DF Retro: The Story of Nvidia GeForce 256 - The Original 'GPU' [Sponsored]
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- Опубліковано 5 лют 2025
- Content sponsored by Nvidia. In this DF Retro special, we revisit the original GPU - the Nvidia GeForce 256. First released in 1999 in an age of phenomenal progress in the graphics space, the GeForce 256 was promoted as the first 'Graphics Processing Unit' - or GPU. In addition to state-of-the-art performance, GeForce 256 also brought about new features such as hardware transform and lighting and full DirectX 7 support.
John Linneman shares his perspective on the hardware and also talks to Phil Scott - now Nvidia's Director of EMEA developer relations, but back in 1999, a developer working on the exciting new range of PC graphics accelerators.
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Seeing some of those old 3D Mark demos set off a nostalgia bomb in my brain.
top tier video as always John
We don't deserve DF Retro, it's too good
John's videos are vastly superior to the rest of DF.
@@ionseven nah Matthew is a star
@@ionseven did you really have to say that
@@totty2524 I deserve it, and more
Going from software rendering to an actual GPU was mind blowing for me. Keep up the great work with these videos.
same, when I was a kid I wanted to play motocross madness but couldnt even get it to install cause it didnt detect 3d hardware, finally got an SIS 6326 and was able to play it and I also played Star Wars Dark forces 2 and was blown away..............then I was mind blown when I upgraded to a voodoo2 lol cause I went from playing carmageddon 2 at 20 fps with the sis 6326 to about 80 fps with the voodoo 2 lol.I still own these cards too
I remember playing Unreal 1 in software mode for the longest time until the day arrived where I could finally afford an accelerator. It was a Voodoo card and going from software to GPU rendering was like stepping into an entirely different world.
As a kid it was amazing! Back then my sister's boyfriend installed a 3DFX card on our PC and the graphics got so good. My first experience was on NFSIII. I ended up playing that game so much I memorized all the tracks shortcuts and speed lines.
@@conyo985 Im glad I kept all my old 3dfx cards lol. I have a box full of them
@@kyles8524 haha, its little bit frighting because I got exactly the same expierence. I started with onboard SIS 6326 that I later upgraded to Voodoo 2. My mindblowing games were: NFS 2, DF2 and the og UT. Transition from 2d to software 3d and to glide 3d is something revolutionary. In my opinion even virtual goggles won't be so influential for gaming like graphic accelerators.
The days of GPUs when you were sometimes just happy that it ran, not necessarily how fast it ran. It was definitely an exciting time.
Great video, John!
I dont know by 99 you were expecting it to run and hopefully run fast. The shit not being compatible era was more like 2 years earlier.
@@Games-tt9hu Maybe for Quake and Unreal Tournament players, but most PC players by 1999 were happy to just run the game at decent settings and resolution. Graphics tech was moving so fast from the late 90s to mid 2000s that trying to run games at super fast framerates were not a top priority for most PC gamers.
In those days PC gamers dabbling on the high end were trying to run games at max graphical settings at 30 fps which was usually preferable to running the same game at lower settings at 60 fps. PC gamers back then were more interested in experiencing cutting edge graphics than higher performance, only fast paced shooters were the exception where higher framerates were more desirable.
Back then I was just happy that games like Unreal Tournament, Half-Life, The Sims, Starcraft, Need for Speed III, Quake II, and such could run on my crappy PC.
@@03chrisv yeah I can confirm, at least in my experience. Most of the PC gamers and nerds I knew in high school back then (right before consumer GPU'S) were playing simulators, RTS games, top-down 2D shooters or dungeon crawlers and were OK with the 15 fps or whatever their shit ran at back then. When I got my first computer that could run games with texture filtering at 60fps my mind was absolutely blown! And it had a 3dfx Voodoo card, which wasn't even classified as a GPU. Seeing normal mapping, bump mapping, real-time shadows and high poly counts on a GeForce card later was equally mind-blowing!
