When 3DFX came out it was a revelation. i had the 1st voodoo card in 96ish and couldn't belive how good it was. i then move on too the voodoo 2 12mb in sli. that was another big jump. i still have my two diamond voodoo 2 cards , both 12mb. there boxed and still in my spareroom.
@PROSTO4Tabal
4 жыл бұрын
Today is my favourite day! I recieve packs with Winfast A250 Ultra Geforce Ti4600, Voodoo5 5500 AGP and PixelPipes upload his new '99 comparison. I am very happy today, Thanks for upload :-)
@Storm_.
3 жыл бұрын
Two things I would like to add: there was a 3rd player in this battle of 1999 and that was the Matrox G400 MAXX. The Matrox actually would often beat the TNT2 in Direct3D titles but was let down by poor OpenGL performance. In general the D3D king was the Matrox card, OpenGL was V3 3500 and the best 'all-rounder' was the TNT2 Ultra. Also it wasn't that people didn't care for 32bit colour, they absolutely did! But it was too much of a performance hit on the TNT2 or G400 for it to be viably used in-game.
@fenixlolnope361
Жыл бұрын
Where’s rage 128?
@randomguydoes2901
10 ай бұрын
@@fenixlolnope361 rage 128 had a solid image quality, but such a mediocre card. Too little too late on ATI there
@Bobsien
4 жыл бұрын
Some games tested have a Glide support. You run these tests in glide (into Voodoo) or OpenGL?
@PixelPipes
4 жыл бұрын
No Glide, apples-to-apples
@OvermannOnline
4 жыл бұрын
@@PixelPipes It would've been neat to see the glide performance along with OpenGL.
@PixelPipes
4 жыл бұрын
@@OvermannOnline This won't be my last video on the Voodoo3 series!
@joeyvdm1
4 жыл бұрын
Loved it! Another terrific Pixel Pipes episode. And oh boy, the member berries are strong with this one. I still have both GPUs, and it was a tremendous era to be an enthusiast! Thanks for the vid Nathan, another great one.
@azazelleblack
Жыл бұрын
This represents my experience from the day. I had a very fast AMD K6-III CPU that was overclocked to 508 MHz (113 * 4.5), with low-latency SDRAM, and a 3dfx Voodoo 3 3000 card that I attached a relatively large CPU cooler to, hehe. It would run 190 Mhz, faster even than the 3500's clock! My friend's Pentium II 400 Mhz system, when upgraded with a TNT 2 Ultra, was still far behind the performance of my machine in a lot of games. He felt like the tech websites must have been paid off, as he had the impression that his machine would be much faster! (*´▽`*) The 256x256 texture limitation really wasn't a problem back then. 256x256 was still larger than most textures in most games (e.g. Half-Life, Quake III), and the real limitation was the fact that textures had to be sized in powers of 2 on 3dfx. Some games would bug out if you didn't run them in a special 3dfx mode, even if they didn't have Glide support. And while the "22-bit" thing was basically marketing, 16-bit output on 3dfx really did look way better than on anyone else's cards, even Matrox.
@Species0001
4 жыл бұрын
I bought my first PC back in 1999: A Pentium III 550 MHz and a TNT2 Ultra! That graphics card served me well for years and was only replaced by the GeForce4 Ti 4200.
@Tokyodriving
4 жыл бұрын
Whoa that was the same upgrade for me too! I had the Creative Labs TNT 2 Ultra.
@Just_a_Lad
3 жыл бұрын
What was the heaviest game you were able to play with that TNT2 Ultra?
@Species0001
3 жыл бұрын
@@Just_a_Lad I think it was UT2003. But it was also one of the reasons why I upgraded. ^^
@TheVanillatech
2 жыл бұрын
Ah I had a few of those machiens back in 1999. I was lucky enough to aquire five Dell Optiplex servers in amazing fold out cases and each contained dual P3 550's, 256MB SDRAM, onboard SCSI with Quantum SCSI 8GB HD's and Dell Viper 770 TNT2's - which were much like the TNT2 Ultra only custom to Dell machines I believe. For the time, those machines were absolute powerhouses, especially under Windows 2000/ME which made use of the dual CPU's, although I think only Quake III used the dual core ability in terms of games. I gave one to my brother who had never had a PC before, only a Playstation 1, and he was mesmerized by Deus Ex and Heretic 2 for months. Hilariously, he called me on night and asked me to come over because he had gotten really far in Deus Ex but had become stuck on the submarine base level (near the end of the game). I went over and discovered he hadn't applied a single skill point except those from the start of the game. He had gone ALL THE WAY to the sub base, being untrained in almost everything. Regardless, I still have one of those machines left in storage but I outfitted it with P3 700's and a Geforce 256 DDR before I retired it back in 2002. I did keep the vipers out of the other machines though, so I have 3 of those, the guy who bought the machines from me only wanted them for their SCSI capability and the SCSI drives they came equipped with. Considering I managed to get all 5 for nothing, I made a few quid on those PC's. Still, looking back, I should have kept more than one. Retro builders dreams, those Optiplex machines.
@TheVanillatech
2 жыл бұрын
I had a TNT2 Ultra with my Duron 750 and I remember playing Gunman Chronicles on it and loving the game. Recently built a retro rig with an AMD K6-III 550Mhz and a TNT2 Ultra and Gunman was unplayable. Those K6-III's really sucked at floating point.
@piecaruso97
4 жыл бұрын
The advantage of having a 3dfx card is that you can run pretty nice exclusive programs like the ultra hle emulator and all without having a fast cpu or gpu, all you need is a pentium 2 and a 3dfx card
@tenow
4 жыл бұрын
yeah, and I entered millennium with Intel 740 wondering why Direct3D support was so wonky on it. Had to upgrade to Rage128 quite quickly
@harryshuman9637
3 жыл бұрын
Rage128 was pretty ghetto in 2000, no?
