Yeah 32 bit 3D color in 1998-00 was way overrated. G200, G400, and TNT1/2 took a huge speed dive at 32-bit color. Rage 128 sucked in general. 3dfx's 16-bit color looks great and I'm not convinced that it's a significant disadvantage for the games of the time.
32MB of video RAM was never a tangible advantage for TNT2-era hardware as I remember. It probably became beneficial with the GeForce, Radeon and Voodoo5. Before that you'd have had games limited by aspects such as Voodoo2's very small, split memory architecture and game devs weren't going to break compatibility for those popular cards.
Glide is always better than D3D in those old games. It's not just about speed.
- You will see visual issues and even missing features in some games if you use D3D or OpenGL instead
- D3D as an API was not that great at the time.
- Too many graphics card vendors + shitty, unpredictable drivers meant issues with development. Glide was effectively a closed, controlled environment that just happened to be very popular.
BTW, I was a G400 guy. I thought they were the best, most magical graphics cards around in 1999. 😀 Oooh sparkly VCQ2 full 32-bit rendering (blah blah). Nevermind those weird rendering errors, OpenGL horribleness, lack of control panel 3D tweaking options, poor drivers overall..... TurboGL ftw... (eh go NV if you want to use GL).
But my perspective has changed since I've been able to see how much better Glide works overall in those old games. Rather minor speed differences and claimed technical advantages come in way below practical results & compatibility.
Voodoo5 has to be the best choice out there for games from '99-'00 or so. That card is seriously underrated and the gaming press should be ashamed of how they judged it based on 3DMark 2000 bullshit scores. Its FSAA is really fantastic and works fine even with older games.