These days, you're not considered a serious PC gamer unless you drop $3k or more on your rig, which is fairly common. That's not even counting the price of your 240hz OLED monitor. The debate quickly becomes classist and about status symbols.
That was true in the mid 90s. And even then people were making fun of the S3 Virge as a graphics decelerator.
I remember EVERY game, demo and benchmark in this video from back when owning a GeForce 256.
..But most people thought I was wildly crazy when paying that much money for "just a graphics card". They probably would've fainted though, if they knew the GPU prices of today.
Not to mention that the GeForce 256 still sells for quite a bit of money :-D
$299 in 1999 is the equivalent today of $518 when calculated for inflation.
Given the 256 was at launch the top tier card, yeah I would have been laughed at by my father for asking for the equivalent of the top tier today (which I consider to be the 3080ti, as the 3090/3090ti are overkill for the price). I did manage to get a voodoo1 card back in the 90s though , which was impressive enough. I think I jumped to the getorce 2 or 3 after that skipped the 256 entirely.
@@bionicgeekgrrl Crazy reading your comment from just two years ago to think about the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 with the 5000 Series that's going to (likely) be announced in January 2025, only 7 weeks away.
The golden era of PC gaming was 1998 - 2002. I am still stuck in that era.
Hell so much so, I've jokingly said that my IT skills (I am an IT Professional for a living) are better suited to 2002, as opposed to 2022.
GeForce 2 Ultra. Had an INSANE 64 MB of VRAM. Crushed everything I threw at with a 1 GHz Pentium III and an unheard of 512 MB of RAM. My first high-end gaming PC. Good memories.
There's something about old games and old gpus that brings a smile on my face.
@@alangeorge5592 Nostalgia.
@@ebridgewater Also the fact that nowadays the games have amazing graphics but they still don't appeal to me as much as the old low poly graphics.
@@alangeorge5592 Cause most of these games feels like copy paste of templates, cashgrabs, filled with microtransactions and dlcs and requiring patches [since the game is broken on launch date] and shit like that.
Not to mention, the artstyle of many of these current games look cartoonish compared to older games where textures had grit and looked realistic.
@@RiasatSalminSami yeah, I could play a game from 90s or early 2000s for hours, but get so bored playing today's games even after 1 hour.
So many memories watching this. This was back when every six months there was a significantly faster GPU, it was crazy how quick the industry was moving. I'd go through at least 2 new cards a year, I had the Riva 128, Riva TNT, Riva TNT 2, Riva TNT 2 Ultra, GeForce 256 SDR, then the DDR model when it came out, then the GeForce 2, the GeForce 2 Ultra, and then of course the GeForce 3. Before the Nvidia cards I had my Voodoo 1, the Voodoo 2 12MB in SLI, then in between some of those Nvidia cards there were things like the Voodoo 3 Banshee, and the Voodoo 3. I still have all my Voodoo cards, and my Riva 128 and Riva TNT, and I wish I had kept more of them tbh. Anyway, I was lucky to be able to get them all, and lucky enough to know enough people that when I wanted to upgrade to the newest card I could move mine into my wife's rig, and sell hers right away. CPU's were almost as crazy, overall I have an entirely new PC every year lol... Good times, good times...
I remember spending a small fortune on my first new pc. And it had a AGP Geforce DDR. It seemed amazing at the time.
Hug me mate. Nothing can beat a 16MB AGP card. I remember playing a game Hell in Vietnam and it was like a multichrome scatter fest. Good old days.
well you can spend a fortune on a pc today too. just got a email from a local store that a 3090 is available for 3500e ridiculous.
Correction my good sir, It was amazing at the time.
Not only seemed, it WAS amazing at the time!
First pc I had was my father's Pentium 1 way before Nvidia stuff...
Man we've come so far in graphics quality. Its unbelievable.
And price too LMAO
@@Aggrofool Well, the GeForce 2 GTS launched for around $350-400, that's roughly $600-650 for inflation.
The MSRP of an RTX 3080 was around $750? So not much more expensive I guess...
