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3dfx discussion/appreciation thread

Mr. Bluntman

Mr. Bluntman

Supreme [H]ardness
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Jun 25, 2007
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I don't know about all of you fellow [H]'ers, but 3dfx was/is a big reason why I'm so big into PC gaming to this day. After trying competing cards based upon S3's infamous ViRGE, Matrox's Mystique, or ATi's 3D Rage II let me down, I eventually reached for the box with monstrous greatness inside... And although I sadly do not have my original Monster 3D anymore, I still do have this-



So, with this coupled with an ultimate Socket7 Intel build I've been replaying the greats like Quake 1/2, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, MechWarrior 2, Screamer 2, and Tomb Raider from way back when. :D

Includes:
Intel Pentium MMX 233MHz
64MB SDRAM
Intel 430TX ATX motherboard with 512KB motherboard cache
Stealth 3D 2000 Pro 4MB
Sound Blaster 32 with 8MB soundfont RAM
20GB WD Hard Drive
52x32x52x CD/RW & 8x DVD-ROM
Win95 OSR2.5

Was very much the ultimate 1997 build, and would have drooled to have something like this when it was new

I will always be grateful I was alive to experience those exciting times.

What are some of your most fond memories of 3dfx or early 3D acceleration tech on the PC? Or some of your favorite games from the day that you played on 3dfx hardware?

P.S. snaps of your vintage 3D hardware are encouraged
 
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Recently I put together the following:

Intel Pentium II 450 @ 500MHz
384MB SDRAM
ASUS P2B-VM Motherboard (440BX Chipset)
Voodoo 3 2000 PCI
Integrated Sound
20GB HDD
12x CDRW
Windows 98SE

I've tried out Need for Speed games from the mid to late 90s, Quake 2-3, and a few others.

I have fond memories of 3dfx titles and games because whenever I'd see that 3dfx intro before playing a game - it just felt special. Kind of annoying later on because it was unskippable - but still special nonetheless.
 
Indeed those old VooDoo pieces are nice. Now, if you want to go all the way, find yourselves some old Aureal 8830 based sound cards, and try Half Life with A3D support and a good surround system.

Still hurts to this day. Creative....FU.
 
450 said:
I have fond memories of 3dfx titles and games because whenever I'd see that 3dfx intro before playing a game - it just felt special. Kind of annoying later on because it was unskippable - but still special nonetheless.
Click to expand...

Indeed it was special. You knew then that every time you saw that spinning logo that you were in for an amazing visual (for the time) experience. It still makes me smile seeing it to this day. :)

punisher said:
Indeed those old VooDoo pieces are nice. Now, if you want to go all the way, find yourselves some old Aureal 8830 based sound cards, and try Half Life with A3D support and a good surround system.

Still hurts to this day. Creative....FU.
Click to expand...

Once I get funds correct, I will have to invest in one of those, as well as a second Voodoo 5, but those are getting insanely pricey. I've never had the pleasure of having a A3D sound card, however, so that should be a treat.

Last I looked, working Pure3D cards are going for upwards of $250 on eBay. Makes me glad I managed to hang on to it all these years. Sadly I can't say the same about my V5 5500 AGP :(
 
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Oh boy this brings me back. I was about 13 or so when I got my first pc to call my own and before that I had pretty well only played on Voodoo Banshee setups at friends houses. My first video card purchase was naturally a V3 3000 PCI, shit they could have sold me on the box alone at the time.

FFW to now and I recently saw this beauty for sale locally and had to have it. It came with the original driver cd and the heavy ass cord for video purposes. All for $10.
Threw it in an old Barton core Sempron rig with an Asus board and 2x Kingston 512Mb HyperX and it made Half life fly. As it well should. I should get around to trying some older games as well.

I recently also saw a Voodoo 4 4500 for sale a couple hours from me. By the time I got a ride and contacted the seller it was gone. They only wanted $20 ffs....I will find one!

lavaheadache said:
You don't want pics of my vintage hardware collection. It would be dork overload. :)
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Don't tease me bro.
 
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punisher said:
Indeed those old VooDoo pieces are nice. Now, if you want to go all the way, find yourselves some old Aureal 8830 based sound cards, and try Half Life with A3D support and a good surround system.

Still hurts to this day. Creative....FU.
Click to expand...

A3D was incredible! It still baffles me how it seems like we had better HRTF available in '98 than we do now. I just don't understand how we have all this disposable processor power yet no attention is given to the sound!

Hopefully AMD TrueAudio helps turn things around.

Were Aureal 8830 cards the only ones to support A3D 2.0? It seems like A3D 2.0 cards didn't support 5.1 and only did 4.0 maximum. Is this correct?
 
