Voodoo, Geforce or Radeon: Do you still remember your first graphics card?

Tomb Raider: Bilinear filtering off (left) and on (right) (Image: PCGH)


from Thilo Bayer
Do you remember the first graphics card that you built into a computer or that was in your first complete PC? Then use the comment function to get rid of your memories of it.

In the course of a PC career, you put many a graphics card in the slot provided for it. Some may have started with the VESA Local Bus, others with PCI or AGP, others only know PCI Express.

What memories do you have?

Depending on how long your own PC usage career lasts, a good dozen graphics cards can come together. Today we would like to reminisce with you: Which 2D or 3D accelerators do you remember? Which card did it seriously start with? Do you remember the concept of pure 3D add-on cards? Or have you already been using graphics modes such as HGC, EGA or CGA? Write your first graphics card and your personal graphics card history (also with pictures if you like) as a comment under this news.

In the picture gallery you will find some suggestions as to which graphics cards were known in the 90s, 2000s or later and some have achieved legendary status. The PCGH editors Raffael Vötter and the author even show their first graphics card. From the many well-known graphics cards, we pick out the Voodoo Graphics at this point and briefly explain their historical significance.






See also  Valve's latest patent filing is for a new VR headset



Tomb Raider: Bilinear filtering off (left) and on (right) (Image: PCGH)
Source: Image: PCGH 07/2002


The first work of the pioneers of 3dfx appeared in 1996 and still relied on two individual chips: Pixel and Texel FX. Both typically ran at 50MHz and featured the fundamentals of 3D acceleration that are still important today: bilinear texture mapping with mipmap support, perspective correction, 16-bit z-buffer, anti-aliasing, and even (palette-based) texture compression. What few people know: SST-1 and the voodoo cards based on it almost didn’t even come onto the market, because at the original price of 500 US dollars there was no manufacturer who wanted to sell the boards. Luckily for 3Dfx (then with a capital “D”), memory prices for the required EDO RAM plummeted in early 1996 and the MSRP dropped to a more marketable $300.

The triumph of 3Dfx began with Tomb Raider, which even offered edge antialiasing, and the first-generation id engine games accelerated by the Mini-GL driver. The chip’s SLI capability was hardly used in the home user market, although 3Dfx partner Quantum3D knew how to exploit it in the simulator business.

Reference-www.pcgameshardware.de