@@Diablokiller999 but the street price is much more inflated now :(
@@wanhl2440 Sure, but that's another topic why it's like that and not compareable to 20 years ago. But NV and AMD listened, they will surely increase MSRP for the next generation, if Intel is not up to the fight.
@@Diablokiller999 yeah it was reasonable until the recent explosion in price, if ethereum becomes unminable tho we're in for some very cheap gpus later this year, thats for sure
I was 15 in '99 and somehow convinced my parents to buy this for me. It came with a CD with the first "Unreal" game (not Tournament). Man, first reaction from me was: "wow, this needs a fan???", second reaction was with the Unreal game. OMG, the 3D detail! :)
Told my parents it was needed to run word xD
@@incubator2k3 Ahah, well done
Did you ever play that demo game Dagoth Moor Zoological Gardens? I was blown away by that card when I bought it in 1999 and saw T&L being utilized by the hardware.
@@NorweegI did! It looked incredible. It reminded me of Morowind but with more color. Some tech demos were designed to resemble some popular or upcoming games. With the name "Dagoth Moor" I'm sure they were thinking of Morrowind. It's main villain was Dagoth Ur. Morrowind was also known for its use of shaders like the water FX, but this tech demo was a little more trippy and colorful.
Oh man. This brings me back to the LAN days of late '98 to early oughts. First without a 3D gfx card on a Pentium MMX 166 MHz computer and then later on a Pentium 2 300 MHz with a basic 3D card. That's the computer I bought my first own GPU for. The card was the almighty Geforce 2 MX 32 MB. I LOVED the pond demo and that brought me to go into 3d modeling and rendering and interest in HDR imagery and the like.
That's another story which goes from 3D studio Max 1.2 all the way to Maya 7 or 8.
Later I switched that card for a Radeon 9800 pro after seeing what the 9700, that my brother bought, could do. I still have a couple variations of the Geforce 2 MX lying around. Man, the speed of technology development was astounding and to be a PC gamer from '96 onwards was a treat. My first issue of PC Gamer was October 1996, I believe, and I still have each and every CD Gamer and DVD Gamer disc kept in storage.
Fun times. Great video.
The late 90s... It was such a great time for PC tech/gaming. Thank you so much for this trip! I remember very well progress in PC tech and 3D gaming was awesome back then.
Yeah, these days things are moving so slowly.
I had a Riva TNT and later upgraded to a GeForce 2 with 64mb vram. I remember everyone of my friends thought I were out of my mind and would never find a use case for so much vram.
I remember hearing that someone was able to use a the VRAM on a Quadro to run Doom 2016 or something like that.
It made a big difference. I had a Geforce GTS 32MB and my friend had the 64MB with the same CPU setup and he would get 5 to 10 FPS higher than me at 1024x768 in most games.
@@IgoByaGo I didn’t know anything about computer hardware back then. It essentially boiled down to 64>32 and it was within my budget. But I guess it made a difference :)
Ahhh that 3DMark2000 helicopter demo at 1:26 bring back so much good old memories
I'm trying to hunt down an old GeForce 256 to get the recently discovered Shadow Man Nvidia build to run.
This long lost version of the game features updated graphics compared to the regular 1999 release.
It was to be bundled with the GeForce 256 but for whatever reason that never happened.
The Shadow Man Nvidia build was found in the "Uncle Duffy" collection. He was a beta tester who worked for Acclaim. When he passed away his nephew sold off various Acclaim related treasures his uncle left behind and that's how this particular version of the game was rediscovered.
It's a shame that currently noone I talked to has had any success in getting it to run on modern hardware.
This was brilliant John, my family had a Pentium 75Mhz that I started gaming on. I upgraded it to a Pentium 133mhz and added a Voodoo 1 and later a Voodoo Banshee. Then in 2000, I got my very first Pc, an Athlon 650Mhz with a. Geforce 256. The Voodoo 1 blew my mind but getting that Athlon System with the Geforce, going from playing Quake 3 arena, Half Life and Tiberian Sun on the 133, to my Amd Athlon. That was something else. Finally good frame rates 😅😊. Excellent video, I remember all of these tech demos and games. Incoming was amazing 😊. Love it! Now I have a 5900X and 3090Fe, how far we have come.... where will we be in another 20 years!
