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The 3dfx Voodoo1

fabiensanglard.net

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Re: The 3dfx Voodoo1

#111

Post by fabiensanglard »

carey wrote: post #79
fabiensanglard wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I dislike JavaScript. Because it bloats pages, slowdowns page loading and you always need libraries to do the smallest thing. I try to avoid JavaScript as much as possible. There is some on this page to flip the screenshots and that annoyed me.

You should be able to do something with labels, CSS sibling selectors, and the :checked pseudo-class if it matters to you. I found an example at https://codepen.io/ancaspatariu/pen/WpQYOP which does quite a lot more than you’d need.

My hero :) !

Re: The 3dfx Voodoo1

#112

Post by sliken »

bla3 wrote: post #38
Zenst wrote: post #30

My flatmate owned a Voodoo2, was impressive though the market soon caught up and and when the following year I did get myself a 3500, after a month I sold it and got a Matrox G400Max as it did the 3D level I needed (more so the less demanding games of the time). But more so, the colour gamut was so much sharper and stood out on a CRT of the time. I was curious so I had a dig on the specs to relive the decision of the…

24bit and 32bit both have 8bit per RGB color channel, the extra 8 bit are either alpha (for textures) or padding (for performance). All other things being equal, colors should look the same on both.

Yes, but keep in mind that monitors of the time were analog devices. Matrox was well known for higher quality at the time. It was visible even just with black text on a white background. Basically their implementation of moving from pixels to the analog signal was better. Less artifacts, less shadows, better colors, better frame to frame stability, etc.

Re: The 3dfx Voodoo1

#113

Post by LeonM »

Oh man, nostalgia levels through the roof!

I remember buying my first 3D 'accelerator card' as they were called back then. It was a Voodoo Banshee card. The Banshee had an onboard 2D video chip, so it didn't have the VGA passthrough cable.

I bought the card at a trade show (the Dutch audience here will remember the 'HCC dagen'). That's where you could buy them cheap. Not sure if it was actually cheaper, internet wasn't very useful back then, so there was no easy way to compare prices.

I didn't have a computer of my own yet (I must have been 14 years old or so), so I bought it for our 'family' computer, an IBM P166. I remember getting up super early to put the card in before my dad would wake up. He would certainly have freaked out if he saw that I opened up the expensive computer to put it some gaming thing.

Good times.

Re: The 3dfx Voodoo1

#114

Post by badpun »

BuckRogers wrote: post #86
GuiA wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is because you experienced these things during your formative years that they have such a unique luster, and that nothing seems to quite compare. People who are in their formative years today will look back upon the current times with similar enthusiasm; just like your elders a few decades ago found that your Playboy magazines and 3D video game cards were pointless debauchery. So it has been for the billions of hu…

I've definitely considered that thought over the years, again and again. I do think there truth to it and plays some role here, but overall would respectfully disagree with it as a flat out conclusion if used as a dismissal in this case. It's worth expanding on because you're not just wrong outright, it's impossible to objectively state that nostalgia isn't a factor, but I truly do think I'm onto something here on wi…

> Things are objectively worse today from the 20th century, everyone knows it or can definitely feel it.

That may be true in the US (although of course it's debatable). In the global scale however, things have improved tremendously. For example, my region, Central and Eastern Europe, has been freed from comunism and flourished for the most part after 1989. But that's small change compared to vast improvements in living standards of hundreds of millions in Asia (China, India, other countries). So, it'd say the boom is far from over, it's just getting more evenly distributed now, as opposed to most of the XX century, where the US was in an unique position to get so much richer than almost everybody else.

Re: The 3dfx Voodoo1

#115

Post by gattilorenz »

tom_ wrote: post #18

My claim to fame is that the only Voodoo card I've ever owned was a Voodoo 5 6000. I picked it up in the early 2000s during a pre-closure clearout at my then-employer, a UK video games developer. The sheer size of the thing made me LOL, that and the number of fans and the additional power connector. Then I noticed it was a 3dfx - oh, hey! I could play that Glide-based motorbike game, that I remembered enjoying at a f…

I picked up my Voodoo 2 in 2005 when I found it in an old computer I was scavenging for pieces with other high school students.

I was young, but I immediately recognized it and traced it back to the computer magazines (from 97/98) of my older syster that I used to devour. No other student realized what it was. They were puzzled by the double VGA connector :)

I took it home, and installed it in my Athlon XP 2600+ system alongside the ATI 9800 Pro, to finally try the Glide games that I never had the opportunity to play years before... The first time I saw the full-screen 3dfx logo, it felt amazing.

Not only I still have it, but I collected more for free over the years, and I'm still amazed that something I would drool over a few years back became trash-worthy. It's either a reminder that good things happen to those who wait... or a memento morì.

Re: The 3dfx Voodoo1

#116

Post by mpalfrey »

I had a Voodoo Banshee (combined 2d/3d card). It wasn't as good as a V2 but was OK for me back in the day.

I then moved to NVidia predominantly (TNT2 Ultra), although I did pick up a cheap V5 5500 which I ran for a bit.

Like other's have said, it was a fun time to be involved with PC gaming. Unfortunately life has got in the way since, although I do spend time on Vogons looking at old systems and wondering if I should build a couple of retro machines!

Re: The 3dfx Voodoo1

#117

Post by pgt »

The 3dfx Voodoo1 was the first hardware I bought with my own money to put in my 200Mhz AMD K6 machine, which I kept cool with two industrial fans. I paid R450 (~$30) for my Voodoo1 and have fond memories of multiplayer Half-Life 1 and Alien vs. Predator (AVP1) with friends.

Re: The 3dfx Voodoo1

#118

Post by ernst_klim »

rayiner wrote: post #16

It’s crazy how fast stuff moved back then. Voodoo 1, to Voodoo 2 (both hits) to Voodoo 3 (meh), to Voodoo 4/5 (debacle), to bankruptcy was less than 4 years. In the same timeframe, we went from a 200 MHz Pentium MMX to a 1 GHz Pentium 3. What’s happened since 2015, by contrast? Many people still swear by their 2015 MBPs, the last model before the touchbar debacle. That Haswell based machine was getting long in the to…

Nothing. Staff moved fast on a PC market, which was affected by the transition from PC being a mere toys to serious devices.

These voodoo boards were a mere joke in comparison to what SGI could provide, so the PC market was catching up, hence it moved fast through the well trodden path.

I mean, all these voodoo and nvidia guys already worked for SGI or similar companies and just brought to the PC market the technologies which were developed for previous decade.

Re: The 3dfx Voodoo1

#119

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

santoshalper wrote: post #58
derefr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious comparison to the GPU arms race is the VR hardware arms race. Same number of companies rising and falling in about the same period. Carmack is at the forefront of both, too.

VR has been a wet fart compared to 3d graphics. Tons of hype but very little progress and almost no broader impact on the technology or games industry.

Not sure why you've been so heavily downvoted, perhaps there are a lot of people here working in the field. It definitely seems the case that the average consumer couldn't care less about it, however.

VR is the new 3D TV.

Re: The 3dfx Voodoo1

#120

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

LeonM wrote: post #113

Oh man, nostalgia levels through the roof! I remember buying my first 3D 'accelerator card' as they were called back then. It was a Voodoo Banshee card. The Banshee had an onboard 2D video chip, so it didn't have the VGA passthrough cable. I bought the card at a trade show (the Dutch audience here will remember the 'HCC dagen'). That's where you could buy them cheap. Not sure if it was actually cheaper, internet wasn…

Haha, this pretty much mirrors my story exactly, except a couple of years later with the Voodoo3. Dad included!

Good times.

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