DF Retro Hardware: The Origins of the 3D Graphics Card [Sponsored]

Content sponsored by Nvidia. In this episode of DF Retro, John Linneman returns to the mid-90s and the arrival of the 3D accelerator boards that would revolutionise gaming as we know it. These days, we buy a new GPU, we play and play and it works, but things were very, very different back in the day...
Subscribe for more Digital Foundry and DF Retro: bit.ly/DFSubscribe

[@SynthMusicWorld]

I was a software tester at Intel when 3D cards first started to hit the market, testing display drivers for Windows 95. Many of my colleagues got to test the first ATI 3D card; my project was the forgotten S3 Virge. I spent way too many hours playing the game Monster Truck Madness as a way to test the driver, and also the "Buddy Holly" video clip that was included with Windows 95 OSR 2. This was back with Direct X 1. A year or two later I came back (I was a contractor) to help test out display drivers for ATI. It was pretty cool to be there at the very beginning. I even was testing the very first release of USB and AGP. Good times. I know that there was a group in a secret lab testing out the first Unreal game. By 2000 I was an Intel employee, and I ended up in a group testing BIOS software for desktop systems. Some of my colleagues were helping Microsoft in testing the BIOS for the OG Xbox. Good times.

[@wing0zero]

Nice little side story to the video, thanks for sharing.

[@jameshollan1160]

I used to play Monster Truck Madness way back when on my parent's Acer! That game was cool.

[@matsuda150]

Scott Smith I remember the S3 Virge. I had an S3 card (1999 - 2000?) I think in my self-built gaming rig. I had an S3 Virge paired with an Intel Pentium 3 CPU, and then replaced it with an NVidia Geforce 2 or something like that.

[@forestR1]

i remember playing MS monster truck madness on s3 virge.

[@xBINARYGODx]

Excellent post - wish we had more of this sort of this for this channel. That said, the comments section being mostly meme's is better than the fanboy wars of years past, so I will take that and the occasional excellent post ANY day.

[@sadstormtrooper]

I like how its an Nvidia sponsored video yet there is hardly any promotion for new Nvidia cards just pure information

[@LonelySpaceDetective]

best kind of sponsor raid, nordvpn, etc, take notes

[@system-error]

I remember how fast things changed, from the Playstation wowing everyone in the mid-90s to then looking like crap by 1999 because the PC had gone miles ahead. Think of Doom in 1993 to Quake in 1996 and then Unreal in 1998. Five years, just nuts.

[@documentthedrama8279]

the real sorcery was quake 2 on the ps1

[@_chipchip]

@@documentthedrama8279 Some of the games towards the end of the PS1s life were pretty amazing considering how limited the hardware was.

[@arnox4554]

Should have said "streets ahead".

[@system-error]

Yeah that's the fascinating thing, towards the end of the 90s the PS1 was in last place graphically compared to PC and even N64, but it stimulated ingenious innovation - 1996-1999 on the PS1 is one of the most seminal runs in gaming history. The first Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Gran Turismo, Metal Gear Solid, Grand Theft Auto, Medal of Honor and Silent Hill all came in those years. And there were tons of awesome groundbreaking original games on top of that, those are just the ones that became big franchises. And Dual Shock! The twin analog sticks/vibrating controller was also an innovation of that period, and it's been the standard for over twenty years now and doesn't look like it's going to change any time soon.

[@PrimiusLovin]

Yeah, talk about it: from playing 2D NES games in the early 90s; to the improved jump in the visual quality of 2D SNES games in 1992, along with its proto 3D games; to full 3D games on PS1 by 1996, which they themselves weren't even up the visual quality and performance of 3D games you could then find on the Arcades; all the way to playing Unreal on PC by 1999; and then, to top it all, PS2 graphics quality by 2001!! A really massive change in visual quality, performance, and gaming experience in just the span of a decade for me!! I was blown away by what I was seeing and playing, with new game genres popping out from all directions due to the new graphical capabilities... and if there ever was just one thing that carried me into video games, then all those fast changes in computer graphics technology of that decade are the sole reason.

[@deathdoor]

"EVERYTHING IS OFF NOTHING IS WORKING" Quote of the video.

[@MrGreatDane2]

Was looking for this

[@Daniel-Gomez-M]

Welcome to old school PC gaming

[@franzusgutlus54]

He is describing 2020

[@Jayy997]

I read this as "Everything is gone Kharak is burning" Would be keen to see a DF retro on Homeworld.

[@matthewmangan5161]

to be fair the shading was working but nothing else

[@lustechsource5197]

One of the biggest "WOW!" moments I had was upgrading to a 3Dfx Voodoo. To prepare myself, I first ran a game in software mode and then switched to Glide. I was blown away at the difference! Higher-res, better graphics and super smooth frame-rate! Too bad 3Dfx stopped innovating, but I will forever remember them cuz of that moment.

[@matcarfer]

they never stopped, they implemented blur, aa, and some other stuff, but got behind on speed, resolution, bit depth, and compatibility. By the time V4 came, they were lagging so much that costed them everything. Thats the problem when someone is overconfident, they get surpassed by the competition.

[@rick-deckard]

Yes! The smoothness was a paradigm shift. It was as if suddenly you understood what was missing before.

[@teffhk]

They did kept on innovating, they just bad at doing business. The T-Buffer technology they were working on basically provide the foundational for many graphic features many years later, the ones we are using today

[@retractingblinds]

Yeah, it's unfortunate but they basically kept pumping steroids into that first voodoo design and hoping it wouldn't roll over and die. Once everyone else caught up, especially Nvidia, 3dFX just rolled over and died.

[@arteljus983]

Voodoo3 lacked 32-bit colors and dual texture units like voodoo2 had. That´s what killed 3DFx. Also they used alot of money on advertising instead of developing better hardware...

