Microsoft and WYSIWYG,(What you see is what you get) if only, we were all sooo wrong

The in the day review on the late final Via Cyperblade chipset (2001) alluded to the soldered on memory being ddr and the chipset having DDR support but apparently it never happened.

My particular embedded example must have had standard sdram soldered on but I never knew.

I thought all 486 boards labelled overdrive ready would take a Pentium Overdrive.

That AMD K6/K6-2/K6-III were "bad chips", mostly because here in Brazil, those were very very common to be sold in this combination:
AMD K6-2 500 MHz + PC-Chips M598LMR + 64 MB SDRAM PC100

This combination, using onboard SiS 530 chipset graphics, were really bad, but not the processor's fault.

I thought Savage 2000 is a good card 😀

XGI Volari would kick some serious ass.

That I knew Dos like my pockets. Myths...

Me and my buddy pronounced Tomb Raider like "Tumb Rider" until the movie came out in 2001.

Nexxen wrote on 2021-12-01, 19:19:

XGI Volari would kick some serious ass.

I recall the hype suggesting it was gonna kick the snot out of the 9800Pro or something like that. Turned out it was just about capable of kicking some traces of snot out of a well filled water balloon if you poked a few holes in it first.

Nexxen wrote on 2021-12-01, 19:19:

XGI Volari would kick some serious ass.

That I knew Dos like my pockets. Myths...

I had the same delusions, if that is any consolation for you..

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-12-01, 20:32:

Nexxen wrote on 2021-12-01, 19:19:

XGI Volari would kick some serious ass.

I recall the hype suggesting it was gonna kick the snot out of the 9800Pro or something like that. Turned out it was just about capable of kicking some traces of snot out of a well filled water balloon if you poked a few holes in it first.

🤣 🤣
On paper it's death on a horse, after reviews just a bucolic kid's drawing of a donkey in a field.

appiah4 wrote on 2021-12-01, 20:51:

Nexxen wrote on 2021-12-01, 19:19:

XGI Volari would kick some serious ass.

That I knew Dos like my pockets. Myths...

I had the same delusions, if that is any consolation for you..

It actually helps.
We are not alone, on the contrary, in really big company, I say.

Volari was at least a cute card.

Pronounciations.....

Ie.
Meraki - "Mur-ack-ee" vs "Mu-rock-ee"
Altiris - "All-Tier-us" vs "All-tire-us"

Thinking I could use mSATA drives on most 486...nope, needs a faster ATA compliant HDD host adapter, like my PTI-255W VLB.

One fun one is the Versa E/V with detachable screen debate. Im still unsure what is correct and what is wrong! Was I right its a 40E and the windows help file is a Typo? Did Ford IT screwup during a wipe and load and put the wrong load on? PC Mag points to me being right but I dunno with that help file. I should check if its got the detachable screen in the pics. Might do a YouTube on this.

I was a firm believer that tile based rendering in my beloved PowerVR Kyro2 would take over and give 3dfx and nVidia a run for their money, riiiight up until the Geforce3/4 just z-buffer brute forced their way into the lead

"That every new Windows version was going to be better than the one before." OK so what happened when Windows ME came out ugh ! ohh then after XP windows Vista ugh ! and after Windows 7 came all the new Windows MORE garbage versions ;p

silvervest wrote on 2021-12-02, 00:20:

I was a firm believer that tile based rendering in my beloved PowerVR Kyro2 would take over and give 3dfx and nVidia a run for their money, riiiight up until the Geforce3/4 just z-buffer brute forced their way into the lead

Tile based rendering did take over though (15 years or so later)

appiah4 wrote on 2021-12-02, 06:12:

Tile based rendering did take over though (15 years or so later)

Oh really? I read that some mobile graphics chipsets were using tile based rendering, but wasn't aware of anything else? I haven't really kept up with 3d rendering techniques since probably mid 2000's... should I feel vindicated? 😁

silvervest wrote on 2021-12-02, 06:17:

appiah4 wrote on 2021-12-02, 06:12:

Tile based rendering did take over though (15 years or so later)

Oh really? I read that some mobile graphics chipsets were using tile based rendering, but wasn't aware of anything else? I haven't really kept up with 3d rendering techniques since probably mid 2000's... should I feel vindicated? 😁

All AMD GPUs since Vega and all nVidia GPUs since Maxwell use tile based rendering. All current consoles also use tile based rendering. Also XBOX 360 had onchip eSRAM to assist in holding framebuffer data and applying MSAA through tiling and XBOX ONE had enough eSRAM to hold the framebuffer so tile based rendering could be emulated in software.

I remember reading about people using 128mb of RAM in 1999 and thinking it was an utterly stupid waste of money because that kind of RAM capacity would never be needed. Egg met face 4 years later when I built a system with 512

appiah4 wrote on 2021-12-02, 06:33:

All AMD GPUs since Vega and all nVidia GPUs since Maxwell use tile based rendering. All current consoles also use tile based rendering. Also XBOX 360 had onchip eSRAM to assist in holding framebuffer data and applying MSAA through tiling and XBOX ONE had enough eSRAM to hold the framebuffer so tile based rendering could be emulated in software.

Very cool. Time to go rub some things in some certain people's faces, thanks!

cqm was fine and creative cards never change

silvervest wrote on 2021-12-02, 00:20:

I was a firm believer that tile based rendering in my beloved PowerVR Kyro2 would take over and give 3dfx and nVidia a run for their money, riiiight up until the Geforce3/4 just z-buffer brute forced their way into the lead

3dfx was already dead and the Geforce3 was launched before the Kyro2 release though... the real what-if here is if NEC didn't exit so fast and how we could've had PVR2 in Aug/Dec 98 (apart from the dreamcast that is)

(though even then, Q3TEST would probably flush out enthusiasm)

Tile rendering should be on the Intel GMA iirc, as that's where the desktop usage of PowerVR's graphics patents went into after PVR were over with the discrete card market and gained foothold in mobile chips.