Creative 3D Blaster VLB: $395 DOS Graphics Card from 1995

[@technonoises]

The pop out calibration panel on the monitor impressed me more than it should have.

[@genekwagmyrsingh9433]

I dunno, I just bought a 144 IPS and having to reach around behind it to blindly control it sucks. I would love to have one of those... although I suppose it might affect the bezel size...

[@doodoobrn]

Yeah, my EV700 didn't have that!

[@juanbrits3002]

@@genekwagmyrsingh9433 Most monitors can be controlled via Display Data Channel (DDC) / Command Interface (CI) software

[@camotech1314]

​@@juanbrits3002 correct 💯 my HP monitors definitely have that utility.

[@b_risky]

burning CD's at slower speeds to reduce the chance of creating a coaster... man, talk about memories

[@Crixer234]

is still valid, but i had more chances to get coasters with DVD+R Dual layer, rather other kinds of discs.

[@Daz5Daz]

Yep. Before buffer under-run protection (BURN) coasters were so so common.

[@loganiushere]

Glad I use my discs on the same drive they were burned on.

[@TheAndyroid]

Still often best to burn them at the second slowest speed so they play more reliably on hifi CD players.

[@robsku1]

Oh, flash from the past! I remember burning at 8x and nervously and intently staring at the buffering-meter, hoping it would stay on green :)

[@Kundalini12]

Imagine spending $350 on this card and then seeing a review that ends with the words "It's crap".

[@sarahts21]

The thing is, back in the day you usually read the reviews in whichever magazine you "trusted" before purchase. So the reviews saying "It's crap" is one of the reasons so few people got one to wring the last bit of life from their 486's. Not everything back then was, always, a direct upgrade and pretty much everyone had already been burned once or twice when their new hotness turned out to be a steaming turd.

[@GrandTheftWatto]

Imagine a magazine actually telling you the truth about a bad piece of hardware, though! Especially from a big company with influence (at the time) like Creative. Now they would just buy off the journos with goodie bags and get an average score.

[@houstonhelicoptertours1006]

That would be my experience with the S3 ViRGE, world's first 3D decelerator. I bought the damn thing 3 days after launch.

[@yellowblanka6058]

@@GrandTheftWatto That's because the people who wrote for PC/Gaming magazines in those days were actually into PC hardware/gaming and had some journalistic ethics, weren't just fresh Creative Writing/English majors with a knack for using SEO keywords and crafting clickbait titles.

[@William-Morey-Baker]

these days 600 wont even get you an entry level card... with miners and scalpers and whatnot... even at msrp 600 is still only mid high range, or high mid range even. even at msrp 350 wont buy you anything other than entry level cards these days unless you buy last gen, and good luck finding those...

[@victorlgcarvalho]

"Himem is testing memory" Dude, that made me nostalgic...

[@luvincste]

i remember when i was a kid spending afternoons trying to make these games run at a decent fps, trying every trick known to humanity, and often failing

[@victorlgcarvalho]

@@luvincste I used a program called QUEMM386, that loaded the TSR programs into upper memory and freed the main memory for the games... LOL Good times!

[@CelticSaint]

Hymen?

[@AwankO]

Me too!😄 The whole video made feel nostalgic, especially setting up the display settings in dos xD.

[@override7486]

@@CelticSaint You know, that one with big-ass sword and puma (or something) for a horse. The Terminator of old school fantasy.

[@MrClawt]

The only way I played Nascar was to eliminate the field to be last man standing. It had such good crash physics for its time.

[@LGR]

I question anyone that _doesn't_ end up driving in reverse after the first lap to crash everyone.

[@z2ei]

@Lassi Kinnunen 81 I don't think I ever won a game in Indy 500 *without* taking out the entire field.

[@ZinhoMegaman]

Well, I'm just another Nascar crash player.

[@Jgallstar1]

I was the same way but I got sucked in eventually and now I'm full on into sim racing lol

[@onometre]

I did the same shit in dirt to Daytona lmao

[@davidt3563]

These were such fun times. New cards, new software, seeing your first 3D accelerated game after software rendering was amazing. All the random articles about OpenGL Vs Glide and the new Direct X.

[@MaximilienNoal]

I wish DOSBox would emulate it. It would help to preserve those exclusive games like Rebel Moon. Very interesting video !

[@kristophertadlock779]

I agree, there are so many neat little graphics APIs that are just about impossible to experience today. The DOSBox team is practically allergic to scope creep, but maybe PCem will support some of them one day.