[@oxidmedia]

just the NFS3 music at the beginning was a nostalgia trip in itself

[@alucard0712]

@@lpurches yes its from NFS2SE, amazing OST!

[@qualityexplained]

this is defintely NFS3 menu music, not NFS2.

[@alucard0712]

@@qualityexplained it was first introduced in NFS2SE

[@LARANEASTCOST]

Let me clear this it was first used in nfs 2 se

[@saptadeepnath5664]

From.nfs2se and nfs3

[@andersdenkend]

Sponsored by 3Dfx

[@victorsegoviapalacios4710]

Sponsored by 3dfx, now Nvidia.

[@jonathanpeixe9658]

Nvidia bought 3Dfx in 2000. So technically is Nvidia.

[@NonsensicalSpudz]

@@jonathanpeixe9658 well actually, they bought up a lot of their technologies not 3dfx as whole

[@JohnOmniviz]

@@NonsensicalSpudz NVIDIA owns it in full but never did anything with it beside use some of their IP's.

[@williamf7196]

@@JohnOmniviz The major reason Nvidia becomes the major player in the field today is because Jen Hsun Huang had the extraordinary vision and money to acquire 3dfx's core assets. No one else could do that back then.

[@JulianCallan]

John's Richard-esque hand movements in the intro are a sight to behold.

[@Xx_m1k3_0X1onG_xX]

He's learning

[@realjuancho]

I really thought they were father and son... They sorta look alike.

[@VargVikernes1488]

It's spelled "Richardian art of handcraft" (pronounced "Wichardian")

[@clarenceboddicker6679]

Witchard 3 - Wild Hands

[@putzak]

@@clarenceboddicker6679 lmao

[@riaz8783]

Great of John to present this to us while wheeling himself backwards through a data centre. Going above and beyond to add to the production value.

[@kupokinzyt]

This made me laugh out loud lol.

[@DeanCalaway]

The importance of the original PlayStation had into propelling companies to produce cards for desktop home use cannot be underestimated.

[@tchitchouan]

How did ps1 manage to do 3D ?

[@plasmaastronaut]

yes, and before the PS1, the 3DO and Saturn was showing what was coming. DF has done a good history review here, but i'd like to see it fleshed out more: not just pre quake but also how the leader 3dfx was pushed out the market. Sadly this channel lacks organisation, so much content just all thrown into a mixed bag.

[@ksjarvinen]

You are right, the importance of the original playstation cannot be underestimated. It has, however, been overestimated.

[@Astfgl]

When I first saw ads in magazines for the 3dfx cards around 1996, I genuinely thought it was snake oil. Games at 640x480 with *that* much higher framerates and looking *that* smooth? Yeah right, that's not possible. Of course I was wrong, and boy did 3D accelerators change the face of PC gaming. Still it took me until 1999 to finally get my first Voodoo2 graphics card, simply because games started requiring them.

[@bombkangaroo]

"Play your favourite games, like Wipeout 2097, at double the resolution and frame-rate, only on PC with 3DFX!" I remember being incredulous at those magazine adverts back in the day. Surely technology doesn't move that fast? How could a general purpose machine like a PC be so much better than my dedicated games console? Ah, to be young and naive again...

[@2drealms196]

I love how in those early 3d-accelerator magazine ads (eg 3dblaster, Voodoo1) most of things in the ads were prerendered CGI models. (eg CGI of Turok protagonist, CGI of a sportscar, CGI of an apache copter). Seems consumers smartened up by the Voodoo2 and the ads started showing alot more screenshots of actual ingame models, not cgi models.

[@robertt9342]

I remember seeing the ads and then reading the reviews of these cards. I thought it was possible, I guess I was just more openminded, but I wasn't a big fan of how fragmented development might get.

[@bionicgeekgrrl]

It took a lot of persuasion to get my father to buy a 3dfx voodoo1 card (I think he bought the only model that had 6mb of vram too), but damn was it worth it, even he was impressed by the difference! I can't remember what card I got after it, but I didn't buy another 3dfx card, it may well have lasted until getting the first geforce card from Nvidia.

[@ThePipeFox]

Ah, Romulus 3 from NFS3.... Still one of my all time favorite music tracks all these years later.

[@GrahfShiro]

I immediately jumped in the comments as soon as I heard those opening notes. Kudos! Good ol' times.

[@matthiasb7481]

those were the times

[@ThePipeFox]

Matthias B I still remember running NFS3 on a Pentium Pro 200 MHz with a Chips & Technologies integrated video card... couldn’t get it anywhere near playable :) Needless to say my mind was blown when I played it a while later on a Riva TNT

[@Flapdr01]

@@GrahfShiro same

[@_chipchip]

Same guy did some of the music for NFS2 and High stakes etc. Rom Di Prisco is his name :)

[@Ownko]

For a Nvidia-sponsored video, it's 3DFX that stole the spotlight, but we all know Nvidia bought them in the end. Maybe it's time to bring the Voodoo brand back: Nvidia Voodoo 3000 series. (3DFX Voodoo 3 3000 was my first GFX card) =P And yes,John, please talk for hours about this. I loved seeing all these games running on different cards.

[@Safetytrousers]

''Before we enter the future, join us to celebrate the biggest breakthroughs in PC gaming since 1999'' I think they want the contrast and wriggled a little further back.

[@Fry09294]

“Voodoo” would now be considered racist.

[@SeanHarlow]

The tail lights on NFS on the Matrox card just brought back so many memories of playing games on my parents' computer, then being absolutely shocked when I got a PC of my own with a massive 8MB Rage card and it supported things like transparency properly. Headlights in Monster Truck Madness 2 were no longer opaque cones.

[@RogerJL]

Matrox Millenium was the peak of 2D graphics cards - everything accelerated, supported high resolutions, sharp CRT video...

[@GoTeamScotch]

Monster Truck Mandess 2 was my first online gaming experience as a kid. Dialing in to the MSN Gaming Zone on the family computer that my dad outfitted with a 3dfx voodoo2 card. Good times.