I bought the GeForce DDR the month it released. Blew my mind, it played some games at 1600x1200 just fine. I recently got my first OLED with HDR1000 and its the first feature to really blow my mind like back in the day when its implemented properly.
My first PC was Pentium 3 with some 8MB graphics card I got beginning of 2000, I remember not being able to play GTA3, so later I managed to get my hands on the GeForce 256... Those were great times, these 3D demos and games were so impressive for me as a kid, much more than any RTX thing I have tried these days. Great video and reminder of those careless days :)
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. My PC gaming experience started out with graphics like these, when I got the GeForce 2
I went straight from a Voodoo 2 to a Geforce 4 so all of the in between stuff I mostly missed, so this was very interesting.
I worked with Phil on Expendable At Rage Newcastle, my first job in the industry.. happy days! - RB :)
The original GeForce was nuts. The graphics it could run was like pre-rendered CGI cutscenes from games just a few years ago running in real time.
1999 ; such a great year for so many reasons - GeForce, Dreamcast, RR4, my first pentium3 pc etc. This video brought back so many great memories - 3Dmark!! Thanks John and the DF team.
This reminds me of going from software rendered Quake II to running a Riva TNT2, crazy difference. I got it from a store that bought and sold used VHS tapes, they had like four boxes on their hardware shelf.
Quake II was the first game I've tried after buying the 3dfx Voodoo 2 in the summer of 1998. I was totally blown away by it. Both the graphical fidelity and the framerate were out of this world. I soon got my hands on Unreal and it was just as advertised... unreal!
Imagine buying a graphics card to play a orange and brown game with low res everything but faster.
LOL, how much did you pay?
I had a 32mb Riva TNT2.
Probably my most favorite card.
@@nexxusty Same, it's too long ago to remember what I paid.
@@HouseNorwayBear Aww, yeah I guess I can say the same.
I THINK I paid $175. Not positive.
So many memories with that card though.
1995 through 2002 was an amazing time to be into PC gaming. Every 6mo there was groundbreaking tech being introduced. PC's and peripherals needed upgraded constantly, and games were truly innovative. Going from Doom, Duke3D, Quake, Descent, C&C, and Starcraft into 3D accelerated titles like Quake II, Unreal, Neverwinter Nights, Dungeon Siege, Descent 3, Soldier of Fortune, and Serious Sam was pretty amazing. Some of the companies rose to become the tech giants we all know today, others faded and relegated to just fond memories.
Things like VR and real time raytracing piques my interest, because it reminds me of how hard the industry pushed towards new experiences.
Having to upgrade things constantly sounds...quite scary, at least in comparison to buying a Playstation, waiting 6 years, and then buying a Playstation 2.
@@MicahtheDrumCorpsPseudoboomer, not scary, fun yet unfortunately expensive. Yes, that's always been the great thing about consoles, everything just works as it should.
The first games that took full advantage of the GeForce256's DOT3 Bump Mapping (Normal Mapping) both came out in the year 2000; Evolva and Giants: Citizen Kabuto. The "Bump Map Patch" (July 2000) for Evolva, which came out a short while after the original retail release, lets you toggle between different modes for the bump maps using one of the function keys. It was used on both the environment and the player characters. Giants came out in December 2000 and used lots of DOT3 bump maps for the landscape and for the titular beast Kabuto, which looks really awesome in motion.
These retro episodes are really fascinating, damn! Super interesting stuff. Thank you!
I moved from a 3dfx vodoo 3000 to a GeForce 2 GTS and was blown away at the time by the jump in graphics fidelity.
4:21- need more of this attitude from the higher-ups especially for SP/story-driven games!!
I remember these days vividly. Great times, I was 13. So many good memories. I had a TNT2 Ultra!