[@rasmusolesen5307]

I am sure they would appreciate your contribution ;)

[@andrejrockshox]

thats true. seeing this i wanna play that game.

[@LGR]

@@kristophertadlock779 I've been messing around with PCem a bunch lately and started reading up on the proposed graphics standards that could end up emulated in the future. The 3D Blaster VLB is right near the top of their list, although the likelihood of it actually happening is currently "low."

[@realsentientpotato]

@@LGR PCem?

[@Roadstar1602]

It's weird to me that you say you don't like your old videos. I love them. I've been watching since the early days, and I still go back and watch the old videos sometimes. The intros give me the same sort of nostalgia that these 3D accelerator cards do.

[@Xenotypic]

content wise, his old videos are just fine. it's just a little more rough around the edges which is perfectly fine. people like youtube for a reason, it's the every man sharing his passions. it's more real.

[@DelphinusVyse]

It's a common thing for creator type people. You improve as you get more experienced, and that makes it even harder to not notice the flaws in your work when you look at it retrospectively.,

[@legendarylinc0762]

My adrenaline starts pumping every time I see the 486 woodgrain. It's probably one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

[@sorenstudios]

I think it's important to remember that when Creative was trying to hawk this card at $350, the original PlayStation had already come out months earlier at $300.

[@RingingResonance]

And a year later the N64 came out.

[@imwalkworse6298]

thats why i never got into PC gaming. Imagine buying a new game for the PC and then coming home to realise that it doesnt work because of the million things that went wrong in those days.

[@YTubechangeAccount]

@@imwalkworse6298 They usually dropped back into software mode, and there was no way to play the funnest videogames on the PS1 correctly. Yeah I bought Redalert & mechwarrior for PS1, but they never worked and there was no $50 card I could buy to make it work (I never paid more than $50 for a videocard in the 90s)

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

And the PlayStation had something similar to MMX / SSE while Creative could probably not even set up its own triangles.

[@SianaGearz]

Mhm but Playstation ran at quarter of the resolution of this card, no texture filtering, no Z-buffer, a lot of extra wonk with gaps in triangles, more wobbliness, this was the next gen stuff. Then again, Playstation games were actually playable.

[@RayRayIsCoolio]

I like how when he showed the price adjustment for inflation, $600 didn’t even seem that expensive

[@rickyricardo2006]

That is so sad😔

[@fortunax22]

I mean you can’t take it at face value and compare to other cards today....a $50 modern video is infinitely more powerful than this card.

[@TimoBirnschein]

Plus, when you look at the review rating of 20% "It's crap!!" - then it seems kinda expensive :P

[@Nordlicht05]

@@fortunax22 i think he means you bought back than a card for gaming for 600 and now people often pay more.

[@lwvmobile]

Wait until he covers pandemic pricing of video cards in 20 years, I'd hate to see the price adjustment for inflation on those.

[@WhiplashFanatic]

Shout-out to Fatal Racing/Whiplash at 32:02! Best racing game ever made! (I may be a little biased...)

[@krazysk]

I completely forgot about this game. Gremlin interactive had the best games at that time.

[@b_risky]

i too, loved this game

[@alancheatley4378]

Glad to have 3DFX, 3D video cards were like the difference in night and day playing games

[@Passenger-nj7in]

I played Fatal Racing over the network versus a friend, he used S3 Virge and I had the Monster 3D. Those were the easy wins, practically in every game we played, like nfs2 and so on 😆

[@CorporalDanLives]

I remember getting my first monster 3D. My jaw was on the floor. I knew that shit was serious when it made a clicking sound during the VGA passthrough!

[@Yootzkore]

Yeah, I remember that. Seeing P.O.D., and then GLQuake run on Glide on a Voodoo 1 around 1996/early 1997 felt like a slap in the face. Then came the Voodoo 2 and Unreal, barely a year and a half later, and they slapped even harder. The evolution of PC 3D graphics between 1994 and the early 2000s was just insanely fast.

[@vetzRetro]

Great video Clint! Glad I was able to help out :) You should've let me and Gona (on Vogons) know the issues you had getting Flight Unlimited and Battle Arena Toshinden running, maybe we could've provided some tips for troubleshooting. Really strange though as I haven't encountered any problems getting these two games to run on my VLB system. Performance from this card wasnt any good on a typical 486 (as seen in the video), you really needed a highend VLB system for it to shine as the card doesnt bottleneck on a faster system like other early 3D accelerators. Now lets hope someone comes forward with the memory module so that you can do a followup on the DirectX and Direct3D capabilities!

