DF Retro: The Story of Nvidia GeForce 256 - The Original 'GPU' [Sponsored]

Content sponsored by Nvidia. In this DF Retro special, we revisit the original GPU - the Nvidia GeForce 256. First released in 1999 in an age of phenomenal progress in the graphics space, the GeForce 256 was promoted as the first 'Graphics Processing Unit' - or GPU. In addition to state-of-the-art performance, GeForce 256 also brought about new features such as hardware transform and lighting and full DirectX 7 support.
John Linneman shares his perspective on the hardware and also talks to Phil Scott - now Nvidia's Director of EMEA developer relations, but back in 1999, a developer working on the exciting new range of PC graphics accelerators.
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[@billyb7119]

Seeing some of those old 3D Mark demos set off a nostalgia bomb in my brain.

[@ModernVintageGamer]

top tier video as always John

[@totty2524]

We don't deserve DF Retro, it's too good

[@ionseven]

John's videos are vastly superior to the rest of DF.

[@Jennifer-cg5ih]

@@ionseven nah Matthew is a star

[@UlyssesM]

@@ionseven did you really have to say that

[@ssabykoops]

@@totty2524 I deserve it, and more

[@Rumteldat]

Going from software rendering to an actual GPU was mind blowing for me. Keep up the great work with these videos.

[@kyles8524]

same, when I was a kid I wanted to play motocross madness but couldnt even get it to install cause it didnt detect 3d hardware, finally got an SIS 6326 and was able to play it and I also played Star Wars Dark forces 2 and was blown away..............then I was mind blown when I upgraded to a voodoo2 lol cause I went from playing carmageddon 2 at 20 fps with the sis 6326 to about 80 fps with the voodoo 2 lol.I still own these cards too

[@rodneyabrett]

I remember playing Unreal 1 in software mode for the longest time until the day arrived where I could finally afford an accelerator. It was a Voodoo card and going from software to GPU rendering was like stepping into an entirely different world.

[@conyo985]

As a kid it was amazing! Back then my sister's boyfriend installed a 3DFX card on our PC and the graphics got so good. My first experience was on NFSIII. I ended up playing that game so much I memorized all the tracks shortcuts and speed lines.

[@kyles8524]

@@conyo985 Im glad I kept all my old 3dfx cards lol. I have a box full of them

[@lukaszkaszak]

@@kyles8524 haha, its little bit frighting because I got exactly the same expierence. I started with onboard SIS 6326 that I later upgraded to Voodoo 2. My mindblowing games were: NFS 2, DF2 and the og UT. Transition from 2d to software 3d and to glide 3d is something revolutionary. In my opinion even virtual goggles won't be so influential for gaming like graphic accelerators.

[@madpistol]

The days of GPUs when you were sometimes just happy that it ran, not necessarily how fast it ran. It was definitely an exciting time. Great video, John!

[@Games-tt9hu]

I dont know by 99 you were expecting it to run and hopefully run fast. The shit not being compatible era was more like 2 years earlier.

[@03chrisv]

@@Games-tt9hu Maybe for Quake and Unreal Tournament players, but most PC players by 1999 were happy to just run the game at decent settings and resolution. Graphics tech was moving so fast from the late 90s to mid 2000s that trying to run games at super fast framerates were not a top priority for most PC gamers. In those days PC gamers dabbling on the high end were trying to run games at max graphical settings at 30 fps which was usually preferable to running the same game at lower settings at 60 fps. PC gamers back then were more interested in experiencing cutting edge graphics than higher performance, only fast paced shooters were the exception where higher framerates were more desirable.

[@danielgomez7236]

Back then I was just happy that games like Unreal Tournament, Half-Life, The Sims, Starcraft, Need for Speed III, Quake II, and such could run on my crappy PC.

[@rizzo-films]

@@03chrisv yeah I can confirm, at least in my experience. Most of the PC gamers and nerds I knew in high school back then (right before consumer GPU'S) were playing simulators, RTS games, top-down 2D shooters or dungeon crawlers and were OK with the 15 fps or whatever their shit ran at back then. When I got my first computer that could run games with texture filtering at 60fps my mind was absolutely blown! And it had a 3dfx Voodoo card, which wasn't even classified as a GPU. Seeing normal mapping, bump mapping, real-time shadows and high poly counts on a GeForce card later was equally mind-blowing! These days, you're not considered a serious PC gamer unless you drop $3k or more on your rig, which is fairly common. That's not even counting the price of your 240hz OLED monitor. The debate quickly becomes classist and about status symbols.

