Ode to the GPUs of old

[mdchesne]

Once state of the art,
Now a paperweight or doorstop,
you were considered top of the line
if you had triple digit clock speeds.
but woe to old, and dust to dust,
we honor your memory.
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/19991019/geforce-07.html
(check out the clock speeds! whoaaaa!! humbling)

 

[Kenazo]

🙂 I remember those cards.

 

[Patt]

I owned a few of those cards 🙁 RIP /nerdiness

 

[acemcmac]

The geforce 2 ultra is still the 56 chevy of all video cards imho

 

[Lonyo]

I still have a TNT2 Ultra in an old system (still working).
I laugh because they ran 32/16-bit tests, it's funny that we ever used to even consider 16-bit colour in games, now no one gives second thought to running 32-bit for everything.

 

[Sqube]

Check out those speeds... damn near triple-digit speeds in Quake.

Back in the day.

 

[LeiZaK]

Voodoo5 ftw!

 

[PottedMeat]

Oh Diamond Monster3D how i miss thee! Start of the 3D Graphics craziness - first 3Dfx VooDoo card.

 

[DPmaster]

Originally posted by: mdchesne
Once state of the art,
Now a paperweight or doorstop,
you were considered top of the line
if you had triple digit clock speeds.
but woe to old, and dust to dust,
we honor your memory.
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/19991019/geforce-07.html
(check out the clock speeds! whoaaaa!! humbling)

Yep the good old days. I remember back then when the big boys on the block were the Rendition Verite and the 3DFX Voodoo 1. There were other players such as the PowerVR cards but the big boys were those two. Running Quake 1 at 640x480 using the GL patch was awesome for its day.

My first 3D card was the Nvidia Riva 128 (I'm not 100% sure but I think this Nvidia's first foray into the 3D gaming card market).

I then went to the Riva TNT2 Ultra (this was the card to have back in the day). I mated this with 2 Voodoo2s in SLI configuration to have the best of both worlds. The TNT2 Ultra for Direct3d games and the Voodoo2s in SLI config for Glide (remember that 🙂) and OpenGL. Glide WAS THE THING TO HAVE if you wanted your games to run smooth and look great.

From there I went to the Geforce 2 GTS, then the Geforce 4 TI4400, and now finally the Geforce 6800GT.

I still have to say the TNT2 Ultra and the SLI'd Voodoo2s were probably the biggest workhorses out of all the video cards I had. I actually kept those Voodoo2s even when I had the GF2 GTS.