My video card collection's website - The Golden Era of 3D Acceleration

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[EOCF] Tim

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Hi,

Some of you might know me on here, some not.

My name is Timber (or Tim for short) and I’ve been collecting video cards for quite some time now. Back in December I decided to make a website for my collection. It’s called The Golden Era of 3D Acceleration, and it covers all high end graphics cards from the very beginning of 3D in 1994, to 2003. The site contains many retail cards and also some very rare pieces of hardware, including prototypes.

This is purely a hobby, I’m not a 3D professional in any way, I’ve just got a big passion for 3D acceleration, games, and the hardware that runs them.

My goal is to keep this part of early 3D acceleration alive, sort of like a hardware museum if you like.

I don’t particularly like websites that are a work in progress, but I had to choose from either showing my collection already, or wait a long time for all the info on the cards to be completed.

Please have a look, and let me know what you think of it, either on here, or via [email protected]

The main picture gallery is under “The Collection – Golden Era” and then select the appropriate year.

www.tga3dx.com

Thanks! :)
 
Cool site, you just need more info on the cards, the company, and the climate(s) during those years. I'm digging it.
 
looka interesting.. nice collection. some of those prototypes look crazy..
 
Nice, I will look through your collection and offer any help I can regarding your cards.

I have a nice memory of the era myself, although mine only goes back to 1997 :D

EDIT:

Can you please increase the default font size inside The Collection? It's very tiny. I know you want to display lots of information, but we're used to scrolling down to read the entire passage.
 
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good stuff, i remember most of those cards. looks like you need to get updated with more info because at this point its PHAIL for not having any info on the 3Dfx cards.
i found a NV1 in one of our labs at MS.....i was the only person who even knew wtf it was, it made me sad
 
That's a pretty cool site. I wasn't really that in to computers back then although I recognize a few of those cards as ones we have at the office... lol.
 
Something should be mentioned about the Voodoo 5 5500 being the first card to introduce Anti-Aliasing- Never could play games on anyone else's computer after that.
 
Griff805 said:
Something should be mentioned about the Voodoo 5 5500 being the first card to introduce Anti-Aliasing- Never could play games on anyone else's computer after that.
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sorry man, it wasnt the first card that it worked on. maybe the first you could use it with but not the first that it worked on
 
Griff805 said:
Something should be mentioned about the Voodoo 5 5500 being the first card to introduce Anti-Aliasing- Never could play games on anyone else's computer after that.
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Are you nuts?

The Rendition v1000 could do edge anti-aliasing at full-speed using native RRedline-ported games. Check out vQuake to see the best example (pay close attention to the r_antialias setting, you set it to 7 to anti-alias the whole world).

I played this game at 640x480 with edge anti-aliasing on my overclocked Hercules Thriller 3D Rendition v2200 and got 30fps!

As for cards that do MSAA in any game without special coding, the GeForce 3 was the first card with MSAA. Prior cards could do SSAA (with a huge performance hit).

The Voodoo 5 is only special for using RGSS, which looked damn good compared to previous methods. Beyond that, it still sucked because there was a huge performance hit enabling it (performance drops by 1/2 for 2xAA and by 3/4 with 4xAA). Anything above 800x600 was unplayable with 4xAA, depending on the game (see here).

The industry went with MSAA precisely because it didn't have the huge performance hit, and once everyone caught-up, RGMS it looked almost as good as RGSS. Even the industry's first attempt, the GeForce 3, typically dropped %40 performance for 2xAA and %65 performance for 4xAA, which was an improvement over the %50 and %75 of super-sampling. More modern cards have dropped this deficit even more, while super-sampling still has the same old costs.
 
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defaultluser said:
Are you nuts?

The Rendition v1000 could do edge anti-aliasing at full-speed using native RRedline-ported games. Check out vQuake to see the best example (pay close attention to the r_antialias setting, you set it to 7 to anti-alias the whole world).