[@UncleMikeRetro]

Man, Clint! This baby is a super rare find and I should know, I wanted one back then 😎 Thanks for an awesome Friday treat.

[@nickwallette6201]

I remember the ads in magazines back then. I could not believe what I was seeing. Of course, the ad had about the same frame rate as the software. 😄

[@xmctmariaville511]

"Plug And Pray" is my new catchphrase for quick and dirty repairs now. Thanks LGR!!!

[@DoctorWhom]

I'm so used to Plug and Pray I'm still surprised when I plug stuff into a computer and it actually works

[@guycyber1584]

Glad to see this channel is still doing well after many years

[@Sassybng]

Right? I’ve been watching consistently since 2015 and he doesn’t feel like one of those channels that goes downhill :]

[@crunchysoup8515]

@@Sassybng yeah his content is consistent

[@davescomputercorner6015]

Because of ... let me guess... the pandemic, right?

[@squirlmy]

@@crunchysoup8515 the funny thing is, this era of early Windows PCs with all the adjustments and drivers and jumpers, was really frustrating! I, as someone a bit older than Clint, would like to forget it and deal either with older microcomputers which were very limited, but less fiddly, or just emulation. Somehow he maintains this nostalgia for DOS and early Windows-Gaming, which had the worst parts ever! It was the Dark Ages of PCs!

[@LexoAstonov]

I like how they tried to achieve what Quake 1 could do in software rendering on the Pentium. Dynamic lighting and such.

[@scruffythejanitor1969]

Aside from functionality, that card is just beautiful.

[@Panzer_the_Merganser]

Seconded, Scruffy.

[@MosoKaiser]

And it comes in a box!

[@nickwallette6201]

I thought so too. Whoever manufactured Creative’s PCBs made a nice finished product, and the layout is pleasant as well.

[@genekwagmyrsingh9433]

I'm surprised how brand new it looks.

[@jemert96]

@@genekwagmyrsingh9433 with the performance in mind, that's not entirely surprising lol

[@cromulence]

I would love to know what Creative were thinking when they released this. The PSX came out just before this, was self contained, and totally wiped the floor with this. Especially after the disastrous 3DO Blaster. Madness.

[@jcasetnl]

In '94/95, no one knew the PSX would go on to become one of the most important consoles ever. People were still thinking about the 3DO. Was Sony going to make a console that was as out-of-touch with the market as Panasonic? After all, Sony was the same company that gave us betamax and the minidisc. You don't really know if a console is a legit success in the market until about a year into its lifecycle. Plenty of PC cards had time to come to market and beg for software support they never really got before fading into obscurity.

[@MrDuncl]

The Playstation was aimed at an entirely different market, which previously had been associated with things like ET on the Atari 2600. Regarding graphics it was the N64 that really impressed me; so much that I bought one. There again the graphics on that jumped straight from Silicon Graphics workstation to console.

[@cromulence]

@@MrDuncl The N64 was impressive with its filtered textures, but the lack of RAM, maximum texture sizes, being forced to use cartridge media, and the terrible microcode that Nintendo made people use meant that the machine couldn't really match the PSX. But I agree that it was a good system.

[@cromulence]

@@jcasetnl they pretty much did. $299. That set the stage for the rise of the PSX. The 3DO was totally dead by this point. The PSX launched with killer titles. It had a massive launch in Japan which meant that it's launch in Europe and the US was going to be huge. Sure, it had to fight a battle with the Saturn at first, but I mean come on! A $349 add-on for your PC that didn't really speed things up, or an entire console that also doubled as a CD player in your living room for $299? It's a no brainer.

[@jcasetnl]

​@@cromulence The 3DO was discontinued in 1996 and games were produced for it up till its demise. You seem to shift around dates and events to serve your points.

[@MortimerZabi]

If memory serves, I remember reading about this in Computer Gaming World. The review basically said: "don't expect this to turn your 486 into a pentium." Perhaps in case someone tried to run Wing Commander 3 on it or something.

[@DochMurder]

Anyone else just constantly watching LGR and waiting for a new upload?

[@Kirix]

The box brings back memories of being in mom and pop computer store. I could only afford the Creative Labs 3dfx Banshee but going from Software rendering to 3dfx in Quake2 blew my mind

[@WaltTFB]

30:15 Whatever the quality of the graphics, tha's some crystal clear Barry Davies commentary,

[@drd7of14]

Not gonna lie, the performance you got in Magic Carpet isn't too far off from what I had when I was a kid 😅

[@rulzmaker]

This is the first 3D accelerator I dreamt about back in the day when I was just a kid. I've read about it in magazines and at the time it was out of this world. Much love LGR for bringing this back into my focus after almost 30 years. I ended up just hooking up my ATI Rage II to a Voodoo card later on in a different build.

