NVIDIA GeForce FX Named Best Graphics Processor of 2002

Yawn on so many levels.
FX isnt a GPU.
They were crap, floating point performance sucked.
No problem if you degraded to 16bit colour to bring the framerate back up.
Last but not least, are you in a time warp?

Why post a 2002 article on a 2002 GPU series?
Is this to spread bad word about NVidia?
 
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I've got an XFX 5200 with the outer box.. Bought it basically to run Doom 3 better. I don't remember framerates in Doom 3, but Nascar Racing 2003 would pull 27 frames with like 10 cars on the track. I was a dumb kid and thought that because movies were 29 fps that anything 20+ was just fine.
 
some of us are still living in 2001 / 2002, man

I hear ya, those were pretty good years for PC gaming.

I miss reading PC Gamer, Maximum PC & PC accelerator Magazines. Every now and then I read them on Google Books.
 
I've got an XFX 5200 with the outer box.. Bought it basically to run Doom 3 better. I don't remember framerates in Doom 3, but Nascar Racing 2003 would pull 27 frames with like 10 cars on the track. I was a dumb kid and thought that because movies were 29 fps that anything 20+ was just fine.
I bought a 5900XT based on the [H] review (my first BFGTech video card!). I had midrange money as a kid and was deciding between it and the 9600XT. I ran Doom 3 on it with a highly customized config file at 1280x960 with good detail around 40-60 FPS. What was really fun was getting Doom 3 to run on my dad's PC with a MX440. I think we finally managed to get it to run at 20-25 FPS at 800x600, and the game basically looked like it was using phong shading on everything. It's too bad I could never get Half-Life 2 to run right on the 5900XT since it didn't have full DirectX 9 support. I don't recall how NR2003 ran, but I know I didn't have any issues. I think a good CPU was just as, if not more, important as the GPU in that game. I had an Athlon XP 2000+.
 
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I bought a 5900XT based on the [H] review (my first BFGTech video card!). I had midrange money as a kid and was deciding between it and the 9600XT. I ran Doom 3 on it with a highly customized config file at 1280x960 with good detail around 40-60 FPS. What was really fun was getting Doom 3 to run on my dad's PC with a MX440. I think we finally managed to get it to run at 20-25 FPS at 800x600, and the game basically looked like it was using phong shading on everything. It's too bad I could never get Half-Life 2 to run right on the 5900XT since it didn't have full DirectX 9 support. I don't recall how NR2003 ran, but I know I didn't have any issues. I think a good CPU was just as, if not more, important as the GPU in that game. I had an Athlon XP 2000+.

I had a 440 mx at first which was a slide show with Doom. Then I got the FX 5200 and more ram, and then it was playable. My box was a Sempron 2500 but I had it overclocked to 1.8 ghz, and it displayed as an Athlon at that point. It was just the best computer I could scrape together on a 14 year old's wage
 
I had a 440 mx at first which was a slide show with Doom. Then I got the FX 5200 and more ram, and then it was playable. My box was a Sempron 2500 but I had it overclocked to 1.8 ghz, and it displayed as an Athlon at that point. It was just the best computer I could scrape together on a 14 year old's wage
I had an FX5200 for a short bit, and I quickly realized it was inadequate for most games. Moved to an FX 5700 which was a big leap in comparison, but I didnt really enjoy Doom 3 in higher settings until I moved to the 6600GT. The 6 series was a big upgrade over the FX series.
I bought a 5900XT based on the [H] review (my first BFGTech video card!). I had midrange money as a kid and was deciding between it and the 9600XT. I ran Doom 3 on it with a highly customized config file at 1280x960 with good detail around 40-60 FPS. What was really fun was getting Doom 3 to run on my dad's PC with a MX440. I think we finally managed to get it to run at 20-25 FPS at 800x600, and the game basically looked like it was using phong shading on everything. It's too bad I could never get Half-Life 2 to run right on the 5900XT since it didn't have full DirectX 9 support. I don't recall how NR2003 ran, but I know I didn't have any issues. I think a good CPU was just as, if not more, important as the GPU in that game. I had an Athlon XP 2000+.
My brother picked an FX 5900XT back then and we never had any issues running HL2. Even ran Lost Coast with the HDR stuff pretty well.
 