I played this game at 640x480 with edge anti-aliasing on my overclocked Hercules Thriller 3D Rendition v2200 and got 30fps!

As for cards that do MSAA in any game without special coding, the GeForce 3 was the first card with MSAA. Prior cards could do SSAA (with a huge performance hit).

The Voodoo 5 is only special for using RGSS, which looked damn good compared to previous methods. Beyond that, it still sucked because there was a huge performance hit enabling it (performance drops by 1/2 for 2xAA and by 3/4 with 4xAA). Anything above 800x600 was unplayable with 4xAA, depending on the game (see here).

The industry went with MSAA precisely because it didn't have the huge performance hit, and once everyone caught-up, RGMS it looked almost as good as RGSS. Even the industry's first attempt, the GeForce 3, typically dropped %40 performance for 2xAA and %65 performance for 4xAA, which was an improvement over the %50 and %75 of super-sampling. More modern cards have dropped this deficit even more, while super-sampling still has the same old costs.
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Lol, sorry- I was probably 14 when I got the card and just believed all the marketing I heard about the card. I thought I read it somewhere on the box. All I know is that the PQ was tons better than anything else I saw at the time, even for a few years after... and that Halo picture on the back of the box looked insane at the time.
 
defaultluser said:
Nice, I will look through your collection and offer any help I can regarding your cards.

I have a nice memory of the era myself, although mine only goes back to 1997 :D

EDIT:

Can you please increase the default font size inside The Collection? It's very tiny. I know you want to display lots of information, but we're used to scrolling down to read the entire passage.
Click to expand...

I will check it out, try and bump it up one. Thanks for pointing it out. :)

Griff805 said:
Lol, sorry- I was probably 14 when I got the card and just believed all the marketing I heard about the card. I thought I read it somewhere on the box. All I know is that the PQ was tons better than anything else I saw at the time, even for a few years after... and that Halo picture on the back of the box looked insane at the time.
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It had fantastic image quality, shame it wasn't as fast as it should have been though, hence the Voodoo 5 6000 with 4 VSA-100 chips. That could do 8x :)
 
Okay, just a few things:

1. You don't have a Rendition Verite v1000 card under 1996. I can post a picture if you want one.

2. The Rage Pro Turbo listed under 1998 is the exact same chipset as the Rage Pro. ATI released a driver update named "Rage Pro Turbo" that they claimed increased performance by %40, but it actually hurt performance in most games. The driver update was recalled, but the new name stuck.

3. Permedia III was announced in 1998, but was delayed until spring of 1999. It would have performed well against the crop of cards in 1998, but in 1999 it got trampled. It is confusing because you have entries for this chip in 1998 and 1999.

4. Same thing goes for the Voodoo 5 5500 as above, a delay of one year between announcement and ship date, which meant the 5500 was thoroughly outmatched by the GeForce 2 and crushed months later by the GeForce 3.
 
Oh god I'm getting so much nostalgia right now. I miss the days of the ati 9700 pro: it was like jesus came to computers. Such a fine card.
 
defaultluser said:
Okay, just a few things:

1. You don't have a Rendition Verite v1000 card under 1996. I can post a picture if you want one.

2. The Rage Pro Turbo listed under 1998 is the exact same chipset as the Rage Pro. ATI released a driver update named "Rage Pro Turbo" that they claimed increased performance by %40, but it actually hurt performance in most games. The driver update was recalled, but the new name stuck.

3. Permedia III was announced in 1998, but was delayed until spring of 1999. It would have performed well against the crop of cards in 1998, but in 1999 it got trampled. It is confusing because you have entries for this chip in 1998 and 1999.

4. Same thing goes for the Voodoo 5 5500 as above, a delay of one year between announcement and ship date, which meant the 5500 was thoroughly outmatched by the GeForce 2 and crushed months later by the GeForce 3.
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I've decided to list the cards on their announcement date, not on their actual release date, hence that answers some of your questions.

I know the Rage Pro Turbo was just a driver update, but since they rebranded the whole chip as Turbo, I decided to list that one as a seperate card.