[@venix20]

you can not call it Accelerator really ... 3d Decelerator ...sure :P

[@FlyboyHelosim]

I remember the simple and exciting days when owning a 3D accelerator card was the difference between having a textured sky or not.

[@genekwagmyrsingh9433]

5:25 Article mentions that cross development between PC and Playstation was going to start happening. Took like 15 years for that idea really to take off... the thought that I can play Metal Gear, Tekken, and various Square Enix games on my pc is still somewhat surprising to my younger self.

[@KanoWhite53]

Will never forget installing an 8MB Voodoo 2 card. The difference in graphic fidelity and frame rate was mind blowing. The card came with that racing game Wipeout 2097... It's probably the biggest jump in graphics I have ever seen since.

[@RandomlyDrumming]

Same here, only with original Voodoo. :) It was a night and day difference.

[@nicholas-k8j]

@@RandomlyDrumming yep in 1998 i saw it on quake 2 at an IT computer shop and the graphics looked amazing at the time compared to doom 2 not too long ago

[@silverismoney]

I had the 3DFX Voodoo card. I'll always remember the click click noise it when as you swapped from 2D to 3D and you got so much better graphics than without, it was really worth the money back in those days.

[@Kyntteri]

Mid 90's was magical time what came to 3D games and all that new hardware was really something to drool over. Fast forward to 2021. Flagships cost $3000 and they're out of stock anyway.

[@DavidMarvin]

I like how you are talking about such small resolutions that were good for the time, and I am watching this at 256x144.

[@lordterra1377]

I must say Rebel Moon looks amazing. It appears to have dynamic and or baked lightning way ahead of the time. It's pretty slick looking!

[@razvanmazilu6284]

Seeing the performance in most of these games, I think this piece of hardware could probably be classed as a graphics decelarator card 😄

[@brianmcgovern6119]

This was a point in graphics history when performance was "it depends". There was so many badly implemented VLB systems (and even PCI with the Pentium initially) coupled with the fact that these cards usually had only a handful of top titles that were fully compatible that you were really rolling the dice as to whether a $350 adapter would be any use to you at all. There is a reason they didn't last too long, and it took DirectX to unify the graphics environment under Windows to really get you to the point where the software renderer was the best bet. Any extra money you had for these toys were typically best used to save up for your next, higher performance, machine.

[@pazsion]

not even sure anyone actually tried gaming on a 486 other than 8 bit adveture games

[@pazsion]

really see that 33mhz bus hehe isa was less but separate?

[@xsc1000]

@@pazsion No, ISA wasnt separate and PCI also not. Both VLB and PCI run on 33MHz.

[@Deadguy2322forreal]

It was often called that in magazines and on newsgroups back in the day!

[@CooChewGames]

I remember this era well; even at the time, the Creative Labs 3d cards were known to be avoided as they just didn't do much... it was the Voodoo 2 and it blew me away and made me take the jump into 3d cards.

[@thesteelrodent1796]

Voodoo2 was two years later. Even the first Voodoo came out a good half year after this card.

[@squirlmy]

@@thesteelrodent1796 I'm not sure if you are thinking any of that contradicts the OP. He described an "era", surely that covers more than a couple of years!😳

[@dangerotterisrea]

My cousin had a packard bell pc, that weird corner one that had some kind of accelerator card in it back in the day...I was blown away at it, this was pre ps1!

[@joethompson11]

Ah man I had hi octane on my mistubishi apricot, it was my favourite game as a kid. So glad you showed the footage of it, haven't seen it in probably 20 years and that brought back a load of memories. Thanks!

[@MrDuncl]

Thumbs up for mentioning the Mitsubishi Apricot. I turned mine into a full multimedia PC complete with 4x CD ROM, two hard drives and 14K4 dial up modem for surfing the web. In terms of capability the biggest leap I ever made in Home Computers.

[@thomas5666]

I wonder if there has been a resurgence of interest in older pc games, from people that can only get really low end graphics cards. Around 2000 to 2004 I gamed solely on a ps1 and a hand me down IBM ThinkPad. Had the time of my life trying to find games from before my time to play and figuring out how to get them to run.

