First post, by Kordanor
Hey there!
I am currently looking into graphics cards and want to make an overview about when certain features got added to which vendor. A bit of a guide to graphics cards, and ofc 3D is also a part of it, though I will only scratch the surface.
And for that I thought it would be useful to know when Graphics card started offering proper hardware acceleration for 3D.
It seems like the Line is rather hard to draw though.
I am looking at it per Chip manufacturer. Looking at Cirrus Logic, S3, ATI, Nvidia and 3dfx.
For 3dfx it's easy. It's the Voodoo 1, which also had its own accelerator Glide. But also works fine in openGL and Direct3D.
As far as I know for ATI its the Mach64 GT aka 3D Rage, which also got its own accelerator CIF, that however has Problems with Direct3D, missing transparency. I am not sure if the Rage 2 and Rage 2C were any better in that regard.
It seems like the Rage Pro, and Rage 128 were the first ones which had a more "normal" usecase.
For S3 it seems to be the S3 Virge, also using own accelerator S3D. But it does not support OpenGL and also has issues with Direct3D. I haven't found much regarding the other versions like GX and GX2. Are they basically as bad? That would make the Savege 3D the first card with general usage.
For CL it should be the CL-GD5465 aka Laguna3D although, the performance is overall terrible. Also it does not support OpenGL and has warped textures due to missing perspective correction, and missing transparency.
For Nvidia...apparently the NV1 (Edge 3D) already had 3D acceleration, but no decent support for DirectX. I have not found any info about OpenGL Support. So the frst "decent" one is probably the Riva 128.
It would be great if you could comment with your experiences/knowledge here. Any correction, as well as confirmation will help!