The Permedia III from Formac was announced in 1999, Formac was a card manufacturer for Mac, and their designs usually differed greatly from the normal PC based cards. Hence the two different entries.

Well, again the V5 was announced back then, it was either listing them on when they were released, or when they were announced, I chose the first. :)
 
thats one great collection of cards! and good work on the site too, keep at it. i really enjoyed what you have already.

makes me sad that my crazy dad tossed out my voodoo 3 2000 in perfect working order...that bastard! that thing overclocked like a bitch!
 
Heh. I remember when my Geforce2 was a big deal to get. It's only good for my retro gamer-rig now, but still works great.

As mentioned, some background on the cards would be good.
 
Thanks to the feedback of you guys, I fixed one or two things, the search in Overview page, is now fixed. Also the Company History page on 3dfx, is now fixed. :)
 
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Looks good, from what I saw.

(If you ever decide to sell your FX5800 Ultra, drop me a PM. ;))
 
Where is the top of the line matrox 4 meg that I started off with,and by the way.It was the first 3d video card out.It came with crash up derby if I rememberI know it was some game like that anyway.My next card.The intense voodoo.Your project is great,but your work is cut out for you.Remember glide,and if you dont.You really have your work cut out for you.but good luck on your project.
 
Awesome! I love old 3dfx cards. I'm still running a PC with a Voodoo Banshee in it.
 
As promised, here is a picture of my Rendition v1000 card, the Sierra Screamin'3D!

It's a Canopus Total3D relabeled, and without the 3D glasses output.

Here's a link to another v1000 card, the Miro Royal Flush, just in case you want to add more v1000 cards to your "to get" list.

352gkgl.jpg


I see now that you have a nice collection of the v1000 cards. Your site is confusing because everything is listed by announcement date, and not actual release date (in this case, announced in 1995 and released in 1996).

I noticed that on your website that the announcement silicon in 1995 has the revision V1000L-E, and my chipset is revision P. Probably stands for EXPERIMENTAL/EVALUATION and PRODUCTION, lol.
 
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Ah it dumped what I was typing and I only got the last part so just delete this post as it does not make sense with only the last piece.
 
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MR_PERFECT said:
Where is the top of the line matrox 4 meg that I started off with,and by the way.It was the first 3d video card out.It came with crash up derby if I rememberI know it was some game like that anyway.My next card.The intense voodoo.Your project is great,but your work is cut out for you.Remember glide,and if you dont.You really have your work cut out for you.but good luck on your project.
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Which one do you mean? Millenium? Impression Plus? Mystique? They are all there. :)

drakken said:
Ah it dumped what I was typing and I only got the last part so just delete this post as it does not make sense with only the last piece.
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Very nice card, I think it was the only time that a games developer released a card of their own. That one is quite rare now actually.

I'm not quite sure what the -P stands for, I think it's another revision, with mpeg acceleration perhaps.
 
This is such an amazing collection. Can't wait to see the site when all the information is added.
 
k96gnome said:
This is such an amazing collection. Can't wait to see the site when all the information is added.
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Keep checking back now and then, it's pretty hectic atm with getting married etc, but after that I should have some more time. :)
 
Due to the feedback received on the initial, tricky to use menu, I've changed the navigation menu from 2 drop down boxes to one. The main gallery is accessed by clicking on the "Golden Era" link from the "The Collection" drop down box.

From there you can select which year you want to look at.

Hopefully this will make browsing a tad easier and less confusing for newcomers, and easier to use. Please let me know if you think so. :)

I should be getting a lightbox soon, to take some more professional pictures of the cards.

http://www.tga3dx.com/Golden-Era.html
 
My 9800 at it's finest. God that was, er is (since I still have it :D ) a beautiful card. And so is the box art =P

 
Nice site, the history of the cards is interesting, and seeing so many manufactors at the beginning was interesting, compared to today, only having 2, soon to be 3 different chip designs.
 
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