[@fungo6631]

That was true in the mid 90s. And even then people were making fun of the S3 Virge as a graphics decelerator.

[@geminijinxies7258]

I remember EVERY game, demo and benchmark in this video from back when owning a GeForce 256. ..But most people thought I was wildly crazy when paying that much money for "just a graphics card". They probably would've fainted though, if they knew the GPU prices of today.

[@ruxandy]

Not to mention that the GeForce 256 still sells for quite a bit of money :-D

[@bionicgeekgrrl]

$299 in 1999 is the equivalent today of $518 when calculated for inflation. Given the 256 was at launch the top tier card, yeah I would have been laughed at by my father for asking for the equivalent of the top tier today (which I consider to be the 3080ti, as the 3090/3090ti are overkill for the price). I did manage to get a voodoo1 card back in the 90s though , which was impressive enough. I think I jumped to the getorce 2 or 3 after that skipped the 256 entirely.

[@OptimumSlinky]

GeForce 2 Ultra. Had an INSANE 64 MB of VRAM. Crushed everything I threw at with a 1 GHz Pentium III and an unheard of 512 MB of RAM. My first high-end gaming PC. Good memories.

[@alangeorge5592]

There's something about old games and old gpus that brings a smile on my face.

[@ebridgewater]

@@alangeorge5592 Nostalgia.

[@alangeorge5592]

@@ebridgewater Also the fact that nowadays the games have amazing graphics but they still don't appeal to me as much as the old low poly graphics.

[@RiasatSalminSami]

@@alangeorge5592 Cause most of these games feels like copy paste of templates, cashgrabs, filled with microtransactions and dlcs and requiring patches [since the game is broken on launch date] and shit like that. Not to mention, the artstyle of many of these current games look cartoonish compared to older games where textures had grit and looked realistic.

[@alangeorge5592]

@@RiasatSalminSami yeah, I could play a game from 90s or early 2000s for hours, but get so bored playing today's games even after 1 hour.

[@smrutimanmohanty7780]

Man we've come so far in graphics quality. Its unbelievable.

[@Aggrofool]

And price too LMAO

[@Diablokiller999]

@@Aggrofool Well, the GeForce 2 GTS launched for around $350-400, that's roughly $600-650 for inflation. The MSRP of an RTX 3080 was around $750? So not much more expensive I guess...

[@wanhl2440]

@@Diablokiller999 but the street price is much more inflated now :(

[@Diablokiller999]

@@wanhl2440 Sure, but that's another topic why it's like that and not compareable to 20 years ago. But NV and AMD listened, they will surely increase MSRP for the next generation, if Intel is not up to the fight.

[@xXJeReMiAhXx99]

@@Diablokiller999 yeah it was reasonable until the recent explosion in price, if ethereum becomes unminable tho we're in for some very cheap gpus later this year, thats for sure

[@grumpyrocker]

I remember spending a small fortune on my first new pc. And it had a AGP Geforce DDR. It seemed amazing at the time.

[@sherlockholmes7630]

Hug me mate. Nothing can beat a 16MB AGP card. I remember playing a game Hell in Vietnam and it was like a multichrome scatter fest. Good old days.

[@medovk]

well you can spend a fortune on a pc today too. just got a email from a local store that a 3090 is available for 3500e ridiculous.

[@5izzy557]

Correction my good sir, It was amazing at the time.

[@Torbjorn.Lindgren]

Not only seemed, it WAS amazing at the time!

[@guily6669]

First pc I had was my father's Pentium 1 way before Nvidia stuff...

[@zhaf]

I had a Riva TNT and later upgraded to a GeForce 2 with 64mb vram. I remember everyone of my friends thought I were out of my mind and would never find a use case for so much vram.

[@alext3811]

I remember hearing that someone was able to use a the VRAM on a Quadro to run Doom 2016 or something like that.

[@IgoByaGo]

It made a big difference. I had a Geforce GTS 32MB and my friend had the 64MB with the same CPU setup and he would get 5 to 10 FPS higher than me at 1024x768 in most games.

[@zhaf]

@@IgoByaGo I didn’t know anything about computer hardware back then. It essentially boiled down to 64>32 and it was within my budget. But I guess it made a difference :)

[@Cinetyk]

I was 15 in '99 and somehow convinced my parents to buy this for me. It came with a CD with the first "Unreal" game (not Tournament). Man, first reaction from me was: "wow, this needs a fan???", second reaction was with the Unreal game. OMG, the 3D detail! :)

[@incubator2k3]

Told my parents it was needed to run word xD

[@Cinetyk]

@@incubator2k3 Ahah, well done

[@Norweeg]

Did you ever play that demo game Dagoth Moor Zoological Gardens? I was blown away by that card when I bought it in 1999 and saw T&L being utilized by the hardware.

