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History of 3D gfx cards

Y

YU22

Golden Member

I'm doing a pretty silly work infront of class tomarow about 3D cards, both technology and history. Could you help me out a bit with some facts or point me to some good article.

There was a really good article about it on that penny-something site, but I don't remember thier web-adress =(

I know a lot myself but I would still like to prepare a bit.
 
There was a great article by Tom Monk at Acellenation.com. Before I had read that article, I only knew of 3 major chip makers in 3D history that wiped out the competition, 3Dfx, ATi and nVidia, but that article was very detailed, and info loaded. I thought It was a great one by Accellenation.
 
Yep, that acellenatoion article should be all you need. It doesn't get much more detailed than that.
 
That article was incredible! A great primer for anyone interested in why certain companies have failed and others have prospered. A must read. 🙂
 
Dont even think of mentioning the bitboys or you will automatically receive a failing grade :|:frown:😕
rolleye.gif
 
ViRGE stands for Virtual Reality Graphics Engine.

I used to have one of those. Ughhhhhhh... What a horrible chip! I'm not kidding when I say software rendering looked better and ran faster.

The history of 3D graphics cards in 1 line:
3DFX -> nVidia -> ATI
 
Hey, I remember when I made the move - LucasArts just put out X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter.... I bought Win95 just to be able to play it. I also bought a 4MB S3 Virge thinking, "Hey, this is a 3D game and it'll be enhanced by a 3D video card!!"

It did run slightly faster.... only because of more/faster video memory. Darn that was a lot of spending for a game I didn't really like... 😱
 
Speaking of spending alot for a game...

I purchased a Diamond Multimedia Monster 3D Card(which was a 3DFX Voodoo1, I believe 4MB of RAM), and I bought it for around $250, just around the time it came out I think, perhaps a little afterwards...but it was quite new nonetheless.

Anyways, my main reason for buying it(other than it looked like a cool investment) was Descent 2. Dang, I remember when I first fired up that game on it...soooo crisp textures and 50-60 fps! Man, I'll never forget that...and I put it to good use too, man I played D2 forever, especially multiplayer, I think it is tied with Descent 1 as my favorite game of all time.

But still...looking back it is amazing how much the industry has advanced...and that was only like 6 years ago!
 
<--- *Dreams of past Descent 1 multiplayer games*

Best of all, it was on a LAN, so I could taunt the other players with my real voice.

*sigh*

 
Indeed, Descent 1/Descent 2 on a LAN was always a great time...too bad I didn't have a LAN until later, but I did play some LAN games at a friends house.

By the time I got a LAN none of my friends wanted to play me because I would pound them pretty bad.
 


<< Hey, I remember when I made the move - LucasArts just put out X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter.... I bought Win95 just to be able to play it. I also bought a 4MB S3 Virge thinking, "Hey, this is a 3D game and it'll be enhanced by a 3D video card!!"

It did run slightly faster.... only because of more/faster video memory. Darn that was a lot of spending for a game I didn't really like... 😱 >>


XvT actually ran pretty well on the ViRGE considering what it is. Run it on a DX/GX/GX2, and it'll beat software mode by a decent amount. Besides, the graphics are much better; I believe XvT was limited to 256 colors in software mode, although on the flip side, the ViRGE didn't do transparancy correctly on explosions.
 
True.... I remember getting Descent II specifically for S3 Virge... the graphics were much nicer but slowed by HALF... Rather disappointing - I went back to software mode.

My firends and I won a few contests for Descent I/II level design... I wrote the music. Still have it.... 😉 The music anyways.....
I should grab an old Voodoo2 for the 3dfx version of Descent.... on more reason I'd like a Voodoo5.

I just love the old Glide stuff.
 
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