Remember 3DFX?

[t-scene]

I'd like to take this moment to plug my K6 system once more.

http://www.jax184.com/projects/K6/K6.html

It uses a pair of 12 meg Voodoo 2s in SLI, combined with a 3D capable Geforce 2 in place of the traditional 2D only card. That means I can use whichever card is better suited to the game in question.

Man that reminds me of the first computer I ever built. But mine was a Chaintech ATX modo with a AMD K6-2 450mhz Voodoo 3 3500. Awesome machine to play Unreal on! I wish I would have kept all my old pc stuff

[evildragon]

My first up to date computer waaaaaay back was the following specs:
Intel Celeron 333MHz
32MB RAM
Windows 98SE
SoundBlaster 16
3dfx Voodoo3 3000 16MB

I say up to date cause before then I usually built computers out of old used parts to even have a computer. Previous to that pc I had a:
Intel 486 DX2 66MHz
20MB RAM
Windows 95
SoundBlaster 16 (Same card as above)
Cirrus Logic graphics with 1MB VRAM, I used 1024x768@256 colors at 83hz interlaced back then.. That resolution had no progressive mode yet for the kind of CRT I had then..

[N.Saibot]

Was yours overclocked? or Overclocked now? The card might have been damaged.

I have a "The Card Cooler" as it was know back in the day. Its bascially 2 brackets that hold 2 80mm fans...when I bought mine I had 2 options for fans, the 4-pin molex had 2 5000rpm fans, or the 3-pin headers that I think was around 3000rpm. Noisy bastards!!! I've since swapped mine out and added some memory heatsinks to my Voodoo 2 Sli setup.

Here is a pic of my Voodoo 2 Sli system, you can see I'm only using 1 80mm fan for "the card cooler"

..image...

Heres the specs as I remember them (been awhile since I built it)
1GHz Coppermine P3 Socket 370
Soyo Mobo (forget model)
768MB PC133 SDRam
Monster Viper V770 32MB (TNT2, non-Ultra) AGP 4x (once I found the jumpers)
Monster Voodoo II 3DFX (SLI'ed)
10GB Seagate HDD
40GB WD HDD
Samsung 52x CD-RW w/8MB buffer (up from 2MB usual)
Pioneer 16x DVD ROM
Future Power 400W PSU
10/100 NIC card (I think D-link)

And now on the way a SoundBlaster 64AWE Gold (untested) yay!


EDIT: before you guys ask, its a modified heatsink, I think it was the stock higher end P3 Heatsink, I had to grind some of it down and tape the caps off so it wouldn't short out. Last time I ran the system (its been awhile) I got 19c idle!!! The HS was cold to the touch!

Aha, so you still needed a cooler fan for that setup. Now that looks more realistic : P

I assume my Voodoo 2 was damaged through overclocking or whatnot, but the Voodoo 1
didn't seem to have any overclock at all and still required same cooling solution as you
have. Of course I got the cards almost for free secondhand, so can't be too sure about
what happened to them before.
I got the cards to be able to play Unreal and NFS2-4 with proper graphics, but
unfortunately never got them to work until recently, when those games just don't look that
stunning any more.

3Dfx just rocks. Never before and never again will there be a videocard that can change
the graphics of a game so much. Nowadays the differences between Nvidia and AMD are
really insignificant, but back then lots of good games were optimized for running under
glide and everything else was just like bad emulation of some sort. The difference when
using proper glide hardware was amazing, such a shame that glide got canned!

[Silanda]

Just think about what could/would have happened if Sega went with 3Dfx for the GPU in the Dreamcast instead of NEC.

Yup, we would have had something worse than what we actually ended up with. Allegedly 3dfx was only offering something like Banshee level hardware (makes sense given the proximity of the Banshee's release to the Dreamcast's Japanese release date), but even if it had been somewhat improved it would likely have been inferior to the PowerVR solution. You have to remember the things that 3dfx hardware was weak on: no hardware texture compression, 16-bit 256x256 textures only, and no hardware hidden surface removal. These problems were not fixed until the Voodoo 5 and would have produced a console with significant limitations compared to the one we got (texturing was an area that the DC was pretty strong in).