[@ryan0io]

I was in highschool when these early cards came out. We called them '3d de-celerators', as was mentioned, a lot of the times the game ran better in software only mode. It wasn't until the 3dfx voodoo1 that actually impressed me. I was blown away by it compared to every other card, and compared to software rendering. But, that was early pentium, and pci.

[@guerillagrueplays6301]

The soundtrack on that Rebel Moon game sounds *kickass,* and pretty ahead of its time. Very much shades of NIN and late 90s/early 2Ks industrial.

[@HaveYouTriedGuillotines]

More early 90s rave/techno, honestly. Just at a slower tempo. It even has a hoover, listen to Human Resource - Dominator and you'll see what I mean.

[@melskunk]

Well, downward spiral came out a year before this game, but I agree with the other guy that it sounds more like standard electronica

[@carlolalattacosterbosa5821]

I never thought someone would ever have patience to install and test such a card! Really nice quality video and narration here! Hope netflix willcontact you to sponsor something big, because you really deserve it man!

[@SyntheticFuture]

Oh man Magic Carpet... that was a vibe. Never understood what it was all about.. but it was hella fun to fly around and shoot stuff :P

[@zenkim6709]

It was a game that gave PC gamers a taste of what would become possible in a few short yrs -- simulated 3D graphics rendered in realtime that didn't look like just a bunch of squares & triangles strung together over a flat Earth. The performance on 486 PCs was pretty shitty, but Flying Carpet literally flies on a more powerful Pentium PC (in fact, any Pentium system faster than 120MHz might make the game unplayable). As for the game itself ... Flying Carpet was a fairly innovative spin on the combat flight simulator: you're the apprentice of a now-dead sorceror who accidentally shattered reality into a multitude of alternate worlds; your task is to visit each world, destroy any magical monsters or hostile wizards & gather up all the magical energy ("mana" -- which appears as golden spheres). As you gather mana, you can use it to perform certain actions -- travel super-fast, use new attacks, heal your injuries, build & upgrade a fortress, etc. The end goal is to rid all the alternate worlds of enemies & use the mana to knit the shards of reality back together again.

[@DolganoFF]

I was working in a computer store in 1995, and the VLB was THE thing back then. Didn't live to the hype, made overclocking impossible and was killed by PCI.

[@PixelPipes]

Such a legendary time in 3D history, and a crazy example of a really experimental early attempt at it. And this rarity really deserved this deep dive spotlight, so thanks Clint for showcasing it! P.s. I am not the same Nathan that loaned out this card, in case anyone thought that.

[@classic_jam]

liar you have every 3D card ever made somehow, and you're the only person named Nathan

[@yosuhara]

I immediately assumed it was you :D

[@boredbastardbullshit]

You might know a fair bit about pixel pipelines, but you still haven't learned the mysteries of texel tubes

[@Pendragon1989]

I just watched a 35 minute video from start to finish about a DOS graphics card from 1995, and I'm quite happy about it.,

[@jasonblalock4429]

You should cover Flight Unlimited someday, on it's own. It was such a unique and ahead-of-its-time sim, not to mention having the pedigree of Looking Glass and Seamus Blackley working on it.

[@mrbrad4637]

I had the retail version of flight unlimited too.. I was amazed at the graphics back when it came out

[@JimmiG84]

The Flight Unlimited series were what got me into flight simming. They were all ahead of their time (FU1 for the scenery and physics, FU2 for the scenery and ATC/AI traffic, and FU3 for, well, the scenery, as well as dynamic weather).

[@askjacob]

@@mrbrad4637 Same. You could even forgive the weird bumping the ground textures always did

[@mrbrad4637]

@@askjacob Yes, I remember it doing that now that you mention it.. It did look amazing from the skys - especially impressive that it was playable on a 486 DX2/66, Infact it ran very well on my DX4/100

[@coolie4u]

Dear Clint! I love the color tone in this video when you show the circuit boards. It's incredibly sharp and full of contrast between the green and gold plated metal. Very satisfying to watch indeed :-)

[@LGR]

Thank you!

[@ratinthecat]

You pulled out the printed manual with a binder clip and I got immediate feels.

[@thewatcher5271]

Thanks For The Memories, Man! I Have A Case Just Like That . . . Somewhere & My Diamond Monster Cards Still Work After All These Years. Thank You.