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Ah FX. Something Nvidia and I would like to forget.

When Doom 3 dropped, so did my frames. All due to running this piece of shit. (bonus points for those that can name it)

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So I went out and got me an EVGA FX 5700Ultra. Doom 3 went from a slide show to around 35-40FPS @ 1280x1024 @ med settings. Needed 256MB of VRAM to run high settings. I solved that by getting a Leadtek/WinFast A400GT(6800GT).

Meanwhile my wife wanted an upgrade for her Pogo games box 1.7GHz Celery and onboard video, so got her a BFG FX 5500 OC PCI, and she was overjoyed.:ROFLMAO:
 
Meanwhile the Radeon 9500 non pro was the shit.

Same memory buss as the 9700, and could have the additional pipes unlocked to get a 9700 non pro in effect.
 
Ah FX. Something Nvidia and I would like to forget.

When Doom 3 dropped, so did my frames. All due to running this piece of shit. (bonus points for those that can name it)

View attachment 94411


So I went out and got me an EVGA FX 5700Ultra. Doom 3 went from a slide show to around 35-40FPS @ 1280x1024 @ med settings. Needed 256MB of VRAM to run high settings. I solved that by getting a Leadtek/WinFast A400GT(6800GT).

Meanwhile my wife wanted an upgrade for her Pogo games box 1.7GHz Celery and onboard video, so got her a BFG FX 5500 OC PCI, and she was overjoyed.:ROFLMAO:
Says what it is right at the top: SiS 315. The supposed GeForce MX killer.
 
Says what it is right at the top: SiS 315. The supposed GeForce MX killer.

Yeah I thought about painting that out too, bonus points for you sir since you nailed it. Joytech Apollo 3D Thrill 315 128MB , what a mouthful for a worthless card.
 
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In 2003 I was smart enough as a teen to get a pc with 9600 pro when it was competing with FX cards and ran Doom with Far Cry relatively good. I wasn’t smart enough when paired it with P4 with HT instead of some Athlon instead though.

I had my FX-5600 paired with a Barton XP 2800+. My buddy had a Radeon 9600 Pro. Not only did he get the better card he got HL2 for free with it.
 
All this has me wanting to rebuild my old box. Since I still have the 5200, and an unknown 5800 Ultra ( have to find it ).. I also still have the CPU/ mobo from my build from back then and I think 2gb of ram. Could put it all in a spare but beat up Cooler Master Elite 310. I have IDE optical and hard drives laying around as well
 
All this has me wanting to rebuild my old box. Since I still have the 5200, and an unknown 5800 Ultra ( have to find it ).. I also still have the CPU/ mobo from my build from back then and I think 2gb of ram. Could put it all in a spare but beat up Cooler Master Elite 310. I have IDE optical and hard drives laying around as well
You can actually pickup PATA SSDs now and add a surprising boost to those old systems. Even 20 years ago we were held back by our storage devices.
 
cool. I'll probably test the old hardware first though. I'll have to buy a power supply though
 
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Will a modern power supply power my old board? I kind of blew up the power supply I had from the old box, running some DC projects for the forum a while ago

Soyo K7M-333 Fwiw
 
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I see that you're still obsessed with the FX series :) (we exchanged a few PM's 2 years ago, if you recall)

I'm still running my good old Radeon 9600 Pro in my P4 system, but I've been considering augmenting that with something Nvidia of that period, perhaps a Geforce4 Ti4600... I got a 6800 Ultra and a 7800GTX now but those may be a little too new for this.
 
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Will a modern power supply power my old board? I kind of blew up the power supply I had from the old box, running some DC projects for the forum a while ago

Soyo K7M-333 Fwiw

K7 = Athlon XP, most of those used the old 20pin power connectors so if you have a 24-pin only connector (non-detachable 4pin) it may interfere with some chokes or capacitors (as was the case with one of my boards, had to swap the 24pin ATX connector to a 20+4pin one from another PSU to use it). Another problem will be that most Socket A stuff, at least prior to 2004 was powered off 5V as opposed to 12V that modern PC's draw most of the power from (regardless of how many pins they had on ATX). With good PSU OEM's like Delta, Lite-On, Zippy this unusual crossloading won't be an issue but some of the cheap crappy brands may have ripple or voltages outside of the correct range if drawing too much on 5V.