@garydurn7983
2 жыл бұрын
Yes it really was a special time. Each generation gave such massive performance gains for the same cost, and you really wanted and used that extra performance to boost resolution and graphics fidelity. You went from 320x200 prior to having a GPU, to 640x480 using a Voodoo1, then 800x600 using a Voodoo2 then 1024x768 with the Voodoo3. I was lucky to experience each generation and the night-and-day upgrade it provided. I guess it would be like going from a 980 to 1080ti to 3080 in the space of 3 years at a 3060-like price level (sans crypto). Interesting to see a look back at performance now. The reviews all made a big deal out of the 32 bit colour advantage for Nvidia, but this generation of hardware wasn't capable of pushing it at a nice frame-rate (ala ray-tracing) so everyone stuck with 16bit anyway. Glide support totally turned the tables to favour 3DFX. The tie up between STB and 3DFX was catastrophic and tragic end to the company. Many gamers saw it coming a mile off, too bad the corporate money-men didn't.
@jamescarter8311
Жыл бұрын
Thank you. Nvidia fans just don't understand the dominance 3Dfx had. Their only real mistake was turning their back on companies like Creative Labs who was a monster at the time. They made a lot of enemies which also led to bad press and lost sales - which then led to less money for R&D to stay competitive; but the Voodoo 4 and 5's were still very capable designs.
@Leyvin
Жыл бұрын
While I remember the whole STB × 3dFX commentary going on at the time... _realistically_ what ended up leading to the downfall of the Voodoo compared to the NVIDIA TNT2, ATI Rage128 and S3 Savage was OEM Deals and Support for what became the Industry Standards (OpenGL and DirectX) While NVIDIA did tout their 32bit Support., realistically even up to the GeForce FX Series... it was a novelty., because their Pixel Pipelines were 16bit; meaning to support 32bit they combined the Dual Pixel Pipeline into a Single Pipeline; which effectively halved the performance. This is different to ATI who increased their Pixel Pipeline to 24bit and S3 who increased theirs to 32bit... albeit both ended up with slow Core Clocks., meaning they couldn't really compete with either Voodoo or TNT2 in terms of 16bit Modes; with the Rage sitting about 20-25% behind and Savage 50% behind; but the Rage would show a CLEAR performance advanced in 24bit/32bit ("True" Color) while the Savage would have equal performance (at half the price point). Still as most would still game in 16bit., none of this seemed to even be a blip on reviewers' radars until Radeon Vs. GeForce; when 24/32bit did become more important with the introduction of Shaders. GLiDE while based upon OpenGL was a Limited Subset of the Instruction Set specific to the Voodoo Architecture., and so the Architecture had a hard time supporting the more complete OpenGL 1.x Specification... and the same was true for Direct3D. This meant that while Drivers were made available to support said APIs., performance and feature support would often be lacking on Voodoo. And by 1999., most Developers had abandoned supporting Manufacturer Specific Graphics APIs in favour of the Vendor Agnostic OpenGL and DirectX. Still as noted, the other side of this was NVIDIA with the TNT2 became *excellent* at the art of OEM Partnership. If you bought a new OEM PC (Pre-Built) from Compaq, Gateway, Dell, etc. from 1998 - 2001., it was almost guaranteed to have an OEM NVIDIA TNT2; which while were "Cut Down" from the Retail version; did cement the name recognition with PC Gamers., and due to a lack of most understanding there was a difference (which a BIG performance difference) between the TNT2 Ultra and TNT2 OEM ... would usually lead to them showing their mates at _how_ much better their Graphics Card was to their friends Voodoo. These deals also became lucrative enough for NVIDIA for them to be in a position to "Help" 3dFX when their market share dropped dramatically, and they found themselves in financial trouble.
@GraveUypo
4 жыл бұрын
yours is the best channel on 90's tech by such a long shot.
@MilesMetal
4 жыл бұрын
And LGR!
3 жыл бұрын
90 sucks 80 RULES
@winj3r
4 жыл бұрын
The TNT2 Ultra was my first graphics card, bought in the summer of 1999. I had a friend that was adamant about the Voodoo. And we argued a bit about it. But I do remember that pretty much all reviews put the TNT2 Ultra ahead. And that was the reason I bought it.
@Tokyodriving
4 жыл бұрын
Same with my friend and I. Tnt2 ultra!!!
@TheVanillatech
2 жыл бұрын
Yeah that was the changing of the guard. The TNT vs the VooDoo 2. They traded blows I guess, with TNT2 being faster (and with more colours and resolution support) in Direct 3D, but 3Dfx having the edge in some titles because of Glide. I saw a friend running Aliens vs Predator and Quake III with his TNT at a lan, however, and that made me take the plunge and sell my VooDoo 2 card and buy a TNT2 Pro. If only I'd have held out for a few more months I coulda aimed for the Geforce or Radeon. Ah well!
@marvelv212
Жыл бұрын
3dfx was the better card but nvidiots were so dum to fall for paid reviews.
@MattyStoked
4 жыл бұрын
This channel is so awesome. Having such a specialised dive into this tech is so so so enjoyable. Thank you for this video, I remember 99 extremely well as I had just got into PC building and this era was so ferocious!
@ML_314
Жыл бұрын
I agree 100%! :) Is just so, so satisfying, relaxing, nice, ... watching a short documentary produced as high of quality as a pixel pipes video. This one is one of my favourites.
@corydensley7631
Жыл бұрын
The first PC I built had a Voodoo 3 with the TV tuner. The dongle was really annoying, but I could record Buffy the Vampire Slayer on my PC. So that was cool, even though I couldn't keep more that a few episodes due to the file size.
@RandomlyDrumming
4 жыл бұрын
OMG first! How original am I, eh? xD EDIT: In all seriousness, I always had 3dfx accelerators, until 3dfx went under, and I remember how fiercely I was rooting and fanboying for 3dfx against Nvidia and ATi back in a day. Everything was moving so fast and it was so competitive. Man, I miss the 90's sometimes...
@SirSilicon
4 жыл бұрын
In the 8 Years from 1999 and 2007. We went from Quake III to Crysis. In 2021 GTA V will be rereleased on PS5. A game from 2013 also 8 Years. Yeah times moved fast then.
