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A History of 3D Cards From Voodoo To GeForce

Posted by kdawson on from the long-and-winding-road dept.

Ant sends us to Maximum PC for an account of the history and current state of 3D video cards (single print page). "Try to imagine where 3D gaming would be today if not for the graphics processing unit, or GPU. Without it, you wouldn't be [trudging] through the jungles of Crysis in all its visual splendor, nor would you be fending off endless hordes of fast-moving zombies at high resolutions. For that to happen, it takes a highly specialized chip designed for parallel processing to pull off the kinds of games you see today... Going forward, GPU makers will try to extend the reliance on videocards to also include physics processing, video encoding/decoding, and other tasks that [were] once handled by the CPU. It's pretty amazing when you think about how far graphics technology has come. To help you do that, we're going to take a look back at every major GPU release since the infancy of 3D graphics. Join us as we travel back in time and relive releases like 3dfx's Voodoo3 and S3's ViRGE lineup. This is one nostalgic ride you don't want to miss!"

8 of 320 comments (clear)

  1. I bought a whole box of them... by DarkProphet · · Score: 4, Funny

    at best buy a couple weeks ago... too bad the box was supposed to contain a Nvidia 260... s3, 3dfx, all kinds of old ass graphics boards in the box.. but no 260...

    --
    What could possibly hurt the security of the American people more than giving our own government the ability to hide its
  2. Visual Splendor? by D+Ninja · · Score: 5, Funny

    Without it, you wouldn't be [trudging] through the jungles of Crysis in all its visual splendor

    Hmmm...is anybody able to play Crysis in all its visual splendor?

  3. There were some early kick ass 2D graphics cards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    But the market never accepted them because no matter how thin they made the peripheral slots, the damn things would just fall through the case.

  4. GeForce FX 5800? by wondershit · · Score: 4, Funny

    Am I missing a joke or is it an error that the description of the GeForce FX 5800 features the image of a vacuum cleaner? I mean... not that a vacuum cleaner with 15 million transistors is not impressive...

  5. Thats why I buy the ones rated in Bungholiomarks by Atomic+Punk · · Score: 5, Funny

    You need the Bitchin'fast3D2000

  6. Re:Graphics and Stuff by revlayle · · Score: 4, Funny

    It was a very fetching story

  7. Re:SLI only by Jaroslav.Tucek · · Score: 4, Funny

    >The V2 could only hit 1024x768 in SLI

    Well, the V2 was perfectly able to hit other places besides that, like London...

  8. Re:7th Guest by GunFodder · · Score: 4, Funny

    Not to mention the added luster of nostalgia. I was showing my mom Fallout 3 and her comment was like "wow, it looks almost as good as Myst!"