TELEPACMAN wrote:

So far I'm quite surprised, thought I was the black sheep with my g200 without opengl

Horrific OpenGL on the G200 is what drove me away from Matrox forever.

stamasd wrote:

I went through a variety of video cards in the late 90s - early 2000s. I don't remember them all. I never had a 3Dfx card until later, in the mid-2000s I got a V3-3000 mostly out of curiosity, and I was kinda disappointed (at that time my main card was a Geforce4-4200, no wonder the disappointment). I started with a ATI Rage Pro, went through others such as G200, TNT2-M64, GF3-Ti200 (which was a hand-me-down from a friend), wanted a Radeon 8500 but couldn't afford it, eventually managed to get the GF4-4200 which I held for a long time, skipped a few generations... at some point I played with a Radeon 9700 for a while which I flashed with Apple firmware and used in a home-built Mac G3... Made the jump from AGP to PCIe with a Radeon X800 which was disappointing, got rid of it and tried a Radeon X1300, another disappointment, then found my groove with a Geforce 8800 GT which finally gave me the good OpenGL support I had been looking for. When that one burned out (guess the fanless design on a powerful card had something to do with it, thank you very much ECS) I went to a Radeon 5870, and then to my current Radeon 7970. Whew.

Out of all of these I still have the 4200 which I'm using in my PII retro machine, the 5870 in a secondary desktop and the 7970 in my main desktop.

Yeah, I went trough a shitload of cards myself...

1. 95-98 -> Cirrus Logic 53xx PCI. In 1997 I added a 12mb Creative 3DFX Voodoo 2 (CT6670) witch I still have along with it's sister card I got SH in 2002.
2. 99-2002 -> Trident Blade 3D (built into a VIA MVP4) + Voodoo 2
3. 2002-2003 -> Radeon 7000 DDR + 2x Creative 3DFX Voodoo 2 12MB. Bought the second V2 SH really cheap.
4. 2nd half of 2003 - Radeon 8500 64MB. The thing was so fast I shelved my V2 cards. Couldn't bear to sell them tough.
5. 1h 2004 - Gigabyte Maya Radeon 9000 64MB - still have it 😁
6. 2h 2004 - Palit Daytona FX 5200 Ultra 256MB - marginally faster then the Radeon 9000
7. 2005 - PNY Geforce 6600 AGP 256MB
8. end of 2005 - Club 3D X800 GTO 128MB AGP
9. 1h 2006 - XFX 7900GT 256MB PCI-E and later 2x Club3D X1950XT 512MB Crossfire (with the weird DVI dongle)
10. 2007 8800GTX 768MB press sample built by nvidia
11. end of 2007 - 2x HD2900XT Crossfire
12. 2008 HD 3870 Crossfire - 1 card was a sapphire, the other club3d. Later that year I traded my desktop for a Toshiba Qosmio with a 9700M GT.
13. 2009 - HD 4850 crossfire - one asus, one sapphire
14. 2h 2010 - Gainward GTX460 768MB
15. 2011 - Zotac GTX480 AMP! - later on I tried a SLI solution with two 480 cards, one Zotac the other Gainward. They made so much heat they would warm up the room in winter 😀
16. December 2012 - Sapphire Radeon HD7950 FLEX OC. Later that year I got a second, then a third card for CFX. 2x Crossfire was awsome, 3x was kind of pointless. Still have pics of the tri-fire setup on my IMGur.
17. 2014 - 2x R9 280x - one was Gigabyte Windforce OC, the other was a Sapphire Trixx
18. 2015 - Geforce GTX980m 4GB

I think that's about my complete video card history, Looking back, I switched between nvidia and ATi a lot, and still don't have a favorite. Have to say, my faforite cards are the Voodoo 2 cards, since they are the ones I got the most use of (BY FAR). Then the 8800GTX and the pair of 2900XT cards. The 8800 was shockigly fast when it came out. I later traded it for a PAIR of 2900XT cards (they were that hated) witch were about 1.5x faster then the 8800 (in crossfire) and only payed 30$ extra for the set over the 8800. I also liked the 7900GT - my first high end card. It was one of best cards you could get at the time, and I remember feeling so smug I have a top of the line video card in my system for the first time in my life. The GTX460 and HD4850 cards stuck with me as well. They were very well priced and fast.