@RandomlyDrumming
4 жыл бұрын
@@SirSilicon We also went from predominantly "2,5D" games to Quake 3 in ~4 years (1995-1999.). Or how about Voodoo2 almost doubling the performance of Voodoo Graphics in less than 2 years (1996-1998.). How's that for gen-on-gen leap? :) Or going from 4MB to 16MB+ of total memory on consumer graphics cards (basically quadrupling total graphics card VRAM in ~3 years, 1996-1999.). We also went from basic 3D accelerators in 1995. (with Rendition Verite, NVidia NV1 and similar) to fully T&L capable GPUs in 1999. Crazy times... :)
@Konkretertyp
4 жыл бұрын
@@RandomlyDrumming and now it is like a stagnation in techindustry, no big improvements over the previous tech in the last couple of years. The only thing i like in todays tech is that the power consumption is going down while the performance is going up in the same time. But the overall performance hadn't changed that much.
@cyphaborg6598
3 жыл бұрын
It was still an emerging technology it was only a matter of time for it to slowdown.
@GraveUypo
3 жыл бұрын
we're kinda going in a mini revival of the 90's right now as far as hardware goes and i hate it. i just bought a 6700xt and amd is already leaking stuff saying how outdated my card will be by this time next year. come on!
@manuelink64
4 жыл бұрын
Glide > Direct3D 3DFx gone, but never forgotten! Great video!
@Kamamura2
26 күн бұрын
LMAO, you don't know what you are talking about. Glide was a subset of OpenGL, a small API with limited capabilities that eventually failed to innovate (3DFX cards never could do 32bit colors, for example), while DirectX evolved to cater the evolving hardware and exists till today.
@Stratotank3r
4 жыл бұрын
1999 was a very exciting year. I moved jobwise to a new city and bought an ATI Rage128 to upgrade my Rage pro + Voodoo2 Rig. Voodoo3 was very expensive back then. Love your vids!
@RetroAmateur1989
4 жыл бұрын
I was looking for voodoo3s a few years back. They were sold for peanuts. 11, 15 buckaroos, they were cheap. I found a 2000 in a computer I salvaged, and that prompted me to look them up again, 70 at the least.
@MrKillswitch88
4 жыл бұрын
Back in 2009 I gotten my first v5 5500 agp for a meager $10 shipped from eBay, those were the days of getting such cards for peanuts now they sell for $250-350 on bid these days.
@m9078jk3
4 жыл бұрын
@@MrKillswitch88 I bought a 1997 Sierra Screamin 3D card new in the box on eBay for $5 USD about 2 years ago and after making a video on my find here on KZitem within about a month I resold it for $960 USD to a vintage graphics card collector in Deutschland. In some ways I regret selling it as a rare collector item
@TheVanillatech
2 жыл бұрын
@@m9078jk3 There was a recycling place in Manchester that had an eBay page about a decade ago. They must have gotten through some serious gear from all corners of the UK because they would post, weekly, hundreds of GPU's from old computers and ask between £3 and £15 for each one. Most of them were correctly identified, but not all. But all were sold as working so someone there must have been testing them. Over a year I bought more than 50 cards. Geforce 2 Ultras, Rage Fury Maxxes, VooDoos .... the works. Ended up being on first name terms with their office and in all those purchases, only ONE card didn't work when it arrived, so the guy sent me two identical (working) cards for free just a few days later. Awesome people. If you add up the sold listing prices of a lot of those cards now, you're looking at insane profit. Just can't seem to part with any though! They are all my babies.
@joeconti2396
4 жыл бұрын
Everyone was super jealous of my Voodoo 3 back in the day. Then my buddy got a Geforce 256 and then everyone made fun of my Voodoo 3.
@sgtjarhead99
11 ай бұрын
I went with the Creative Labs TnT2Ultra as soon as it came out. Although I was a big 3dfx fan at the time, I didn't think the V3 was that much of a leap from the existing 12mb Voodoo2 SLI setup that I already had for Glide games. I had a spanking new 21" CRT at the time and the TnT2 was just more vibrant with its 32bit color support.
@Darth001
4 жыл бұрын
i really enjoy when you release new videos keep it up buddy you deserve way more subs than you have
@tHeWasTeDYouTh
4 жыл бұрын
If only 3dfx had not bought STB and Gigapixel....almost 200 million wasted on those two. I wish the Spectre cards had come out but they ran out of money. TNT2 Ultra was my second graphics accelerator after I my Voodoo 1. Great times, remember by dad taking me to buy it like it was yesterday.
@JefersonPaivFerreira
Жыл бұрын
The TNT2 Ultra was technically more poweful, but the 3dfx looked better and was faster when running many games that used the 3dfx Glide API (I had both cards in lower versions: the TNT2 "non-Ultra", and the Voodoo3 2000).
@framebuffer.10
4 жыл бұрын
Very nice video, I remember these battles in "first person", I was on 3dfx "side" with my Voodoo3 2000 (which I still have and still works!)
@GraveUypo
3 жыл бұрын
i had a voodoo2, then my brother upgraded to a gf2 gts and i took his voodoo 2 and put in my system for SLI, which performed about the same as a voodoo 3 2000. good times.
@RC-go2kl
2 жыл бұрын
I have the VD3-3000 and the VD3-3500. My first experience with video cards was the VD3-3000 when I cracked open my mom's gateway PC to install that bad boy to get Rainbow 6: Rogue Spear running smooooooth as butter. My mom wasn't happy, but my 16 year old mind did not care lol
@Wowzers2006
Жыл бұрын
This is a really well thought out review of a really special time in a lot of people's lives. Thank you for doing such a good job.
@symol30872
3 жыл бұрын
The late 90's was an insane time for computers and 3D graphics in general. It was really special being a kid at the time and reading through PC magazines dreaming of owning a 3dfx card. Well 20+ years later, I now own most of the popular 3dfx cards 🤣
@cgoody9913
3 жыл бұрын
I was a young police officer with my tnt2 ultra, sony g520 and pe 550e
@georgiaguardian4696
3 жыл бұрын
We must have been born the same era and was enthusiastic about these cards at the time! I bought 256, TNT, TNT2, and Almost all high end cards following these for the following 10-15 years!
