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Gaming with 3DFX, PowerVR and early graphics cards

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    Gaming with 3DFX, PowerVR and early graphics cards

    How many people here owned some of the early PC 3D cards?

    As one of the forum's 60fps fans, this era of gaming meant a lot to me. Most games were still designed for non-3D card users or consoles, which were generally much weaker than a Voodoo-equipped PC. This basically meant that all the games felt like when we played PS1 ports to Dreamcast; subtly better in terms of effects, but much sharper and with silky-smooth framerates; kinda how I wish games had remained permanently, but unfortunately it didn't last.

    I got my original Voodoo card in 1998, I think. It was an unbranded card (i.e. not 3DFX branded) and I still remember the first time I booted up Final Fantasy VII and F-22: Air Dominance Fighter. After that, support for the cards came thick and fast. I must've spent years playing Earthsiege 2, Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries 3DFX Edition, Incoming and Rogue Squadron.

    Remember how it was weird that the Dreamcast was largely built with PC parts, and how the PowerVR2 graphics cards never came out due to Sega buying them all? Strange in retrospect but it was a big deal at the time, given how PCs and consoles differed.

    Anyone else have good memories of these?

    #2
    I got a Diamond Voodoo 1 for Christmas back in the day, along with a piping hot P200MMX and 64MB of RAM, all held in one of those old-school beige, all metal cases that weighted more than a small car.

    I already had MW2, but had to go through again with those hi-detail 'Mech models available in the 3DFX edition, and Hyperblade was absolutely gorgeous with all those textures. Or the non-accelerated vrsion was simply terrible looking, your choice.
    Same as with MW2, I had to reinstall the 3DFX version of EF2000, before F-22 ADF and F-22 TAW hit the scene. And don't forget about Longbow 2, and F-15 Eagle.

    I think Homeworld was the first game where Glide was surpassed by DirectX and OpenGL in performance, and I even tried to play Ground Control on it, but the game was way too demanding for the system.

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      #3
      Originally posted by briareos_kerensky View Post
      I think Homeworld was the first game where Glide was surpassed by DirectX and OpenGL in performance, and I even tried to play Ground Control on it, but the game was way too demanding for the system.
      Funnily enough I had exactly the same experience with Ground Control.

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        #4
        Yeah, with a twin ISDN line. Quake PWNAGE.

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          #5
          Colin Mcrae Rally 2 on my Voodoo 2 literally felt like it was a generation ahead of the PSX game. I love that card to this day. The PC itself was quite underpowered though so it would struggle with some games.

          G-Police is another one that looks amazing with it although IIRC that one is Direct3D only.

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            #6
            Originally posted by Cepp View Post
            Colin Mcrae Rally 2 on my Voodoo 2 literally felt like it was a generation ahead of the PSX game. I love that card to this day. The PC itself was quite underpowered though so it would struggle with some games.

            G-Police is another one that looks amazing with it although IIRC that one is Direct3D only.
            G-Police is a great example, because in that game you could uncap the framerate, whack up the resolution & draw distance, and increase the ambient traffic in the city to Fifth Element levels. Looked amazing.

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              #7
              Originally posted by Asura View Post
              How many people here owned some of the early PC 3D cards?

              Remember how it was weird that the Dreamcast was largely built with PC parts, and how the PowerVR2 graphics cards never came out due to Sega buying them all? Strange in retrospect but it was a big deal at the time, given how PCs and consoles differed.

              Anyone else have good memories of these?
              The Dreamcast wasn’t built with PC parts. The SH4 CPU was a cut above what x86 offered at time for calculating 3D stuff. And far smaller. The PVR graphics chip was eventually released for PCs in a fashion as the Neon 250. But even that didn’t have all of the features of the PVRDC chip and Direct X never exposed a lot of the PVR features.

              I really enjoyed that era of PC gaming. Started with an Orchid Righteous 3D Voodoo 1, then dual Creative Labs 12MB Voodoo 2s (Unreal at 1280 x 1024!), then a Voodoo 3 3500, a Voodoo 5 5500(dig that AA), a Prophet something Kyro and finally a Prophet 4500 (IIRC) Kyro 2. I was firmly back to consoles after that. I did experiment with a really early Power VR card but can’t remember the name of it but it only did point sampling. And I ran a Matrox M400(?) in a non gaming system. Lovely image quality from that card.

