What was your 1st 3D video card ?

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GURU7OF9

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Oct 27, 2020
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Voodoo 1 with 4mb then a Diamond Viper V770 TNT2 Ultra , Quake 3 Arena
My very 1st video card I had was not even mine really! I borrowed a mates and it was a Voodoo 1 with 4mb ! The first card i actually bought I saved up for 6 months and got a Diamond Viper V770 TNT2 Ultra with 32mb. It was in my first pc and I got it all from the shop where my mate worked! p2 333mhz 128mb ram . Actually at the time he mentioned something about a Celeron 300A blah blah blah and i said well its slower so i prefer the P2 333mhz. I look back now and think I AM SUCH AN IDIOT ! He probly should have pushed it more, but shit happens! :(
I used to run Q3A time demo relentlessly with my never ending quest for more frames and with the Voodoo 1 and 4mb I cranked that baby up to just barely crack 30FPS at 512x384 with low low low graphics! But after I put that shiny new V770 TNT2 ULTRA in I was super pumped and could run Q3A demo four at 800x600 with beautiful beautiful graphics at 45FPS ! God that was so damn Beautiful and so damn FAST ! haha ! Was AWESOME ! :)
 
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geforce man

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Geforce 256 DDR. I still have mine! Quake 3 Arena @ 1024/768 @ max details, with TRANSFORM AND LIGHTING, at 60fps. The original cooler died / fell off, so I have the naked card, but no AGP board to run it, and I don't even know the last drivers that would have worked for it. I assume that died in the windows XP era. It also only had the VGA output and that was it. Man times were simpler back then. I do know that I could push the core +25 Mhz, and the memory +40 Mhz, I remember that clear as day. Crushed some 3dMark 2001.
 
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ender1598

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Mine was the Intel i740... looks like it was one of the earlier ones to use AGP. Was my first computer when I went off to college and I still did plenty of gaming on it with Half-life. Really can't remember what I upgraded to afterwards though.
 
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Grinmaul

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Couldn't even guess, first computer was a 286/12 with a 4 colour display. so whatever came with that, i do still have a few of the cards i got over the years, 3dfx, matrox, some ati's.
 
S

socK

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Riva 128, I think? Paired with a 300mhz P2.

Ran Unreal like shit, but did pretty good with Quake 2.
 
erek

erek

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GeForce 2 MX / MX 200 (Unknown first party or AIB Partner)
 
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RamboZombie

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s3 2000 or some something it was directX 2 - it actually ran slower when using 3d fuctions - but it could show the demo from MS at about 2-3 fps - quite the experience...

but this was my first 3d (if you wann call it that) card.

before that i had a 386 25sx with some kind of vga card and my trusty pc speaker doing config.sys and autoexec.bat all night long - it actually sucked :)
 
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edmaroro

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My first card was a Trident TVGA8900 with 1mb of video memory (Enough to play Descent). Always wanted a Quantum3d Obsidian2 X-24. (I would exchange my 3090 to try one of those with a roland scc-1/scb-55 these days - not kidding - pm if you have one 🙂)
 
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shae

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Trident 8900 wasn't a 3D card. :)
And Descent... did it even support SVGA? Even if it did, I'm guessing it worked also on plain VGA, so no need for 1MB video RAM.
 
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Vapor1000

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1621370986604.png

This was the best $20 I ever spent on a video Card. Back in 1998 Comp-USA had a sale for $50 marked down from $99 with a $30 mail in rebate (which i did get back).
Used it for 2 years until the House burned down, and it got replaced with a Diamond Viper V770 Ultra (TNT 2 Ultra)
 
Nasty_Savage

Nasty_Savage

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I actually just tossed out my voodoo card, i found buried in a pile of shit that i had been meaning to go through for years 😞 Anyway, yeah. Mechwarrior was definitely the shit, but I also loved Myth: The Fallen Lords. Watching zombie chonks bounce across the screen with rivers of blood and that satisfying explosion sound from the dwarven sappers made me smile every time lol
 
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TheToE!

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First real one was Monster 3d voodoo 2 12mb. It was actually an 3d accelerator card, still needed a video card lol. I was 15, working at pizza hut. The year was 1998. Music was good, chicks were hot, and PC gaming was on fire. I miss those days man. I didn't have a care in the world other than saving up money for hardware and trying to get my fingers wet. Not gonna lie, getting a little misty eyed over here.
 
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cybereality

cybereality

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Mine was a Voodoo 3000 AGP, 1999. Still remember running the Unreal 1 benchmark, those graphics were crazy.
 
Starfalcon

Starfalcon

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First one I bought for myself was a voodoo 3 3500TV card, earlier systems came with assorted crappy S3 decelerators.
 
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Canon

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Technically the first was a RIVA 128, that came pre-installed in a system. I never really played any 3D games that ran worth a darn on the RIVA 128 from my memory except a demo of Need for Speed.

Ended up getting a Voodoo 3 2000 AGP to replace it. I got that when Unreal Tournament came out and I played that in Glide. I played that game a lot... against bots, and online via 56k modem...
 
K

Koldur

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I bought the very first Voodoo 3D Monster card at a for me at 16 years old insanely high price of 300 guilders back then. I did love the hell out of the card, was such a revolutionary piece of tech!
If I only knew I would buy a €900 RTX 3080 card last December back then haha!
 
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Slade

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ATI rage II I think. I think my first real 3d card was a 3dfx voodoo, followed by voodoo2 with a canopus spectra riva tnt which I got a relative to bring back for me from asia.
 
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JSHamlet234

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RS_Surge said:
GPU's with no fan support was hip back in the day. I think the G200 was the hottest GPU i've ever had.
Click to expand...

I used to mount Intel retail box CPU fans with glue on the edges and thermal paste in the middle. I wish I could take a picture of my Voodoo3, but it's in a closet at my parents' house. I think it did close to 200MHz on the core.
 

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WilyKit

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Diamond 3DFX Voodoo 2 and the first 3d accelerated game I played with it was Need For Speed 2 SE. I still have that card somewhere in my "retro hardware" box
 
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SticKx911

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Ti 4600. I was somewhere between 16 and 18 and have not since bought a video card new. Not that I regret that purchase, but life...maybe one day, but I’ll always have fond memories of being top dog on graphics at UT lan parties. I was a terrible player so I had to have some reason to feel important. Haha
 
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RS_Surge

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SticKx911 said:
Ti 4600. I was somewhere between 16 and 18 and have not since bought a video card new. Not that I regret that purchase, but life...maybe one day, but I’ll always have fond memories of being top dog on graphics at UT lan parties. I was a terrible player so I had to have some reason to feel important. Haha
Click to expand...
The Ti 4000 series lasted pretty long in the DX8.1 days even though it was post 2001 (dx9 release). I had my Ti 4400 for 3 years until real games in Farcry 2004, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory came out.
It was more geared toward games like medal of honor: Allied Assault, Warcraft 3. That was a great era.
 
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cybereality

cybereality

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I originally got an ATI 9000 Pro, but I found out it didn't work with 3d shutter glasses, so I had to swap it for an Nvidia.

Pretty sure it was the Ti 4400 I exchanged it for. At the time it was a $400 video card and that seemed like crazy money for a GPU.

Clearly remember playing American McGee's Alice in 3D, that was such a great time.
 
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pfc_m_drake

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Another vote for Rendition Verite 1000. Mine was a Sierra Screamin' 3D that I used to play IndyCar II...loved that game.
 
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