@3dfxvoodoocards6
4 жыл бұрын
The V3 3500 would have won easily in NFS Porsche too, but you run it in Direct3d instead of 3dfx Glide.
@vana4054
5 күн бұрын
I have that 3DFx Compaq variant, the only 3DFx card I managed to get during my youth days (getting a new one was just to expansive) . Glad I still have it and an PC from the era, to get a quick retro gaming session on the weekends :)
@SebastianBugiu
4 жыл бұрын
Great job! I remember how I only had a 2MB video card back then and I was looking up to these 2.... Great memories! Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
@rovervitesse1985
3 жыл бұрын
Drooling over that Leadtek winfast A350 geforce 5900 behind you. And next to it the fail of the era: the hopeless 128 geforce fx5800 with its vacuum cleaner cooler. The design of that leadtek a350 is one of my absolute favorites still and only is bettered by the Gainward 6800 gt golden sample with similar design but in red and the ultra rare Chaintech Apogee GeForce FX 5800 Ultra golden card with blue LEDs inside. Love that period
@PixelPipes
3 жыл бұрын
Yes I LOVE the design of that Leadtek card. They made a 5800 with the same cooler but good luck even seeing one
@infinity2z3r07
4 жыл бұрын
Back when $250 got you into high end gaming 😰
@LS3ftw15
4 жыл бұрын
To be fair, $250 in 1999 is equivalent to ~$390 in 2020. The RTX 3080 is $499 MSRP. So we're not THAT far off.
@infinity2z3r07
4 жыл бұрын
@@LS3ftw15 I know you meant 3070, not 3080 @ $499, but i guess i should have phrased it "when $250 bought the fastest thing anyone could buy." Those days are certainly gone. And now nvidia is bigger than Intel lol
@LS3ftw15
4 жыл бұрын
Infinity2z3r0 Yep. Typo on my part, and that’s a fair point.
@turbinegraphics16
4 жыл бұрын
But the rest of the system was really expensive.
@jamescarter8311
Жыл бұрын
The enthusiast PC gaming market wasn't yet ready to support $2000 graphics cards. They would've thought you were nuts.
@BurritoKingdom
Жыл бұрын
Voodoo 3 Velocity was my first add on GPU that I installed myself. I bought it because it was cheap and the extra TMU could be unlocked easily by changing the readme.
@shotgunl
4 жыл бұрын
I always love when new content from PixelPipes shows up because it's always an interesting topic. I had a Creative Labs TNT2 Pro paired with a Slot-A Athlon 650MHz, and though a friend and I debated whether the TNT2 was faster than his Voodoo 3 2000 (he had older Pentium 2 400Mhz though, so...he's also a massive racist now not a friend for years, so I think I win...), we both, as well as couple other friends, had tons of fun playing Unreal Tournament, Quake 3, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress Classic, No One Lives Forever, etc. Great times. I still have the CPU, TNT2 (and GeForce 2 mx that I bought to replace it), Sound Blaster PCI 128, and (AMD-750-chipset-based) motherboard from that PC, but the motherboard if flaky, even with some of the caps replaced. Though I had enjoyed PC hardware since the late 80s and still do, and in the mid-00s through ~2015 had worked for one of the large OEMs and had access to every piece of hardware imaginable and to some of the engineers in Taipei/Chonqing/Suzhou plus, at the time, had the income to stay current (990X+2xGTX690s probably being my most extravagant PC spending), I still feel like I had the most fun with PC hardware during the that area between those initial Slot-A Athlons through P4s and Athlon XP/MP until the 939/754 Athlon 64s. Now, I loved getting dual core CPUs, and really loved 1366 i7s later on (920...then the 990X, which I still have up and running in the small-form-factor PC in my living room with an old GT750ti, which I find a funny, and is why I pulled it out of my old desktop and swapped out the 920 in the SFF pc), but those late '99 through early-mid 00s hardware and games really call to me still.
@LogiForce86
Жыл бұрын
The Diamond Viper V770 TNT2 Ultra was THE card to get if you went Nvidia back in the day. However, that would also be the last great product of Diamond Multimedia, because like 3DFX merging with STB, Diamond merged with S3 and created the S3 Savage 2000; a supposed Geforce 256 killer that turned out to be buggy and flopped (and the company basically died after that (although they are still around producing products nowhere to be seen) and are now a subsidiary of PowerColor).
@bowtopostulio
Жыл бұрын
Given how obscure and rare those two cards were even back in the day, i feel like a better and more relatable video would've been the TNT2 vs 3000 or even the Geforce vs the 3000. I had the 3000 during this generation and loved it. it killed everything i played. While Glide was still relevant Voodoo was unmatched and looked even better than cards with 32bit color for that 1998-2001 era. I feel like you should've thrown in some more games like Tomb Raider, Descent II, Driver, Thief II, Hitman and maybe even a couple 2001 games for fun.
@fr4gl3
Жыл бұрын
Can't even remember what PC I had in 99. I think it was about the time I was changing from a Pentium 133mhz to a AMD K6 300 with a ATI Rage pro 8mb and 64mb ram very happy playing CS with like 5 fps in the Aztec door on a 32 players server ;)
@johncate9541
Жыл бұрын
The V3 was faster in real-world use; you didn't play 3DMark, and 32-bit color wasn't playable on most machines in 1999. The GF 256 at the end of the year changed the game, though. I had a V3 3500TV that I ran for years even after the industry had moved on. I mounted a cooling fan on it and got it to run at 202 MHz. It was running on a system with a K6-III+ 550 into the late 2000s when I let someone convince me to sell the rig to them. I wish like hell I hadn't.