              Those early days showed a lot of promise stuff like Incoming, Mech Warrior, Unreal, Quake 2 etc. There was one particular helicopter combat game I really liked that was Glide only can’t remember the name of it though.
              I suppose I stuck with the 3dfx cards for so long as Glide support was often a factor in games running well.

              Although I do feel it took the console baseline catching up a bit before we got the better production values you associate with higher budget multi platform games.

              I’m waiting on a history of 3dfx book arriving that I had back on Kickstarter. If you hear the names Rampage, Sage and Gigapixel and wonder what could have been then your an auld saddo like me!
              Last edited by CMcK; 19-12-2019, 23:44.

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                #8
                I had a voodoo 3 2000 that I got to play Half Life on my Pentium 2. Still have that set up too.

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                  #9
                  Originally posted by Asura View Post
                  G-Police is a great example, because in that game you could uncap the framerate, whack up the resolution & draw distance, and increase the ambient traffic in the city to Fifth Element levels. Looked amazing.
                  That it does, pity the second game never made it over.

                  -edit-
                  I still remember playing the demo for Half Life 1 on a friend's PC who also had a Voodoo. I vividly remember watching the intro monorail sequence and seeing the mechs walking through radioactive ooze and being blow away by how good they looked. They still look good today tbh.

                  Then there was the Quake III demo. The Voodoo 2 starts to struggle a bit here but it was good enough for me and my friends at the time.
                  Last edited by Cepp; 20-12-2019, 09:54.

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                    #10
                    Originally posted by Cepp View Post
                    Colin Mcrae Rally 2 on my Voodoo 2 literally felt like it was a generation ahead of the PSX game. I love that card to this day. The PC itself was quite underpowered though so it would struggle with some games.

                    G-Police is another one that looks amazing with it although IIRC that one is Direct3D only.
                    The days when so many so-called PS exclusives were also on the PC. Never heard the PS generation back then, say I don't need a console and just game on the PC for better GFX and frame rates. LOL.

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                      #11
                      Originally posted by CMcK View Post
                      The Dreamcast wasn’t built with PC parts. The SH4 CPU was a cut above what x86 offered at time for calculating 3D stuff. And far smaller. The PVR graphics chip was eventually released for PCs in a fashion as the Neon 250. But even that didn’t have all of the features of the PVRDC chip and Direct X never exposed a lot of the PVR features.
                      That's fascinating to know. I didn't read extensively into it at the time; I just knew about the PowerVR card and the Windows CE connection, which at the time certainly made it feel like we were seeing a PC/console convergence.

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                        #12
                        Originally posted by Team Andromeda View Post
                        The days when so many so-called PS exclusives were also on the PC. Never heard the PS generation back then, say I don't need a console and just game on the PC for better GFX and frame rates. LOL.
                        Aye, Rollcage was another one. The game scales quite high if you have the horsepower.
                        Last edited by Cepp; 20-12-2019, 10:13.

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                          #13
                          Originally posted by Cepp View Post
                          Aye, Rollcage was another one. The game scales quite high if you have the horsepower.
                          Yeah, Colin McRae 1 & II looked amazing on the PC. Still have to be honest mind, even though I had them on the PC I rathered to play them on my brothers PS at the time.

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                            #14
                            I recently sold my voodoo 2 for pretty good money. I wish I'd kept all my other cards as they go for a fair bit now lol.

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                              #15
                              Originally posted by Team Andromeda View Post
                              Yeah, Colin McRae 1 & II looked amazing on the PC. Still have to be honest mind, even though I had them on the PC I rathered to play them on my brothers PS at the time.
                              Biggest issue with the PC versions for me was finding a decent controller. It was rough going for a long time. Even today I stick to using PS1 to USB adapter on my Windows 98 PC.

                              Originally posted by vanpeebles View Post
                              I recently sold my voodoo 2 for pretty good money. I wish I'd kept all my other cards as they go for a fair bit now lol.
                              Yeah, even the Voodoo Rush is expensive these days. I wish I'd gotten round to picking up every card I was interested in a decade ago.

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