[@Gubalicious]

That table is the perfect colour and finish for a backdrop for old school graphics cards 😍

[@urhotmatua]

Thanks for making the video possible, Nathan

[@ms-dosman7722]

Might be worth trying to pair that 3d blaster with a regular ISA video card to get those other games working. Sometimes multiple VLB cards can cause strange issues. It's a bit of a long shot but you mentioned you'd pretty much tried everything already.

[@adamsfusion]

I second that. Local Bus signal integrity was never great, even back in the day, and one device with really high bandwidth requirements could cause all sorts of issues or be itself defeated by devices on the chain with slow transition speeds.

[@stefanl5183]

Also, If I recall correctly, VLB ran at the actual FSB speed of the CPU. That meant depending on which variant of 486, or in this case pentium overdrive, you were using the clock speed of the bus would be affected. In some causes the bus could run at higher clocks that some cards didn't like and that especially became even more of an issue when multiple cards were on the bus.

[@SimonQuigley]

I had this card, and no end of problems getting it working. Probably bought and tried like 8 different 2D cards alongside it, finally found some configuration that worked. It had a nasty habit of causing the machine to lock up hard depending on which 2D card it was paired with.

[@frmula1fan51]

Thank you for your content. Really makes you appreciate the PS1.

[@heclec4420]

I used to play Nascar Racing and drive backwards instead of race and cause absolute 1995 era 3D mayhem.

[@johnnieduke95]

I'm so happy I found you I have rewatched some of your episodes more than a handful of times since I recently discovered your channel idk how I never found it before!

[@danielberrett2179]

Bonus Friday LGR video and Philscomputerlab! wooooooo

[@brilliantgeorge]

At @14:10, try and move those speakers away from the monitor. Similar thing happened to a friend of mine years ago when he had bought a brand new CRT monitor and couldn't understand why the screen was so messed up. After battling with re-installing Windows drivers many times he gave up and arranged to return the monitor back to the shop, then he called me to go to his place and have a look. The first thing I noticed was the symmetry and volume of the picture deformation, it was large and it didn't look normal. I immediately removed the speakers away from his screen and hey presto the brand new monitor was working as expected! He couldn't believe it!

[@Edward135i]

All I can keep thinking about is how the N64 must have been mind blowing if this is what PC gaming looked like just one year before it came out. Also I remember playing Nascar Racing around this time, I was probably around 6, I remember I loved driving backwards and causing huge wrecks. Also 6 year old me knew how to use DOS but 31 year old me does not.

[@gabormiklay9209]

22:40 Any serious racing game (and also FPS shooters) are unplayable under 60 FPS. But 100 FPS is much better. It's because the steering/control input is the same rate as the FPS. 60+ FPS means a fine steering input. This is a way to measure directly.

[@HashMagician]

34:06 Epic LGR snarl Gonna use it for an incoming message

[@dremcfleuve]

In the Québec cultural space, a writer known as Victor Lévy Beaulieu is often referred to by the VLB acronym. Which makes the name of this card funny.

[@TheSleepyCraftsman]

At 8:15, the magazine literally says "It's crap". Now that's what I call a no B.S. review. 🤣😂

[@cheezst8ke]

Back in the mid 90s I upgraded the first computer I bought which was a Packard Bell Legend 75MHz Pentium with 2MB onboard video to a Creative Labs Graphics Blaster RIVA TNT 16MB PCI graphics card. Then a couple years later I bought a faster Packard Bell Platinum tower style computer with a 200MHz Pentium MMX with 2MB onboard video and upgraded that to a Creative Labs 3-D Blaster Savage 4 Pro 32MB PCI graphics card. That second Packard Bell PC also got some other Creative Labs upgrades installed later on which included the Creative PC-DVD Encore Dxr2 DVD Drive Kit, Sound Blaster Live sound card, Modem Blaster 56K V.92 Modem, and a CD-RW Blaster CDRW drive. I had the Playstation console version of that Battle Arena Toshinden game that you were talking about. It was a great fighting game back then.

[@mCreecher91]

That pop out control panel on your monitor is sweet as hell

[@fatglist]

The time when there was a soul in every device. Whenever there is a device, then some kind of innovation or engineering solution. A video about old pieces of iron is ready to watch endlessly !!

[@stanlee5465]

DAMN, Does that intro voiceover from Nascar racing bring back some memories! "I'm Ned Jarrett from Papyrus, THIS is Nascar racing!" And then I'd enjoy playing the game at like FIVE frames per second trying to drive a Nascar with ONLY a computer keyboard!

[@MeltWithU]

It was so much fun going to computer shows back then. There were 1 million choices from 1 million different parts, for people who wanted to buy bits and pieces to build their own machine. So much fun!