@aceofhearts573
Жыл бұрын
3:44 this right here my friends....this is what destroyed 3dfx. Even to this day I cannot believe the CEO did that. He bought STB thus becoming a competitor to all their AIBs and then they banned them from making their chips. All flocked to Nvidia and all the cash flow 3dfx was making ended literally overnight.
@postanimus8989
4 жыл бұрын
Its crazy how fast technology was moving at that time. Nowadays you can play new games on 5 years old mid-end gaming PC with no problem, back then 5 years old PC was practically trash. I had Rivia TNT2 in my trashy PC in 2006 and as you can expect i was very unsatisfied because any game over 2002 just wouldn't run at all. My friends were rocking some 6800GT or even 7800's in their bulids and my parents were against spending money on computer, because they paid once for it and paying for upgrade was waste money for them. At this time i'd kill for even 6600GT or 9800Pro to play some newer titles. Nowadays i want to revisit my dream from that time and bulit ultimate retro gaming PC from mid-2006 with some X1900XTX/X1950XTX and Core 2 Extreme CPU to fulfill my dream from that era.
@Konkretertyp
4 жыл бұрын
To be honest, i've never cared for 32 bit color depth or high texture resolution when i had a bulky crt and a voodoo 2 12mb and later on a voodoo 3 3000 until i've got a lcd monitor for myself (i was in my early teens, so i've basically knew nothing about all the tech stuff). Things had changed for me afterwards, when i realised how awfull the 16 bit dithering looked on my lcd monitor, some time later i've got my hands on a cheap geforce 4 mx 420 (i think it was the 420), which i replaced with a FX 5200 (128 bit, 256 mb), that i've got for free, just a year later (at this point i've replaced my whole system from a 866 mhz Pentium 3 to a Athlon XP 2200+). Oh the memorys of joy, passion and experimenting with games settings and editing ini and cfg files, to get best results of performance and visual fidelity. I love your videos, they always give me this retro vibe and memories of the past, when i've read almost every pc magazine i've got my hands on, that i could afford for my pocket money (and of course my love for my Voodoo 2 & 3).
@lflyr6287
Жыл бұрын
PixelPipes : the real reason why TNT2 Ultra was portrayed back then as a winner is Nvidias anti-competitive tactics that they still use today against AMD....and that is bribing outlets to falsify measurement data or at least partially falsify the data. You getting overall faster results with Voodoo 3 today, with the same old drivers from back them tested on the same old games from back then, is proof of Nvidias bribery, period.
@patrickct9386
3 жыл бұрын
Great video. You captured the essential aspects of the cards well. And what a surprise how well the 3500 performs against the tnt2, as compared to the reviews at the time, as you noted. I got into gaming and pc hardware at the time, so remember the tnts vs voodoo3 battles well, my first card being a V3 3k. Endless amounts of graphs and exposition! I agree that 3dfx made a mistake making the 3500 a multimedia card; they shoud have done that with the 2k, and left the 3500 for the hardcore gamers. I do think though that the 22-bit effective colour was a very smart feature, as the bandwidth hit of 32bit was in most cases too big. And the founders admit making their own cards was a disastrous decision.
@ravengamer2905
Жыл бұрын
Back in the day, I went from a 3DFX Voodoo 2 to a Riva TNT 2, what a huge difference it was back then
@AetiusPraetorian
4 жыл бұрын
I always liked the Voodoo cards and would read the reviews in my Boot magazine (Now Maximum PC). I had a Riva 128 and later upgraded to the Geforce 256. Good times back then.
@joetheman74
Жыл бұрын
You fail to mention what api each game is using. I would venture to guess that the ones where the TNT2 came out on top were DirectX and the ones where the Voodoo came out on top were OpenGL. Could be wrong but since you didn't provide this information and I am too lazy to look it up that is what I will have to assume. This testing was not detailed and thorough enough to make any real conclusions.
@retrochristmas7329
2 жыл бұрын
I have my gateway performance 700. Have a diamond stealth 3 in the agp slot and a diamond monster 3d 2 "a diamond voodoo 2" in the pci slot. Got both fir 10 bucks
@Stanwis
Жыл бұрын
Voodoo 3 was beggining of an end for 3dfx. Still great card but not really ahead of g400 and tnt 2. This and terrible management.
@Caleb-fv5fp
2 жыл бұрын
Wtf last year you could get a voodoo 3 3000 for $50 now it’s like $200 who tf is buying this stuff besides me?!
@classic_jam
4 жыл бұрын
Another well researched video and good comparison. Only wish you included a few of those later pushing games that had DX6 render paths just to see what they can really do. Otherwise, awesome video
@rockygamerblogs5253
3 жыл бұрын
Mmm and the voodoo3 pci edition? I have one in my PIII 450mhz with 384mb ram and Windows XP retro pc
@baroncalamityplus
4 жыл бұрын
Compaq Gaming Desktop. That's something I didn't ever expect to hear.
@ironhead2008
4 жыл бұрын
Not surprising that the V3 was being held back: it's a DX6 card so it relies on the CPU for alot of graphical setup. It can sure as hell take advantage of a faster CPU: According to Phil's Computer LAb the Sweet spot for the V3 is a 1 GHz Pentium 3. I suspect a 1 Ghz Athlon XP (say an underclocked T-Bred or Barton, or a Geode NX) would do just as well.
@ironhead2008
4 жыл бұрын
Which kind of exposes the TNT2 Ultra even more. Even with an overspecced CPU it still got creamed more often than not.