[@dmitrisafonov6976]

@@RogerJL It only accelerated windows really, as windows had I think GDI driver standard, and most video cards at that time accelerated windows GUI. Matrox Millenium had a very fast 64 bit bus, and very fast WRAM, so it was marginally faster in higher resolution 2d games due to faster transfers. It did have several awesome features such as 4mb of ram for high resolutions, fast ramdac for higher refresh rates, crisp output, and a few proprietary driver features. Millenium + Voodoo1 was the ultimate combo in 1996, and in 98-99 it was G400Maxx + SLI Voodoo2

[@IronTiger]

Playing Unreal for the first time with my Voodoo Rush, thinking the software renderer was hardware acceleration, I was impressed, even though the frame rate was poor. It wasn't until I got it working on a Voodoo 2 that I realized what I'd been missing.

[@AmentiVZ]

I remember my old Matrox Millenium and 3Dfx Voodoo cards running on a Cyrix CPU, then a Pentium III later on. It was a great time for gaming.

[@DigitalDesires87]

Ah, yes, I still remember begging my dad back in the 90s to get me a Diamond Monster 3D for christmas. Good times.

[@oskar2930]

why good times? how are you today?

[@zannelox2847]

I got voodoo Rush 3d 4mb in s3 virge era xD

[@RandomlyDrumming]

Haha I similarly begged my dad for RealVision Flash 3D (Voodoo 1) which I paired with the infamous '3D deccelerator' - th S3 ViRGE 4MB xD

[@mattcgarland]

Pretty sure that's the card I ended up getting! Quake 2 looked pretty sweet with all those coloured lights.

[@ChrisMaz]

@@oskar2930 Because it was a huge jump from software based graphics to hardware based graphics. The differences were bigger back then.

[@system-error]

Ah the Unreal engine was so cool with that close-up noise detail, I remember bashing my face into and out of walls just to see the detail layer come in and out, and also being amazed at seeing my character in reflections. That engine still holds up pretty nice, there's a cool Clive Barker horror game from 2001 called Undying that uses it. Has some cool haunted mansion levels, and some cool 'portal to hell' type levels set in a swirling abyss of chaos and darkness. And you have weapons and magic. Plus the writing is just a bit better than what you usually get in a game.

[@Spokker]

It looked better than the textures in FF7: Remake haha

[@nitrax8629]

The software renderer in particular was insane - great visual quality and decent performance (especially with transparencies compared to the likes of Half-Life). You could disable the dithered alpha and get near 3D-accelerated visual quality, provided your CPU was fairly good!

[@rodmunch69]

Great video, but what is left out is that no one but the richest of the rich kids had Intel processors are the time. With AMD and Cyrix making their own 4x86, 5x86 and 6x86 processors at much lower prices, the Intel Pentiums were for rich kids and businesses. I remember having Quake on a Cyrix 586 and it ran like a turd - maybe in the mid-teens at 320x240, that was with an ATI 3D Rage (the first one, which sucked). Then I went to the store one day and they had the new Voodoo card that I had heard about in the magazines, so I pulled out my credit card and bought one. WOW, same computer, same everything and Quake ran flawlessly. It was amazing. Then, even more impressive, was loading up Unreal - a game that on a CRT still looks fantastic even today. The generational leap the Voodoo card brought to market can not be overstated, it was huge.

[@bionicgeekgrrl]

I was one of those lucky kids. Always had intel chips. We were not rich, but my father certainly had a good job (he was a service engineer for sun microsystems) and it helped him form contacts in the trade. Effectively he contracted with friends who had pc companies as their hardware guy and got components at vat free discounted prices (couldn't do it that way these days!!). Meant I missed the whole console and Amiga thing (though my brother did get a snes and later a Saturn). So yes, they were expensive CPUs, but fun times!

[@emrexis]

Pretty cool for nvidia to sponsor passion project like this without shoving their gpu down our throat :)

[@NonsensicalSpudz]

to be fair, nvidia don't really need to

[@JelaniWood]

In a way they kinda did. They bought out 3Dfx and shuttered them. That's where SLI originally came from.

[@michaelmonstar4276]

It wouldn't fit anymore anyway... They're too girthy now...

[@Aggrofool]

Anyone remember S3 Virge? The world's first 3D Decelerator

[@zannelox2847]

Yeahhh hahahha so true

[@darkauscus]

Noice =D

[@megapro125]

3D decelerators are still made to this day for people who enjoy suffering lol. MX250, GT 1030, RX 520, RX 530 etc. are probably slower than modern iGPUs.

[@dan_loup]

It was a quite ok 320x240x16 card.

[@dan_loup]

Also i pity those that got the alliance AT3D monstrosity

[@youcantholdmedown1265]

when NFS 3 hit the screen, nostalgia hit me like a ton of bricks

[@awqag]

The game that really blew my mind at the time was a racing game called Moto Racer. I saw it on my friends 4mb 3dfx, and it was unbelievable.

[@jeanfred11]

I want to quote this one too : i played it on s3 virge with 16MB RAM (maybe 7fps ?) Then on ATI Rage Pro with 48MB RAM, pretty playable. And when i received the 3DFX, it became completely smooth. What a game !

[@michaelmonstar4276]

I think I played that. - I also just found that Moto Racer is still around. Number 4, on the Switch.

[@BaconLord696]

When the Unreal segment started the nostalgia hit real hard. I miss those days. ;(

[@aublak7492]

Love this older retro stuff. Early 3D stuff was so interesting. There were so many players on the field at the time. Who would have guessed that Nvidia and AMD/ATI were the ones left standing. To think that 3Dfx could have been standing where Nvidia is right now.

[@pedroferrr1412]

Unfortunately 3DFX didn´t had leather jacket´s ;-)

[@excess_wrx]

@@pedroferrr1412 or many colorful spatulas

[@iulian2548]

3dfx died because they were greedy, they didn't allow partner cards since Voodoo 3. In the end, Nvidia acquired them.