Yet another great documentary by Mr. Linneman. Like someone else said, DF Retro deserves its own channel.
Here here
It's incredible to think that we're approaching a quarter century of GPUs in PCs and consoles.
This was the first GPU I ever got. I paired it with an Intel PIII 500 MHz, 192 MB SDRAM and a 7200 RPM HDD that was so tiny its capacity was specified down to double digit decimals.
Ran Incoming and Expendable like nobody's business.
My first GPU was an Nvidia GeForce 2 MX 32mb. That was the moment I realized that consoles couldn’t keep up with PCs anymore
So glad to have a fellow Geordie in a DF video!!!!!
I didn't touch PC gaming until I was in my late teens in 2014, but these retro videos are so well-made and fascinating there always an instant-click for me! Thanks for all your great work John :D
I remember having the 256 in my brand new P3 800mhz personal computer, straight from DELL. I couldn't believe how smooth Quake 3 played on that machine.
I just got my hands on a GeForce 256 DDR. They are very sought after with the SDR version (released earlier) right behind it. I had to buy it immediately. I also bought and had one back in the day. The graphics card is legendary. I can't explain to folks today how incredible it was to put the GeForce in only to witness the monumental upgrade in performance you received when you entered a game.
RIP James McCaffrey (Max Payne Voice Actor) December 17, 2023.
i remember running 3dmark2001se thinking this would be the peak. if there would be games looking like that we wouldnt have to go any further. quite funny to think about it
We've come so far that often we need a side-by-side to understand the latest improvement, they're subtler now. Diminishing returns!
It's awesome that they were able interview the Crypt Keeper
I'd argue Shenmue for the Sega Dreamcast was the most graphically impressive game you could play in the 1999-2000 even if you did own a $2000 PC.
That's more a design stand point. A lot of PC studios didn't have the budgets to make a game like Shenmue
@@Loundsify Well yes, a lot of it was down to the work and artistry that went into the textures, more than instant GPU effects
This vidoes get better and better, now they even feature the creator of the OASIS, just amazing.
That was a fun trip down memory lane. Thanks!
Still got mine here by me, in a drawer. What a beast of a card, even when my radeon 9800pro failed, I put it in and it could handle Max Payne 2 with no issues at all.
What a delightful surprise on a Saturday morning!
Software raster -> Voodoo 3 2000 PCI -> GeForce 2 MX -> GeForce 3 -> GeForce 4 Ti 4200 -> Radeon 9700 Pro... Back then the leaps between cards was so big. Every GPU upgrade brought not only a huge increase in performance, but also huge new features that changed the way graphics were rendered. After the 9700 Pro, things kind of slowed down, there wasn't really any big sudden improvement visible to the consumer from DX9 through DX12 like there had been from 6 to 7 to 8 to 9. At least until ray tracing. That's the first big new "holy moly" hardware feature I can remember since DX9 hit.
Thank you for taking me back!!!
I love DF!!!
Nice video, but you missed one very important fact. GeForce 256 was basis for first profi card of Nvidia - Quadro, which single handedly practicaly destroyed all competitors and only 3Dlabs survived few years. This also inspired ATI into entering profi markets few years later.
My 1st GPU when I was given my first PC back when I was 9yrs old in 1999 to play UT99. Pentium III 733mhz, 128MB PC-133 SDRAM, and a Geforce 256. Also DF, GREAT choice for the music @6:00. Jun's Heavenly Garden stage from Tekken Tag 2 :D My favorite Tekken game of all time.
Dang, serious flashbacks to early 2000's when we got our first Duron 700 + GeForce 2MX PC
Should've kept my original 256 and voodoo2...but great video, brings back a lot of good memories from 20 yrs ago
In the 1970s, the term "GPU" originally stood for graphics processor unit and described a programmable processing unit independently working from the CPU and responsible for graphics manipulation and output.[2][3] Later, in 1994, Sony used the term (now standing for graphics processing unit) in reference to the PlayStation console's Toshiba-designed Sony GPU in 1994.[4] The term was popularized by Nvidia in 1999, who marketed the GeForce 256 as "the world's first GPU".