@mayrbek123
4 жыл бұрын
Dude why haven't you launched a patreon yet. This is the kind of channel that is made for patreon
@osgeld
4 жыл бұрын
I had the tnt2 ultra it boggled my mind that the gpu had a heatsink almost as big as my cpu's... here's the reason TNT2's dominated, simply they were giving them away. you bought a big box computer with a 3d video card it came with a TNT, TNT2, etc, and more often than not it was just the stock card in many HP, Compaq's late 90's home all rounder upper end offerings. 3DFX you had to go out and buy for the most part. In the late 90's / early 2000's I worked for a computer refurb house that dealt with the major brands of the time, and OMFG we had boxes of the things, I upgraded my dual V2's for a TNT2 , and all my friends got one ... including a few ultra's before I went out and bought a ge-force, again they were giving the whole damn TNT series away for free, and well that pretty much worked out for nvidia and poor ole 3dFX couldnt justify their prices (esp since most gamers bitd ran 800x600 and even the base model TNT could nail above 60FPS all day long)
@ruxandy
4 жыл бұрын
The main issue with some of these results is something that you actually mentioned: unlike the Voodoo 3, the Riva TNT2 Ultra supports high resolution 2048 x 2048 textures. For example, in games such as NFS Porsche, the Voodoo 3 looks completely washed out when compared to the TNT2 (because of the low resolution textures). Of course, this results in better performance for the Voodoo 3, but the image quality penalty is quite extreme. And, boy, people really didn't appreciate this at the time. I remember debating with my friends if it was worth the performance penalty with the TNT2, and with very few exceptions, most of us agreed that, yes, it was worth it (especially because, having played in software rendering for many years, we were quite used to MUCH lower framerates, so it didn't really bother us). Anyway, great video as always, keep up the good work! :)
@PixelPipes
4 жыл бұрын
Good point, higher res textures means higher use of memory bandwidth
@retroshenanigans1
2 жыл бұрын
Indeed... Same issue with 3DMark2000, Expendable, Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament - they all support high resolution (mipmapped) textures between 512x512 and 2048x2048. So, when taking that into consideration, one can clearly see why the Voodoo 3 was the beginning of the end for 3dfx. :-)
@the_motherfucker
Жыл бұрын
"Much" isn't an acronym
@ruxandy
Жыл бұрын
@@the_motherfucker, who said it was? If you are talking about the upper case letters, I'm sure you are smart enough to understand WHY I chose to use them. ;-)
@aidan5125
3 жыл бұрын
My father once worked for 3Dfx and tells tales to this day
@阿綸的全勳學院
2 жыл бұрын
Oh !amazing
@frosch90453
4 жыл бұрын
Keep it up dude, way to few people are covering old tech! P.S. A video on the Radeon HD5970 would be an awesome way of eliminating the FOMO I've carried around for 11 years.
@GraveUypo
3 жыл бұрын
cards i REALLY wanted but missed out on: voodoo 3 (any of them) radeon 8500 PRO radeon 9700 PRO (got the 9800pro later so close enough) radeon HD 5850/70 Fury Nano Vega56 It's funny, the only nvidia cards i really lusted after were the geforce 2 series and then the geforce 4, which was a huge disappointment and made me not ever "wish" for a geforce again (although i'd buy them when they were good, like the geforce 8800gt)
@johncate9541
Жыл бұрын
I still run an HD6970 in one of my rigs here to this day. It's not supported by AMD anymore, but works well in Linux.
@armorgeddon
4 жыл бұрын
Are all comparisons Direct3D vs. Direct3D or was the Voodoo3 benchmarked running on Glide in those games that support it? Anyway nice video and I fully agree that many reviews back in the day were pretty bad, I even thought so back then. In practical use the Voodoo3 was the much better card unless you absolutely wanted to try the hyped 3D glasses like the ELSA Revelator. I'm not sure but I think at that point the Voodoo3 cards even were cheaper than the corresponding TNT2 model.
@PixelPipes
4 жыл бұрын
No Glide testing, just apples-to-apples comparisons. I'd expect the Voodoo3 to look even better when using it.
@armorgeddon
4 жыл бұрын
@@PixelPipes Fair enough, would be good though if the graphs would've shown that it was Direct3D and even better would be showing Glide result besides the D3D results. Thanks for the answering! Greets!
@sarahkerrigan7996
2 жыл бұрын
Would love to see a contemporary Matrox G400 MAX review. Crappy drivers hampered its OpenGL performance and all initial reviews were very critical. Then drivers improved but reviews were not updated. Probably the best card of the TNT2/Voodoo3/Rage 128 Pro/Savage4/G400 generation
@PixelPipes
2 жыл бұрын
Very true
@jamescarter8311
Жыл бұрын
3Dfx was king at the time as I clearly remember. Nobody gamed at 32bit, so that part didn't matter. Nvidea and ATI gained a foothold only because of 3Dfx's fateful decision to make their own cards. They made a lot of enemies and lost in the press which cost them sales needed for R&D and it snowballed from their.
@stuvo1977
10 ай бұрын
Yep, then the Voodoo 5 line was released late. It was meant to be released in fall 99', but it got pushed back by 6 months. Voodoo 5 competed favorably with the Geforce 1, but it was significantly slower than the Geforce 2 GTS. 6 months later 3dfx was gone.
@dcikaruga
3 жыл бұрын
Matrox was still a contender during this period, surprised you haven't done any videos on the G200 or G400 cards.
@rwl0323
3 жыл бұрын
Excellent video! Thanks!
@unrealengine1enhanced
4 жыл бұрын
i liked voodoo, and their minigl was very neat for the times. but nvidia was a bit ahead of voodoo and ati, and it's a good thing nvidia absorbed voodoo or we wouldn't have the gpus that we have today.
@3dfxvoodoocards6
4 жыл бұрын
Only with the Geforce Series it was ahead of 3dfx.
@RaPtOr9600
4 жыл бұрын
I still have my TnT2 pro VIVO version with 3d glasses input from 1999, remember face of my buddy who had voodoo 2 when TnT2 flexed some power. He knew but would not admit TnT2 is better But when GF DDR arrived TnT2 days were gone Great video
@bojanrakonjac6267
4 жыл бұрын
Hi Nathan, another good one, and those cards are looking sweet as brand new 😊 Enjoy following your channel, hope you make more excelent quality videos like this one. I remember that in ‘99 I had 1st contact with PCs, and they were nor even close to these babies... celeron at 433 and Rivas tnt2 m64... yet, so much fun and so much progress in so little time 👏
@superchiaki
3 жыл бұрын
celeron kicks ass !