[@bionicgeekgrrl]

@@Moi-tf6nn matrox kinda just added 3d as an afterthought. Their primary market was always those who wanted the best 2d and multiple monitors were their specialty at the time and still is today. A voodoo 1 with a matrox card was a pretty awesome combination of best of both.

[@UebelBAM]

Oh man ... so much memories. I still remember to this day, me standing in the store with my dad and we had to choose between the Voodoo card and the Riva 128. And we choose the Voodoo, despite it being an additional card instead of an all-in-one. Great purchase at that time. Good old times, where GPUs came without cooling 😅

[@Stefan_Payne]

S3 and Matrox were the first with 3D Accelerators. 3DFX were the first with a 3D Accelerator that was actually good. Revolutionary Features rarely came from nVidia at all. On the contrary. 32bit Rendering was best on Matrox. Heck even the G200 could close the Gap to the TNT, despite the 64bit Memory interface. TnL was something from the Professional Market, that was used there years before the Desktop Market...

[@renatoborba1987]

The man, the myth, the legend! Mr. Linneman makes ANYTHING so pleasing to hear, him commenting on retro is one of the treasures of youtube.

[@superregera799]

Brought to you by the $1400 RTX 3090...Remember when you could buy a high-end GPU without a loan-shark? Us neither.

[@superregera799]

@@rastas_4221 I think technological stagnation is a bad argument in favor of charging nearly 1500 for a new GPU. If it's so little of an improvement then why charge so much?

[@fran117]

@@superregera799 You really dont have to buy a 1400$ card, even a 600 card nowadays will last you 4-6 years, a 600$ card 15+ years ago, was pretty much unusable in less than 2 years.

[@superregera799]

@@fran117 Again, I don't really think that the fact that new cards are so little of an improvement nowadays over their predecessors is a good argument for charging so much for the new stuff.

[@paul1979uk2000]

Yeah I remember being able to buy a solid card back then for around £130, I don't think you had to go much higher than that to play most games as intended, today prices are crazy high for high-end cards and that's why most games don't take advantage of them, it's also the reason why I don't bother with higher end cards because it's mostly a vanity card and unless games take advantage of them which they don't because most can't afford them, they are just a waste of money. For me, all that's really needed is console like visuals, maybe with a few extra bells and whistles, double the frame rates, so 60fps and whatever resolution you want to play at, anything else, I couldn't care less about and the good news is, you can do the above quite cheap.

[@fran117]

​@@superregera799 Well thats what we get when theres no competition on the market. They are a corporation after all. You really dont have to get the best on the market nowadays unlike before, the only reason to get them is if you have 4k and high refresh monitor. A 200$ card will still do wonders on 1080p. Back in the day even THE best card wont get you 60 frames with latest games on a middling resolution, its ALOT different now lol.

[@alexcoleman589]

A very exciting time coming up for graphics cards this autum: Nvidia has Ampere and AMD has RDNA 2. I can't remember releases being this anticipated.

[@Leon-lg7zm]

RDNA 2 is basically the current nvidia generation and AMPERE is the next generation

[@no2war274]

Let's hope AMD delivers, otherwise we're at the mercy (lack of) Nvidia's insatiable greed.

[@musam992]

@@Leon-lg7zm I think it's better to hold off judgement till thier release. Rdna2 looks to be very efficient from what I've seen in the XSX. While Ampere seems to run very hot with reports of 350w+ on the top-end, and the leaked 3-slot design for the founders edition 3090. Overall, things look very different this year. But it's still too early to say.

[@markxv2267]

Couldnt Care less

[@omarcomming722]

@@musam992 That doesn't really matter tho, efficiency is a plus but is leagues behind power for basically everyone. The price is gonna be the deciding factor.

[@jasonblalock4429]

Man, following PC gaming in the 90s was absolutely magical. It's absurd just how much progress happened in the span of a decade. It was like every year brought giant new leaps forward.

[@nathanddrews]

Pretty sure my first 3D graphics card was the ATI Rage 3D. Imagine my horror a couple years later when it couldn't decode DVD MPEG-2.

[@domoooo]

That soundtrack. Still remember how amazed I was after seeing NFS3 running with bilinear filtering on a loaned SiS 6326-based videocard. The framerate wasn't better than running on software mode (on a Pentium II 300), but the visual upgrade was awesome, even though it didn't do proper alpha (the car was hidden by the "invisible part" of the tree's texture). ... also problematic was the fact that I had to use a driver that was not available at the manufacturer website, after testeing about 5 different driver builds... That was enough for me to go buy my first 3d card. Was in doubt between a Voodoo Banshee card or a Riva TNT. Went with TNT for the better D3D support, but regretted almost as soom as UltraHLE was released, oh well... Good times comparing Rendition x 3DFx x 3DLabs x Real3D/Intel x PowerVR x Number 9 x S3 x SiS/XGI x Nvidia x ATI x Matrox x so many others...

[@justinhancock7337]

Brings back a lot of great memories! I remember getting a Riva TNT2 just to play Half-Life and Counter-Strike. Also had the pleasure of owning some old 3DFX cards... Mid to late 90s were the golden age of PC gaming.

[@_MasterLink_]

My father and I built our first home made computer in 1999. It had a Voodoo3 3000, paired with a Celeron 333 running Windows 98. I have a lot of fond memories gaming on that machine, playing Quake 2, Grim Fandango, Thief, and Unreal/Unreal Tournament 99 (which was my online game of choice for many many years, and still like to play sometimes even today).

[@madfinntech]

That Rom Di Prisco - Romulus 3 right at the beginning took me right back to my threes, Voodoo 3 and Need For Speed 3! Thanks!