Always great to take a look back at Unreal Tournament and late 90's games.
Excellent watch, cheers John
OMG the waves of nostalgia! Great content!
First CG i have ever buy with the money of my first Job. Thanks Digital Foundry for making me feel old
I love stuff like this, hearing from people during the transition.
I wish a wormhole device existed where I could finish my work day, step through and play Solider of Fortune for 2 hours (maybe less if someone picked up the phone) on good old 56k. Good times.
Thank you for doing these! So much nostalgia I can't get enough.
What a great video...Loved the trip down memory lane...
This card was a game changer. I'd just spent the previous 4 months writing and tweaking my own optimised transform pipeline because the DirectX ( DX5 ) processing was not quite efficient enough. Didn't need to do that again.
I bought this card when it was released. I think it was nearly $500 from a local shop if I’m remembering correctly. I have fond memories of those early 3D PC gaming days when that card provided a huge leap in performance from my previous PC.
Love the transparency. This is why Digital Foundry is one step ahead of everyone.
Riva TNT2 was the first time I learned what a graphics card was in my parents PC. Played Age Of Empires 2 and Need For speed 2 and 4 soo much!
I get that this series is sponsored, but I would love to see a similar video/series for ATI/AMD and Intel as well!
Dude, such a great video, this was exactly what i was looking for.
I wish companies still pumped out Tech Demos to show off advancements in GPUs. Even though it was unrealistic to expect a game to look as good seeing things like the human head demo blew my mind
NVidia still releases tech demos. They have a whole page of them on their website. The latest being the Star Wars RTX shiny reflections demo, and the Marbles and Marbles at night demos in Omniverse.
I feel 20 years younger thanks to this video.
I feel like a 1-year-old (I was 1 year old in 2001) thanks to this video.
I'll never forget seeing GLQuake for the first time. Such a huge leap.
I had Nvidia's Riva TNT 16mb in 1999. I remember watching 3DMark2000 and having my mind blown by the graphics and sound.
Nostalgia was strong with this one!
As I recall I went from a TNT2 to a GeForce 256 DDR and as I was on an under-powered CPU at the time it made a HUGE difference on games that supported hardware T&L.
This is why I was hugely enthusiastic about raytracing. Because while everyone was moaning about the performance hit it causes and lack of game support, I was remembering when programmable pixel shaders first came in. It took FOREVER for games to support it, in comparison raytracing seemed to get pretty decent support for a first generation feature and (to me at least) is transformative enough to be worth dropping the resolution for.
It was a problem of perception as we hadn't had a major new GPU feature in the lifetime of many gamers, so they couldn't see the bigger picture. Of course were starting to see it now, sadly hobbled by the silicon shortage and mining craze. :(
Sony named their GPU in the PS1, the GPU back in 1994. Ken Kutaragi had a way with names for his chips. Geometry transformation engine, graphics processing unit, emotion engine, graphics synthesizer, cell broadband engine and reality synthesizer.
I rocked a Voodoo2 (purchased in 1998) when playing EverQuest in 1999 and was the envy of all my friends. lol
I remember when I got my GeForce 256 SDR from Guillemot in september/october 1999 with a Celeron 466 (with a Slot 1/socket 370 adapter) with a brand new PC I worked all my summer to buy... I later in december started to hang out on LAN Parties. Good times...
Outstanding documentary! It's great to learn all these things about the history of graphics, and to have interview with an actual industry expert who was there when it all was happening is so amazing! Looking forward to many more documentaries like this one!
After all these years that 3DMark Matrix shootout still captivates me.
Great vid DF, such a cool look back!
Loved this, thanks for the Nostalgia...
Remembered of my old P3 500 with a Riva TNT2 M64 32Mb and the upgrade for a GeForce 4 MX 440 64Mb :D
Thanks for the memories
Fascinating look back and great video as always.