@V1R7U4Ltv
4 жыл бұрын
Love the content! More 2000s reviews please!
@SirSilicon
4 жыл бұрын
I would liked to see some TNT overclocking results. Maybe this would change the results. Some cards theese days would OC for more than 30% unheard of in todays time. I still love your content. Pixelpipes is a gem. Greetings from Germany
@GraveUypo
3 жыл бұрын
my best overclocker was a 8600GT which overclocked a little over 50% on both memory and core clocks. went from shitty to actually pretty good. other than that, the next best was probably my geforce 2 gts, which overclocked from 200/333 to 285/383 and actually beat a geforce 2 ultra that way. i have a gt710 here that overclocks around that ballpark. low end / low power hardware overclocks best nowadays. or maybe we should count mods, so my geforce 6800GS which unlocked 4 extra rendering pipes for a total of 16 and overclocked a fair bit too, giving a huge performance boost over stock, might take a good position in that rank
@SirSilicon
3 жыл бұрын
@@GraveUypo It's always a difference between low end/midrange OC and high end OC. For a long time it was often easy to OC some cards to get in the ballpark of the high end variant. Overclocking a high end chip 30% is a rare thing these days. Last time I saw it was the 2700K
@johncate9541
Жыл бұрын
There were some TNT2 cards late in its life that shipped as fast as 175 MHz. They were faster than my V3 3500 overclocked at 202. Nvidia's cards overclocked better in those days. Late run GF2 GTS cards a couple of years later were easy to overclock faster than the GF2 Ultra.
@registrazioniduemillaotton6030
4 жыл бұрын
I've had both same exact cards (compaq v3500 + creative tnt2u)... Both great but the V3500 has that magic going :)
@speeedskater
4 жыл бұрын
PCs were more fun back then
@obi-wankenobi1190
Жыл бұрын
Hey nice contents yet I Saw one of my photos at 06:13, it would of been nice if you added my nickname Gold Leader as credits to that photo, I still have that wooden table where the V3 3500 was laying on as well. As the video goes yea nice compilation would of been nice to see Descent 3 and Freespace 2 in here, but hey ya can't have everything, 32 bit wasn't great on the TNT2U I had the Diamond card and I found it too dark, 16Bit Glide looked much nicer multi texturing was miles better plus the 2D core was very good a 128Bit 2D core ideal for 2D games and overall image quality output was miles difference in advantage for the Voodoo3 3500 it's self, it's 350Mhz RAMDAC was also a nice thing to see plus 8 bit per pixel rendering support makes it ideal for older Dos games as well
@PixelPipes
Жыл бұрын
Hello Gold Leader! Look again in the bottom right hand corner. I did credit you.
@obi-wankenobi1190
Жыл бұрын
@@PixelPipes ah is see now yea my bad was hard to see, the yt scroll bar probably covered it
@B24Fox
3 жыл бұрын
Great video. But I can't even begin to understand why on earth would you choose the 45.23 driver for the TNT2!! Using a period-correct driver for the TNT2 (or at least =< 44.03) would have skewed the results much more in it's favor. 44.03 was the last decent driver for anything under the FX Series.
@PixelPipes
3 жыл бұрын
45.23 are by no means the latest and perform very well in my tests. Don't worry, the TNT2 Ultra was performing at peak.
@B24Fox
3 жыл бұрын
@@PixelPipes yeah, i edited my comment (apparently not in time, lol) coz it actually isn't the final driver. And also seems that the TNT2 is the least affected by driver version (after quickly checking one of PHILL's videos, to doublecheck if i'm spewing bullcrap or not). Yeah 45.23 seems to be just fine for the TNT2. Sorry for the hasty comment :)
@lemagreengreen
4 жыл бұрын
The TNT2U just stomped it amongst my friends anyway, I only knew of one person who bought a Voodoo3 and this was after everyone owned Voodoo/Voodoo2 cards. TNT2U was basically the next step before the Geforce/Geforce2.
@nando03012009
4 жыл бұрын
Still have (working) voodoo 2 1000,voodoo 3 3500, voodoo 4 4500 and voodoo 5 5500. Recently acquired a voodoo 5 6000. 🤘🤓🤘
@PixelPipes
4 жыл бұрын
Wow! That's a pretty exclusive club you just joined!
@coryflammer1269
4 жыл бұрын
Can you review your 2900xt with the fastest cpu? wonder what it gets now with 512bit memory bus with a fast CPU.
@Vanu-i4o
13 күн бұрын
I had a Voodoo 2 PC in 1998 and in 1999 my parents upgraded that PC and got rid of it as it was Pentium 2 and Pentium 3 came out. However it's funny to think that all people focused on was the CPU, ram and hard drive size back then... No thought into the GPU. And the new PC had onboard graphics and no slot to put a graphics card in :/ So I actually had worse performance in games on that new PC. It was some Packard Bell PC and it had 1mb of ram for video and that came from the main ram, so it only read as 63mb of ram. So when I tried to launch games that required 64mb of ram like RTCW, they wouldn't run and would just tell me I do not have enough ram. Then my mum bought the next PC and it had a Geforce 2 MX in it and it was barely any better lol. So glad the very next year I built my own 9700 pro PC.
@0mnis14sh
4 жыл бұрын
It's interesting to see how the CPU's back then were impacted by the API's and wrappers needed by the GPU, but the unleashed capability is also great to see.
@FLYREEF
4 жыл бұрын
Great video,3dfx lovely company ahead of their time.. My voodoo 3500 tv still work like a new..
@Xerilium
4 жыл бұрын
Is that an ASRock Steelseries X570 board I see there?
@PixelPipes
4 жыл бұрын
Yep
@neko_samurai
25 күн бұрын
From a more historically accurate perspective, pairing these with much later CPUs is inaccurate to the experience people were having at the time. If you had those CPUs, you’d have a similarly updated GPU. I wouldn’t have said anything, but that diatribe at the end about reviews of the time being bad and this being important and more accurate rubbed me the wrong way. And I wasn’t even playing PC games at the time.