[@rizzo-films]

​@@NorweegI did! It looked incredible. It reminded me of Morowind but with more color. Some tech demos were designed to resemble some popular or upcoming games. With the name "Dagoth Moor" I'm sure they were thinking of Morrowind. It's main villain was Dagoth Ur. Morrowind was also known for its use of shaders like the water FX, but this tech demo was a little more trippy and colorful.

[@pc-sound-legacy]

The late 90s... It was such a great time for PC tech/gaming. Thank you so much for this trip! I remember very well progress in PC tech and 3D gaming was awesome back then.

[@Kynareth6]

Yeah, these days things are moving so slowly.

[@chemergency]

The original GeForce was nuts. The graphics it could run was like pre-rendered CGI cutscenes from games just a few years ago running in real time.

[@HouseNorwayBear]

This reminds me of going from software rendered Quake II to running a Riva TNT2, crazy difference. I got it from a store that bought and sold used VHS tapes, they had like four boxes on their hardware shelf.

[@elimalinsky7069]

Quake II was the first game I've tried after buying the 3dfx Voodoo 2 in the summer of 1998. I was totally blown away by it. Both the graphical fidelity and the framerate were out of this world. I soon got my hands on Unreal and it was just as advertised... unreal!

[@redfoxbennaton]

Imagine buying a graphics card to play a orange and brown game with low res everything but faster.

[@nexxusty]

LOL, how much did you pay? I had a 32mb Riva TNT2. Probably my most favorite card.

[@HouseNorwayBear]

@@nexxusty Same, it's too long ago to remember what I paid.

[@nexxusty]

@@HouseNorwayBear Aww, yeah I guess I can say the same. I THINK I paid $175. Not positive. So many memories with that card though.

[@offspringfan89]

Yet another great documentary by Mr. Linneman. Like someone else said, DF Retro deserves its own channel.

[@marioluigi1523]

Here here

[@trajektoor]

i remember running 3dmark2001se thinking this would be the peak. if there would be games looking like that we wouldnt have to go any further. quite funny to think about it

[@MadsterV]

We've come so far that often we need a side-by-side to understand the latest improvement, they're subtler now. Diminishing returns!

[@Olibelus]

These retro episodes are really fascinating, damn! Super interesting stuff. Thank you!

[@andrewmonk9367]

1999 ; such a great year for so many reasons - GeForce, Dreamcast, RR4, my first pentium3 pc etc. This video brought back so many great memories - 3Dmark!! Thanks John and the DF team.

[@JJW410]

I didn't touch PC gaming until I was in my late teens in 2014, but these retro videos are so well-made and fascinating there always an instant-click for me! Thanks for all your great work John :D

[@pkaulf]

It's incredible to think that we're approaching a quarter century of GPUs in PCs and consoles.

[@DouglasWhitcomb]

Love the transparency. This is why Digital Foundry is one step ahead of everyone.

[@Gloamy17]

Oh shit! So much nostalgia! I remember buying a 256 2-3 years after release for my first "proper" gaming PC. I was stunned by the benchmarks at the time 😂 played Incoming, Unreal Tournament, Midtown Madness, Max Payne, Serious Sam, Rogue Squadron etc. for thousands and thousands of hours. those were the days... Great vid 😌

[@mipe3844]

My first GPU was the Riva 128 back in 1997. Going from software rendering to GPU rendering in Quake II was absolutely mindblowing.

[@CasepbX]

Thank you for doing these! So much nostalgia I can't get enough.

[@mechanicalmonk2020]

Holy lord that 3D Mark video is such a nostalgia kick

[@SAIIIURAI]

So much beautiful nostalgia! I was so proud with my Geforce256 DDR and god only knows how often i run and saw this 3dmark benchmarks over and over again after tweaking and new drivers! I also can recall that 3dmark 2000 had a bad ass soundtrack! Well i will search for it now! ^^ Thx John! Really awesome times!

[@rodneyabrett]

Expendable was so impressive at the time. I hadn't played anything like it. The amount of effects going on simultaneously. Really felt like you were playing an action movie flick.