I vividly remember the first time I installed a Voodoo3 into my AMD K6-2 475 (overclocked to a mighty 500mhz, which I can still remember the left, left, right, left jumper settings for) powered desktop and started playing UT99 and Asheron's Call. It was damn near a religious experience.
 
The Voodoo 2 was not my first 3D accelerator, but the Voodoo 2 changed my life.

Diamond Monster 3D Voodoo 2 12MB FTW Forever.

I still have it wrapped away safely, pass through dongle included.
 
I have my trusty diamond monster 3d 2 12 meg as well. Used to have a pair of them that I ran with an ati all in wonder card.

Brent, we should have a video card-athon. See who can one up the other with bad ass anceint cards in possession .
 
lavaheadache said:
I have my trusty diamond monster 3d 2 12 meg as well. Used to have a pair of them that I ran with an ati all in wonder card.

Brent, we should have a video card-athon. See who can one up the other with bad ass anceint cards in possession .
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I combined mine with the ATI Rage Xpert@Play 4MB, was the perfect combo, had the best 2D and video acceleration, combined with the best 3D. Was very proud of that combo. It is the best setup in the history of computing for me, and I did output it to my TV to play Need for Speed co-op with my step-brother side-by-side on the TV :p
 
Brent_Justice said:
I combined mine with the ATI Rage Xpert@Play 4MB, was the perfect combo, had the best 2D and video acceleration, combined with the best 3D. Was very proud of that combo. It is the best setup in the history of computing for me, and I did output it to my TV to play Need for Speed co-op with my step-brother side-by-side on the TV :p
Click to expand...

I do recall ATi's awesome video acceleration. It was one of the few things that impressed me about the Xpert @ Play and Xpression+ (I had the 4MB SGRAM version of the Xpression+, IIRC) cards. However I thought Matrox had the best overall 2D even through the G200/400 series? I know they were legendary back in the Millenium days. I'd still like to grab a Mystique or Millenium II for my Pentium MMX system to overcome some of the signal degradation from the 2D pass-thru. Or better yet, maybe a Tseng Labs ET6000 based board, complete with RAM upgrade. These things scream under DOS VESA 2.0 modes. :D

And TV output was a big reason (in addition to the 4MB of texture memory) why I swapped out my Monster 3D for the Pure3D. My N64 owning friends were so jealous when I fired up Turok on the big screen. :p
 
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I recently put together a couple vintage machines with VooDoo5 5500 AGP cards, found a bunch of them in some boxes that were getting thrown out at my office(!)
 
FLECOM said:
I recently put together a couple vintage machines with VooDoo5 5500 AGP cards, found a bunch of them in some boxes that were getting thrown out at my office(!)
Click to expand...

Damn, I'm jealous! Enjoy! If it wasn't for my ex fiancé I'd still have mine... Upon our parting she unceremoniously threw a can of Coke on my sample while the system it was running in was doing a disk defragmentation. :(
 
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Mine mine mine....on the wall.

3dfx-v56000.jpg
 
I still have my original Diamond Monster 3D, and one or two PIII / Celerons in one of my drawers. But I'm too lazy to make any of it work. I'd rather use a Glide Wrapper.
 
Is there any way to get one of the Spectere cards? The top-end dual-GPU model was supposed to be about as fast as two FX 5800 Ultras.
 
I really enjoyed my first build

AMD K6-2 @ 500mhz with 128Mb of PC100 SDRAM, 30Gb ATA-66 Maxtor HDD, Creative SB-Live OEM card and the Voodoo3 3000. I lusted after the 3500, but couldnt justify the funds at the time.

Went with the Glide due to Tribes being ever so awesome with Glide support. Playing on my friends K6-2 @ 350mhz, Voodoo2 SLI'd (and I forget his 2d card...) got me hooked on the 3dFX.

Only crappy part about that system was the via apollo chipset was picky as hell with my ethernet card at the time. Enjoyed many a BSOD until I dumped Linksys and went with the Netgear cards. Another semi-crappy thing about that Tyan trinity mobo, was when purchasing the K6-2 550 chip, had to up the voltage to get it stable. But man, all those jumpers bring back some good and some not-so-good memories.

Sad thing was that it was the days of "Upgrade everything every year" to stay current, which was quite difficult for my budget. Skipped the V4 models, and was salivating over the V5's, but times changed, Glide support went away for Direct-X and OpenGL, and I went to the Nvidia cards.
 
Bullitt said:
I really enjoyed my first build

AMD K6-2 @ 500mhz with 128Mb of PC100 SDRAM, 30Gb ATA-66 Maxtor HDD, Creative SB-Live OEM card and the Voodoo3 3000. I lusted after the 3500, but couldnt justify the funds at the time.

