This seems like an interesting card, and I'm interested in finding out more about it seeing as it was most likely the only 3D accelerator ever produced for the VLB bus. All I know is that despite being based off a scaled-down 3DLabs chip, it doesn't support OpenGL. 😜

Review here:

http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~idr/graphics/3D%20Bl … LB%20review.jpg

More info:

http://replay.waybackmachine.org/199612211125 … hic/3dbvlb.html

http://replay.waybackmachine.org/199702250846 … -D_Blaster.html

http://replay.waybackmachine.org/199612220119 … aphic/gweb.html

Pippy P. Poopypants wrote:

Review here:

http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~idr/graphics/3D%20Bl … LB%20review.jpg

Two interesting things about that review. Firstly the price: over 500 US $, and secondly the score: 20%

It was very disappointing. Partly because 486s can't really handle 3D rendering and partly because the visuals are like software mode.

Also it was like NV1 with very few games.

retro games 100 wrote:

Pippy P. Poopypants wrote:

Review here:

http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~idr/graphics/3D%20Bl … LB%20review.jpg

Two interesting things about that review. Firstly the price: over 500 US $, and secondly the score: 20%

Don't we just love having hardware that used to cost k's of money? 😁

Tetrium wrote:

retro games 100 wrote:

Pippy P. Poopypants wrote:

Review here:

http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~idr/graphics/3D%20Bl … LB%20review.jpg

Two interesting things about that review. Firstly the price: over 500 US $, and secondly the score: 20%

Don't we just love having hardware that used to cost k's of money? 😁

Yep, although they do go back up in value once they become increasingly rare. Hence all the expensive Voodoo5s and cheap GeForce2s on ebay 😀

Yup, it's hard to predict what will become wanted and what will become dirt cheap 😜

swaaye wrote:

It was very disappointing. Partly because 486s can't really handle 3D rendering and partly because the visuals are like software mode.

Also it was like NV1 with very few games.

🤣 must have been like every other 3D graphics card back in that era then (pre-DirectX). Small performance boost at best and still looks like software rendering due to lack of bilinear filtering support. Makes me feel very grateful once everything became standardized and playable.

Pippy P. Poopypants wrote:

swaaye wrote:

It was very disappointing. Partly because 486s can't really handle 3D rendering and partly because the visuals are like software mode.

Also it was like NV1 with very few games.

🤣 must have been like every other 3D graphics card back in that era then (pre-DirectX). Small performance boost at best and still looks like software rendering due to lack of bilinear filtering support. Makes me feel very grateful once everything became standardized and playable.

Well, it was the Voodoos that paved the way in the early days.

Dang, announced price 350$ and half year later 500$. Was the PCI version released? It is the only hope for proper comparison.

Putas wrote:

Dang, announced price 350$ and half year later 500$. Was the PCI version released? It is the only hope for proper comparison.

You mean the one based on the Rendition V1000 chip? That one was released not too long afterward, and walks all over the VLB version in many ways.

Ya the PCI version was completely different, using Rendition V1000.

3D Blaster VLB was one of those premature 3D cards like NV1, that Yamaha chip, PowerVR PCX1, etc.

Even V1000 isn't so great actually. It really is not so great for D3D or GL and is mostly designed for custom ports targeting its limited abilities thru Speedy3D. Of course there is a list of chips in this category too.

Voodoo was about a year ahead of everyone else. It started at at least $300 too.

You guys need to remember that back then 2D cards up around $500 were not uncommon. New stuff was expensive back then. I dumpster dived on Usenet for year old used cards.

swaaye wrote:

Ya the PCI version was completely different, using Rendition V1000. […]
Show full quote

Ya the PCI version was completely different, using Rendition V1000.

3D Blaster VLB was one of those premature 3D cards like NV1, that Yamaha chip, PowerVR PCX1, etc.

Even V1000 isn't so great actually. It really is not so great for D3D or GL and is mostly designed for custom ports targeting its limited abilities thru Speedy3D. Of course there is a list of chips in this category too.

Voodoo was about a year ahead of everyone else. It started at at least $300 too.

You guys need to remember that back then 2D cards up around $500 were not uncommon. New stuff was expensive back then. I dumpster dived on Usenet for year old used cards.

V1000 seemed like one of the first usable chips for games however (well except for DOS games, judging by its appalling performance in mode 13h), but yeah 2D/3D chips of this era were certainly not fully baked. But compared to the other 2D/3D chips that were around that time (i.e. ATI's 3D Rage, S3 ViRGE) it was certainly ahead in terms of getting playable frame rates in accelerated games. Oh and I also read somewhere that Carmack stopped playing around with proprietary APIs after his frustration with VQuake (though it was a good game for showing off its features, namely edge AA).

And yeah I remember my dad purchasing an S3 Vision 968-based card back in 1995 for around that much (it was a Number Nine GXE64 Pro PCI with 2MB of RAM IIRC) because upgrading to a Pentium meant no more VLB, at least for us. Seemed like how much a new high-end graphics card would cost today too, as it had pretty top-end 2D performance back in the day. Also seems like Voodoo got cheaped out in terms of price when it was first released due to the drop in memory prices at the time. Again it's fun to see how fast expensive hardware can depreciate (as long as it doesn't become a rare item).