Despite all of that, it will likely be a better idea to use a (good) new PSU to avoid dead capacitors, which cause infinitely more damage than anything outlined above. Personally I go with the best, I have a 2012 Delta Electronics 300W PSU powering my retro P4 rig, and it's been doing a great job at that.

Seasonic seems to be popular on this forum, and they are fine with voltage/ripple/crossload but most of their PSU's have got incredibly fragile PFC controller chips made by Infineon, that tend to fail, as was the case with my S12II. I would avoid them because of that. Go with something that has a PFC chip based off Champion Micro CM6800 design, or no PFC.
 
So pretty much a quality board that has 20+4 connector or just 20 pin connector
 
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So pretty much a quality board that has 20+4 connector or just 20 pin connector

Yes but if you get a consumer grade PSU's the quality aspect will be the difficult part. I mentioned 3 OEM's that I trust for this application (Delta, Zippy, Lite-On) and with the exception of one Antec PSU based on a Delta design there are currently no consumer brands that rebadge their PSU's, even mid-range and some high end it's mostly CWT/Great Wall/HEC based junk which tends to have bad crossloading results. Currently OEM and server grade PSU's tend to be fairly adequate though.

I didn't find any picture of your board online, so you'll have to check for yourself whether a 24-pin will fit, many times it's fine and there is nothing on the board blocking the extra pins.

This PSU should be OEM Delta Electronics: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371033
(the D usually stands for Delta in Antec product codes)
 
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Ran an Athlon XP 2600 back then with a 9700Pro on an Nforce 2 mainboard in a Lian Li case. Ah the good old days. Return to Castle Wolfenstein played so well...

I believe we called the NVIDIA 5XXX series dustbusters due to their fans.
 
I was a dumb kid and thought that because movies were 29 fps that anything 20+ was just fine.

Film movies run at 24 fps lol. I was a film projectionist for several years. I think you're confusing the NTSC standard which is 29.97 FPS for color and 30 fps for black and white.

The reason it works with film is because of motion blur, games at the time didn't have that. Though there were some movies where 24 fps did create problems, like the large panning scenes in LOTR where things start to get jumpy. Later films tried to avoid large perspective panning scenes, Avatar looked really good on film. In my opinion was better quality than the digital version we had at the same time, likely due to the anamorphic widescreen.
 
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powered off 5V as opposed to 12V that modern PC's draw most of the power from (regardless of how many pins they had on ATX). With good PSU OEM's like Delta, Lite-On, Zippy this unusual crossloading won't be an issue but some of the cheap crappy brands may have ripple or voltages outside of the correct range if drawing too much on 5V.

It's better to look for a PSU with a strong 5V rail, picking any PSU that's a "good" brand isn't enough. Later Athlon XP CPUs had a TDP of 89W and could regularly draw more than that, which is dangerously close to the power limits of 5V rails on modern supplies. And since modern supplies often lump the 3.3v and 5v rails off the same regulator, you have even less breathing room.

Despite all of that, it will likely be a better idea to use a (good) new PSU to avoid dead capacitors, which cause infinitely more damage than anything outlined above.

It's actually better to recap old power supplies and use them rather than force a modern PSU into overload constantly. I recap PSUs all the time because manufacturers didn't learn from the capacitor plague and still use shitty capacitors like CapXon, OST, Teapo and United Chemi-Con. You'll need the practice because many of these old boards have shitty caps on them as well which have either already failed, or on their way to failing.
 
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Yeah, I meant NTSC/ DVD 29.97 fps or basically 30 fps.
Film movies run at 24 fps lol. I was a film projectionist for several years. I think you're confusing the NTSC standard which is 29.97 FPS for color and 30 fps for black and white.

The reason it works with film is because of motion blur, games at the time didn't have that. Though there were some movies where 24 fps did create problems, like the large panning scenes in LOTR where things start to get jumpy. Later films tried to avoid large perspective panning scenes, Avatar looked really good on film. In my opinion was better quality than the digital version we had at the same time, likely due to the anamorphic widescreen.
 