[@epobirs]

This brings back a lot of memories. I was in the room when Huang publicly announced the GeForce 256 to the world. This was at the Intel Developers Forum, at the Palm Springs Convention Center. Unlike the massive stage shows the company puts on today, this was in a fairly small room, with at most 40 of us IDF attendees present. I still have the nice long sleeve Geforce 256 jersey they gave out. (Along with the Nvidia jacket I received years later at the GeForce 4 press event in San Francisco.) Plus, they served cake and it wasn't a lie. Back then, Nvidia was this little up and coming company. The presentation was quite a surprise, with the feeling that this was the start of something big.

[@RealJeffTidwell]

Excellent breakdown as always, John! This was around the time that I came of age as a PC gamer. My first full build was the classic 300MHz Celeron OCed to 450MHz, Voodoo3 if I recall correctly. My dad and I had bumped up our Pentium 100MHz with a Voodoo Rush in 1998, but I didn’t get a taste of 60fps in Quake 2 until the Celeron. When the GeForce came out, it was a leap over everything else on the market at the time. ATI/AMD and 3Dfx did catch up, but by that time nVidia had already established relative dominance. The last time I cared about GPU wars was the Voodoo5 5500 versus the GeForce2. GeForce3 brought in pixel shaders for the first time, showcased by DOOM 3 (which barely ran on the card) and the rest is history. Ah, memories.

[@Genkaku]

I had a 466mhz celeron and thought it was the shit, until I bought a GeForce 2 and unlocked its full potential lol

[@RealJeffTidwell]

@@Genkaku What was the stock card, or onboard video? GF2 was very popular, I remember. I was a 3Dfx fanboy (Rush, 3, 5, and I actually had a Voodoo2 for Glide support in old games later on) but I don't need to dig up ancient benchmarks to remind you that the GeForce2 > Voodoo5 in terms of performance. I wanted the somewhat more vibrant and smooth 32-bit color support (not to mention a fantastic early version of Anti-Aliasing) offered by the Voodoo5, but IIRC GF2 had a consistent 10-20% framerate advantage. The first Radeon card dropped around then too.

[@THU31]

Awesome episode. I would love to see an entire series of these videos, showcasing subsequent GeForce and Radeon cards (possibly CPUs as well), what technological advancements they brought and what games benefited the most from those advancements. 2003 was when I really got into PCs. I experimented with so much different hardware, mostly low-end or mid-range, as I was constantly swapping things around. I would love to awaken those memories.

[@oddf3llow]

In terms of nostalgia, this video delivers! Thank you so much for this 😎

[@noahthebrickster]

Great video! I am a developer but don't work with graphics and the level of technical detail in this episode is perfect to "get it" and understand the paradigm changes in graphics. Would love more developer interviews at this level!

[@IsaacSperrow]

Great video. A lot of interesting stuff. Love the behind the scenes perspective of the whole thing. Thank you to Phil for all the insights.

[@GarryMah85]

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. My PC gaming experience started out with graphics like these, when I got the GeForce 2

[@dipshidian]

The first games that took full advantage of the GeForce256's DOT3 Bump Mapping (Normal Mapping) both came out in the year 2000; Evolva and Giants: Citizen Kabuto. The "Bump Map Patch" (July 2000) for Evolva, which came out a short while after the original retail release, lets you toggle between different modes for the bump maps using one of the function keys. It was used on both the environment and the player characters. Giants came out in December 2000 and used lots of DOT3 bump maps for the landscape and for the titular beast Kabuto, which looks really awesome in motion.

[@bombjack1984]

Huge nostalgia pang seeing that 3DMark footage. Great video too, the early years of 3D accelerator cards are fascinating.

[@99Vood99]

Remember those days vividly; went from a S3 Virge to Riva TNT & Voodoo 2 combo - which was nothing short of amazing. Had that combo for several years until I got a Radeon 8500. Followed that one up with a GeForce 2 GTS. Couldn't keep up with the exploding CPU and video card prices so switched to console gaming after that. :(

[@mrburns366]

My first GPU was a Voodoo 2 also :) going from Quake 2 software rendering to OpenGL was mind blowing

[@99Vood99]

@@mrburns366 yes it was incredible - the sharper, cleaner textures, amazing frame rates - completely transformed the playing experience. Some of the 3DFX enhanced games had additional graphical features also.

[@lhb82]

"so switched to console gaming after that" Not all Stories can end well ;) But jokes aside, the prices weren't that bad back then. Plus not that many games really needed the best graphics card, so I was a happy PC and Console gamer.

