Seeing some of those old 3D Mark demos set off a nostalgia bomb in my brain.

top tier video as always John

@totty2524

2 жыл бұрын

We don't deserve DF Retro, it's too good

@ionseven

2 жыл бұрын

John's videos are vastly superior to the rest of DF.

@Jennifer-cg5ih

2 жыл бұрын

@@ionseven nah Matthew is a star

@UlyssesM

2 жыл бұрын

@@ionseven did you really have to say that

@ssabykoops

2 жыл бұрын

@@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.

@kyles8524

2 жыл бұрын

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

@rodneyabrett

2 жыл бұрын

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.

@conyo985

2 жыл бұрын

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.

@kyles8524

2 жыл бұрын

@@conyo985 Im glad I kept all my old 3dfx cards lol. I have a box full of them

@lukaszkaszak

2 жыл бұрын

@@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!

@Games-tt9hu

2 жыл бұрын

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.

@03chrisv

2 жыл бұрын

@@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.

@danielgomez7236

2 жыл бұрын

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.

@rizzo-films

Жыл бұрын

@@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.

@fungo6631

4 ай бұрын

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.

@ruxandy

2 жыл бұрын

Not to mention that the GeForce 256 still sells for quite a bit of money :-D

@bionicgeekgrrl

2 жыл бұрын

$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.

I remember spending a small fortune on my first new pc. And it had a AGP Geforce DDR. It seemed amazing at the time.

@sherlockholmes7630

2 жыл бұрын

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.

@medovk

2 жыл бұрын

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.

@5izzy557

2 жыл бұрын

Correction my good sir, It was amazing at the time.

@Torbjorn.Lindgren

2 жыл бұрын

Not only seemed, it WAS amazing at the time!

@guily6669

2 жыл бұрын

First pc I had was my father's Pentium 1 way before Nvidia stuff...

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.

@alext3811

2 жыл бұрын

I remember hearing that someone was able to use a the VRAM on a Quadro to run Doom 2016 or something like that.

@IgoByaGo

2 жыл бұрын

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.

@zhaf

2 жыл бұрын

@@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 :)

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.

@Kynareth6

2 жыл бұрын

Yeah, these days things are moving so slowly.

Man we've come so far in graphics quality. Its unbelievable.

@Aggrofool

2 жыл бұрын

And price too LMAO

@Diablokiller999

2 жыл бұрын

@@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...

@wanhl2440

2 жыл бұрын

@@Diablokiller999 but the street price is much more inflated now :(

@Diablokiller999

2 жыл бұрын

@@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.

@xXJeReMiAhXx99

2 жыл бұрын

@@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

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.

@elimalinsky7069

2 жыл бұрын

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!

@redfoxbennaton

2 жыл бұрын

Imagine buying a graphics card to play a orange and brown game with low res everything but faster.

@nexxusty

2 жыл бұрын

LOL, how much did you pay? I had a 32mb Riva TNT2. Probably my most favorite card.

@HouseNorwayBear

2 жыл бұрын

@@nexxusty Same, it's too long ago to remember what I paid.

@nexxusty

2 жыл бұрын

@@HouseNorwayBear Aww, yeah I guess I can say the same. I THINK I paid $175. Not positive. So many memories with that card though.

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.

@alangeorge5592

2 жыл бұрын

There's something about old games and old gpus that brings a smile on my face.

@ebridgewater

2 жыл бұрын

@@alangeorge5592 Nostalgia.

@alangeorge5592

2 жыл бұрын

@@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.

@RiasatSalminSami

2 жыл бұрын

@@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.

@alangeorge5592

2 жыл бұрын

@@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.

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.

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! :)

@incubator2k3

2 жыл бұрын

Told my parents it was needed to run word xD

@Cinetyk

2 жыл бұрын

@@incubator2k3 Ahah, well done

@Norweeg

Жыл бұрын

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.

