It's not exactly a box you tick when it comes to compatibility.

DirectX is a layer between the drivers, and the game.
It's job is to send things that can be done on hardware to the hardware, and emulate what isn't. At least in the early days.

The voodoo cards weren't designed with directx in mind, but directx makes them work - even appear to do things they can't (within reason).

The first designed for directx cards were nvidia. They built their features around the functions directx presented to game developers.
The RIVA 128 was "the first" directx card. Directx5.

Anything before that was Microsoft plonking glue between the hardware and drivers to make the hardware "look" standard to the game.

Hi, not sure, you can download the DirectX 3 redistributable runtime and check the folders, for example.

Prior DirectX 5 (version 4 didn't exist), DirectX runtime shipped with drivers for joysticks, graphics cards and sound cards.

That's because Windows 95 didn't have DirectX built-in at the beginning.
So DirectX runtime had to ship with a pack of drivers.
On NT it wasn't needed, because it relied on software simulation only.

Anyway, the S3 ViRGE 325 comes to mind - it does support Direct3D 3 and 5, depending on the driver/DirectX runtime used.

DirectX 1 and 2 were more about DirectDraw, I think.
Many PCI graphics cards can do DirectDraw 1.0 acceleration, for example.
While technically DirectX 2 had some 3D capabilities, it was DirectX 3 that took off.

If you're mainly talking about Direct3D, it may help to start with this discussion to find out which games use the early versions of Direct3D:
Earliest Direct3D Immediate mode and retained mode games

It's possible that system requirements for those games may have some recommended video cards listed.

Direct3D 2 & 3 were under-developed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct3D#Direct3D_2.0_and_3.0

Speaking under correction (because I would be curious too): to my recall, prior to Direct3D 6 industry "standard" was more-or-less 3dfx Glide. As a key example, early 3D accelerated games from LucasArts all used DirectX in some form or fashion but their 3D hardware support was built for thus best supported on a Voodoo chipset [or wrapper] (use anything else and Shadows of the Empire will exhibit missing features). DirectX 5 was a transition of sorts while by DirectX 6 (the highest supported natively by 3dfx hardware) feature sets pretty much matched.

BaronSFel001 wrote on 2025-08-04, 14:45:

Speaking under correction (because I would be curious too): to my recall, prior to Direct3D 6 industry "standard" was more-or-less 3dfx Glide. As a key example, early 3D accelerated games from LucasArts all used DirectX in some form or fashion but their 3D hardware support was built for thus best supported on a Voodoo chipset [or wrapper] (use anything else and Shadows of the Empire will exhibit missing features). DirectX 5 was a transition of sorts while by DirectX 6 (the highest supported natively by 3dfx hardware) feature sets pretty much matched.

The original Voodoo 1 and 2 supported up to D3D5, while the 3-5 were D3D6. The move away from just Glide happened with D3D5, with the Riva 128 being a solid competitor to a Voodoo 1.

But yes, the Glide version was normally the one that just worked while D3D support was spotty. But during the D3D5 era you could use a non-Voodoo and still have a good experience. The move to D3D6 was when 3DFX started slipping with the Riva TNT1/2 normally providing a higher quality image versus a what Voodoo's output. The odd issues with games between different cards were with ATI, S3, and Matrox cards trying to map their proprietary rendering solutions to work with D3D.

D3D7 and the GeForce 256 was the final nail in 3DFX's coffin

A re-look at the DirectX versions of games was a good reminder. D3D2 didn't have much support, and D3D3 was the Sega Saturn port era. D3D5 was the PlayStation era and when things really took off.
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_Direct3D_2-7_games

SScorpio wrote on 2025-08-04, 15:58:

The original Voodoo 1 and 2 supported up to D3D5, while the 3-5 were D3D6. The move away from just Glide happened with D3D5, with the Riva 128 being a solid competitor to a Voodoo 1.

i think there are some misconceptions here, direct3d is just an abstraction layer that the graphics vendor/microsoft puts between the hardware and software. as a reminder, on some early hardware certain drivers would claim to support features that the hardware really didn't, just so that games would run.

voodoo2 drivers should present a direct3d6 device, it supports multitexturing which was the major addition of that version. later voodoo3 drivers should be d3d7, of course it doesn't support hw t&l, but i think it was considered an optional feature. some games will let you choose between sw t&l and hw t&l, the idea of voodoo3 as a d3d7 device is simply to be able to run later games.

A re-look at the DirectX versions of games was a good reminder. D3D2 didn't have much support, and D3D3 was the Sega Saturn port era. D3D5 was the PlayStation era and when things really took off.

playstation and saturn both predate directx anything by a long shot.

auron wrote on 2025-08-04, 20:25:

i think there are some misconceptions here, direct3d is just an abstraction layer that the graphics vendor/microsoft puts betwee […]
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i think there are some misconceptions here, direct3d is just an abstraction layer that the graphics vendor/microsoft puts between the hardware and software. as a reminder, on some early hardware certain drivers would claim to support features that the hardware really didn't, just so that games would run.

voodoo2 drivers should present a direct3d6 device, it supports multitexturing which was the major addition of that version. later voodoo3 drivers should be d3d7, of course it doesn't support hw t&l, but i think it was considered an optional feature. some games will let you choose between sw t&l and hw t&l, the idea of voodoo3 as a d3d7 device is simply to be able to run later games.

A re-look at the DirectX versions of games was a good reminder. D3D2 didn't have much support, and D3D3 was the Sega Saturn port era. D3D5 was the PlayStation era and when things really took off.

playstation and saturn both predate directx anything by a long shot.