I'm still looking for working and affordable 8800GTX and 2900XT cards... they are remarkably hard to find...

I survived from 1996-2000 with a Dataexpert,ExpertColor branded S3 trio 64 V+,1 mb of ram http://web.archive.org/web/19970201080146/htt … aexpert.com.tw/

I wanted a Voodoo Graphics,but was never able to raise the money for 1.
Got close to buy a Matrox Mystique with 2 mb of ram once,but i gave up and use the money to get 32 mb of ram,my pc only had 8.
Glad i didn't waste the money on the Mystique.

Only in 2000 when i bought a new pc,i had my first 3D card,a geforce 2 mx with 32 mb of ram.

the PC I had at the time , a Pentium Pro with 32MB of RAM (later 64) had no 3D acceleration at all , I was running games like Tomb Raider II and Thief in software mode , though surprisingly it mostly ran decently.

it was only around 2000 that the lack of acceleration really started to affect what I could play. I remember wanting to play games like GTA2 and not being able to , due to the requirement of 3D acceleration

I suppose its part of the reason why I like RTS games , I remember spending alot of time playing C&C95 , RA , Tiberian Sun , Starcraft and AOE / AOE2 , Pharaoh and Zeus , in large part because those games never needed 3D acceleration , and seemed to run just fine on the Pentium Pro.

I had my 386SX-20 with 4MB and Oak OTI037 (probably) until 1998 when changed finally with a K62-350 but with S3 Trio3D so every games I played was software rendered. After a while I switched to V3-2000 so I can say that not talking of the S3 Trio3D hw acceleration, my "first" 3d card was 3dfx.
But coming back to those times I would have bought a Voodoo1 that with my old monitor and the games I played was perfectly enough and cheaper.

Ati Mach64VT (not remember the exact model) until 2001.

Sis5598 + 6x86MX until ~2003, then a P4C with i845.

I did not get to experience much 3D.

I pity the fool who couldn't bask in Voodoo's glory! I got a K6-2/350 with a Voodoo 2 right around Christmas -98 and Half-Life, Unreal, Carmageddon 2 and Rainbow Six were the shit! By the summer of -00 it was time for a Duron/GF 256, but it just didn't feel the same. Actually, nothing ever did after Voodoo was gone. 😢

kanecvr wrote:

stamasd wrote:

I'm still looking for working and affordable 8800GTX and 2900XT cards... they are remarkably hard to find...

There's a franchise in the UK which specializes in trading / selling / buying used games and movies. They also deal in hardware such as mobile phones, cameras and PC hardware. Their pricing system is CRAZY. They usually price the graphics cards primarily by how much RAM they have, above all else. They have no clue as to actual performance it seems. And not many people BUY older tech from them. Although they ended trading AGP cards entirely over a year ago, I regularly see X2900XT's in my local store for like £15. All kinds of 8800's too, which are also priced ridiculously low because they don't pack 2GB Vram etc. I bought a few of the X2900 pro's for crossfire, but haven't built a machine around them yet, some 16 months later! Both cards work mint individually. I'm sure I paid £16 for one and £12 for the other.

I also saw an i7 2600K in there once for £65, while they had a higher clocked i3 from a generation on priced at £60 right next to the i7. The only sad thing was, I had no money on me. The next day when I went back it was gone. I almost cried.

Companies name is cEX (computer entertainment exchange I believe). It's a hole, always smells of unwashed teenagers and other even less appealing things. But I stomach the mustiness from time to time, in order to spot a bargain.

