A History of 3D Cards From Voodoo To GeForce

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!"

Comments

Once more around the wheel of Karma, dear friends!

[davecb]

The intro says to include ... other tasks that [were] once handled by the CPU.

In fact, there is a regular cycle of inventing video add-on processors, seeing them spread, then seeing the CPUs catch up and make the older video processor technology obsolete, moving the work back to the CPU. Then, of course, someone invents a new video co-processor (;-))

Foley and Van Dam, in Fundamental of Interactive Computer Graphics called this "the wheel of karma" or the "wheel of reincarnation", and described three generations before 1984.

I suspect the current effort is more directed toward building fast vector processors, rather than short-lived video-only devices. Certainly that's the direction one of the Intel researchers suggested she was headed.

--dave

Missing from the article

[logicassasin]

There's a couple of blatant omissions fron this article:

1. Matrox Millenium I/II - Matrox's best card until the G200 came along. The Millenium II was, at the time, one of very few cards that could be bought with up to 32MB of RAM. Many entry-level 3D workstations running NT4 shipped with such a configuration.

2. Matrox Mystique/Mystique220 - I STILL have one of these AND it's in service. Matrox believed that speed was king, so they designed the MGA1064SG chip for just that, but failed to add features like bilinear filtering, transparency, and mip mapping. As a result, games flew on these cards, but tended to look like utter crap. Both versions had the ability to be upgraded to 8MB or RAM or to full-on video capture and compression using the Rainbow Runner capture daughtercard (which is why I still have/use mine).

3. PowerVR PCX2 - Superceded the PCX1, faster than the original and also an add-in accellerator like the Voodoo1/2 with one two major differences: 1. It didn't require a pass-through cable for operation. 2. It could render 3D in a window as well as full screen. It was also one of two 3D chipsets with native API support by Unreal at it's launch (the other being The Voodoo chipsets). It had, in my eyes, only one major problem - no alpha blend transparency. It could do transparencies, just not alpha-blended. It did have it's own API, PowerSGL, and games coded in it (like Unreal and a Japanese game called "Pure Vex") could look quite good and were pretty fast as well. A few games had after-the-fact patches that added PowerVR support (Mechwarrior 2). Interestingly, the PCX2 could scale much better than the faster cards of the day. I'm not sure of what it's upper limit was, since most reviewers stopped testing it after a while.

4. Savage4 - The Savage series of chips from S3 had their own API called MeTaL. Unknown by many, Unreal (in later patches) and Unreal Tournament both supported MeTaL and through it S3TC. Unreal Tournament 99 looked it's absolute best when run with a Savage4 and the extra textures installed from the second CD. The S4 also had full scene AA, though I doubt anyone ever bothered using it.

5. S3 Virge - The 3D image quality of the S3 Virge was rivaled only by the Voodoo (this was repeated several times in magazine reviews). No other card delivered 3D that looked as good at the time... It was still unbearbly slow.

6. i740 - The Intel chip was one of VERY few that could run Quake III Test when it first appeared thanks to its complete OpenGL ICD.

7. 3DLabs Permedia 2 - Known, but not known... The Permedia 2 was everywhere for a minute. Most card companies were pushing this entry level 3D workstation chip as a 3D gaming platform. Performance wise... well... it kinda sucked. It was missing some features, but thanks to 3DLabs' bulletproof OpenGL ICD, it was one of few cards on the market that could properly render the particle effects on Quake II AND could run Q3T on arrival. Superceded by the Permedia 3, which WAS a better chipset in every way, but still not competitive against the likes of Nvidia and 3Dfx.

There's also the Matrox G400/450, which I still have 4 of in service at home (DH for the wife and 450's for three of my kids).