[@Mr.Morden]

Back when having a "local bus" was a thing.

[@StrangelyIronic]

It's sad how many times I've seen videos that show a collection of old components with comments similar to, "why not throw all that old stuff away?" I get that younger people won't have a connection to them directly to form an appreciation. That said, I'm 28, yet I have a small collection of Model T's and others from the teens all the way up to the 2010s. Maybe I'm just weird and like old and new things.

[@McAster99]

LASER PROBE DOWN is what I want to call a synth techno band.

[@cobaltblue1975]

@11:05 Was just thinking, that narrow gap between the cards means the 2mb memory expansion daughterboard would have to be pretty low profile. Maybe heat issues with cards installed next to them are why they're rare?

[@davidromeroblaya7920]

When two of the five games are from Bullfrog: "An exquisite taste, indeed".

[@VoidloniXaarii]

Thank you very much yet again for a magical trip to the past

[@advancingaustralia2913]

I had a voodoo 3DFX card that was pretty good. Ran Mechwarrior 2 like a dream.

[@robcohen7678]

I remember thinking Vesa Local Bus was the coolest thing ever when it came out, and I loved how long the cards were, they just exuded POWER

[@JamesPotts]

I know you don't do the "game reviews" in general any more, but I'd love to see you play Magic Carpet, especially in random-dot stereogram mode

[@drunkbillygoat]

I'm waiting for that sims knock off game that actually looks better than the sims

[@brucewrigleysgumchewz4667]

@@drunkbillygoat What game was that?

[@jesusisunstoppable4438]

Amazing blowing my mind - I had the 3D Blaster with Daughter add on for more Mem. fun days.

[@ksjoet]

Do you remember any benefits in games/Windows from installing the memory addon board?

[@jesusisunstoppable4438]

@@ksjoet No I don't remember any benefits.

[@WolfmantomLP]

" Volume in drive C is WOOD" Dammit theres a tree growing in my hard drive again.

[@RayMak]

This was divine graphics those days!!!

[@Bagnon609]

I wonder if the additional 2 Mb would help. I hope you can get your hands on that add-in memory board.

[@garysharkey17]

That would be awesome but there isn’t even pics of it. It would be awesome could make a clone of it. It would be great to be able to possibly get 30 fps on Quake.

[@kfhewui152]

I love the early days of 3D. There is just something charming about the blocky design.

[@danyoutube7491]

I prefer the earlier days of bare polygons. As impressive as the leaps and bounds of the mid to late 90s were in terms of 3D, I generally thought them a bit ugly, though that could be down to a lot of the aesthetic choices made by developers. I thought the menus of this era of PC games were quite ugly as well.

[@gudenau]

I bet you someone could make a memory board for that card. Depending on how it works you might even be able to do more than 2M.

[@garysharkey17]

I was thinking the same they did it for the yamaha chip for the AWE 32 PnP card. Problem is no one even knows what the 2MB daughter cards looks like. If someone could just post a front back pick of it I’m sure someone could clone it.

[@gudenau]

@@garysharkey17 It's a memory interface, with half the memory on the board. Shouldn't be hard to figure out by tracing a few signals, probing a few and finding datasheets.

[@ironhead2008]

I vaguely remember someone on the Vogons board working on a board design. I'll post the link if I can find it.

[@squirlmy]

@@ironhead2008 Ooops. Looks like you never found it!

[@lukasjozef1774]

I remember Nascar Racing, Magic Carpet, Hi Octane back in 95, Fatal Racing, Screamer, etc and I was amazed with the 3D graphics, usually I was playing on soft mode because I didn't had a 3d accelerator until 97 or so with 3dfx chipset. Ahh the crazy 90s the best decade for gamers. Great job mate with the video.

[@alxmarch]

That video quality is crisp af

[@chrisducati26]

Back then i was having an intel 486 dx4 100 with cirus logic 5456 vlb, i was ready to buy this glint 3dblaster but it was available after a month. so I'm glad i took the Diamond edge 3d right that time and still have it on my collection of hardware. Your channel is the best i always stop what im doing to watch every new video you upload

[@MaxSteele9]

My 7 year old will never realize how spoiled her generation of gamers really is compared to us 90s kids

[@datamike00]

yea, but your kid's gonna say the same thing in 40 years

[@0MoTheG]

Show them. There are emulators.

[@gr8gassy]

Man, we're getting old. Holy crap.