@rizzo-films

Ай бұрын

​@@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.

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

@MadsterV

2 жыл бұрын

We've come so far that often we need a side-by-side to understand the latest improvement, they're subtler now. Diminishing returns!

Yet another great documentary by Mr. Linneman. Like someone else said, DF Retro deserves its own channel.

@marioluigi1523

2 жыл бұрын

Here here

These retro episodes are really fascinating, damn! Super interesting stuff. Thank you!

Thank you for doing these! So much nostalgia I can't get enough.

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.

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

Great video. A lot of interesting stuff. Love the behind the scenes perspective of the whole thing. Thank you to Phil for all the insights.

DF Retro is like my favorite show on youtube. Great episode, and may there be plenty to come in the future.

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!

Thank you for taking me back!!! I love DF!!!

Fantastic video! DF retro may not come out often. but when it does, it's always a banger of a video!

Huge nostalgia pang seeing that 3DMark footage. Great video too, the early years of 3D accelerator cards are fascinating.

Excellent watch, cheers John

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.

Wow, another stunner John! Absolutely great video.

Great video dude! Love this

What a great video...Loved the trip down memory lane...

Great vid DF, such a cool look back!

Fantastic work as usual. It brought me back to the 90s... so good man.

My first GPU was the Riva 128 back in 1997. Going from software rendering to GPU rendering in Quake II was absolutely mindblowing.

OMG the waves of nostalgia! Great content!

It's incredible to think that we're approaching a quarter century of GPUs in PCs and consoles.

Thanks for the nostalgia trip John! Ah the memories and games of the times.

Excellent episode of the DF retro - we need more of these HW retro vids John ;)

In terms of nostalgia, this video delivers! Thank you so much for this 😎

Thanks for another fantastic video, especially appreciate the participation of a developer who was "in the trenches" when it all happened !! And the flashbacks were frequent and nostalgic ;)

That was a fun trip down memory lane. Thanks!

Fascinating look back and great video as always.

I really love learning about the evolution of computer graphics. This is one of the most interesting videos DF has released so far. Please continue this series about the history of new graphics features in rendering hardware.

Dude, such a great video, this was exactly what i was looking for.

Awesome video as always. Thanks

What a great trip down memory lane. Hope you have more planned

Holy lord that 3D Mark video is such a nostalgia kick

This! Is one of the best tech videos I've ever watched on YT. Fantastic job! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. My PC gaming experience started out with graphics like these, when I got the GeForce 2

Excellent breakdown as always, John! This was around the time that I came of age as a PC gamer. My first full build was the classic 300MHz Celeron OCed to 450MHz, Voodoo3 if I recall correctly. My dad and I had bumped up our Pentium 100MHz with a Voodoo Rush in 1998, but I didn’t get a taste of 60fps in Quake 2 until the Celeron. When the GeForce came out, it was a leap over everything else on the market at the time. ATI/AMD and 3Dfx did catch up, but by that time nVidia had already established relative dominance. The last time I cared about GPU wars was the Voodoo5 5500 versus the GeForce2. GeForce3 brought in pixel shaders for the first time, showcased by DOOM 3 (which barely ran on the card) and the rest is history. Ah, memories.

@Genkaku

2 жыл бұрын

I had a 466mhz celeron and thought it was the shit, until I bought a GeForce 2 and unlocked its full potential lol

@RealJeffTidwell

2 жыл бұрын

@@Genkaku What was the stock card, or onboard video? GF2 was very popular, I remember. I was a 3Dfx fanboy (Rush, 3, 5, and I actually had a Voodoo2 for Glide support in old games later on) but I don't need to dig up ancient benchmarks to remind you that the GeForce2 > Voodoo5 in terms of performance. I wanted the somewhat more vibrant and smooth 32-bit color support (not to mention a fantastic early version of Anti-Aliasing) offered by the Voodoo5, but IIRC GF2 had a consistent 10-20% framerate advantage. The first Radeon card dropped around then too.