[@ricepony33]

Ah remember the endless hours of trial and error to get things running right and downloading drivers and games overnight... Diamond Monster 3DFX Voodoo owner

[@mulando5232]

^^ my voodoo 1 card hat a small "bug". I had to start the PC and than shut it down and start it again. Than it worked. Well at least it still works, but my vintage P3 system is to fast for a 3dfx voodoo ^^. Actually I'm suprised that the P3 500 could manage to run the V1 card. I thought they had a problem if the PC is faster than 450 MHz. But maybe John forgot to press to "turbo" button like many people I knew at that time ^^.

[@michaelmonstar4276]

I always had issues with DirectX and didn't understand crap of it all.

[@HowPettyful]

Insane how I thought about this on my way to work and you upload a video it 8 seconds before i open my browser lol. Thanks guys

[@jaytb6458]

Thanks for the trip down memory lane! I'm one of those that owned a 3DFx Voodoo 1 card back in the day. Tomb raider was my first 3D accelerated game I played, and I was blown away by the 'quality'. Also Quake and Unreal were the games that really pulled me in and made me the gamer I still am today. At present, whenever I hear people complaining about 'bad graphics', I often think back to those days and think 'you should've seen were we came from'. Anyway, enough rambling, I just felt like a kid for a second again.

[@iCaramba0815]

This brings back so many memories. I played a lot of these games on a Pentium 133mhz with an old Voodoo 1 I bought from a friend. Helped me to play Quake 2 and even Half Life (don't ask how it ran, but at least I had fun with it). The Voodoo was such a great upgrade for my old machine. Due to the light effects, I still refer to that era as the "green light" era, as every light source seems to have a green shimmer in it. Good retro video as always, would love to see more DF Retro on hardware themes.

[@paul1979uk2000]

I remember that time, what 3D cards really did was allow much higher resolutions because most games were at low resolution before that of like 320x240 or something like that, 3D cards allowed resolutions much higher like 800x600 or higher whiles having much smoother frame rate and better visuals. The PS1 got the ball rolling but once things heating up in the PC space, it went crazy from around 96-97 onwards and it most of less took until the PS3 and Xbox 360 for consoles to start matching PC on resolutions, frame rates, visuals and all that because before that, consoles were a really low resolution. Best of all was the cost of the gpu's, I remember getting a River TNT with my brother and it only cost £130 lol, if that was today, it would cost at least £500 lol. As for me, there are 3 cards I remember owning, the Matrox Millennium, the PowerVR and RivarTNT, after that, I kinda lost track of what cards I've had lol.

[@DDT-lr3zz]

The NES display resolution is 256×240p While the PS1 resolution is 256x224p and N64 is 320x240p You can see how 5th gen consoles in terms of resolution is the same as 3th gen consoles

[@neretilderem7029]

Oh god, my childhood. I had no idea what's a "voodoo" card, but the name was so cool and the older boys in school told me it makes games run better. I bought the first videocard to play age of empires

[@RaPtOr9600]

My first 3D card vas TnT2pro in 1999, still have that card. First time i boot Quake 2 with that card it was amazing, blown away endless fragging, Q2DM1- The Edge But my jaw dropped when i first time boot Unreal with TnT2 castle intro, looped several times until i picked up my jaw and started playing. And arrival of UT 99 and running for flag on CTF - Facing Worlds, amazing times.

[@flojd574]

Great video! I would also enjoy watching complete history of graphics card technology. That would be even more entertaining!

[@colhapablap]

rendition verité was my first card. christ, time flies.

[@Lewdology]

Aaaa, I remember the sheer excitement I felt when I got my first "decent" GPU, ATI Radeon 7500, I could finally run Morrowind. Those are some of the best video game memories I have, the absolute wonder I felt when playing that game. Also, I'm starting to see some parallels between 3d acceleration and DLSS. Better picture AND better performance, that's crazy! But it has happened once already. Pretty cool.

[@Sonic_Kirbo]

I’d like to see more PC Retro in early-mid 2000’s hardware, when Pentium 4 was transitioning into Core 2 Duo and games like Half Life 2 and Left 4 Dead showed huge performance gains with dual core CPU’s. Also some Unreal Tournament 2004 Retro would be awesome too, loved that game.

[@Mesa4sale]

This was great, clearly the result of a lot of hard work. Well done, and thanks, John!

[@shotgunl]

My first 3D "accelerator" was a PCI Trident 3d Image 9750 purchased to pair with the family Pentium 133MHz non-MMX. Let's just say I was ecstatic when I built my first PC in very late '99 with an slot-A Athlon 650MHz, 96MB of PC-100 SDRAM, a Creative Labs TNT2, a Yamaha Waveforce sound card, and...a trash PC-Chips motherboard based around the AMD 750 chipset. I suffered with the stability of that motherboard for two years until I was heading to college and was able to build a new system based around a Thunderbird-based Athlon 1.4GHz and GeForce 2 GTS. Still, the TNT2 and Athlon 650 allowed me to do what I set out to do with it: play tons and tons of Unreal and then Unreal Tournament. However, I did learn not to buy overly cheap, sub-standard motherboards, and went with an ASUS A7M266 board for the t-bird 1.4Ghz build. I've not bought any non-ASUS motherboard or graphics card since, and I even worked for them and then their manufacturing arm, Pegatron, when they split. Good times.

[@josephzamer5802]

I will never forget my first Graphic Card: S3 trio 3d 2x 4mb!!!! using with a pentium II 350mhz in 1997!!!

[@NeblogaiLT]

Yeah, me neither- it was S3 Trio 1MB in 1998. After adding +1MB RAM to it for higher resolution support- it lasted me till late 1999. Then I purchased TNT Vanta 16MB, as Quake2 multiplayer was brutal in software, ~18fps 320x240.

