3DWinbench (this has a very thorough features test)
Final Reality
PC Player Direct3D Benchmark
Microsoft D3D Tunnel Test

GLQuake can't run on a lot of old cards like Virge / 3D Rage / Mystique and such. I'm sure you know that tho.

Can any 1st gen 3d cards run any game or benchmark well? First gen is accelerators like the S3 Virge, Nvida's NV1, Matrox Millennium and Yamaha's poorly named YGV612 chip kicked started the accelerator market with a thud due to craptacular performance and support.

I'm pretty sure accelerators capable of glQuake like the Voodoo 1 are a 3rd gen part.

Edit: Oh yeah 3Dlabs Glint chip was first gen, but I'm thinking the Virge might actually be second gen?

NV1 can only run the games specifically designed for it. It can't run D3D or OpenGL games. It uses that Sega Saturn-esque quadratic rendering that's incompatible with the triangle world.

A Virge can run some early D3D games. It also can run some games that were patched to use the S3 S3D API, like Tomb Raider and Terminal Velocity. There is actually a Quake patch for these chips but I'm sure it's a slideshow.

Millennium can't do texturing so unless there's some Gouraud shaded game that I don't know of, it never did any games. 😀

I suppose Virge/3D Rage/Mystique are not first gen. There was non-consumer 3D hardware of course too. For all intents and purposes they were first gen for PC gaming though, I think. That Game GLINT chip was more worthless than NV1.

bushwack wrote:

Edit: Oh yeah 3Dlabs Glint chip was first gen, but I'm thinking the Virge might actually be second gen?

I would call all consumer 3D accelerators without DirectX 3.0 support the 0-generation (NV1, YGV612, probably the Matrox Ultima/Impression - they were so different, that it's probably very difficult to find a single benchmark to support all of them), those with 3.0 support 1-gen (S3 Virge), those with 5.0 support 2-gen.

swaaye wrote:

Millennium can't do texturing so unless there's some Gouraud shaded game that I don't know of, it never did any games. 😀

Actually, that isn't texturing 😀

You're right. Gouraud shading is a method for lighting polygons. I'm referring to the look of old 3D games without textures and used that Gouraud method for lighting. It was a distinct look that a lot of later DOS games had.

There is a game or two for their older Impression Plus card. That chip also could not do texturing.

I'm guessing that this 3D acceleration was really intended for "professionals". Maybe some CAD apps could use it? I have no idea.

Yeah, there's plenty of IrixGL hardware made in 1994 and earlier. Expensive huge cards they were, and none of them support Windows/DOS so they don't really "matter" to the consumer anyway 😀

swaaye wrote:

I'm guessing that this 3D acceleration was really intended for "professionals". Maybe some CAD apps could use it? I have no idea.

Yes, at least thats what InfoWorld says about it.

leileilol wrote:

Yeah, there's plenty of IrixGL hardware made in 1994 and earlier. Expensive huge cards they were, and none of them support Windows/DOS so they don't really "matter" to the consumer anyway 😀

SGI hardware rocks 😉

More on early 3D chipsets:
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/3d-graphics-cards-faq/index.html

I like how there was an $1100 version of the Matrox Impression. Oh the good old days and their prices. 😉

I really want to take my fabulous GeForce FX 5200 64-bit edition back in time and make a few billion bucks.

swaaye wrote:

I like how there was an $1100 version of the Matrox Impression. Oh the good old days and their prices. 😉

I really want to take my fabulous GeForce FX 5200 64-bit edition back in time and make a few billion bucks.

And bringing back stacks of overstock socket 3 boards will be insurance for your retirement 😉

Tetrium wrote:

swaaye wrote:

I like how there was an $1100 version of the Matrox Impression. Oh the good old days and their prices. 😉

I really want to take my fabulous GeForce FX 5200 64-bit edition back in time and make a few billion bucks.

And bringing back stacks of overstock socket 3 boards will be insurance for your retirement 😉

And buy bookoo loads of 3Dfx stock...wait a minute, doh!

Final reality is oldest benchmark probadly working on everything that supports D3D. GlQuake is better, because you can see there more fps at new cards. But many many very old cards never supported Opengl (in spec you find Opengl, but no drivers for it) - all virge, trio3d, rage II, matrox older than G100 and many less known. For some cards you can use d3d wrapper, but its slow.
On the other side, many early profesional cards support only Opengl, so you have to choose what you will be testing - if gaming cards, must stay with D3D, if also profi cards, then rather choose Unreal - fps is very very low on old cards and youll see many many missing efects and wrong textures, but you can test D3D, Opengl, Glide and S3 Metal.

vlask wrote:

then rather choose Unreal - fps is very very low on old cards and youll see many many missing efects and wrong textures, but you can test D3D, Opengl, Glide and S3 Metal.

Early versions support just Glide and SGL, and have effects and different sounds which would affect the benchmark scores vs. the newer patched versions.

and Unreal's timing screws up on newer machines, not a very good choice.

8800gtx final reality

7900gs

7600gt

x1650xt

GL1zdA wrote:

I would call all consumer 3D accelerators without DirectX 3.0 support the 0-generation (NV1, YGV612, probably the Matrox Ultima/ […]
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bushwack wrote:

Edit: Oh yeah 3Dlabs Glint chip was first gen, but I'm thinking the Virge might actually be second gen?

I would call all consumer 3D accelerators without DirectX 3.0 support the 0-generation (NV1, YGV612, probably the Matrox Ultima/Impression - they were so different, that it's probably very difficult to find a single benchmark to support all of them), those with 3.0 support 1-gen (S3 Virge), those with 5.0 support 2-gen.

swaaye wrote:

Millennium can't do texturing so unless there's some Gouraud shaded game that I don't know of, it never did any games. 😀

Actually, that isn't texturing 😀

Where would the earliest ATi Rage3d cards fit in the scheme of things? How about the Nvidia Riva?

sliderider wrote:

Where would the earliest ATi Rage3d cards fit in the scheme of things? How about the Nvidia Riva?

Rage3D is a slug, mid-1996 release, pre-Voodoo, 1st gen.

Riva is 2nd to me. It's very fast and matches with the Voodoo2 on most things in performance on Direct3D games, OpenGL is what it really fails at but it can still run Q3A with large levels. 😜

When I was trying out my STB Velocity 128 AGP (Riva 128), I found that Jedi Knight D3D stuttered. Apparently there is some sort of problem with Riva 128 that causes lag on texture loads. I found newsgroup chat about this, covering numerous games.

It's a fast chip for sure. And it's awesome that it is as good as it is considering that it's NV's first triangle chip. But it has issues... It also was limited to 4MB for some reason. They had to revamp the chip with the ZX version to allow 8MB.

I'm more of a TNT fan myself because that GPU really made it clear that NV meant business. It was too bad that they didn't hit their original clock speed target.

swaaye wrote:

Apparently there is some sort of problem with Riva 128 that causes lag on texture loads.

On the fly square aspect resampling is at fault there. I bet it'd be death with certain vertical or horizontal fires in Unreal engine games (particularily the Unreal logo in the bottom)

I've tried 3DMark1997 SE...i mean Final Reality 1.01 and it seems to work on PCX-2 fine. Infact, too fine, it makes me worry what it is doing. Reality marks - 2.82. Sound disabled, of course.

If anyone else has a Deschutes or Klamath P2, i'd like to see your FR results 😀

back when fr first came out I think my v2 scored about 4 (in the 3d perfomance result)

I can't find 3d winbench 98 or 99 anywhere, does anyone have working download links for them?

Thanks.