Some guy on here just bought 15 of them _NEW_ for $1.50 each.
Was the OEM version with "just" the drivers.

Would someone be so kind and explain what's "special" about this card?

It's called 3DX but then also 3DFX Voodoo? And it's a PowerVR, wasn't that a different technology to 3DFX?

EDIT: I think I need a late 90s 3D Graphics primer or something. I have a big gap of knowledge between Voodoo 2 and Radeon 9800...

It's called 3DX but then also 3DFX Voodoo? And it's a PowerVR, wasn't that a different technology to 3DFX?

I could be wrong, but I suspect the "3DFX" is just a typo or a keyword

He is right.

It was indeed called Apocalypse 3Dx. It was an add-on card, comunicating via PCI bus, accelerating D3D and SGL, the Videologic API at the time, as far as i recall. It was like 3Dfx Glide with Voodoo 1, except with no cables. 😎
They existed more or less at the same time.

Man, i remember those times.
S3 Virge, Matrox Millenium, Apocalypse and Voodoo1. Rendition had good reputation at the time too.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Would someone be so kind and explain what's "special" about this card?

It's called 3DX but then also 3DFX Voodoo? And it's a PowerVR, wasn't that a different technology to 3DFX?

EDIT: I think I need a late 90s 3D Graphics primer or something. I have a big gap of knowledge between Voodoo 2 and Radeon 9800...

It's called keyword spamming to get the listing to show up in more searches. 😉

Ah cool!

As always, Wikipedia has some infos: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerVR

So that's the same PowerVR that you find in current mobiles and that made it into the Dreamcast?

Is the PowerVR PCX2 the last one for the PC? Meaning, all the later models are for consoles, mobiles and other devices?

It supports DirectX3, so quite basic right?

In general how did it compare to a 3DFX Vodoo (1)?

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Ah cool! […]
Show full quote

Ah cool!

As always, Wikipedia has some infos: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerVR

So that's the same PowerVR that you find in current mobiles and that made it into the Dreamcast?

Is the PowerVR PCX2 the last one for the PC? Meaning, all the later models are for consoles, mobiles and other devices?

It's not the same at all. PowerVR went through a lot of changes since then. The chips in new devices are hardly related to the earlier chips if at all.

Okidoki...

It's clear I need to some reading.

German Tomshardware seems pretty good, their GPU articles go all the way back to 1998 (TNT vs. Voodoo 2) and I think that's a good start.

Was the KYRO II, the last Power VR product for PCs?

Is there something that makes these cards "special"? Like a certain feature or technological point of differentiation?

Or put another way, what makes PowerVR "cool" / sought after?

The fact that it was a competitor to the Glide format at the time. Needed a good cpu though for maximizing card performance. But in the end, Glide was a better buy because the industry supported 3Dfx. I see PowerVR as a more advanced solution, but lacked support... Games written for it looked nice, very nice indeed.

Cool thanks!

Any hardware sites that go back further than 1998? Basically that cover early attempts from S3 (Virge), Matrox until 3DFX Voodoo came along and rules them all?

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Cool thanks!

Any hardware sites that go back further than 1998? Basically that cover early attempts from S3 (Virge), Matrox until 3DFX Voodoo came along and rules them all?

Here's a link to Tom's, I havne;t been there in years, but was frequent reader in the 90's. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/3d-accele … ew-step,51.html

Look a little deeper and you will find some stuff from 1997. Most all the other sites from the 90's have gone defunct or just threw away their old data. I've noticed gamespot have ditched older game patches from the 90's.

Oh nice!

Looks like the US site goes back further!

This is the "master page" and the first articles are indeed from 1997:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/Component … Cards,4/38.html

Nice indeed. I love "retro" reading. 😀

Oh boy this is fascinating. It seems that with the TNT things began to shift the Nvidia.

Nvidia's decision to manufacture cards themselves (they bought STB) didn't help and other manufacturer's pushed and promoted Nvidia boards.

The lack of 23bit colour is also very interesting.

I wasn't aware that Nvidia was so strong, so early on. It seems that after Voodoo 2 it made sense to switch to Nvidia...

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

It supports DirectX3, so quite basic right?

In general how did it compare to a 3DFX Vodoo (1)?

Well, it was faster, BUT!!! no blend modes other than alpha blending. This was a big killer to the future use of the chipset. so it's obsoleted by 1998. The SGL MiniGL icds suck, too

sliderider wrote:

The chips in new devices are hardly related to the earlier chips if at all.

You'd be surprised - there's some distinct PCX-isms in the SGX series, like inprecise texture coord wobbling for huge polygons, and the whiteout on the VRAM / framebuffer mem use limit. It's also still a tile-based renderer. All PVR chips are.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Was the KYRO II, the last Power VR product for PCs?

yes. Its marketing hype was relied on these factors:
- 8 TMUS THAT NEVER GET USED BY ANYTHING!!
- Hidden Surface Removal and TILE RENDARING for that 1% fps increase!
- Fast as a Geforce2 GTS in non-T&L stuff! and it costs 41% of one!
- ENVIRONMENT BUMPMAPPING which also no game really ever used!

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Or put another way, what makes PowerVR "cool" / sought after?

Nowadays it's just just OMG 3D ON CELL PHOANES AND iDEVICES!!!! that makes PowerVR relevant today.

Come on, check the PowerVR fun thread - i feel like a broken record here.

Anandtech.com also has an archive of articles back to 1997 - go to the bottom of the page and you can go back to the earliest page. They do this for their other sections like CPU's, hard disks and motherboards too 😀

Coolies will check out the PowerVR fun thread and Anandtech.com!

PS: Reading the TNT2 review on toms. Amazing...

What would really be something was 1992 to 1996 reviews... Or magazines scans...

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Oh boy this is fascinating. It seems that with the TNT things began to shift the Nvidia. […]
Show full quote

Oh boy this is fascinating. It seems that with the TNT things began to shift the Nvidia.

3Dfx's decision to manufacture cards themselves (they bought STB starting with Voodoo 3) didn't help and other manufacturer's pushed and promoted Nvidia boards.

The lack of 32bit colour is also very interesting.

I wasn't aware that Nvidia was so strong, so early on. It seems that after Voodoo 2 it made sense to switch to Nvidia...

Fixed a bit. 3Dfx was great up till the voodoo 3 which was beaten by TNT2 varients. They didn't have 32-bit color in use until the voodoo 4/5 that had great FSAA support but lacked in performance and Texture and Lighting (TnL) for newer games coming out which the Geforce 2-MX had TnL and even beat the Voodoo 5 5500 in most cases. Of course 3Dfx was bought out by nVidia very quickly as they were stumbling. Life might of been a different story if the Rampage would of got released.

If memory serves right STB kinda screwed 3Dfx during there acquisition period, and then all the 3rd party manufacturers then kinda went against them.

In the end Glide API was becoming out of date quickly and being beat by OpenGL and D3D games.

Another note is recently Nvidia has started to manufacture some of there cards in-house, if they drop 3rd parties I wonder if history could repeat itself. Then again rumors are that AMD is up for sale and Dell is insterested.