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The 3dfx Voodoo1

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Re: The 3dfx Voodoo1

#231

Post by trasz »

ben7799 wrote: post #225
ernst_klim wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a $4,000 card tho. Full SGI workstations cost from $4000 to $11000 (and this is with a display and software) [1]. This was a primitive texturing accelerator without T&L, without 2D, just a texturing unit. $400 was even a high price for it. [1] https://hsto.org/files/c34/cb5/939/c34cb59393e04c77af072be74...

Having used SGIs in the 1990s they didn't have any power at all until you spent many many many thousands of dollars. The ones that were impressive were the ones that might have been $20k+. At the time the Voodoo came out the run of the mill SGI workstations did not come with any of the advanced 3D graphics capabilites. Certainly nothing that blew you away. They did stuff like wireframe or unshaded 3D CAD and stuff li…

SGI was good for stuff it was made for, which was visualization and CAD. Which, in that time, meant no texturing - that one meant either an expensive hardware option, or software fallback.

Re: The 3dfx Voodoo1

#232

Post by tracker1 »

glenneroo wrote: post #210
influx wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last time I was able to feel that same rush was replacing spinning hdd with ssd.

Wait until you upgrade your "normal" (SATA) SSD with an M.2 version - the speed jump is similar.

The only time I really notice the difference from SSD to M.2 NVME is with a node project build, or running certain background services that are disk heavy... General use, not nearly so much.

Re: The 3dfx Voodoo1

#233

Post by userbinator »

shawnz wrote: post #205
reacweb wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

History of Microsoft is very long. Backwards compatibility was excellent until windows XP (included). This focus on compatibility has largely disappeared in more recent versions. I am not bashing Microsoft. I love visual studio code. I love the fact that I can edit office documents (powerpoint and word) for free using chrome on ubuntu. Maybe the work Microsoft is doing on Windows Subsystem for Linux will make me come…

It seems like you're talking about the fact that they dropped 16-bit compatibility in 64-bit editions. XP was the first consumer version of Windows with 64-bit support so that timeline would fit. There were various significant technical challenges which caused them to drop 16-bit support in 64-bit Windows and I don't think it's fair to imply that they lost their focus on backwards compatibility just because of that o…

There were various significant technical challenges which caused them to drop 16-bit support in 64-bit Windows

That's the official answer. The more nuanced and correct answer is that DOS (16-bit realmode) apps won't work due to the hardware lacking the functionality --- blame AMD, not Microsoft, for that --- but there's no such limitation for Win16 (16-bit protected mode) apps. Thus, WINE on a 64-bit Linux will handle 64, 32, and 16-bit Windows apps, and there's no emulation unlike with DOSbox and such:

https://www.dkia.at/en/node/180

(Coincidentally, I recently made a comment on another article about the nuanced nature of the word "supported": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19578503 )

Re: The 3dfx Voodoo1

#234

Post by ken »

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…

Hardware is no longer my limiting factor. Software is. There's nothing I want to do that a faster CPU or GPU would help me do. (Well, there's a couple, but software is still a much bigger stumbling block for me than hardware even in those cases.)

Look at the PL progress in that Voodoo 1-5 timeframe. We started with C/C++, and ended up with C/C++ and a little bit of Java starting to creep in. That doesn't seem terribly impressive to me.

Today, if I told you I was writing a new program (and I am!), there's 10 different languages you might reasonably guess that I'd have picked. Life's way better than when everybody was constantly transistor-constrained.

Re: The 3dfx Voodoo1

#235

Post by Const-me »

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…

> What’s happened since 2015, by contrast?

Intel monopolized the market by breaking laws (paid billions in fines). The lack of progress is the consequence.

The progress only slowed down for x86. For the rest of chips it has not: GPUs, mobile SoCs, they all becoming significantly faster with each generation.

Fortunately, with AMD Ryzen the stagnation is ending. Core count in mainstream chips already doubled, after stagnating for decade.

Re: The 3dfx Voodoo1

#236

Post by coldacid »

userbinator wrote: post #233
shawnz wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you're talking about the fact that they dropped 16-bit compatibility in 64-bit editions. XP was the first consumer version of Windows with 64-bit support so that timeline would fit. There were various significant technical challenges which caused them to drop 16-bit support in 64-bit Windows and I don't think it's fair to imply that they lost their focus on backwards compatibility just because of that o…

There were various significant technical challenges which caused them to drop 16-bit support in 64-bit Windows That's the official answer. The more nuanced and correct answer is that DOS (16-bit realmode) apps won't work due to the hardware lacking the functionality --- blame AMD, not Microsoft, for that --- but there's no such limitation for Win16 (16-bit protected mode) apps. Thus, WINE on a 64-bit Linux will handl…

To add even more nuance, even protected mode 16-bit Windows ran Windows apps in v86 mode. Essentially protected mode was a hypervisor you could launch from DOS and your actual Windows session would run on top of that. Before the VT-x extensions to x86-64, there was no more access to virtual-86 if you were running the processor in 64-bit long mode.

Considering that, it's no surprise that 16-bit Windows apps would no longer run on 64-bit Windows, especially since NTVDM was necessary to run them on 32-bit NT based versions of Windows anyway.

Re: The 3dfx Voodoo1

#237

Post by ddingus »

trasz wrote: post #231
ben7799 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having used SGIs in the 1990s they didn't have any power at all until you spent many many many thousands of dollars. The ones that were impressive were the ones that might have been $20k+. At the time the Voodoo came out the run of the mill SGI workstations did not come with any of the advanced 3D graphics capabilites. Certainly nothing that blew you away. They did stuff like wireframe or unshaded 3D CAD and stuff li…

SGI was good for stuff it was made for, which was visualization and CAD. Which, in that time, meant no texturing - that one meant either an expensive hardware option, or software fallback.

Except for the O2. Shared memory allowed for massive textures and transforms on them at real time frame rates.

Re: The 3dfx Voodoo1

#238

Post by time0ut »

graycrow wrote: post #206
time0ut wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, this brings back some memories. I also had a Voodoo Banshee. I put it in my AMD K6-2 with 192MB of RAM. This was right around when Windows 98 came out. My friends all had similar rigs. We were on the quest for max frame rate in Halflife, TF1, and original CS. It was a different time back then.

192MB of RAM in 1998? Back then it cost a fortune, I had just 16MB.

Might've been 1999. Hard to remember the details now.

Re: The 3dfx Voodoo1

#240

Post by Zardoz84 »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #124
Zardoz84 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and an actual CPU ? I think that running at 3 GHz would help a lot.

It's not just about "running faster". GL adds a lot of shinyness over and above the software renderer.

Well... Software render on zDooM keeps shining. Even handles some quirks better that OpenGL renderer.
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