[@nitrax8629]

Great vid - at 13:25 I have some tips to get Unreal looking proper and running somewhat decently on that Rage Pro. You need to go into advanced options > Rendering > Direct3D and disable multitexturing, mipmapping and detail textures. This should fix the visuals after a restart, but to get better performance I recommend dropping the texture quality to medium and setting the resolution to 512x384. After you do this it is somewhat fast but not as good as the Voodoo.

[@Brunn0121]

gotta respect the transparency on the title, keep up the great stuff!

[@Riddlewire]

John, you didn't mention whether the Riva you used was the first gen or the refresh known as the Riva 128ZX. That second iteration had much better performance and was available in 1998. Also wish you had included the Intel i740 in this video. Those cards are even more rare, I suppose. Also, Shogo:MAD was released in 1998 with an engine built from the ground up for Direct3D. That and Jedi Knight, which all the magazines used back in the day, would be great candidates for any potential future videos about the 90s GPU wars.

[@madmax2069]

i remember that Intel i740 card, i've only seen one and was in a junk pile. at the time i just didn't care enough to snag it (i just went meh intel video card = junk).

[@5Qu1Z33r]

Shogo:MAD

[@madmax2069]

@@5Qu1Z33r yeah, i remember that game, at the time i had a S3 virge DX and it did't work well at all

[@jasperschellekens4723]

I got a pc with the i740 as a gift when it was already years old, played games like these just fine, only in 16-bit color if i remember correct...

[@DVRC]

Intel i740 are quite common as far as i know: I have a friend who owns one (and I owned it for a bit)

[@tHeWasTeDYouTh]

9:43 I am an old school gamer..........I like them pointy!

[@zanychelly]

Amazing episode John, nice way to start this week. Tks

[@letterman4290]

I remember my heart beating when I installed and saw with my eyes what 3dfx was capable back in 1997. No blocks textures, no texture blinking, just smooth game experience. I had a Pentium 133 and with a single cars with 4 mb of video memory it turned in a gaming machine. Sweet time.

[@chrishexx3360]

ATI 3D Xpression was my first GPU. Showing my age. Had old school SLI with 2 3DFX cards. Remember having cards for 2d and 3d installed. Remember waiting for new patches or drivers from the latest PC gaming magazines before I got a modem. Getting your choice of GPU running would be hit or miss for a while. 3DFX was the equivalent of gaming porn at the time.

[@EposVox]

Great job John!

[@SmidgenPC]

Great work. Awesome to see this topic in-depth. I remember trying to play 3D games without a graphics card in the mid-90s era. It...worked...kind of. But when I bought my first card in '98, wow, it really blew the top off of my PC gaming experience. I became a PC gamer and never looked back.

[@AvalancheReviews]

Keep on killing it man! I live for videos like this.

[@Gr3c0_]

Loved the 90's, my first 3D card was a Voodoo Graphics PCI expansion card with 4 MB of EDO RAM combined with a Pentium 166 MMX & 32 MB memory. Carmageddon looks awesome back then, mindblowing graphics

[@jamiebob8002]

I had pretty much the same set up. Used to play a lot of Quake 2, it was like a slide show until I saved up for a voodoo card. I'll never forget firing it up for the 1st time with the card installed.

[@aquaglow1]

Another great video from DF Retro, such nostalgia for my old 3dfx Voodoo

[@briank]

Quake 2 on my Voodoo2 blew my mind at the time. Very well done as usual I love this kind of content!

[@gunayorbay]

unpopular opinion: these older titles looked better without bilinear interpolation.

[@magicmeowz]

most people would agree with that now, but you have to keep in context of the time when bilinear filtering was a very desired feature because low res pixelated textures were less "realistic" than smoothed ones

[@churblefurbles]

@@magicmeowz yea pixel art wasn't a fixation like it is now.

[@JP-yt5st]

In some ways yeah, but the other advantages like simple things we take for granted made it special. Having colored lighting in GLQuake2 was a HUGE deal!

[@anasevi9456]

_"Not of the S3 variety I assure you"_ pity that, they were the last competent 3rd party... releasing a decent midrange gpu in 2004... so shall it be till Intel eventually rocks up.

[@skillaxxx]

S3 and 3D was Savage ...

[@moosemaimer]

My first GPU was a Diamond Stealth, the S3 ViRGE... in most games it functioned as a 3D _de_ celerator.

[@M.W.H.]

@@skillaxxx you killed it.

[@1gabymalo]

20:27 Please do it, it's so interesting that the video was too short for me. Great work as usual John! Greetings from Argentina

[@matcarfer]

Oh yes, this video hit me with nostalgia on the very first second, with NFS2 menu music. I loved so much I wanted this video to last longher. The jump that 3dfx made in pc 3d graphics was phenomenal, I remember playing demos to death on my friends pccchips celeron 266 with 128mb and a Voodoo2. What a time. That feeling was unique and I never got a similar one again. Top notch video John. Keep them coming.

[@Jahus]

I've had a 3DFX Voodoo 5 card. With 2 fans. It was amazing. Was playing Star Wars: Jedi Outcast, and Jedi Academy. It can run Unreal 2 as well. And oh… X-Wing: Alliance, Rogue Squadron, Need for Speed 3: Hot pursuit… wow… And I've still got that Pentium II computer! :D

[@CyroTheSpider]

Just FYI, a Pentium II is underpowered for a Voodoo 5. Voodoo's strong points are OpenGL and Glide, which scaled very well with faster CPUs

[@Jahus]

​@@CyroTheSpider Yeah, I guess so. The computer is from 1999, and it had 8 MB of RAM or such before we put a 128 MB. It feels weird to write « 128 "MB" of RAM ». Memories…

[@konikoniorden7097]

That NFS2 music at the beginning brought me the chills, oh the memories!

[@Atilla75]

Ah the sweet clicking sound of the Orchid Righteous 3D. I still get goosebumps thinking about it. Simpler times...Thanks for the memories, great Video as always!!

[@Redshift1360]

Man this takes me back. I remember standing at the shelves and staring at the ridiculous and crazy box art for all these cards at CompUSA and drooling cuz I wanted one so bad. I love these DF Retro vids. More please!

