appiah4 wrote on 2024-01-23, 18:50:

But strangely enough there was never a year where the Pentium MMX was the top dog. I never realized Klamath came only a few months after P54C. It almost feels like the MMX was Intel's own kind of Super Socket 7 platform..

The Pentium MMX was a great mainstream and upgrade CPU for 1997, especially given the initially high costs of the PII.

But I agree, it feels a bit odd that the Pentium MMX never qualified as a high end CPU on a year-by-year basis.

appiah4 wrote on 2024-01-23, 21:01:

In 1993 my 486-33 had 4MB, in 1994 I got a CD-ROM Upgrade kit and upgraded to 8MB. In 1995, I upgraded to a DX4-100 and had 16MB. In 1996 I upgraded to a P133 with 32MB. In 1998 I had a PII-300 with 64MB. I remember RAM becoming INCREDIBLY expensive in the late 90s due to some factory fire or whatnot..

Your configuration was beyond average, definitely 😀

As for memory prices rising up - it was earthquake on Taiwan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Jiji_earthquake

Think I got my dx2/66 in '95 (or maybe even '94). It had 8Mb memory and 1Mb VLB graphics.
In '97, I think, I got a spanking new K6-233 with no less than 32Mb.
That was upgraded to a Celeron 450A (which for some reason was marked 300A 🤣 ) i '99, that had a whopping 128Mb ...

H3nrik V! wrote on 2024-01-23, 21:14:

That was upgraded to a Celeron 450A (which for some reason was marked 300A 🤣 )

Lol, yeaaah. Such a friendly CPU 😀

Dungeon Master 1992 (DOS)
https://www.mobygames.com/game/834/dungeon-master/

Maniac Mansion 1988 (DOS)
https://www.mobygames.com/game/714/maniac-mansion/

Wasteland 1989 (DOS)
https://www.mobygames.com/game/287/wasteland/

Missing all of the ATI cards before the Rage amuses me...

1987 ATI VIP
1988 ATI VGA Wonder
1989 ATI VGA Wonder-16
1990 - 1991 ATI Mach8
1992 - 1993 ATI Mach32
1994 - 1995 ATI Mach64

That is because I chose to only include 3d accelerators.

not really 😉
CL-GD410/ET3000
CL-GD510
TVGA8800/ET4000
TVGA8900
CL-GD5401
CL-GD5424
F64300/CL-GD5428
Trio64
Trio64V+

appiah4 wrote on 2026-07-20, 12:05:

That is because I chose to only include 3d accelerators.

I hear you. But still. You got the empty cells on your sheet.

The TI 34010 & 34020 could do 2d and 3d acceleration, but since no one had once and practically none survived, you could leave that out.

Then there's the 8514/A (1987) and the Matrox MG compatible cards for ISA (1989). They had 2d acceleration! You could actually scroll in a GUI without line skipping!!!

I'd add the WD Paradise as a legit competition, at least when they first came out. Maybe put them in the column above 3dfx, since they didn't really overlap time wise
WD90C00 (1988)
WD90C11 (1990)
WD90C31 (1992)
WD90C33 (1993)

You could almost put the Cirrus cards above Nvidia, since there wasn't much overlap there.

Your chart though. Do what you think is best. No need to recreate this--- https://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/history-tree

edit -- In 1996, Pentium Pro systems didn't use SDRAM, Only EDO. SSDRAM was just for VX Socket 7 systems in 1996, and rarely used at that because it didn't change performance enough, and other VX chip limittations.

Oh wow, that chart by Vlask is something 😁 I didn't know it existed and now I'm in love with it, I'll probably spend a few days obsessively going through it 😀

I am not very familiar with a lot of the cards you two mentioned, particularly the WD chips. Of the ones I know, I find it quite a stretch to call many of them 3D accelerators - they were 2D cards with some acceleration features. I'm sure they may have had some use in OpenGL applications and workstations or some such but they were really not very useful for 3D gaming, if at all.

I did not know about PPro not using SDRAM in 1996, that is interesting. Regardless, I believe SDRAM was an option on x86 platforms in 1996, so I'm not sure how to actually represent that.. Thanks for pointing it out!

appiah4 wrote on 2026-07-21, 06:14:

I did not know about PPro not using SDRAM in 1996, that is interesting. Regardless, I believe SDRAM was an option on x86 platforms in 1996, so I'm not sure how to actually represent that.. Thanks for pointing it out!

SDRAM was an option on the Socket 7 430VX platform, but that chipset could only cache the first 64MB of RAM.

At the time, SDRAM wasn't cost effective. If you had extra money, going with a faster CPU was better than a slower CPU with SDRAM, if you could find it.

https://vintageapple.org/byte/pdf/199612_Byte … d_the_World.pdf

Check out the ads from December 1996. SDRAM just wasn't out there.

Switching 32MB of SDRAM to EDO would cost you about $200 and might give you a 5% performance boost, but going from 166mhz to 200 Mhz CPU was only $100 and would give you a 10% performance boost.

Edit -- OK, I guess Dell had it, but it was pretty rare and really only showed up at the very end of the year--