Why Was The Geforce 3 So Important? - GPU History

[@MrAdeljas]

2000's was a great period for pc games

[@8KilgoreTrout4]

Yeah I loved 90's up to 99 and then yeah things exploded faster than my income

[@TheVanillatech]

1992 - 2004 were amazing. After that it was the slow aquisition of the entire industry by a handful of giant media conglomerates that FUCKED video gaming forever. Power taken away from the creative people (developers) and put in the hands of businessmen. Consoles become the main focus. Hardware pushing software (and vice versa) slows to a halt.

[@soylentgreenb]

The 00's where the worst decade in gaming history. First couple of years were alright, nothing special. But then Doom 3 sucked, Half-life 2 wasn't nearly as good as the original half-life, every AAA game was designed for the massive influx of new gamers, which meant very easy games where skill and mastery was not important and story and cutscenes and hand holding were everything. Budgets blew out so much that all creativity and optimism of the late 90's just went straight out the window. Many classic developers that made amazing games went under or where bought out by EA who wore the corpse of the fallen company as a skin and made a few cashgrabs before destroying them. Shiny, Bullfrog, Looking glass, ion storm, Westwood, Black isle. It's like there was a nuclear war and all you were left with where the cockroaches like EA and a few struggling survivors in a radioactive hellscape.

[@RAA12586]

@@soylentgreenb rockstar bought angel studios, the ones that did midtown madness became rockstar games and you guys know the rest.

[@Caleb-fv5fp]

Ok

[@jeffnickels6199]

That reference card with the green heat sinks is one of the coolest looking cards ever made.

[@3dfxvoodoocards6]

4:40 - FALSE! Games released before 2001 and after 2001 look practically the same, there was no huge jump in visual quality after 2001. Unreal 1998, Motorhead 1998, Revolt 1999, Descent 3 1999, Quake 3 1999, UT 1999, Deus Ex 2000, NFS Porsche 2000 - looked just the same as games from 2001-2002, in no way inferior. That huge jump in visual quality came only in 2004 with Doom 3, Half-Life 2, Far Cry, Painkiller, etc

[@eugenb9017]

True, I hate when "retro" youtubers don't know about what they are talking about. Yes, Carmack praised GF3, but Doom3 launched much later, a few generations later, when Geforce FX 5800 Ultra was the top card. GF3 could play Doom3, but it was weak for that game, I know, because I had a Ti200 back then, I upgraded to Radeon 9800, then to 6800 Ultra.

[@wakesake]

cant wait to see more vids especially for the ATI 9700 Pro

[@Aranimda]

The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you can't do!

[@oisiaa]

Man!!! These were my teens! I had GeForce 2s and 4s, but never a 3!

[@mxthunder2]

im glad i picked up a Ti500 a couple years ago while they were still cheap.got a reference model with the purple/green heatsinks.

[@CuttingEdgeRetro]

Nice. Those are great cards.

[@TheVanillatech]

I got all my GF 3's from an IT recycle centre in Manchester that had an eBay page. Prices were random (based on condition of the card, mainly) from £7 to around £15. Sometimes the cards were mis-labelled. I picked up a couple of Asus Geforce 3's that were listed as "AGP 64MB Nvidia" for £4 each. Last count I think I have 11 GF 3's (including 5 Ti500's) and 3 GF 2 Ultras (but 1 of them doesn't have the original fan / hs). Bought all of them for perhaps a little over £100. Same seller.

[@noth606]

@@TheVanillatech fellow hoarder huh? I have too many Gf4 Ti4600's, 6800GT's etc, I got several for free or almost free(7.5-10euro) and same for 7800GS AGP. Tried a few times to shift them cheap to fellow collectors but nothing ever came of it so I still have them.

[@TheVanillatech]

@@noth606 Well it's nice to have a few spares! XD I think the retro market is falling apart at the seams these past few years were the last that cards went rapidly on eBay for good prices. Not that I tried to sell there, but I always kept an eye out. I sold a few on AMIBay to other hobbyists for decent but fair prices once in a while. Our generation is getting old. We have either got what we want, or are too knackered to mess around with old parts anymore! I can't even find the energy to try to offload them.

[@noth606]

@@TheVanillatech hehe, I have everything I want since quite a while, but it boggles the mind that people pay huge sums of money for 6800Ultra AGP and HD3850 AGP etc all of which I got for the price of a decent pizza. I think the only thing I paid a high price for is my AMD FX-60 and that was like 86euro. I would never pay 100+ for an old card. But yes, I think we all or most have a fair bit of grey hairs now, I for sure do, even white ones, but a lot of us have good jobs and some free time and disposable income apparently judging from the prices of retro gear.