[@andrewh3079]

CompUSA! Haha I used to love that store.

[@readystateloop3799]

This is a trip down memory lane. Remember those days when your graphics cards couldn't run new games after a year of ownership.

[@andriodman1]

Yup first it was glide, then AGP, then it was hardware t&l, then it was some unsupported shader, then it was need a new motherboard cause AGP was out. Thats when i quit, just console game now, lots cheaper.

[@Zero11s]

@@andriodman1 you quit right after it went better

[@andriodman1]

@@Zero11s you might be right but I just wanted to play the latest games without having to spend money on hardware all the time to keep the fidelity and the fps up. I don't regret getting out.

[@readystateloop3799]

@@andriodman1 Hahaha. I feel your pain. I feel your pain. Us at ReadyStateLoop had boxes of discarded hardware during the "early days" of 3D PC gaming.

[@sadstormtrooper]

If only we still had these many companies competing in the GPU market now, Nvidia wouldn't be overpricing its GPUs

[@robertt9342]

Depends, if they were still the dominant gpu maker or not. More competitors doesn't mean better competitors.

[@BTech2077]

Blast from the past ... Doom, Hexen, NFS, MDK, Screamer (PC Game, 1995) ... it was pure fun back in the day.

[@spladam3845]

Thanks John, I forgot about this retrospective, great work. I'm remembering the box I threw away with an S3, and Voodoo I and II's in it, and I'm so mad at myself for it.

[@justsomegamer2285]

0:10 That dust scream for some cleaning.

[@Cwiiis]

phew, this really brought back some memories, especially seeing how broken the ATI 3d Rage 2 was on a lot of games - that is indeed exactly how it was back in the day! Getting an Orchid Righteous 3D Voodoo 1 card was revelatory... Something I think is kind of interesting is how unusual the PC was in this regard. Pretty much all platforms, except some of the very cheap home micros (e.g. Spectrum, Amstrad CPC), had some form of graphics acceleration - hardware scrolling, hardware sprites, hardware tile-maps, hardware blitting... All consoles did, most arcade hardware did, and certainly a good number of home computers did too. The PC with its basic frame-buffer and practically nothing else, if anything, was the odd one out.

[@anerkind]

Always great to visit this era again. Thanks John.

[@larsmuldjord9907]

What a nice trip down 3D memory lane, thanks John. My personal stepping stones as an avid gamer and graphics enthusiast: Voodoo 2, Voodoo 3 3000, nVIDIA Geforce 256 DDR, Geforce4 Ti 4600, Radeon HD 4870, Geforce 970 GTX, Radeon RX 5700 XT (my current card). I remember the exact moment I "got hooked". It was at a LAN party with friends, where a friend brought over his dad's brand-new top-of-the-line laptop. With a voodoo 2 graphics card! We fired up Quake 2 for a bit of MP and as we walked by my friends tiny terrible TFT laptop screen, we all stopped in our tracks. What the hell was that!? Colored lights!? Smooth texures! It all looked so stunning, even on that terrible, terrible ghosted TFT screen. It was of course the OpenGL version of Quake 2 running on the 3DFX card with some sort of MiniGL driver installed. I got my first Voodoo 2 not long after, and I became addicted to following the graphics trends and benchmarks. I think my own stepping stones signify a certain level of competence in choosing my cards over the course of those years. A lot of cards looked promising, but lacked support or speed. For instance I long pondered the Matrox Millenium G400, but the performance was not up to par. That hardware bumpmapping though... Those were great times. Ah, yes, walking up to the cliff edge in Unreal after leaving that spaceship. I'm still looking for my jaw.

[@michaelabayomi]

My first ever GPU was by a company called SIS. I remember playing Quake II and Half-Life on it. Wonder if they are even still in business now. 🤔

[@bdwilcox]

That's a Taiwanese company called Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) and yes, they're still around. They made some discrete video cards but also made a lot of motherboard chipsets.

[@mjolnir112]

I remember being on a mission to replace a SIS 630 card with a TNT2 back in the day, for some game I can't remember. I was in school and saved for quite a while

[@michaelabayomi]

@@bdwilcox Ah. I see. Interesting. I remember the card didn't perform that great. I was getting like 3FPS on the original Hitman by the time that came out. Lol. The saddest part was I actually beat the entire game that way, at 3 frames per second. 😅

[@michaelabayomi]

@@mjolnir112 Yeah. Those SIS cards were at the bottom of the barrel back then. Lol.

[@perpetualcollapse]

I’m literally in class rn but new video is new video.

[@oskar2930]

F

[@azuremateria]

Thanks for this content Mr Linneman! The mid 90s were really a time of wonder for PC gaming, especially when 3D accelerator cards were something most people did not know about. I was pretty happy with my old 2MB S3 Virge at that time, though its 3D capabilities were always suspect. The game that convinced me to get a proper 3D accelerator was Quake II, as software mode just wouldn't cut it. I got a Creative Graphics Blaster Exxtreme (3D Labs Permedia 2 chipset) at a relatively cheap price, and it kept me happy for a while, at least for a year or so. It was ok for Need For Speed III or Forsaken, but as time went on, I realized how inadequate it was for games like Unreal Tournament or Resident Evil 2. I then bought a 12MB Voodoo2 card off a friend, and man was it a revelatory experience! Watching this video reminded me of those good times.

[@ElSelcho77]

Thanks for taking me down memory lane. I now vividly remember holding my Diamond Monster when it first came out. It came just in time on friday morning, in the evening I went to a LAN party in the community center with 25 people and BNC connectors. The crowd was awesomely stood behind me and my 14" crt sporting Quake in glorious 640x480. Ah, good times :) I still have the card in the attic!

[@oocinom]

Anyone here had a Physx card? LOL

[@CraaaaaabPeople]

Yes lol.