This was the card that got me into PC gaming and move away from consoles (until Halo came out). I bought Unreal Tournament because I told someone at EB games that I had a GeForce when he asked if I had a Voodoo based card. Dude told me to get Unreal Tournament and Alien Vs. Predator. I did, it was awesome.
Such a fascinating episode.
My first PC with a GPU was a Gateway. It had a Pentium 3 450, 128 megs of ram, and a Voodoo 3. Eventually upgrading it to a Voodoo 5 5500 AGP that I bought from Circuit City. Those were the days.
The GF256 was an important product for Nvidia, because they managed to get the entire feature balance correct, especially in that they didn’t over-invest in the die real estate for the T&L engine. But 3Dlabs, albeit in multichip form, did have a T&L prosumer solution before NV10, so NV10 wasn’t really anything new.
NV20 (GeForce3) just 18 months later, really was pretty revolutionary, in that they introduced the world to true programmable shaders (via vector processing “shader” units), per the DX8 spec. Personally, I tend to think of NV20, not NV10, as the starting point for the modern programmable GPU, versus the entirely fixed function pipelines that preceded NV20.
The next big step after NV20 was AMD’s Xenos (followed by Nvidia’s Tesla), which introduced arrays of general purpose “unified” scalar shader units that removed the remaining fixed function elements. The conceptual design of this architecture, in ever more elaborate form, is still with us today as the modern GPU.
Absolutely love videos like this. Thank you
Holy lord that 3D Mark video is such a nostalgia kick
I remember hooking up my “sound blaster” for the first time back in the late 80’s
I remember my first PC. It was a Gateway with a Riva TNT2. It came with Diablo, Half-Life, Warcraft, and Star Craft. Good times!
My first GPU was the Riva 128 back in 1997. Going from software rendering to GPU rendering in Quake II was absolutely mindblowing.
The timing on this is very ironic, I just sold mine off to a retro collector to enjoy about a week ago!
Awesome episode. I would love to see an entire series of these videos, showcasing subsequent GeForce and Radeon cards (possibly CPUs as well), what technological advancements they brought and what games benefited the most from those advancements.
2003 was when I really got into PCs. I experimented with so much different hardware, mostly low-end or mid-range, as I was constantly swapping things around. I would love to awaken those memories.
I had a Voodoo 5 at the time but remember the Geforce 256 looking like the future with all the extra features. I picked up a Geforce 3 a couple of years later and remember being able to run a load more tests in 3DMark 2001 that the Voodoo 5 wasn't able to run.
Great episode. Stroll down memory lane
Digging these Tekken (Tag 2) songs during some of these videos. It seems John is a big fan of them as well 😁
Oh shit! So much nostalgia! I remember buying a 256 2-3 years after release for my first "proper" gaming PC. I was stunned by the benchmarks at the time 😂 played Incoming, Unreal Tournament, Midtown Madness, Max Payne, Serious Sam, Rogue Squadron etc. for thousands and thousands of hours. those were the days... Great vid 😌
it was a crazy time back then for 3d acceleration cards!
I remember all those NVIDIA and 3DMark demos from the early 2000s.
Really good souvenirs, getting a new card and then installing the drivers for DirectX or OpenGL... fingers crossed that everything worked well as Phil Scott says so well 🤣👍
Great video! I am a developer but don't work with graphics and the level of technical detail in this episode is perfect to "get it" and understand the paradigm changes in graphics. Would love more developer interviews at this level!
John, you’re killin’ it with these videos. I can always count on you, Rich, and Alex to create awesome content.
Subtle slap in the face to Tom eh
@@TranscendentPhoenix Tom is great
The other staff are uninteresting.
@@Dankuzmeemusmaximus apparently the op doesn't think so. Lol
It was a great card, took me back. Thanks for the vid, the interview particularly interesting.
I always remember my first PC build with the S3 Savage4 and then upgrading to the Riva TNT2. That card was brilliant to play Quake III, Deus Ex, Serious Sam and Undying. Morrowind made it crawl though.
Great vid.. Makes me feel old though cuz I remember all those cards and 3d mark suites