[@ambigousBarrel]

I got a Nvidia 4 ti 4600 from buying a job lot of parts that was mostly non working socket a motherboards and a few early Ethernet cards. I was getting it for a FX5900 that had a bulging capacitor and didn't even know the Geforce 4 ti 4600 was in there but it worked a charm unlike the FX5900 that I was sadly unable to bring back to life but I was pretty happy to get the Geforce 4, put it in my windows ME machine with a Athlon XP 3000+ I had lying around and it works a treat :) I was well chuffed since the whole lot only cost me £20 :D Got a few processors out of it and a bit of ram too so can't complain :D

[@tHeWasTeDYouTh]

first card with programmable shaders. I will always remember that and how Microsoft said this at every opportunity as the original Xbox had a Geforce 3 GPU that was more powerful than any of the pc cards, it was in between a Geforce 3 pc and a Geforce 4. looking back the original xbox was a beast it was just held back by having 64MB of ram. I just found out the original plan for the Xbox was to have 128MB....damn ,MS cheaped out last minute.

[@timmanboy1]

Funny enough. With a bios update on the original xbox and a bit of soldering work you can add 128mb of ram

[@retromodz5149]

I have a Geforce 256 agp 32mb vram , Asus model in my Windows 89se Gaming pc its great card

[@ivand5699]

Subscribed, I love those kind of videos.

[@tHeWasTeDYouTh]

Why Was The Geforce 3 So Important? programmable shaders

[@kotd009]

i own the ti500. salvaged from old computers that were scraped and im glad i get to own one!

[@lemagreengreen]

I remember that 3DMark 2001 countryside scene being so impressive back in the day, it actually made you feel justified in buying these expensive (for the time) high end graphics cards. I'd say it still looks pretty good today!

[@0takudad]

I miss my ATI All-in-Wonder 9700 Pro. Had some good times with that card.

[@Wigglythegreat2]

Great video. I still have one of these cards.

[@naikjoy]

Intel Atom's x5 - z8300 HD Graphics scored the same as a GeForce 3 in 3D Mark 2001. Which means it should be able to play every game up to the year 2000 on the highest settings.

[@cyberkiller83]

I just fucking love the way John Carmack Speaks.

[@TheBigb1973]

I still have this card lol. I though for sure games would look more realistic by now. I now have rtx 3080ti . Don't get me wrong graphics today look phenomenal. Just not as real as i imagined they would back then.

[@CuttingEdgeRetro]

We used to look at Crysis 1 and think how realistic it looked. Several media outlets even called it the end of the road for PC graphics. But many of us knew one day ray tracing would be a thing. We just didn't think it would be this early. It's so badly quality compromised just to get it to run on hardware. It's still a decade or more away from being what it should be.

[@Musicandgamer]

Very interesting video, keep the good job on :)

[@charleshorseman55]

Whenever I type in something obscure, but a curiosity into youtube, I assume a british man will be narrating. Not dissapointed.

[@aceofhearts573]

The 3dfx Spectre 3000 would have come out in early 2001and was a little more powerful than the GeForce 4. If 3dfx had not lost so much money they would have destroyed the GeForce 3 and radeon 8500

[@CuttingEdgeRetro]

That's only speculation. Oscar from Spain who has a spectre has stated it's not as fast as a gf3 with what driver support has been cobbled together. He estimate that if you add good driver support it would have been around gf5 ti500 speeds. Or almost as fast as a GF4 ti4200

[@masterblaster5296]

You know back in the 2000s this was my really first kickass gaming videocard, mine was a siluro gf3 from abit, with the piramid box i even remember testing it to emulate nintendo64 on my athlon xp machine. i sold it back then, and After searching another one for years, i was able to buy 4 years ago one with the box and manuals, the siluro model, but sadly one of the memory chips is broken since it gives artifacts, i think its the memory not the gpu. but yea, the GF3 is hard to find, i wonder why there are few cards on the market, maybe they tend to die. The 9800pro that i would not buy, mine died back in 2004. And it died when i was sleeping and i kept the PC on, and not only that, it died with an arctic cooler vga silencer. I now have at least a NVIDIA Quadro DCC, wich is kind of a geforce3 but not a geforce3, because it is not oriented to pc gaming. But i would die to get a working geforce3 to build my old gaming rig.

[@CuttingEdgeRetro]

Our pixel talk community has a few reputable foks who can repair memory issues like this. If you're interested join our discord server and ask.

[@EskoMorko_]

The card at the beginning is a Elsa Gladiac 920 Geforce 3? I had similar one back in 2002.

[@CuttingEdgeRetro]

It's a Dell OEM reference gf3 ti 500.

[@LastOneLeft99]

Funny huge gamer back then but I went from GeForce DDR to Radeon 8500 then Radeon 9700 Pro. Never had a GeForce 3 or 4.

[@CuttingEdgeRetro]

Gf 3 was good but 4 wasn't anything special. You had the right cards back then

[@TheVanillatech]

8500 vanilla (non-LE) was practically the same performance as a Geforce 3. Radeon 9700 Pro easily beat out the Geforce 4 Ti 4600 in 90% of games. I think I went from a TNT 2 Ultra to a Geforce 2 Ultra. That card lasted me until I finally had to buy a Ti 4800SE for Quake III online ( I needed 120fps).