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Overhyped, overpriced, etc., yes, but once people who bought them became eager to dump them for a pittance, these cards still came in handy.

I remember picking up a bunch of 5200 FX cards pretty cheaply, and giving them to various friends of mine in the world of Team Fortress Classic. Those guys were still stuck on cheap, software rendering only graphics cards, and were struggling to play TFC in 640x480 mode.

They were quite grateful at that, especially considering that these cards were giving performance somewhere between a GeForce 2 Ti and a GeForce 3 Ti 200. Playing TFC in 1024 x 768, true color mode, suddenly became a reality.
 
From article:
Gamers eager to realize the full potential of titles such as Doom III and Unreal II -- and developers creating even more advanced software -- will plunk down the big bucks for these boards right away.
Wow, this brings back memories.
I remember the first GPU I ever purchased (with my own money) was a BFG Tech FX5200 256MB OC AGP 8x - and I played DOOM 3 on it at ~40FPS @ 640x480, and just loving it.

Oh how far we have come in all those years.
Thank you erek for sharing this - I don't know how you found that specific article, but if you find more, please share! (y)
 
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It's better to look for a PSU with a strong 5V rail, picking any PSU that's a "good" brand isn't enough. Later Athlon XP CPUs had a TDP of 89W and could regularly draw more than that, which is dangerously close to the power limits of 5V rails on modern supplies. And since modern supplies often lump the 3.3v and 5v rails off the same regulator, you have even less breathing room.

It's actually better to recap old power supplies and use them rather than force a modern PSU into overload constantly. I recap PSUs all the time because manufacturers didn't learn from the capacitor plague and still use shitty capacitors like CapXon, OST, Teapo and United Chemi-Con. You'll need the practice because many of these old boards have shitty caps on them as well which have either already failed, or on their way to failing.

I have done my share of PSU and motherboard recaps. While recapping an old 5V heavy unit is a good idea in theory, in many cases it's not worth the effort, depending on the make and model of the power supply it may not be the best option. The average PSU's people used in 2001-2005 tended to not only have low quality capacitors but were also based on inefficient topologies and cheaped out on cooling heatsinks + a lot of them had misleading or false output power ratings. But if we're talking about the old Delta-based Antec Truepower or an Enermax then I think those are worth recapping and will do well for this application, but the majority of 5V heavy units made after 1999 I would personally stay away from. Before recommending that you also have to consider whether the person is up for the task, especially if he hasn't done any electronics repair before, you should not assume everyone has the skills to do that (recaps can be difficult for a novice, due to the unleaded solder used nowadays).

On paper most modern PSU's allow a max of 100-120W on 5V+3.3V, but certain OEM's underrate that and you can actually pull more while staying within acceptable DC quality range, Delta PSU's are a good example of this which is why I recommend that OEM. Most Athlon XP's stay within a 68W TDP unless you overclock them, and if you do, you're probably better off getting an XP-M like most of us did back in the day. The other option is to use a modern PSU with DC-DC converters, assuming it has enough amps on 5V, it would eliminate the voltage regulation issues present with group regulated designs. Additionally Pentium 4 Northwood systems are more power efficient, despite their reputation (which is mostly based on the later Prescott chips that had a longer pipeline). Later P4 motherboards pull their power from 12V like modern systems, that combined with SSE2 support is why anyone looking to purchase components from this era would be better off with P4 (obviously not relevant to those who already own Socket A hardware).

It puzzles me why you would include UCC in your list of bad capacitor manufacturers, is it a typo? United Chemi-Con is the US subsidiary of Nippon Chemi-Con, a Japanese manufacturer of high quality capacitors and most of their stuff is top notch, with the notable exception of the earlier KZG series which had issues (mostly used in motherboards). For example, my Seasonic S12II from 2014 uses exclusively NCC KZE series capacitors on its secondary side, and they do not seem to be problematic. Teapo is arguably an OK brand nowadays, I would trust them in newer stuff because in the last decade they have made several improvements both to their electrolyte formula and also their supply chain, I have heard something about them sourcing raw materials from Japan now instead of China (low purity aluminum is one of the key reasons Chinese capacitors don't fare well). Anything pre-2010 Teapo should be repaced on sight however.
 