[@zannelox2847]

Yes lolz xD

[@moofree]

I have a PCI-E X1 physx card lying around here. Now y'all have got me wondering if the City of Villains physx functionality works on City of Heroes private servers...

[@d0x360]

It was actually a good idea until nVidia bought them. Offloading complex physics calculation to discreet hardware could have led to some great things if they kept at it. Ahh well, this generation the cloud will start handling some of that stuff eventually. Its been proven it can work now it just needs to be implemented into something good.

[@mwdavis77]

Yes, I remember having one.

[@pasullica]

2:51 "Early cards were expensive..." NVidia "hold my Touring generation and 30xx series"

[@gamingblowsofficial]

Turing.

[@antonkirilenko3116]

I'm pretty sure 400-500 dollars in 1996 felt more expensive than 1.5k dollars now.

[@NathanDrake5]

@@antonkirilenko3116 Not at all, the economy was more healthy back then.

[@GotNextVideo]

When I was a kid, I regularly attended computer shows, so I had a pretty good idea about all the new tech and got to see most of it in action/hands on. I remember being intrigued by 3D acceleration when the Edge 3D came out, but it wasn't until I saw Quake running on a Voodoo that I knew I had to have a 3D card. It finally brought the graphics up to the quality of Sega Model 3 games like Virtua Fighter 3, which was my high bar reference at the time.

[@SAMTHEMANTHATCAN]

I remember first seeing VF3 running on the Sega Model 3 board in a Sega Park in Bournemouth UK around late 1996 and my jaw hit the floor. One of the few times i was stunned into silence at how good it looked and moved. I think even the Voodoo card didnt match it. VF3 on the Model 3 board was pushing 1.5m polygons a second with all the effects on. I think it wasn't until the Sega Dreamcast that consoles caught up. That machine had a Power VR2 inside and i always had a soft spot for the KYRO 1 & 2 cards that succeeded it that offered fantastic value for money.

[@marinechf2581]

I love that they are using music from Need For Speed 3 Hot Pursuit. A great game from that era. Good ol’ Romulus 3

[@RobGMun]

I'm pretty disappointed that you basically have written the PowerVR out of history. You had one too so you know full well it was highly compatible and just as powerful as the Voodoo 1. I had one right at the beginning of the 3D card craze and i was able to run Quake at the same frame rates and at higher resolutions than the Voodoo 1. The Voodoo card was stuck at 640x480 when PowerVR was running Demos at 1024x768 at 30fps. The games has a problem with tiling because of the way it worked but for me this was a minor issue. And it ran anything with the Unreal engine as smooth as butter with no artifacts as well.

[@bonzobanana1]

Yeah I had a power VR card and it was awesome and then I had a Dreamcast and it took gaming to another level on console and made the Dreamcast seem much more powerful than it had any right to be with powervr. The tile based rendering seemed to smooth the frame rates brilliantly. Then onto the Apple iphone and ipads where it really delivered amazing portable experiences. It may not have been a commercial success but the Vita also delivered kick ass graphics too. PowerVR is great technology but you can't take anything away from the pioneering work of 3DFX.

[@andriodman1]

Lol maybe they forgot to mention the PowerVR because PowerVR didn't sponsor the video, like Nvidia did 3dFX's current owner

[@NathanDrake5]

@@andriodman1 Well, nVidia uses tiled rendering since Maxwell, so...

[@Helectronics]

Hmm, I suspect that this video was sponsored by Nvidia!

[@duxcrottv8830]

I suspect that as well. Especially since it says "content sponsored by Nvidia" in the description.

[@liaminwales]

they did eat 3dFX! one big bite and it was gone

[@youuuuuuuuuuutube]

Great video. I didn't want to skip any part of it.

[@mosaeed9112]

Great video, brings back some fond memories!

[@badbob001]

I had an uncomfortable moment when John was discussing anti-aliasing while a profile shot of Lara Croft is shown.

[@CaveyMoth]

You mean you play the graphics on a card? That's a baby's toy. 4:10 "It isn't smooth or playable at all." My childhood begs to disagree. I played COOP over LAN like this all day.

[@matcarfer]

hehe, I thought the same, I remember playing games with my Mystique 220, Intel 740 and later the "much" better Triden Blade 3D (Q3A run at 15fps 640x480 all low) and I was "happy". Until I got a Geforce 2 MX and everything was so much better.

[@jasonblalock4429]

Yep. That's just how Quake played at first launch. 15-20 fps was good enough.

[@bitnisse7186]

This was a nice trip down memory lane to when i owned 3Dfx Voodoo and Voodoo2. I looped em trough my Matrox Millennium II which had very nice looking 2D graphics.

[@Daniel-Gomez-M]

I'm so glad you mention NFS3, it was really awesome back then.

[@maz12004]

It's good that DF are upfront about their sponsored content but there is still something icky about this, especially since it ties in with what Nvidia are doing with their own countdown to Ampere hype page. Digital Foundry's recent "future-proofing your PC" video was also sponsored by Nvidia and while I don't question DF's integrity, or honesty, this still feels somewhat distasteful. edited 31/08/20 Didn't this used to say sponsored by Nvidia or am I losing my mind.

[@MostafaMaher98]

Immediately i thought Nvidia is sponsoring this because of their ongoing campaign right now....and guess what? Nvidia is sponsoring it lol

[@fancyslimoshady]

OMG the first song you played from Rom , gave me goosebumps ! Its a huge gaming song from my childhood !

[@PixelPipes]

Awesome job John! This is a tough era to cover in video form, with having to juggle with driver, hardware, and game compatibility problems on a constant basis. No small feat!

[@zachsteiner]

Why is this sponsored?

[@kmcarno9323]

Maybe because of nvidia's upcoming rtx cards

[@Safetytrousers]

''Before we enter the future, join us to celebrate the biggest breakthroughs in PC gaming since 1999.''