I first started with the S3 ViRGE which supported, well, very basic 3D routines. It used to ship with one game (out of a choice of two) bundled. But the first "real" 3D card was the Diamond Multimedia Viper V330, based on the NVIDIA RIVA 128 GPU. Man, did they have really cool names last time. As you all remember, this is the original RIVA 128 GPU that made NVIDIA big. Came with only 4MB of RAM and DirectX support but I could play games like Turok on it.
Well, if its intergrated, I had this crap SIS POS intergrated for my PIII 800. That really sucked. Super damn weak...
my first 3d? ... Is a S3 Virge pci 2mb considered one ? .. if not then it would be my Creative 3D Blaster RIVA TNT2 32MB ...
Many people bought the S3 ViRGE. It should have given S3 the chance to make it big in 3D graphics but they squandered it on minor upgrades like the ViRGE/DX and ViRGE/GX. Ahh.. I actually got fooled into buying the M64! I bought an OEM M64 in Singapore. The dealer told me it was a FULL TNT2. But when I installed it, it was the M64!
Wow you people havent been around for long. My first 3d card was the Diamond Monster 3D. Original voodoo 4Mb i believe. Iit stillworks and have the original manual and install cd.
Well, many are still longer than you. Because 3D card aren't that old you know. Voodoo, PowerVR, Rendition are what I would call a proper 3D card during that era. Of course, Nvidia picked up their pace later...
My first 3D card was the Voodoo 2 add-in. I still remember using the cable to connect the 2D card to the 3D card. My second one was the Voodoo 5. Got it for PCI about a month after it was released. Then I got my first AGP card. GeForce MX 400. Then I got what I have now! My beautiful R9800 O/C past the 9800 PRO with a 9800 PRO BIOS.
3dfx bashee. man that card sucked had driver problems with a lot of games but the one main thing was it allowed me to play NFS3 hot pursuit on a P1 133mhz and 32MB of ram. pretty much under the requirements but the card definatly helped there.
Here's my history of 3D cards 1) S3 Virge - Diamond Stealth 3D 2) Premedia 1 - Diamond FireGL 1000 Pro 3) Voodoo2 - Diamond Monster 3D II 12mb version 4) 3DLabs Premedia 2 5) Geforce 2 MX 6) Geforce 2 Ti 7) ATI Radeon 9800 SE Hmm dun think I left out any.. not owned by me but used before ... Diamond Viper V330 - Riva128 Diamond Viper V500(?) - Riva TNT
