VOGONS


First post, by SETBLASTER

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Hello guys. I came here to ask because i think you have better memory than me. It is kind of difficult for me to remember why i wanted a geforce2 so badly in 2001. The only thing that i can think of is that i wanted it to play Quake 3 arena online.

Year 1998 i had a pc that was Pentium2 + voodoo 2 + diamond stealth 3d 2000
(with this setup i played gems like diablo2, C&C tiberian sun, turok)

Year 1999 i think i sold the voodoo2 and bought a Diamond viper v550 (NVIDIA Riva TNT)

Year 2000 Changed to pentium3

Year 2001 Bought a geforce2

geforce2 was better because it gave more frames at higher resolution 1024x768 ? What games from that year required to have a geforce2 ?

Reply 1 of 8, by oohms

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The geforce 2 was a big step up in performance and supported high res textures and bump mapping compared to the voodoo cards. I remember upgrading from a voodoo banshee to a geforce2 mx and looking at how detailed the walls were in soldier of fortune

DOS/w3.11/w98 | K6-III+ 400ATZ @ 550 | FIC PA2013 | 128mb SDram | Voodoo 3 3000 | Avancelogic ALS100 | Roland SC-55ST
DOS/w98/XP | Core 2 Duo E4600 | Asus P5PE-VM | 512mb DDR400 | Ti4800SE | ForteMedia FM801

Reply 2 of 8, by meljor

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I think you kept the TNT far to long and therefor the Geforce2 was a GIANT step forwards, even from a TNT2 it was a huge step up. And the GTS for example was still a fairly expensive card but it was still a lot cheaper as the ultra and still performed amazingly well. Also compared to the TNT2 ultra the GTS was a steal.

And around that time came the hardware TnL supporting titles and for that you had to have a geforce(2) to make them enjoyable speed wise (or higher res).

So i think everybody wanted one back in the day. It was the card that beat the voodoo's to dead and was at least a big step up compared to previous generation. Besides, also the Geforce2 MX was hugely popular for beeing pretty inexpensive and still very well performing. I came from a dual voodoo2/tnt2 m64 to a Geforce2 MX and i was not disappointed.

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asus tusl2-c, p3-S 1,4ghz, voodoo5 5500, live!
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Reply 3 of 8, by Staticblast

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meljor wrote:

I think you kept the TNT far to long and therefor the Geforce2 was a GIANT step forwards, even from a TNT2 it was a huge step up. And the GTS for example was still a fairly expensive card but it was still a lot cheaper as the ultra and still performed amazingly well. Also compared to the TNT2 ultra the GTS was a steal.

And around that time came the hardware TnL supporting titles and for that you had to have a geforce(2) to make them enjoyable speed wise (or higher res).

So i think everybody wanted one back in the day. It was the card that beat the voodoo's to dead and was at least a big step up compared to previous generation. Besides, also the Geforce2 MX was hugely popular for beeing pretty inexpensive and still very well performing. I came from a dual voodoo2/tnt2 m64 to a Geforce2 MX and i was not disappointed.

Yeah, would definitely have been the hardware TnL support. I remember getting mine (the same one in my 4-in-1 build!) because Emperor: Battle for Dune required exactly that.

4-in-1 build (thanks Phil!): AMD K6-III+ 450 / SOYO 5EMA+ / 128MB SDRAM / 80GB Seagate HDD / Voodoo 3 3000 / Orchid Righteous 3D / Sound Blaster CT2960 / MPU-401 PCMIDI Clone / HxC Floppy Emulator / 15" CRT monitor

Reply 4 of 8, by matze79

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Emperor does not require Tnl.

it requires minimum 16Mb Videocard with DirectX 7.0a.

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Reply 5 of 8, by leileilol

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NOLF2 and BF1942 were the two big T&L-requiring ones in 2002 (can't run without it), and together for the performance minimum, a Geforce2 fits that bill, even if we're going into the GeforceFX/Radeon9700 era by that point.....

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Reply 6 of 8, by Staticblast

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matze79 wrote:

Emperor does not require Tnl.

it requires minimum 16Mb Videocard with DirectX 7.0a.

...Dammit. I hate false memories. Makes me feel like I can't trust my own brain. You're right, of course. It didn't require it, only supported it.

4-in-1 build (thanks Phil!): AMD K6-III+ 450 / SOYO 5EMA+ / 128MB SDRAM / 80GB Seagate HDD / Voodoo 3 3000 / Orchid Righteous 3D / Sound Blaster CT2960 / MPU-401 PCMIDI Clone / HxC Floppy Emulator / 15" CRT monitor

Reply 7 of 8, by NamelessPlayer

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leileilol wrote:

NOLF2 and BF1942 were the two big T&L-requiring ones in 2002 (can't run without it), and together for the performance minimum, a Geforce2 fits that bill, even if we're going into the GeforceFX/Radeon9700 era by that point.....

Can't speak for the former, but BF1942 showed huge gains on an old Athlon XP 1800+ system by upgrading from the integrated GeForce 2 GTS (nForce chipset) to a Radeon 9600 XT in the unoccupied AGP slot. However, I still perceived some CPU bottlenecking going on; that game loves having an Athlon XP 3200+ or faster.

Funny thing is, it's a bit harder for me to remember games that required HT&L and would thus run on a GeForce 2 (it was integrated, after all!), but it's easy to remember the big slap in the face that said "get a real graphics card already!" when the Deus Ex: Invisible War demo refused to run on said integrated GeForce 2 GTS because there was no Pixel Shader 1.1 support (or shaders at all, really).

Thief: Deadly Shadows apparently did the same, and Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 only seemed to have fallbacks for the sake of trying to run on such weak GPUs to cover more of the PC market. Then nobody wanted a Radeon 9x00 when Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory added HDR (which required a GeForce 6 Series with Shader Model 3.0) and Far Cry also got it patched in.

GPUs advanced so much faster back then... felt like you needed a new DirectX update and a new GPU every single year.

Reply 8 of 8, by chinny22

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For me it because the PC I got in late 98 came with a 16MB TNT, and couldn't afford to upgrade so soon after.
Cant remember which exact year I upgraded to a GF2 MX but would be about 2001ish and remember being annoyed at Need for Speed 4, or Porsche, bumping up graphics card in my priority list, even then the MX was pretty expensive for a 20 year old me