Love this kinda content!!! Well done

Absolutely love videos like this. Thank you

Love the transparency. This is why Digital Foundry is one step ahead of everyone.

Awesome video, really did enjoy more please!!

Excellent video. This graphics technology progression tracks right alongside my own personal discovery and love of PC gaming, so it brings back lots of happy memories.

So much beautiful nostalgia! I was so proud with my Geforce256 DDR and god only knows how often i run and saw this 3dmark benchmarks over and over again after tweaking and new drivers! I also can recall that 3dmark 2000 had a bad ass soundtrack! Well i will search for it now! ^^ Thx John! Really awesome times!

Expendable was so impressive at the time. I hadn't played anything like it. The amount of effects going on simultaneously. Really felt like you were playing an action movie flick.

Such a fascinating episode.

Brilliant doccie. Definitely want to see more and would love to get Ito the weeds of the technical stuff

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.

Awesome vid dude :) keep it up!

This video encouraged me to do some research cub maps and reflections. Thank you for creating such informative content.

Very enlightening video!

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!

This brings back a lot of memories. I was in the room when Huang publicly announced the GeForce 256 to the world. This was at the Intel Developers Forum, at the Palm Springs Convention Center. Unlike the massive stage shows the company puts on today, this was in a fairly small room, with at most 40 of us IDF attendees present. I still have the nice long sleeve Geforce 256 jersey they gave out. (Along with the Nvidia jacket I received years later at the GeForce 4 press event in San Francisco.) Plus, they served cake and it wasn't a lie. Back then, Nvidia was this little up and coming company. The presentation was quite a surprise, with the feeling that this was the start of something big.

Great episode. Stroll down memory lane

Great vid.. Makes me feel old though cuz I remember all those cards and 3d mark suites

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 😌

These kind of sponsored content are the best, where you get insight from main people. Hoprfully DF can score more sponsored content like this.

Great video. This was my first GPU for my first PC, based on a slot A 700mhz AMD Thunderbird from memory!

Remember those days vividly; went from a S3 Virge to Riva TNT & Voodoo 2 combo - which was nothing short of amazing. Had that combo for several years until I got a Radeon 8500. Followed that one up with a GeForce 2 GTS. Couldn't keep up with the exploding CPU and video card prices so switched to console gaming after that. :(

@mrburns366

2 жыл бұрын

My first GPU was a Voodoo 2 also :) going from Quake 2 software rendering to OpenGL was mind blowing

@99Vood99

2 жыл бұрын

@@mrburns366 yes it was incredible - the sharper, cleaner textures, amazing frame rates - completely transformed the playing experience. Some of the 3DFX enhanced games had additional graphical features also.

@lhb82

2 жыл бұрын

"so switched to console gaming after that" Not all Stories can end well ;) But jokes aside, the prices weren't that bad back then. Plus not that many games really needed the best graphics card, so I was a happy PC and Console gamer.

@99Vood99

2 жыл бұрын

@@lhb82 Should've mentioned I was a teenager and had to convince Mom to buy the stuff until I could started earning myself at 16 and got the Radeon. I'm also in Canada - not too many deals around these parts in those days. 😂

@JohnDoe-ip3oq

2 жыл бұрын

Makes no sense to go from dx8 8500 to a dx7 gf2. Maybe you had a 7500, but if you didn't, that was a terrible downgrade.

So glad to have a fellow Geordie in a DF video!!!!!

Well done, thank you. I love this kind of content.

This is a really great retrospective! The only thing that would make it better (and benefit some of your other videos too!) would be to have the titles of the games onscreen when showing footage of them. Some are incredibly famous, some are maybe not so familiar to people anymore.

Love this. More PC tech retro.

My first dedicated graphics card was an Nvidia Riva TNT2 from the Gateway computer I got back in 1999. I think it was the card they had before this one.