[@99Vood99]

@@lhb82 Should've mentioned I was a teenager and had to convince Mom to buy the stuff until I could started earning myself at 16 and got the Radeon. I'm also in Canada - not too many deals around these parts in those days. 😂

[@JohnDoe-ip3oq]

Makes no sense to go from dx8 8500 to a dx7 gf2. Maybe you had a 7500, but if you didn't, that was a terrible downgrade.

[@masterquake7]

I went straight from a Voodoo 2 to a Geforce 4 so all of the in between stuff I mostly missed, so this was very interesting.

[@mmarreri]

I'll mention the S3 Savage 2000. It was also released in 1999, had hardware T&L... that didn't work. Before 1999 there were so many choices: ATi Rage 128, Riva TNT, Matrox G200, VideoLogic Apocalypse (PowerVR), Voodoo 3, and Intel 740. CPUs were also into 3D gaming, Intel MMX is from 1997, AMD 3DNow is from 1998. I guess the GeForce caught everyone off-guard, except ATi (AMD) and 3Dfx which was bought by nVidia.

[@mauriciochacon]

Trident too lol

[@DarkShroom]

yeah except the difference was all the graphics cards sucked and where largely incompatible.... the times before i had a geforce 2 where largely painful ... before that only the voodoo card i had seemed to have any decent support, Power VR cards and the ati Rage where mistakes i made

[@mauriciochacon]

@@DarkShroom nvidia, ati and 3dfx had good drivers (usually) had ati rage 128 and played the hell of everything.

[@mauriciochacon]

@Ali Cuntë yes i know about ati drivers, they had 16bit colour issues and later on ogl issues. But on my case they were awesome Ati rage 128 Ati x200 x300 x600 X800 Amd 4830 270x 580

[@SHGames97]

Wow, another stunner John! Absolutely great video.

Outstanding documentary! It's great to learn all these things about the history of graphics, and to have interview with an actual industry expert who was there when it all was happening is so amazing! Looking forward to many more documentaries like this one!

[@JPgreekgaming]

The viper v330 with the riva 128 will always have a special place in my heart. Absolutetly incredible at the time, and what a time it was for gaming!

[@pc-sound-legacy]

The crisp look of the textures in comparison with the blurry 3DFX look was noticeable. I remember playing Need for Speed - Hot Pursuit on this card, great times🤗

[@Schraiber]

Probably couldn't do this because of the Nvidia sponsorship but it would have been interesting to talk about the N64 which, iirc, had proper hardware transform and lighting offloaded from the CPU.

[@loutronz4708]

Thank you for taking me back!!! I love DF!!!

[@jasonroche3690]

This was brilliant John, my family had a Pentium 75Mhz that I started gaming on. I upgraded it to a Pentium 133mhz and added a Voodoo 1 and later a Voodoo Banshee. Then in 2000, I got my very first Pc, an Athlon 650Mhz with a. Geforce 256. The Voodoo 1 blew my mind but getting that Athlon System with the Geforce, going from playing Quake 3 arena, Half Life and Tiberian Sun on the 133, to my Amd Athlon. That was something else. Finally good frame rates 😅😊. Excellent video, I remember all of these tech demos and games. Incoming was amazing 😊. Love it! Now I have a 5900X and 3090Fe, how far we have come.... where will we be in another 20 years!

[@lowdefal6306]

Incoming, which ironically came with my Creative Labs Voodoo Banshee.

[@EposVox]

Great video dude! Love this

[@bloomerb4162]

The Riva 128 is what made me get a voodoo card. I realized I needed glide.

[@Luckyn00bOC]

Ahhh that 3DMark2000 helicopter demo at 1:26 bring back so much good old memories

[@Fuchsfein]

I'm trying to hunt down an old GeForce 256 to get the recently discovered Shadow Man Nvidia build to run. This long lost version of the game features updated graphics compared to the regular 1999 release. It was to be bundled with the GeForce 256 but for whatever reason that never happened. The Shadow Man Nvidia build was found in the "Uncle Duffy" collection. He was a beta tester who worked for Acclaim. When he passed away his nephew sold off various Acclaim related treasures his uncle left behind and that's how this particular version of the game was rediscovered. It's a shame that currently noone I talked to has had any success in getting it to run on modern hardware.

[@PAKA62]

Back then I couldn't afford a Geforce 256 so I had to settle for a TNT2. Some of the Rage Software games of this era are available on Steam and GOG. Excellent video.

[@TheLastLineLive]

My first dedicated graphics card was an Nvidia Riva TNT2 from the Gateway computer I got back in 1999. I think it was the card they had before this one.

[@SpacedAug]

What a delightful surprise on a Saturday morning!

