flooring me in their one-on-one briefing at E3.
3Dfx wasn't the only company creating a board with a separate 2D and 3D chips. VideoLogic also made the Apocalypse 5D that used the PCX2 and Tseng Labs ET6000.
Another forgotten chip was the IXMICRO Twin-Turbo 128-3D. I don't know much about it, but I seem to remember something about them trying to put it on CardBus card for notebooks. They weren't the only ones that had that idea. I seem to remember Rendition making a CardBus prototype card based on the V2200. Other than Margi Systems I don't think there have been any companies that have tried doing a graphics board on CardBus.
Speaking of the Rendition based-boards, another strange card was seeing Sierra release a Verite V1000 graphics board having not ever release any hardware before. I believe Canopus made the board, but Sierra put their name and brand on it, and packaged 3 full versions of Sierra games along with a shareware copy of Quake. It was last time I ever saw a game company release hardware. Another strange Rendition board was the V1000 reference board. It used a red PCB, and I think that was the first time I had ever seen a non-green PCB. After that I seen somebody make a cobalt blue PCB.
Canopus, also made a niche by making the Total3D. A Verite v1000 board with a LCD shutter glasses connection and 3D audio enhancement. The first and last of it's kind I believe. Though Metabyte later brought back wireless 3D shutter glasses for their Voodoo2 board. It was special in that the game didn't have to include built-in support and thus would run on almost any Direct3D or QuakeGL game.
Further looking at Canopus, I saw something that I forgot all about. They had a RIVA board called the WitchDoctor that used a "reverse" pass-though connection for Voodoo2 users. They made this so the monitor would hook straight to the RIVA board and thus provide better 2D quality by not going through the Voodoo2.
If you use Archive.org and look up Dimension3D.com you can still get to all the company press releases I linked from my archived site. You can also look at my Chip Overview pages. Looking at it, it showed some chips from companies like Brooktree, Philips Semiconductors, Samsung Electronics, Sigma Designs and Silicon Reality.
With all that said, I still believe the Bonnie and Clyde rank up there as one of the strangest cards.
Maybe somebody should go through this thread and write down all the contenders and then make a poll?
Tommy McClain
Heathen said:
Without access to my original article on it, I can only say it was just a little bit slower than competing solutions at the time, but however it was doing FSAA where the others were not. I think one of the main reasons it didn't suceed was because it didn't have any way of turning off FSAA to make it go faster. Not sure if that was a software or hardware issue.
Tommy McClain
Neutrality
Newcomer
AzBat said:
Uhm, was it ever introduced at all? Thought I read something about the card never making it to market.
-Neutrality-
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