@RetroSpector78
4 жыл бұрын
Awesome channel ... can’t believe you never showed up on my feed ! Love these Riva TNTs
@PixelPipes
4 жыл бұрын
Glad you finally found me! lol, KZitem algorithm strikes again
@Kamamura2
26 күн бұрын
I owned a TNT2, and I remember what upgrade it was over the Riva 128. I played Sin and Halflife 2 on TNT2. Good times...
@SaccoBelmonte
Жыл бұрын
ahhhh memories.... I had a creative TNT2 Ultra. Times in which I was between Need for Speed and UltraHLE.
@nicholas-k8j
3 ай бұрын
i remember getting a new Celeron 433 in december 1999 and playing quake 2 after hours doing work exp at a computer shop in 1998.... over reated for the cost if you ask me , quake 2 looked great at the time but those cards were expensive... in 99 when i got almost the cheapest computer available at the time for $1200 in december 1999 in Australia it had a 17inch KTX monitor 9 gig hard drive 433 celeron with 64 ram sd1333 i think with win98 it came with only a 8 meg AGP built in graphics SIS 620 chip set i think it it ran unreal tornament 2000 in software render amazing good ... that voddoo card is super expensive but why buy it if Unreal torn still looked amazing in software render ....
@unrealengine1enhanced
4 жыл бұрын
and a **NEW KING** of **LEGACY GAMING** was born... (take my advice or don't, but you won't be disappointed if you do) if you like retro boxes that much, and want the power of a computer from today, i know a variety of good gear combinations and will readily share. (my best setup being an old core 2 quad i used to run not long ago) it RAN EVERYTHING...
@guest21984
3 жыл бұрын
I've just build a machine with a P3 500Mhz and Voodoo 3 3000. Unreal tournament getting 60fps. Prior to 3dfx cards this was unthinkable. If 3dfx announced they had started up again and were bringing out a GPU to rival Nvidia and AMD I would pay £1500 as i'm sure many would
@ALE79-88
3 ай бұрын
i had voodoo 1 and 2 in 90's
@bco1981
2 жыл бұрын
I seem to remember that, that exact driver you used on the tnt lost about 30% performance. using the driver version 44.03 was faster. I remember i was not having it, i tested on windows 2000, 98se and xp and it was the same story. i tested on all 3 OS's because i thought it was the fact that i switched from 98se to 2000 back then. but it was the same with these drivers across the board. This is just from memory, so. but i distinctly remember there was this about 30% difference in performance with those drivers. Edit: Just remembered, this was related to geforce 4 cards. not sure how much it affected other cards.
@CYON4D
4 жыл бұрын
Always great to see a 3dfx comparison video.
@wuhansrule
Жыл бұрын
I own both cards But my Voodoo 3 3500 is the TV Model. I watch the aftermath of 9/11/01 On my Voodoo 3 3500TV. But Nvidia Still used the classic if you can't beat them buy them out. And with the purchase of 3dfx they dominated things for years. As for me I loved my Voodoo card more the the Nvidia TNT2. It was not until I need more VRam I then bought my ATI All in Wonder 128. I did video Editing converting old VHS to DVD for People. Nvidia just cost too much for the higher Memory Video Cards. Now I use Nvidia 1070 with a Telsa K80 to boost it. I have 32GB of VRam and Nothing seem to to slow it down.
@Wushu-viking
Жыл бұрын
Interesting. The TNT2 Ultra (the 32mb model) did age better in 2000-2001. The 32mb became the standard(minimum). As far as I remember, the TNT2 Ultra was not far behind the the Geforce 256 SDR model in performance.
@bigdeagle1331
6 ай бұрын
In the Sunday paper! I would always look at the Best Buy inserts! They always had the voodoo card in them! From 1998 to 1999! That’s my first knowledge of the cards!
@josephwright433
Жыл бұрын
My then step brother when I was a kid had a Voodoo3 and I had a TNT2. We always pit them together to see who's could run what better. Those were simple times. The first GPU i purchased with my own money was an Nvidia 8800GT Alpha Dog Edition. I remember it fondly. Is your dicord channel still live? Id like to pop on and chat with like minded tech lovers 😊
@przemekkobel4874
Жыл бұрын
I remember that just before it got assimilated by nVidia, 3dfx acquired a company with a promising tiler design (Gigapixel). Out of curiosity, my next card after 5500 was another tiler - Kyro II. Funny thing, it sucked at benchmarks, but could handle 32 bits and some serious loads in games. I guess, Imgtek was too naive to care about driver "optimizations".
@PanekPL
19 күн бұрын
Thumbs up if LGR brought you here
@dawabbit65
18 күн бұрын
@@PanekPL 👍
@CattleRustlerOCN
Жыл бұрын
I owned every generation of voodoo card starting with the voodoo 2 up until 3dfx went away after the 5 5500 iirc. Glorious times. Then I became an Nvidia fanboy for many years owning maybe one ATI card along the way. If I were buying a card now I'd go with an AMD Rx 7900 xtx or or if they release a rumoured 7950 xtx or 7990 xtx. Nvidia pricing is just insane.
@cackoocacho1629
2 жыл бұрын
Went through a Voodoo 1, Voodoo 2, and that was it for me with 3DFx. Switched to the TNT 2 next, as colour depth and texture "were" important to me. Then, the GeForce 2 after that, until going over to ATI for a couple of cards. One of my good friends got the Voodoo 3 3500, and he had nothing but problems with it. I certainly don't regret having gotten my TNT 2 back in those days. It was the right time to dump 3DFx. 16-bit rendering was already archaic.
@niklasohman5021
Жыл бұрын
Thanks for a nice video, but I think you should have done some comparison of the image quality too, in the very same games. You could just compare 16-bit quality since the Voodoo didn't support 32-bit. Because at the time I myself bought a TNT2, I felt the image quality was sharper. When looked at side by side the image quality output from the Voodoo 3 felt more smudged out. Wich made the deal for me. I knew the performance was a little stronger in the Voodoo card but I was happy with the performance both cards delivered at the time.
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