Went with the Glide due to Tribes being ever so awesome with Glide support. Playing on my friends K6-2 @ 350mhz, Voodoo2 SLI'd (and I forget his 2d card...) got me hooked on the 3dFX.

Only crappy part about that system was the via apollo chipset was picky as hell with my ethernet card at the time. Enjoyed many a BSOD until I dumped Linksys and went with the Netgear cards. Another semi-crappy thing about that Tyan trinity mobo, was when purchasing the K6-2 550 chip, had to up the voltage to get it stable. But man, all those jumpers bring back some good and some not-so-good memories.

Sad thing was that it was the days of "Upgrade everything every year" to stay current, which was quite difficult for my budget. Skipped the V4 models, and was salivating over the V5's, but times changed, Glide support went away for Direct-X and OpenGL, and I went to the Nvidia cards.
Click to expand...

I have many crap-tacular memories dealing with the VIA Apollo MVP chipset. I had an ASUS Super7 board with the MVP3 series that was actually an exception to the rule and was a joy to use. I can't comment about your NIC issues as I always used 3Com cards. And it's one thing that I don't miss was the yearly upgrades. My budget never allowed for it at the time, either. It was always bi or tri-annual at best, usually second hand.
 
FLECOM said:
is that a 366 celeron?
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I THINK it is a lapped 366, but honestly I do not remember.

Mr. Bluntman said:
Is that a mockup or does that bad boy actually fire up? I'm leaning towards no since the intel bridge chip were the source of the major problems with this board until 3dfx switched to HiNT ones
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That was actually a working board at one point but was an engineering sample used in 3dfx labs. It had a shit-ton of workarounds on it. I cut all those off as it was to only be used as a trophy.
 
I traded a Tyan motherboard to someone for the original 4MB Voodoo add-on 3d card. I had just started playing Half-life at the time, and will never forget how much better that game looked and played once the 3dfx card was installed. I had the 12GB add-on/pass through card after that, and later a Voodoo 3000 AGP (I think) before they went away.
 
Xilikon said:
I don't even remember if those Voodoo5 6000 cards were even for sale in public ?? I remember about talking about the power and that it needed a external power brick to run that card.
My foray in the 3dfx world started with a Diamond Monster Fuzion and the next one was the Voodoo3 2000 and I love them. I had fun running Diablo in Glide mode (back then, Glide graphics is superior to OpenGL).
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I think a few may have gotten out full retail ready. I know I've seen the 6000 boxes that's for sure. I'm sure any that were retail ready would have gone to company, friends and family first though.

Aye Glide was the shit back then. Sigh all this nostalgia. Makes me wish Nvidia had some sort of a 3DFX skunkworks team in house doing the batshit crazy one off stuff. Or at least call them Rampage.... Rampage 980 Oc has a nice ring to it :D
 
Xilikon said:
I don't even remember if those Voodoo5 6000 cards were even for sale in public ?? I remember about talking about the power and that it needed a external power brick to run that card.
Click to expand...

The Voodoo5 6000 never was in retail anywhere. 3dfx did however have working demos out and about. I got to play Quake2 at WinHEC 2000 in New Orleans. Got pictures to prove it. ;)
 
I tend to toss/sell all of my old hardware that I'm not actively using but the one card I kind of wish I would have kept was my Quantum 3D Obsidian X-24. It was the first consumer single-slot SLI card for the Voodoo 2 generation. I've been using SLI or Crossfire for every generation that it was available ever since.

As for 3dfx cards I still own, I've got an old Win98SE machine with a Voodoo 5 5500 in it. VM software has gotten to the point that I rarely ever need to actually use it anymore, but I keep it around for the rare games that give me trouble.

As for 3dfx in general, I'll never forget when I got my Voodoo 1 in October of 1996. The first AAA game to get support was Tomb Raider and it was an amazing experience. You had to be there at the time to truly appreciate what an incredible leap in performance and visual quality it was. I still kind of miss the loud clunk that the analog switch made when the card took over.

And don't even get me started on GlQuake which hit a few months later. I had LAN parties practically every week for the next 5 years after that...
 
Yeah when i added Diamond Monster 3D to my Matrox Millennium II in 1997 and started Tomb Raider for the first Time in Glide mode, with locked 30FPS damn unforgettable lifetime moment.
That brought tears to my eyes, the difference was so drastic and revolutionary for its time that nothing can yet replace that feeling.

The only thing that come close to that magic moment was when i fired up Elite Dangerous in Oculus DK2.

I wish i still had the First ever 3DFx in my possession, but sold it at the time to finance Voodoo II SLi
and kept doing that till today with every upgrade cycle.
 
gamingarena23 said:
Yeah when i added Diamond Monster 3D to my Matrox Millennium II in 1997 and started Tomb Raider for the first Time in Glide mode, with locked 30FPS damn unforgettable lifetime moment.
That brought tears to my eyes, the difference was so drastic and revolutionary for its time that nothing can yet replace that feeling.
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for me it was Quake II but the feeling was the same... from software rendering to glide, wow!
 
