Video Card History

John Mathers writes "While searching the net for information on old Voodoo Video Cards, I came across this fabulous Video Card History article up at FastSilicon.com. It's nice to see that someone has taken the time to look back on the Video Cards that revolutionized the personal computer. Here's a quote "When 3dfx released their first card in October of 1996, it hit the computer world like a right cross to the face. That card was called Voodoo. This new card held the door open for video game development. The Voodoo card was simply a 3D graphics accelerator, which was plugged into a regular 2D video card; known as piggy backing."

Ah... those were the days :-)

[turgid]

I remember when the PeeCees had EGA or lowly CGA (which looked terrible, by the way) or even no graphics at all other than the graphics characters available to MS-DOS. PeeCee graphics cards were expensive to get even rudimentary high-res and color (16 if you were lucky) whereas "home" computers like the Amiga and ST had higher resoltiom, greater colour depth and some hardware acceleration (blitting). These machines were never taker seriously because their advanced graphics and sound capabilities were considered frivolous in the busness world.

The rest, as they say, is history :-(

Re:Only 1996 to the Present

[vasqzr]

Back then, the hardware specs (so you could program the device) came with all the accessories you bought for your PC. Imagine that.

Printers had a book with all the Escape codes, Video cards told you which modes they supported, modems had AT command set references...

Try getting the specs to a PCI card nowadays....

Could use more info

[alpharoid]

Video card history going back to 1996 isn't really necessary -- if you're around 25 and bought the Voodoo 1 back when it came out, you can probably recite all the facts from 1996-2003 from the back of your head.

And if it's just 3D chipsets that count, what about the [near useless] S3 Virge, before the Voodoo? What about the extra details, like 3dfx buying out STB to manufacture its own integrated 2D/3D solutions (Voodoo3 onwards), effectively pissing off an entire industry?

Oh well. Maybe next time.

Re:Only 1996 to the Present

[PainKilleR-CE]

It's basically just an article on the early 3dfx cards and then a quick skim of about 1/4th of nVidia's lineup and a love-fest with ATI's most recent cards.

It almost sounds like the author only talked about the cards he owned.

Just on the nVidia side, he barely mentioned the TNT and it's various derivatives, didn't mention the TNT2 Ultra or other TNT2 cards (except the baseline), and didn't mention that the GeForce 256 came in SDR and DDR versions, pretty much solidifying the future of DDR on video cards (because there was little other difference between the cards to explain the difference in benchmarks). Not to mention the later GF2 upgrades, the GF3, and the GF4.

Even with his early mentions of ATI he missed the mark a bit. ATI wasn't aiming for the 3d market so much because they had a solid hold on the OEM market, which didn't care (at the time) about 3d. When the OEM's started to care, nVidia had their chipset ready in part because of their XBox work (or they got the XBox work because they were working on the chipsets for the OEM market, either way it wasn't long before they were releasing motherboard chipsets), and a solid hold on the lead in 3D graphics technology.

Beyond that, he mentions that nVidia 'bought out 3dfx', which isn't quite right, since nVidia simply bought most of their IP and left the company to it's own devices (3dfx basically sold all of their assets and shut down).

Overall, it's a very light article that could be surpassed by a quick read through the review history on most sites that review graphics hardware.

Re:Bullshit

[turgid]

Where I come from, it's PAL, not NTSC, which gave you 100 pixels extra vertical resolution. Anyway, the Amigas and STs had monitor outputs for serious use, and even the low-end ones could do higher resolution, with much better pucture quality, on proper monitors.

EGA was expensive and slow compared.

Re:When will it go back to the CPU?

[h0tb0x]

I like the paradigm the way that it is for the moment. Considering if they build all of this into our cpu's then any major graphics advance would probably require changing out your mobo and cpu - and probably cost considerably more. Using expansion cards makes sense and it leaves the owner free to use virtually whatever combination of hardware they require (ie: some cards come with video out and no video in) and lets you pick the features that you need in terms of cheaper cards that don't feature "extra" outputs or inputs. It also avoids you having to rip your entire system apart for one upgrade. Just pop out the card and drop in the new one. It will be a long long time before they can produce a really successful "all-in-one" solution for cpu/graphics processing.
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Re:Revisionist History?

[NanoGator]

"I note that the history of this article starts in 1996 . . . one year after Rendition's Verite chip became the first consumer add-on 3D accelerator."

Just playing Devil's Advocate here, but it wasn't until 3DFX hit the market that it became a mainstream gaming card. Creative Labs didn't invent the sound card, but they sure made that market blossom.

Re:Revisionist History?

[Skuld-Chan]

Talk about revising history here's a few facts.

A) the Verite chip had no opengl support - it could only run vquake - a specialy made version of Quark for the verite. And even then it was slow. Also it was kinda pokey for Direct 3D stuff as well.

B) S3 also had no opengl support - and limited direct 3d support - most direct 3d games did not support it (for instance it didn't support uploading textures...)

C) Matrox - except for high end equipment also wasn't nearly fast enough to play GLQuake. The Mystique is not nealy fast enough to play actual video games.

Why do I keep mentioning Quake? I think in 96 is was the defining game. If your card could run GLQuake smoothly you were in the zone. And the only cards that could run it even near smoothly cost well over 2000 dollars. Don't believe me? This is actually all in the GLQuake readme (more or less)

When my Intel P-120 first started GL Quake on the Voodoo 1 I just about crapped my pants. It was smooth, fluid and it looked awsome! No other video card at the time for 150-200 dollars could deliver those kinds of results.