[@victorradial1179]

im just 20 years old but I love review polygons of old games. not sure what is in. I have not the same feeling in moderns actual games where I don't need to think straightly.

[@brucewrigleysgumchewz4667]

TBH... I miss the early 2000's of computer gaming. That's when I did most of mine. Put disc in, install, run game setup, play game. On rare occasions it had compatibility issues or needed a patch or GFX driver update to work. My games rarely crashed....well except for GTA-VC. That game crashed hundreds of times on multiple video cards. It was just an unstable game. These days PC gaming is laughable. Even you buy the physical game from the store... It's...put disc in, Install game, maybe update drivers, (nope can't play yet)...Needs "internet connection" for single player game, Need to install Steam, create Steam account, now you have to download the game all over again (game needs a 20-50GB "update"), install update, now MAYBE you can play it. Yeah I get PS4 games have giant ass updates to them. I've installed several of them. But at least you don't HAVE TO HAVE the update before you can even play it. Sure, it'll miss some bug fixes and other stuff, but the game is still PLAYABLE and doesn't need a stupid internet connection to even work. Unlike Shiteam. And "offline" mode is a joke. Doesn't work all the time and it still needs to "check" ...try taking your computer to a place with no internet for a week and playing those games...hah...

[@Kaziklu]

I admittedly never read the ads very much... I just assumed they were 3D sound cards... I had no idea they were for video. I had a sound card and I associated Creative basically exclusively with sound or CD drives.

[@geerstyresoil3136]

I would try the VLB acclerator in the 1st slot, curious if you would get better performance. Sometimes the last slot on motherboards have reduced performance due to varying resource constraints, could be competing with resources of the other VLB card as well.

[@NullStaticVoid]

VLB, Vesa Local Buss. Remember it well along with Micro Channel, Advanced Graphic Port and NuBuss. I did have this card at one point and did get the memory upgrade.

[@kujakojoe]

I was at that Comdex show and picked up one of these... was working for a company called 3DTV which at the time was making stereoscopic shutter glasses for PC. Should see if I have one in the back of the closet to send to LGR.

[@ChairmanMeow1]

This is what made 90s computing fun imo. Everything was so modular, and I dunno about you guys, but I was opening my case all the time to mess with things, install other cards, etc. Things were so serviceable. I havent opened my current PC since I got it.

[@miikasuominen3845]

Framerate just seems to be so low, that I almost get motion sickness just looking at that for a few minutes ;) We have come far, indeed :)

[@thedopplereffect00]

It probably would have run pretty decent at a lower resolution

[@miikasuominen3845]

@@thedopplereffect00 Maybe, but they didn't give you that chance...

[@thedopplereffect00]

@@miikasuominen3845 yeah. I think that's why Quake for example allowed you to set from so many different (and weird) resolutions. They knew people wanted to choose themselves between quality and FPS.

[@miikasuominen3845]

@@thedopplereffect00 I think that's more from the developers themselves. iD added most of the 3D-acceleration themselves. And Carmack was VERY adamant, about how things looked and ran. I suppose they (Creative) paid the developers to put support in and (no surprisingly) they put minimal effort in to make as much money as possible ;)

[@parula321]

I had this back in the 90s. I was a poor high schooler when I purchased it working at Wendy’s after school. I had to sell prized possessions to get it. It was amazing for the time. I was obsessed with graphics back then. It kinda disappointed me a little because I had super high expectations. One thing that always bothered me about 3D games was when you would walk close to an object weather a wall, door, person, entity, whatever was the blocky pixilation that would occur. I thought this would get rid of that. Interestingly the problem still exist today.

[@youfube-]

I wish there was an option to get new parts with the classic and beautiful green and black PCB style. Mobo, graphics gard, RAM and other expansions. no RGB, just the hardware by itself. Just raw business and no GaMEr this and that nonsense that's flashier than the Vegas Strip.

[@unbearifiedbear1885]

I'd give up every _bit_ of SSD memory, every inch of draw distance, every "multithread solution" and every single "traced ray" to go back to this era of gaming It's never going to be that good again, folks.. the 90's were truly golden 😢

[@Codeaholic1]

Love the intro music.

[@elise1409]

Idk why but I just keep coming back to this video, I can't tell you how many times I've watched it probably over 50 i just really like listening to it on my drive to my university

[@BennyTygohome]

Waiting for the day when my daily computer's gpu is so old it ends up on LGR

[@ronkemperful]

I love your ‘throwing technical spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks’. That’s how my family for years checked to see if dinner is ready! Great video!