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While recapping an old 5V heavy unit is a good idea in theory, in many cases it's not worth the effort, depending on the make and model of the power supply it may not be the best option. The average PSU's people used in 2001-2005 tended to not only have low quality capacitors but were also based on inefficient topologies and cheaped out on cooling heatsinks + a lot of them had misleading or false output power ratings. But if we're talking about the old Delta-based Antec Truepower or an Enermax then I think those are worth recapping and will do well for this application, but the majority of 5V heavy units made after 1999 I would personally stay away from. Before recommending that you also have to consider whether the person is up for the task, especially if he hasn't done any electronics repair before, you should not assume everyone has the skills to do that (recaps can be difficult for a novice, due to the unleaded solder used nowadays).

You can't blame PSUs for using half wave topologies 20 years ago, because the majority of power supply companies were doing it, even the really good ones. This was an era where a 350W PSU was considered overkill for anything but servers, and having a half wave topology in a unit with that type of power draw is nothing to scoff at. I do however disagree that Antec made great designs back then, they were utter garbage. They had an infatuation with using weird non-standard Fuhjyyu capacitors and having their PSUs run silent. This caused high failure rates because the fans on some units literally would never spin up, even if the unit was hotter than the surface of the sun internally. You could literally smell things burning inside the PSU and the fan would still never kick on, or run so slowly that it would move no air. Fuhjyyu capacitors had a defective electrolyte that could not tolerate heat and would rapidly fail. I remember having to open up dozens of their units and performing mods to the fan circuitry to keep the fans running at all times.

Before recommending that you also have to consider whether the person is up for the task, especially if he hasn't done any electronics repair before, you should not assume everyone has the skills to do that (recaps can be difficult for a novice, due to the unleaded solder used nowadays).

If anyone in this day and age wants to dabble in computers from 10+ years ago, being able to at least solder through-hole components is a requirement. If not power supplies, motherboards are going to have failing capacitors and those are getting scarcer by the day. Unlike PSUs, those boards are never going to be manufactured again and need to be kept in working order. I'd recommend being proficient at SMD soldering as well because there are motherboards and video cards which have SMD caps on them (3dfx cards being an example.)

It puzzles me why you would include UCC in your list of bad capacitor manufacturers, is it a typo? United Chemi-Con is the US subsidiary of Nippon Chemi-Con, a Japanese manufacturer of high quality capacitors and most of their stuff is top notch, with the notable exception of the earlier KZG series which had issues (mostly used in motherboards).

This is exactly why I list United Chemi-Con, because of the KZG series. I honestly don't care that they may be a "reputable" company or their other cap lines may be free from faults, their KZG series is the most prolific in the market and that gives them a black eye. I've seen equipment up to 2009 using these caps and still regularly get them in.

The KZG series has a 100% failure rate after about a year of use, and I've replaced hundreds of them over the past decade. The KZE series is no better, while they don't end up leaking like KZG, they fail internally and either go high ESR, short, open circuit or have severe capacitance drift. I've had KZE caps cause power supplies to go on fire due to the mentioned issues and motherboard VRMs to explode.
 
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From article:

Wow, this brings back memories.
I remember the first GPU I ever purchased (with my own money) was a BFG Tech FX5200 256MB OC AGP 8x - and I played DOOM 3 on it at ~40FPS @ 640x480, and just loving it.

Oh how far we have come in all those years.
Thank you erek for sharing this - I don't know how you found that specific article, but if you find more, please share! (y)

Oh man...now we’re triggering oldnhardware flashbacks! My first system with a graphics card was a Dell XPS P2-300. It had a NVIDIA RIVA 128 4MB in it, and I later put a Voodoo2 12MB. I played a lot of G-Police, X-Wing vs Tie Fighter, Mech Warrior 2, Quake 2, Warcraft 2, Starcraft, and Unreal on that rig.

EDIT: Can’t believe I forgot that we used to format our hard drives with multiple partitions back then. I think my old 6.4gb came in 3 or 4 partitions.
 