It doesn't do S3 Texture compression or bump mapping either which were also big additions. Yes games can query what features a card can do in hardware, but some of them lied and thus you got the really broken janky things of early D3D. The Retained Mode of D3D2 and was closer to a modern graphics engine and at the time Microsoft also had Talisman under development. It wasn't until D3D5 that D3D looked closer to the modern API we all know today. In those early days many game were playable in a software renderer, while hardware gave you more performance and higher resolutions.

And yes not all games used all features of D3D, and you could even toggle individual features off and one in some of them. But by the time HW T&L took off, Voodoo no longer competed.

auron wrote on 2025-08-04, 20:25:

playstation and saturn both predate directx anything by a long shot.

The long was a the Japanese Saturn release at 19 months. But the N64 was originally released the same month as D3D2. The Japanese PSX release was 7 months before the first DirectX release. Console are also a static target for years while PCs evolved more quickly.

But Direct3D3 ports of Panzer Dragoon, House of the Dead, Virtua Cop and Virtua Fighter really makes it looks like a Saturn port era.

While D3D5 had tons of cross overs with the PlayStation as well as N64. But the PSX releases were just far more numerous.

But Direct3D3 ports of Panzer Dragoon, House of the Dead, Virtua Cop and Virtua Fighter really makes it looks like a Saturn port era.

These games remind me of the Nvidia NV1 and the concepts of quads vs triangles..
LGR made a video about the card. Very interesting, I think. Too bad DirectX didn't support it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jChtlWNIAL4

I liked the late days of Windows 3.x/the early days of Windows 95 that were still very experimental.
The good thing about DirectX (D3D, DDraw) was software-rendering/the reference rasterizer (a later used term).
Up until DirectX 6.x software rendering was pretty much the standard to us normies normal people/casual gamers without 3D accelerators.

3D cards also had to catch up with software-rendering, still. In terms of visual quality, at least.
A fast Pentium workstation with MMX/3DNow support could still compete with a gaming PC, without requiring special hardware.

Edit: Also interesting..
Sonic X-treme running on real Nvidia NV1 hardware
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJB_7iEeAns

The good thing about DirectX was that it was more versatile and/or supported more genres.
Whenever I look up 3dfx Glide games, it's all about 3D sports or shooters genre (not my genres).
Need for Speed II SE was about the only notable game that comes to mind (has optional Glide support).
The most appealing use case to me are emulators with Glide support, thus.
But since I like 2D consoles and Voodoo/Glide lacks support for 2D, the number of use cases is very low even here.
For DDraw/Direct3D 3 and up, there are thousands of indie games from late 90s, by contrast.

Edit: That's also why I have a bit of a soft spot for rusty old Windows 98SE with DirectX 6.1, I think.
DirectX 6 had been optimized for CPUs, still, not just for GPUs and fixed-function accelerators.
There was a brief moment in time, ca. '97/98, in which people speculated that then brand new MMX could supersede 3D accelerators.

I know, it sounds funny nowadays, but it wasn't that far-fetched, actually.
SIMDs like MMX could be used to implement software-based DSPs.
That's also why WinModems came to be. They're unreliable due to multitasking issues, but very flexible.

And back in the 90s that was very welcomed, because modem standards contiously had changed every few months.
A software-DSP based modem thus was like a modern day SDR (software-defined radio). All kinds of modulation schemes could be implemented in software.

Updating the WinModem was just a matter about updating drivers, really.
Some USB modems then laterhad used programmable DSP chips and flash ROM, which was an WinModem on a single-board computer.

While I suppose that is one way to look at it, in general Sega PC games of the Windows 95 era were superior to the Saturn versions they were ported from (though not so much with NV1, which is part of the reason why it never took off) but not necessarily the arcade originals.

One thing I have been curious about: which games actually took advantage of Direct3D 7's hardware T&L back before it became mandatory?

BaronSFel001 wrote on 2025-08-05, 14:56:

While I suppose that is one way to look at it, in general Sega PC games of the Windows 95 era were superior to the Saturn versions they were ported from (though not so much with NV1, which is part of the reason why it never took off) but not necessarily the arcade originals.

One thing I have been curious about: which games actually took advantage of Direct3D 7's hardware T&L back before it became mandatory?

Sacrifice could use it, but it wasn't mandatory. The GeForce 256 was the only card that could do it until 7 months later when the first Radeons came out. And then 6 months after than Direct3D 8 along with vertex and pixel shaders were out.

So for a while hardware t&l couldn't be needed. However, games could just fall back and do it in software so the games that supported it ran better as it offloaded compute from the still single core systems. It was the Direct3D 9 era when games started requiring it.

^What comes to mind: The Matrox cards had interesting lighting effects (EMBM etc), too.
The G400 was from '99 or so, so it was close to DirectX 7 release.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuHy9geQPB0
Edit: https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_ … th_EMBM_support

BaronSFel001 wrote on 2025-08-05, 14:56:

One thing I have been curious about: which games actually took advantage of Direct3D 7's hardware T&L back before it became mandatory?

Quake 3 used T&L through OpenGL. Not sure if there was a wrapper to Direct3D. Quake 3 was compiled for the mac as well.

MikeSG wrote on 2025-08-06, 10:16:

BaronSFel001 wrote on 2025-08-05, 14:56:

One thing I have been curious about: which games actually took advantage of Direct3D 7's hardware T&L back before it became mandatory?

Quake 3 used T&L through OpenGL. Not sure if there was a wrapper to Direct3D. Quake 3 was compiled for the mac as well.

The GeForce 256 was the only hardware T&L card when Quake 3 was released, with the original Radeon series a few month later. Both of them supported OpenGL with T&L extensions so it wouldn't have been using a wrapper to run.