I bought a V3 3000 AGP card from the Hastings at the time along with the game Kingpin. I remember spending the whole night tearing my mother's Sony VAIO PC at the time apart to put it in!
 
Xilikon said:
I don't even remember if those Voodoo5 6000 cards were even for sale in public ?? I remember about talking about the power and that it needed a external power brick to run that card.

My foray in the 3dfx world started with a Diamond Monster Fuzion and the next one was the Voodoo3 2000 and I love them. I had fun running Diablo in Glide mode (back then, Glide graphics is superior to OpenGL).
Click to expand...

The 6000 never hit retail but the 5500 did. Not in large quantities but you can find some original boxes still.
 
Trimlock said:
The 6000 never hit retail but the 5500 did. Not in large quantities but you can find some original boxes still.
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With the recent 3dfx mania on fleabay, things are getting nuts over there. Honestly they aren't worth what they're charging (I'd rather buy a used 2500K and a GTX 670 for that much!). Only saw one boxed set my last check yesterday.

Any of you used a Voodoo Graphics with a Pentium Pro? I am aware it may actually be slower in 16-bit applications, but I'm hedging on improvements in more intensive 3D titles. May have a freebie on the way, just waiting to hear back about it. Hopefully it will have some extra grunt compared to the Pentium MMX I am using now in the titles that need it. Haven't seen any benches IIRC of such a setup, and would make for an interesting experiment
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
Was very much the ultimate 1997 build, and would have drooled to have something like this when it was new

I will always be grateful I was alive to experience those exciting times.
Click to expand...

Oh, if only I had been a bit older back then to have had the money to build such a system, you're so lucky!
I do remember having good times with my 80386SX and Trident 512KB back in the early 90's, ah those were the days.
 
still running my Retro Rig
I recently sold off my entire 3dfx collection except my Voodoo2 SLI Diamonds

my Retro Rig consists of

XP2200+
AGP 68000GT
SBAudigy
V2 12MB / SLI
2Gb DDR1
120Gb HDD
PS2 Keyboard + PS Mouse
1280x1024 LCD Square monitor


It has a dual HDD setup one with win98SE and one with Windows XP

works well with DOS, Win98, XP

I'm in the works now on building an arcade style type cabinet for it, which it'll hopefully be more of a like a fun little "showcase" type setup for my boys to see what the "good old day" where like lol

Love this little bix
 
I really don't understand the lovefest for 3DFX. They were mostly lucky early-on, and showed their lack of decision making for nearly every step thereafter.

When Q3Test was released in April 1999, it marked the end of the 16-bit, 256x256 era. And yet, 3dfx managed to release a card without those features in the same month Q3Test became available.

That's not the image of a gamer-oriented company, that's the image of a company with it's head firmly up it's ass. I have no fond memories of them, and don't understand those that do.
 
Red Falcon said:
Oh, if only I had been a bit older back then to have had the money to build such a system, you're so lucky!
I do remember having good times with my 80386SX and Trident 512KB back in the early 90's, ah those were the days.
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I am a bit older, and I was in the same boat. In '97 I had a Pentium 133MHz with 256K motherboard cache, 2.1GB hard drive, 32MB of EDO DRAM, SB AWE32 PnP with 512K onboard, S3 Trio64+ 2MB, and a Diamond Monster 3D. Only after they were obsolete did I obtain my current Pure3D.

My first system was a Packard Bell (un-affectionately called Packard Hell) 486 DX2/66 with 8MB, 540MB HD, with 1MB Cirrus Logic ISA video - bought at the end of 1994. In hindsight I should have reached for a Pentium 90 or 100MHz system. Ever since then I made it a point to educate myself about PC hardware, never making the same mistake. That thing spent more time in the repair shop than it did on my desk. :(

defaultluser said:
I really don't understand the lovefest for 3DFX. They were mostly lucky early-on, and showed their lack of decision making for nearly every step thereafter.

When Q3Test was released in April 1999, it marked the end of the 16-bit, 256x256 era. And yet, 3dfx managed to release a card without those features in the same month Q3Test became available.

That's not the image of a gamer-oriented company, that's the image of a company with it's head firmly up it's ass. I have no fond memories of them, and don't understand those that do.
Click to expand...

While it's true after Voodoo2 they were behind the curve, and ultimately their ignorant decisions that caused them to fold and be purchased by NVIDIA, many of us have some of our fondest memories playing 3dfx accelerated games. That's the point of this thread, so that those of us who remember can appreciate and reminisce about these experiences.
 
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