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Oh man...now we’re triggering oldnhardware flashbacks! My first system with a graphics card was a Dell XPS P2-300. It had a NVIDIA RIVA 128 4MB in it, and I later put a Voodoo2 12MB. I played a lot of G-Police, X-Wing vs Tie Fighter, Mech Warrior 2, Quake 2, Warcraft 2, Starcraft, and Unreal on that rig.

EDIT: Can’t believe I forgot that we used to format our hard drives with multiple partitions back then. I think my old 6.4gb came in 3 or 4 partitions.
Damn, that's awesome!
I remember those days - Descent, Duke Nukem 3D, DOOM I/II/Final, Quake, SW Tie Fighter - so many good memories.

haha, yes, I do remember when most systems were pre-configured with multiple partitions - makes sense on some server systems or workstations, but on a consumer Windows system back then? Heh, good times.
Nice system in your sig as well - I got Star Wars: Tie Fighter Special Edition (CD-ROM version) running on my Quadro 950 a few years back with a 100MHz PowerPC 601 CPU and 256MB of RAM - managed to muster around 15-30fps on average - not bad for a workstation that would have cost around $15,000 back in 1992. :D
 
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Damn, that's awesome!
I remember those days - Descent, Duke Nukem 3D, DOOM I/II/Final, Quake, SW Tie Fighter - so many good memories.

haha, yes, I do remember when most systems were pre-configured with multiple partitions - makes sense on some server systems or workstations, but on a consumer Windows system back then? Heh, good times.
Nice system in your sig as well - I got Star Wars: Tie Fighter Special Edition (CD-ROM version) running on my Quadro 950 a few years back with a 100MHz PowerPC 601 CPU and 256MB of RAM - managed to muster around 15-30fps on average - not bad for a workstation that would have cost around $15,000 back in 1992. :D

Duke 3D! Ha! I had an HP P120 that I played that with. Remember having to enter modem strings in DOS? LOL!

I was wondering if anyone would recognize the sig. That LC is the system that won’t die. Still runs.

The Quadros were the bomb back in the day! Man that got expensive fast though! I remember be excited that Mac OS 8 finally got basic HyperThreading. Remember the Copland hype? As a kid, I worked at CompUSA Mac Store. It was great getting to play with those rigs!

My family has always run Macs and PCs. After that we had a couple Mac Clones from Power Computing. One was a 601 with the old Nubus ports, and the other 200mhz 604. We still have it somewhere. After that it was the old blue G3 and grey G4. A couple of Mac Minis, and now mostly laptops for my mother. My father went PC for flight sims.
 
Duke 3D! Ha! I had an HP P120 that I played that with. Remember having to enter modem strings in DOS? LOL!

I was wondering if anyone would recognize the sig. That LC is the system that won’t die. Still runs.

The Quadros were the bomb back in the day! Man that got expensive fast though! I remember be excited that Mac OS 8 finally got basic HyperThreading. Remember the Copland hype? As a kid, I worked at CompUSA Mac Store. It was great getting to play with those rigs!

My family has always run Macs and PCs. After that we had a couple Mac Clones from Power Computing. One was a 601 with the old Nubus ports, and the other 200mhz 604. We still have it somewhere. After that it was the old blue G3 and grey G4. A couple of Mac Minis, and now mostly laptops for my mother. My father went PC for flight sims.
Man, does that ever bring me back.
Oh yeah, I remember the LC was 'Low Cost' and lacked the FPU, and EC was 'Embedded Controller' and lacked both the FPU and PMMU - they were all still very expensive, though!

Those systems were built like tanks, and to this day, I always wanted a Quadro 700 since it was the one that Dennis Nedry used in the first Jurassic Park movie.
Forgot all about the Mac clones back then - those are actually pretty tough to find now and can go for a pretty penny.

I actually don't remember ever seeing Copland with its multithreading capabilities back then - don't know how I missed out on that one.
So it basically was competing against OS 8 & 9, then?

You might appreciate this if you haven't seen it already:
https://hardforum.com/threads/red-falcons-retrocomputing-thread.1841374/

Cheers! :D
 
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