3dfx - A trip down memory lane

lol I had a Diamond edge 3d and moved on to a Diamond monster with a whopping 2mb or ram
cutting edge stuff I tell you, I think the monster 2 was the first SLI card to come out ... sigh
good old memories.
 
Had a voodoo banshee in one pc and two voodoo2's in SLI mode in another.

Those were the days :)

Ended up getting a Riva as Ultima 9 kept crashing with the banshee.
 
The Voodoo 2 was pure awesome in its day. I'll never forget the experience of throwing one into my Pentium 166 and connecting it to my 1MB S3 trio card. I'd received Tomb Raider 2 as a birthday/Christmas present a few weeks prior and anyone who was jamming PC games at the time will tell you that trying to play TR2 on software rendering using a 1MB card was an incredibly painful experience.

I was quite amazed at how (after I installed the Voodoo 2) TR2 suddenly came to life...and Quake 2, HOLY ****, it looked like a different game in all of it's OpenGL glory :wtf::D

Playing Unreal on the Voodoo 2 was also something quite special.
 
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Playing Unreal on the Voodoo 2 was also something quite special.
Click to expand...

Unreal was an awesome game, the music soundtrack changing when something dangerous is coming along, so cool.
Graphics where the best at the time I'd like to think.
 
My first 3d card was a power VR which my Pentium 120 just couldn't handle. The graphics were lovely, but my CPU couldn't handle it and Quake 2 ran like a dog with a broken leg, barely getting 14 fps.

So I sold it quickly and got a Monster 3d and the difference was remarkable, very smooth with beautiful graphics. Q2 never lagged at all although I really can't remember what resolution I was running it at. But it was eye candy for sure and changed gaming forever. I even went back to the first Quake using GL Quake and spent a long time playing that all over again because the online deathmatch scene was revived in the UK when GL Quake was released.

I also got a voodoo 2 when they came out but could never afford 2 of them so never had the pleasure of SLI unfortunately. But by that time getting a decent ping to a server was more important because the graphics side was taken care of.

Yep, 3dfx changed my life and I nearly failed Varsity playing for my clan until all hours because of it ;)

And although the graphics were lovely, my abiding memory of Unreal was the colour green :D
 
This thread bringing back memories of peaking on acid while fighting swamp monsters in Kings Quest 8...
 
Ah the good old days...

My first 3d accelerator was a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI...
 
Nice to see so many 3dfx 'veterans' :D

My first card was the Banshee. I'll never forget the day I bought it.

Went out for lunch to pick it up and when I got back to work I immediately installed it into my work PC; fired up Quake 2 and jammed a bit :D

The one bloke in the office told me I was "mal in die kop" to pay so much for a screen card. It was worth every cent :D

I think I still have it lying around somewhere :D
 
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HiToKiRi said:
Playing Unreal on the Voodoo 2 was also something quite special.
Click to expand...

Oh don't even get me started.

Saw the game on a friends PC running a Diamond Monster 3D II (8MB)....got it home, installed it, and.... ugly graphics, slow, and sucky.
Needless to say a month or so later I also got me a Diamond Monster 3D II :)

Never had a Voodoo3 though, by that time 3dfx was dead and it was the Riva TNT 2 Ultra's turn.


Unreal looked better on my Voodoo 2, than it does now with a 4870X2



Edit:
Talking about Unreal and 3dfx....anyone remember the "Blaster PC" they always had on show at incredible connection?
It was like the only black PC where all other PC's were still beige, and had 2x12MB Voodo2's in SLI, Sound Blaster Live!, 5.1 Surround Sound...it was ALL just Creative Hardware - they always used Unreal to show it off.
I think it was like R20,000.......BACK THEN!
 
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I never had a 3dfx card.

I remember what it was like though - I wanted one SO BAD! Then one day my dad agreed to buy me a Riva TNT for R1600. I still dont why he did - he was very against gaming etc. Anyway, the story was that he was willing to pay for a Voodoo2 for R1600. They told us that the Voodoo2 had been reduced in price and that the Riva TNT, the new hotness, was now R1600. So Riva TNT it was.

I remember playing Quake 2, Half Life 1, Sin etc on that card.

I think at the time, people were starting to refer to graphics cards in general as 3dfx cards. Had they carried on, they would probably be a household name now. Just like we call any petroleum jelly Vaseline, we would probably be calling any 3d accelerator a 3dfx card.
 
Had one of the original Voodoo cards, and later a Voodoo3 something. The latter was cheap compared to Matrox and was bought because the 3dfx had very good 2D (at the time nVidia's 2D quality was poor).

Unfortunately the company made a number of poor decisions. Those eventually killed them.
 
GPUs are dying as a market, or three market segments; high, mid, and low, so to speak, are dying.
 
My first decent card I ever owned was the Canopus Pure3d II LX. I liked it so much I bought two of them and ran them in SLI.
We played Quake, Unreal Tournament, MS Combat Flight Sim, Urban Assault and Counterstrike until it came out of our ears.
What held us back was Telkom's 56K dial-up internet in Multi-player games.

Those two "rather expensive at the time" Canopus cards are laying in some box somewhere. I forgot about them until reading this thread.

Don't play games any more, probably grew out of it?
 
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