It was a great card, took me back. Thanks for the vid, the interview particularly interesting.

Very informational video

I can watch this type of video forever!!!

great narration!

Amazing video. Nice lunch with this

John, you’re killin’ it with these videos. I can always count on you, Rich, and Alex to create awesome content.

@TranscendentPhoenix

2 жыл бұрын

Subtle slap in the face to Tom eh

@boffifis1

2 жыл бұрын

@@TranscendentPhoenix Tom is great

@93836

2 жыл бұрын

The other staff are uninteresting.

@TranscendentPhoenix

2 жыл бұрын

@@boffifis1 apparently the op doesn't think so. Lol

Gotta love these deep dive videos, didn't know I needed to know these things. The GeForce 256 DDR was the first discrete GPU I ever bought, upgrading from the TNT 2 in my prebuilt Pentium 3 machine. My Giants: Citizen Kabuto ran so smoothly

Great video, thank you very much.

Just started the video...and you put the perfect music..... .... og deus ex....Well, back to the video.....even before hitting play I was sure "this will be good"...but now...even more so..... thnks man

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.

Ahhh that 3DMark2000 helicopter demo at 1:26 bring back so much good old memories

Takes me back to installing the first 3DFX card in my PC and patching a racing game I had ( 'Screamer' I think ) and my jaw hitting the floor! Great video.

I'll mention the S3 Savage 2000. It was also released in 1999, had hardware T&L... that didn't work. Before 1999 there were so many choices: ATi Rage 128, Riva TNT, Matrox G200, VideoLogic Apocalypse (PowerVR), Voodoo 3, and Intel 740. CPUs were also into 3D gaming, Intel MMX is from 1997, AMD 3DNow is from 1998. I guess the GeForce caught everyone off-guard, except ATi (AMD) and 3Dfx which was bought by nVidia.

@mauriciochacon

2 жыл бұрын

Trident too lol

@DarkShroom

2 жыл бұрын

yeah except the difference was all the graphics cards sucked and where largely incompatible.... the times before i had a geforce 2 where largely painful ... before that only the voodoo card i had seemed to have any decent support, Power VR cards and the ati Rage where mistakes i made

@mauriciochacon

2 жыл бұрын

@@DarkShroom nvidia, ati and 3dfx had good drivers (usually) had ati rage 128 and played the hell of everything.

@mauriciochacon

2 жыл бұрын

@Ali Cuntë yes i know about ati drivers, they had 16bit colour issues and later on ogl issues. But on my case they were awesome Ati rage 128 Ati x200 x300 x600 X800 Amd 4830 270x 580

Back then I couldn't afford a Geforce 256 so I had to settle for a TNT2. Some of the Rage Software games of this era are available on Steam and GOG. Excellent video.

Very interesting! Good job.

The viper v330 with the riva 128 will always have a special place in my heart. Absolutetly incredible at the time, and what a time it was for gaming!

@pc-sound-legacy

2 жыл бұрын

The crisp look of the textures in comparison with the blurry 3DFX look was noticeable. I remember playing Need for Speed - Hot Pursuit on this card, great times🤗

Great video. It's also very nostalgic. I remember these early days, like it was yesterday. Partly because I had already bought an ATI card just before the GeForce 256 released, and was envious of it. But also because the rapid evolution of hardware was very exciting back then. The GeForce 256 was a revolutionary card, that really defined Nvidia, and put it on the path to becoming the company they are today. The Riva line were good, but nothing that stood out the way the GeForce 256 did. Oh, how I miss the days when you could buy a top tier card for around only $200.

This us awesome! I remember these early days, but so much i didn't know

Woah. So many memories unlocked.

Thanx for some nostalgic vibes. 😌

What a delightful surprise on a Saturday morning!

Always great to take a look back at Unreal Tournament and late 90's games.

Nostalgia was strong with this one!

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 :)

Great approach to sponsorship 👍