[@ZXSpectrum128K]

Please review vga with tv encoder

[@madmax13326]

I wonder what a few of my old agp cards are worth

[@charleshorseman55]

I had a radeon 9800 (I believe) that I bought to play Deus Ex. Man that was a long time ago. Didn't run great, but at least I got to play Deus Ex!

[@24DEX]

I have the Hercules Ti 500 original box and Ti 200 :) the best looking GF3 out there!

[@dimarzio9374]

ti 200..my first gpu love

[@thelasthallow]

i have a maximum pc magazine from feb 2003 and damn near every pre built pc in it was equipped with an ATI 9700 Pro very very few had an Nvidia Ti4600 as an option Edit, i was looking for a 7900GTX and they are going for nearly $200 U.S. the quadro variants which are the EXACT same card down to the cooler, $20 each HAHAHHA

[@Pavluha901]

Doom 3 (alpha version and demo) is more impressive, than modern Doom 2016. Geforce3 was a beast.

[@ghillieveteran9027]

Can you do a video on gt 210?

[@RAA12586]

The radeon 9500 could be softmodded to be a 9700, I gamed with that for a while.

[@holonaut]

The 9700 was legendary

[@ricardobarros1090]

And Ati 9550 128mb ???

[@RAA12586]

@@ricardobarros1090 I'm not sure about the 9550.

[@dyslectische]

GeForce 4 4600 ti vs ati 9500 and up. GeForce 4 4200 vs ati 9200 GeForce 4 mx vs ati 7500 GeForce 3 serie vs ati 8500 and 7500 GeForce2 (mx) ati 7000 GeForce 256 vs ati rage Fury serie Tnt serie vs ati rage 128. The problem in that time is that card for not came out on the same year . If you look in de specs self . Ati always later . The other problem in that time . The dy of the core are to big . Ati hit the jackpot with radeon 9500 serie and up. The radeon 9100 ati 8500 The radeon 9200 its a 8500 This is the time that rename gpu problem came out .

[@2012sidewinder]

good job! I had one....

[@rcarkk]

I have this exact reference Geforce 3 Ti500. How much is it worth?

[@rcarkk]

Modzy's Retro Collection Im not a serious collector, but i still like to collect high end GPUs from early years. For now, I'm not interested in selling it because i consider it one the best and valuable cards on my collection. I bought it in 2011 from someone on USA for 15€ with shipping included.

[@coffeefox5703]

Bah. Unfortunately I can't run a 9800 Pro due to my Compaq using a dinky 200W PSU and those bastards used a custom pin layout. So GeForce 3 for me. :(

[@fungo6631]

The GeForce 3 was the GeForce RTX of its time.

[@Obie327]

Nvidia was in big trouble when I got my 9600xt and later 9800 pro series of ATI graphics cards. One example was Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction looking way better graphically than Nvidia's 6800 GT compared at the time. (downgrade) I have a PNY Geforce 3 ti in my collection (not sure anymore what version) Also found my Asus Geforce 4 ti 4200. Thanks for the review of these game changing cards.

[@kyles8524]

i have both these cards

[@rcarkk]

Btw, very good video...

[@RAA12586]

Wish I kept my old gpu's, I had the regular geforce 3.

[@RAA12586]

Actually it might be in parents storage lol.

[@Hornet85]

The current GeForce RTX reminds me of GeForce 3, being the first GPU to bring real time raytracing. I think raytracing will be as huge as programmable shaders was to gaming graphics.

[@CuttingEdgeRetro]

It will. But it just sucks RTX came at such a high price premium. I paid $525 AU for my gtx 970 when it came out. If I want the RTX 2070. It's $1000 AU for the equivalent MSI gaming model.

[@rijatru]

Or shader model 3.0 with HDR on the 6800gt. It cut the frame rate in half back then, a couple of years later it was mainstream. Nvidia has been and is the pioneer in GPU technology.

[@MrTomas7777]

And GeForce 16 series is kinda like GF4 MX

[@dschultz9466]

So you're refusing to tell us the info we need to find these simply because you simply don't want to share. Real nice.

[@dschultz9466]

Okay fair enough, and apologies for such a snippy comment, something was irritating me offline and unfortunately got brought here, yes, hunting for info can be fun in of itself.

[@govnonatarelke10007]

This card is in original xbox

[@PawsBlog]

I did hardware mod and overclocked GeForce 3 Ti 200 into a Ti 500 - kzbin.info/www/bejne/il7UanqXZ96Wjq8

[@kaneCVR]

The Geforce 4 Ti 4200 is ~50% faster then the Gf3 Ti 500

[@TheVanillatech]

Not even close. Around 15-20%.

[@nazigrammar9728]

Gf256 was enough for Doom3, gf3 was more than enough

[@nazigrammar9728]

Same for Stalker

[@ferdinandoportel]

GeForce 3 brought few innovations compared to the previous generation and disappeared from the market a few months after its release. radeon 8500 was a better product and brought a more complete implementation of Directx 8 technology.

[@loganglatt7254]

the original xbox gpu

[@PabloB888]

Not exactly, xbox GPU had 2 vertex units not just 1 like geforce 3.

[@kjererrt7804]

blabla blablablaaa