They got the ball rolling too bad it rolled up one side of the hill of reality and then rolled right back over them in the process. I bought 1 single share about 6 months before the Nvidia buyout and the disappearance of the one company that deserves all the credit for making the 3D gaming we have today a reality. Hell, I think I even have my 3dfx stock certificate around here someplace. Great wiki page, lots of great info and history, with links to some kickass sites with hardware collections worth taking a peek at for old time's sake. The release on the unsuspecting gaming community of the original 4MB Voodoo card was a paradigm shift that still has repercussions felt even now in today's multipipeline room heater kerosene powered generator requiring video card behemoths that fill our PCs. Man that was and always will be something I'll never forget. From that moment when the logo appeared I was hooked like a hardcore crack addict that hasn't has his/her fix in 36 hours. Suffice to say that experience happened to me and I remember it in crystal clear true color with the sounds and smells to go with it. I was gunning to get to that level so I could see that myself. Now I personally remember seeing ads in magazines of that level in Quake where the floors were reflective, along with the "stained glass" textures on the walls. You read over the simple setup instructions, realized it was meant to be a passthrough product and then it all became clear.Īlmost as clear as that singular moment the first time you fired up GLQuake with that Voodoo card in operation - the 3Dfx logo basically zooms in onscreen and you know you're in for a treat. You came home, pulled the card outta the box (I remember that moment, and the smell of that card brand new), and the cables and wondered "Ok, how the hell does this work?" The salesman didn't have a machine to demo the card on, so you talked for a bit and took a chance. You spent $2500+ to build that box, and you were happy with it, but then you heard about this "3D accelerator" card and went to a store to get more info. The original Quake, loaded up on a Pentium 200 MHz box (Pentium Pro if you were rich) with a humongous 6.4GB hard drive and 64MB of system RAM. Think back to those days and those experiences: Anyone that says otherwise simply doesn't know jack shit about the history of what 3Dfx (the original spelling) did for the 3D gaming industry when they put out that original Voodoo card. Of course, the king of all Glide/OpenGL games is, was, and always shall be Quake, period. Being that Glide was a subset of OpenGL (and 3Dfx/3dfx never fully supported the full OpenGL library anyway, there was no reason) I consider most of the old games to fall under both categories since they're so interrelated. I almost wish I had some old hardware that I could set up for those old games. I'm holding a Voodoo5 5500 64MB AGP card in my hand (well, not really but it's on the shelf in front of my face over the monitor) and a pair of Diamond Monster II 12MB Voodoo 2 cards right behind me in an anti-static bag. Man, Those were the days! When you paid the 300-400 bucks to upgrade and the Image Quality differance slapped you in the face. But I loved my Banshee, it came with NFL Blitz! Awsome game, also played alot of NFS Hot Pursuit with that card. this was a awsome card, alot of people didn't like it, they prefered there SLI Voodoo 2s and the Quantum single card SLI solution. the Flyby demo was awsome, really showing what a Voodoo 1 card could do, all you got with the Voodoo 2 was faster framerates the IQ was the same, but you could also run at higher resolution which did make it look better.Īfter the Voodoo 1 I got a Quantum 3D Raven (Voodoo Banshee) basicly a Voodoo 2 and 2D card all in one. I had Quake 1 at the time, after getting the Voodoo 1 card there was no way i was going back to software Rendering ever again. I don't think theres been this much of a leap in Image Quality Sense. the differance between Software and hardware Acceleration was so differant. I was so amazed at the differance that card made. I remember when I got my Diamond Monster 3D (Not 2, the very first one).
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