[@bleeb1347]

The GeForce 3 was actually slower than GeForce 2 Ultra in most games, and was more expensive. Reviewers couldn’t see how incredibly powerful pixel shaders would become, replacing fixed pipeline arrays within 4 years. At first though, not a single reviewer recommended the GeForce 3.

[@ionseven]

That's when ngreedia started their shenanigans.

[@timmanboy1]

The geforce 3 was in the original Xbox. They found a customer in Microsoft at least

[@pc-sound-legacy]

Yes - GeForce 1 as well as GeForce 3 definitely were ahead of their time. Supporting games came out later on and then Nvidia already released their successors.

[@Lucas-uu3of]

My sentiments exactly to how reviewers reacted to RTX and DLSS when they were launched, pixel shaders changed the game. So have these new technologies going forward.

[@bleeb1347]

@@Lucas-uu3of ray tracing has the capability to completely replace rasterization rendering. Once real time Ray tracing is fast enough to do more than just lighting and shadows, we won’t need faster and faster GPUs for gaming.

[@93836]

John, you’re killin’ it with these videos. I can always count on you, Rich, and Alex to create awesome content.

[@TranscendentPhoenix]

Subtle slap in the face to Tom eh

[@Magusslettewestberg]

@@TranscendentPhoenix Tom is great

[@93836]

The other staff are uninteresting.

[@TranscendentPhoenix]

@@Magusslettewestberg apparently the op doesn't think so. Lol

[@gamecat666]

I worked with Phil on Expendable At Rage Newcastle, my first job in the industry.. happy days! - RB :)

[@Cezar_Wolf84]

A golden age, when so much was done with so little.

[@LoneWolf2k4]

My dad's friend was big in the Quake community developing support for the Space Orb controller. His friend was big into building computers. I received a hand me down 256 DDR around 2000 or 2001. That card punched well above its weight through my college years. I was able to play all of the newest titles well into 2008. It was at that point that I took a hiatus from PC gaming due to money constraints. I have so many good memories gaming on that particular PC. I never appreciated what I had at the time. I would love to get my hands on my old PC build, for nothing more than to recover that card. I'm sure my mom cleared out the garage and that PC has perished. No... it couldn't play Crysis.

[@andrezunido]

I moved from a 3dfx vodoo 3000 to a GeForce 2 GTS and was blown away at the time by the jump in graphics fidelity.

[@greasebob]

This was a great, great video. As an N64 user I was blown away by 3dFX and got a Voodoo 2 for my first PC, a Gateway Pentium 2 350. The graphics were great but the gameplay didnt hold a candle to Nintendos greats. I stayed with dual Voodoo 2 setup until Geforce 3 came out and it checked all the boxes. Fun times, used to love trying out all the latest demos and benchmarks.

[@MenTal9R]

So many memories watching this. This was back when every six months there was a significantly faster GPU, it was crazy how quick the industry was moving. I'd go through at least 2 new cards a year, I had the Riva 128, Riva TNT, Riva TNT 2, Riva TNT 2 Ultra, GeForce 256 SDR, then the DDR model when it came out, then the GeForce 2, the GeForce 2 Ultra, and then of course the GeForce 3. Before the Nvidia cards I had my Voodoo 1, the Voodoo 2 12MB in SLI, then in between some of those Nvidia cards there were things like the Voodoo 3 Banshee, and the Voodoo 3. I still have all my Voodoo cards, and my Riva 128 and Riva TNT, and I wish I had kept more of them tbh. Anyway, I was lucky to be able to get them all, and lucky enough to know enough people that when I wanted to upgrade to the newest card I could move mine into my wife's rig, and sell hers right away. CPU's were almost as crazy, overall I have an entirely new PC every year lol... Good times, good times...

[@vincentvoillot6365]

First CG i have ever buy with the money of my first Job. Thanks Digital Foundry for making me feel old

[@retropolis1]

I entered the Geforce era with the Geforce 2 MX before it was split up into MX 200 and MX400 types. The original GF2 MX (and the almost identical GF2 MX400) was a little stronger than the GF 256 except for its lower memory bandwidth, so, boy, did I have a blast with that thing playing Unreal Tournament on a Pentium 3 @ 800 MHz. I also loved 3D mark 2000 and used it constantly for tweaks of my hardware. I still have the music in my ear when just seeing the demo graphics in this DF Video. Fond memories.

[@Scisca1a2a]

I loved playing Expendable on my Matrox G400 MAX - the actual first card with Environmental Bump Mapping and faster than the first GeForce. What a beast it was at the time!