Any idea if they have a store in London? I could ask my sister to go and have a look (if she has time). Over here a 2900xt goes for 50 euro, and a "working" 8800GTX is about 35 - but all I have tested so far were on their way out (artefacting after 20-30 minutes of use) - and belive it or not, 35 euro is not pocket change for me since I make around 400 euro / month...

My friend near Cardiff goes to one fairly regularly. That's obviously not London though.

I had a

Pentium MMX 166MHz (overclocked to 200MHz)
64MB EDORAM
Intel 430VX board
S3 Trio64V+ 2MB

until autumn '99 when I got a Creative 3D Blaster Voodoo 2 8MB PCI.
Before that upgrade it was really hard to find good games for the PC.
I mostly played DOS games I think. The Voodoo 2 transformed that machine into an arcade 😁

My first 3D card was an STB Velocity 128 (Nvidia Riva 128). I think I got it in late '97 or early '98. I remember buying it because I wanted a card that could do both 2D and 3D, and it was getting pretty good reviews. I was constantly hunting for updated drivers, especially ones optimized for 3DNow!

I managed to finish Quake 2 and Final Fantasy VII (needed a special Riva 128 patch) with it, though. Couldn't run Unreal at playable rates. Sometime in '99 I picked up a Banshee card for cheap, and I used it until '01.

My first Graphics Card was a AdvanceLogic with 1 MB (1994) on a Pentium 75.

Later i upgraded to a Pentium 133, then 200 MMX , with an MiroVideo + TV Addon. (mpeg hardware decoder, watching tv on Pc, and beeing able to print out teletext sites, was very cool)

But as the voodoo1 comes out, id soon by one, because i play FPS (quake, unreal) and racing sims (cars and motorcycles)

I'd by a diamond monster 3d.

used that combi , until i upgrade to a Gefoce256ddr.

Later a geforce4ti4200.

Then a ATI X850 XT PE.

the next cards i use, i by second hand (Ati HD 4870) and now (nvidia 570 gt)

always wanted a voodoo2, but the games still runnung on voodoo1, so i never. buyed one.
later i got one with some pc parts from a friend.

RacoonRider wrote:

I managed to survive with no computer at all. Lucky you, that's what I say 😁

That's amazing for someone who wasn't born yet.

In the 90's I had no 3D card, I made do with an S3 Vision 864, but I lusted over the Voodoo2 ads in gaming magazines. My first proper 3d card was a Voodoo4 4500 pci which I got in early 2000. I still have it, though don't ever use it, the Aavid fan is an absolute piece of junk.

Greetings from Portugal too TELEPACMAN 😀

My first computer was in 1999 and i had to survive until the middle of 2001 without a videocard, only had a really crappy onboard sis530. It had a AMD k6-2 450Mhz and 64Mb of ram.

So i played if possible my games in software mode. Imagine playing either in lan or online Unreal Tournament at 400x300 in software mode in order to get 15 playable fps! Then more or less in June of 2001 i got a Voodoo Banshee and another stick of ram with 128mb and it was like day and night!

All that and in 2002 i got my first job, and i bought a Athlon XP 2000+, 512mb of ram and a Geforce 3 TI 200 128Mb which i overclocked like crazy. Great times!

I never cared for it and still do not. I tried a Voodoo2 recently but it is a PITA IMO. Just too much work to get it to work. Plus I like strategy games: not RTS. RTS is fun @ LAN parties but there are no LAN parties anymore.

I spent that time going from a 4mb S3 Virge, to a Creative Permidia 2 4mb card, which got me through until I bought a Voodoo Banshee 16MB some time later which lasted me quite some time.

kanecvr wrote:

Any idea if they have a store in London?

The original Computer Exchange was on Tottenham Court Road - I don't know if it's still there now as this was in 1993 before they knocked a load of older buildings down. There is one on almost every high street in England now. The store was constantly mentioned in PC Zone magazine because this random bloke called Charlie Brooker used to work there. He then began writing a comic strip for the magazine before becoming a reviewer. His acerbic style has earned him quite a big reputation in the press and on TV. Not bad for a guy who worked in a 2nd hand computer shop!