[kool kitty89]

We went ATi back then... I think the first 3D accelerator we got at home was a Rage Pro PCI card some time in the mid 90s. ('97 or '98 I think)

It seems like ATi and 3DFX were the only real options for 3D early on with the ATi cards offering the best affordable range as well as some high performance stuff. In fact you had the first RAGE card in '95 before the VooDoo entered the consumer retail market in '96.
You had the S3 ViRGE based cards in '95 but those were rather weak at 3D from what I understand (not hugely better than software rendering but at least a route to highcolor 3D more on the Playstation level), and in '95 you had Nvidia's quad based NV-1 chipset too (primarily used in Diamond's EDGE 3D card) but that never really took off and Nvidia abandoned quads with the cancelled NV-2 chipset.

It seems like in the mid 90s the ATi cards had the best value while 3DFX had the top tier performance being offered, especially with the RAGE series offering capable integrated 2D acceleration and MPEG/MPEG-2 acceleration. (technically the PCI version of the RAGE pro wasn't intended for full DVD playback but my dad ended up scrounging up some beta drivers for the PCI version and that's how we had our first DVD video player on our PC ~1998 )

That was for the family PC though... (which eventually became my PC at the end of 1999 -at which point it was the Rage Pro with a ~500 MHz K6-2 running Win95 I think -the new family PC got 98SE iirc)
I believe my dad's home server/office PC was using one of the Voodoo cards in the late 90s.



I did notice we actually have one of those early S3 based cards (a DRAM based Diamond Stealth 3D card) but I'm not sure what computer that was ever used in.

[Rusty Venture]

My Win98 machine has a Voodoo3 in it right now. When I get shit organized, I'll snap a pic of it.

[runback22]

I will always love my Voodoo2.....Dark Forces 2, Half Life 1, Team Fortress Classic, Quake 2, Sin, Rainbow Six Rogue Spear....NFL Blitz.....

classic stuff right up there in fondness with the Genesis....

[TmEE]

My PC has no free slots to put a Voodoo into it...
Click for full size

[Speedle]

oh yes! I remeber my VooDoo2 12mb i think it was. When I got it, it was the best card you could buy loved it

[Guntz]

My PC has no free slots to put a Voodoo into it...
Click for full size

Holy crap, how does one have so many internal hard drives connected to one's computer??

[N.Saibot]

Holy crap, how does one have so many internal hard drives connected to one's computer??

I believe he has some harddrives connected via a separate E-IDE controller card. Really no
other way to connect that many HDDs, except heavily modifying your motherboard and
soldering new chips onto it.

[sheath]

You know, I honestly will never care about another generation of consoles. What I really want is a way to put 1994 and 1998 PC hardware into as small a case as possible. That way I can be sure I'm playing the real thing, and I'm sure I'd also find a way to record it in action.

[mick_aka]

My PC has no free slots to put a Voodoo into it...
Click for full size

You could at least have moved that cup of piss before taking the photo

[roguetrip]

Looks like my Soundblaster 64 AWE Gold is waiting at home for me. Anyone got a good link for working drivers before I start searching, might make my life easier since it untested and sometimes getting working drivers off the bat can be a pain.

On a side question, I was thinking about replacing the V770 TNT2 with something better, what would you guys recommend?! I tend to stick with Nvidia unless you could persuade me otherwise. Dunno how a Voodoo 5 (don't have one btw) would work with 2 voodoo 2's in SLI

You guys got me wanting to boot this thing up. I just picked up a complete Redneck Rampage pack with all add-ons and a Quake2 with all add-ons, this could be fun!

[TmEE]

Holy crap, how does one have so many internal hard drives connected to one's computer??

N.Saibot is right, there's a PCI PATA+SATA RAID card... I don't use the RAID function, but I use it for four extra HDDs ^^

You could at least have moved that cup of piss before taking the photo

Don't hurt the feelings of my orange juice...