[@negrusz]

I had a G400 back than also. In D3D this card not bad at all. And it had the #1 image quality. After matrox i used a GF2MX400 i think. I loved this PC period.

[@rare6499]

I remember these days vividly. Great times, I was 13. So many good memories. I had a TNT2 Ultra!

[@Genkaku]

Man, what a time it was for gaming. I had to save up a long time to get my very first GPU, the GeForce 2

[@crakghoul]

Great video. This was my first GPU for my first PC, based on a slot A 700mhz AMD Thunderbird from memory!

[@fawwazrusli415]

Even though i never own the graphics card, taking a look what it was achieved back then is very impressive for 1999

[@detonator620]

I can watch this type of video forever!!!

[@Desmo46]

Excellent watch, cheers John

[@xcipherx]

What a great trip down memory lane. Hope you have more planned

[@onlyeyeno]

Thanks for another fantastic video, especially appreciate the participation of a developer who was "in the trenches" when it all happened !! And the flashbacks were frequent and nostalgic ;)

[@NoverianSnowCone]

So glad to have a fellow Geordie in a DF video!!!!!

[@drasticmart]

Nostalgia was strong with this one!

[@jackdaft258]

DF Retro is like my favorite show on youtube. Great episode, and may there be plenty to come in the future.

[@oddf3llow]

I always used AMD K6-2 stuff, since Pentium 2 & 3 was so expensive. Consequently, I was stuck with Super Socket 7 motherboards, which usually had flaky AGP stability. So I stuck with PCI Voodoo 3s for a good while, meaning I missed the TNT/TNT2/GF-256 stuff. My first "proper" AGP card was a GeForce2 GTS, followed by the mighty GeForce3.

[@BigSnipp]

The Voodoo 3's were more powerful than the TNT cards, so you didn't miss much.

[@Rickenbacker451]

There were PCI variants of the TNT, OEM TNT 2, TNT M64 and Vanta although being rare.

[@IgoByaGo]

I don't remember my Super Socket 7 board having as many AGP issues as my Slot A boards with Biostar chipsets. I didn't have really good Athlon AGP support until the Nforce boards came out.

[@IgoByaGo]

Also, I ran on an AMD K6-2 400Mhz CPU with a Voodoo Banshee and then Riva TNT. I wanted a Voodoo 3 so bad at the time, but I couldn't afford it. I remember my dad offered me his Pentium 3 setup, but I said no because it was only PCI. I had no idea at the time that AGP voodoo and PCI didn't matter much.

[@oddf3llow]

@@IgoByaGo The problem on those boards was AGP texturing. Voodoo cards actually ran fine on them AGP because they didn't actually support it. I remember I had a couple of K6-2 400s on SIS and a VIA based motherboards. Neither had particularly good AGP texturing support. A friend brought over his TnT2 and it wasn't happy in either of them.

[@RARufus]

During the Quake 3, Unreal Tournament days I was running a Voodoo 3 card. I loved that card but the GeForce 256 was better when it came out, however most games then required more CPU to take advantage of it…at least more CPU than I had.

[@Velcrochicken1]

I remember upgrading from a voodoo banshee (sp) to a voodoo 3 and gaining nothing because my amd cpu sucked. Horrible day 😢

[@amansway-rulesforlife4113]

Love the tekken tag 2 music

[@sellingacoerwa8318]

It's awesome that they were able interview the Crypt Keeper

[@thomHD]

I'd argue Shenmue for the Sega Dreamcast was the most graphically impressive game you could play in the 1999-2000 even if you did own a $2000 PC.

[@Loundsify]

That's more a design stand point. A lot of PC studios didn't have the budgets to make a game like Shenmue

[@thomHD]

@@Loundsify Well yes, a lot of it was down to the work and artistry that went into the textures, more than instant GPU effects

[@WuShuu]

Funny how this Geforce 256 released in 1999 and i remember buying a Geforce 210 in 2010.

[@Alex-nk8bw]

This! Is one of the best tech videos I've ever watched on YT. Fantastic job! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

[@mtx1212]

Should've kept my original 256 and voodoo2...but great video, brings back a lot of good memories from 20 yrs ago

[@andyespinozam]

This vidoes get better and better, now they even feature the creator of the OASIS, just amazing.

[@RolfWrenWalsh]

The golden era of PC gaming was 1998 - 2002. I am still stuck in that era. Hell so much so, I've jokingly said that my IT skills (I am an IT Professional for a living) are better suited to 2002, as opposed to 2022.

[@vgamuseum]

Nice video, but you missed one very important fact. GeForce 256 was basis for first profi card of Nvidia - Quadro, which single handedly practicaly destroyed all competitors and only 3Dlabs survived few years. This also inspired ATI into entering profi markets few years later.

[@aL3891_]

Man... Final reality brings back memories.. It's funny how these old benchmarks still feel cutting edge somehow, even though they're so outdated :) that's probably just nostalgia talking though

[@harunv.2731]

My first PC was Pentium 3 with some 8MB graphics card I got beginning of 2000, I remember not being able to play GTA3, so later I managed to get my hands on the GeForce 256... Those were great times, these 3D demos and games were so impressive for me as a kid, much more than any RTX thing I have tried these days. Great video and reminder of those careless days :)

[@danielgomez7236]

Always great to take a look back at Unreal Tournament and late 90's games.

[@mobius006]

Awesome video as always. Thanks

[@GamerSg84]

Ah the 2000s, when 2 years saw more progress in GPU performance than the last decade has in the present.

[@DDT-lr3zz]

That why the leap from Playstation 2 to Playstation 3 was huge. You could see how little hardware evolved in the last 10 years

[@SIPEROTH]

That is not quite right. Remember how Stadia advertise their service about having more power than even Pro consoles at the time with their close to 11 teraflops power from the Google servers etc? Right now an RTX 4090 is over 80 teraflops. The difference in power is sooo much more than many generations of cards in old days put together. So progress in GPU performance is good. What is hard is detecting it in the games. Games are so detailed now that the look good even in -frond of another game that has double the details.

[@GamerSg84]

@@SIPEROTH The tflops of Ampere/RDNA3 has been grossly inflated because of doubled ALUs per SM, which for whatever reason is never utilised beyond marginal usage. The 2070 Super had 9tflops but the 3060 has 12.7 tflops. Yet the 3060 is significantly slower than the 2070 Super. teraflops has become another marketing figure for both GPU manufacturers. If you look at framerates, the 1080ti still puts the 3060/3050 to shame even though it was released 4 years prior.

[@Charles8777-od4kj]

@@SIPEROTH Does that mean that the PS3 GPU is in par with Xbox 360 GPU? As the PS3 RSX has 230.4 GFLOPS while Xbox 360 Xenos has 240 GFLOPS. But yep the PS3 RSX didn't have unified shaders.

[@Charles-hy6gp]

Dennard scaling and Moore Law died like 16 years ago. However a 2 years old high end PC was considered very weak, i don't miss that.

[@mbsfaridi]

These kind of sponsored content are the best, where you get insight from main people. Hoprfully DF can score more sponsored content like this.

[@EvanBorden]

I just got my hands on a GeForce 256 DDR. They are very sought after with the SDR version (released earlier) right behind it. I had to buy it immediately. I also bought and had one back in the day. The graphics card is legendary. I can't explain to folks today how incredible it was to put the GeForce in only to witness the monumental upgrade in performance you received when you entered a game. RIP James McCaffrey (Max Payne Voice Actor) December 17, 2023.

[@flyingplantwhale545]

Such a fascinating episode.

[@MrChomiq]

Dang, serious flashbacks to early 2000's when we got our first Duron 700 + GeForce 2MX PC

[@AlexWaltz21]

Dude, such a great video, this was exactly what i was looking for.

[@alibided]

OMG the waves of nostalgia! Great content!

[@Espedals]

This was the first GPU I ever got. I paired it with an Intel PIII 500 MHz, 192 MB SDRAM and a 7200 RPM HDD that was so tiny its capacity was specified down to double digit decimals. Ran Incoming and Expendable like nobody's business.

[@glennm449]

I had Nvidia's Riva TNT 16mb in 1999. I remember watching 3DMark2000 and having my mind blown by the graphics and sound.

[@Animated__Freak]

Fantastic video! DF retro may not come out often. but when it does, it's always a banger of a video!

[@guspaz]

Software raster -> Voodoo 3 2000 PCI -> GeForce 2 MX -> GeForce 3 -> GeForce 4 Ti 4200 -> Radeon 9700 Pro... Back then the leaps between cards was so big. Every GPU upgrade brought not only a huge increase in performance, but also huge new features that changed the way graphics were rendered. After the 9700 Pro, things kind of slowed down, there wasn't really any big sudden improvement visible to the consumer from DX9 through DX12 like there had been from 6 to 7 to 8 to 9. At least until ray tracing. That's the first big new "holy moly" hardware feature I can remember since DX9 hit.