same here. had the creative voodoo banshee and that unreal..... wow...

i felt the same....

Microprose GP2. Mostly under 25 fps even with my Pentium Pro 200 oc’d to 233. Games became too much for CPUs. The Voodoo was the game changer for games that supported it.

carlos lol

I guess Im asking randomly but does any of you know a method to log back into an Instagram account?? I stupidly forgot my account password. I would love any assistance you can give me!

@Nicolas Jaziel i really appreciate your reply. I got to the site through google and I'm waiting for the hacking stuff atm. I see it takes a while so I will get back to you later when my account password hopefully is recovered.

@Nicolas Jaziel It did the trick and I actually got access to my account again. I'm so happy! Thanks so much, you saved my account!

I'm pretty sure the Banshee is capped at 800x600 for 3D, but yes, the Voodoos shined in Unreal.

Banshee, 60 FPS, 1024x768? Doubt. Especially with a CPU you could have in 1998, while getting Banshee as an upgrade. Nostalgia is a powerful thing :)

@@SomePotato Nah, it could even do 1280x1024 for some odd reason. Mostly I think it was just because it had the memory to create a frame buffer that large (but still only 256x256 max texture resolution, even on the voodoo 3). Hell even glQuake would had run unacceptably above 800x600 by 1998 single player standards on the banshee.

@@bobzeepl At 1024x768 the banshee would be GPU limited on any slot 1 CPU. At some 640x480 it would run at about 40 FPS in the unreal time demo with a pentium II 300. With some rose tinted glasses, there were probably spots that indeed ran at 60 FPS, but not 1024x768 and these would have been in like a dead end or small indoor area.

Half-Life and the number three in the same sentence. Half-Life 3 confirmed.

True that! I remember nagging my parents for a 3D card (it turned out to be the VooDoo 2 later :) so I could play SiN. Also, it bumped up my Quake2 mods with the 3d tech ;)

Actually, by the time Half-Life came out, the first videocards to successfully combine 2D and 3D (i.e. able to play 3D (nearly) as fast and just as beautifully as the Voodoo cards) had already come out. The nVidia RIVA TNT being the best example. Within 2 years the 3dfx cards went from totally awesome must-haves to just a less compatible, more expensive and cumbersome option.

ApemanMonkey I didnt know that at the time though. Comp usa had the diamond monster cards on the front display and where i lived they were the thing to have.

You forgot tomb raider

300 bucks turned a pc into an arcade machine lol

voodoo 2 was a real leap in technology fabulous card

I had a trident too, and then an ati I think. We eventually moved to an S3 ViRGE, which was touted to be the first 3d accelerated card, then moved to the voodoo1 monster3d, then the voodoo1 6mb Canopus Pure3d, Creative Banshee, then an Nvidia Riva TNT....... etc etc... now 1080ti watercooled hybrid cards in SLI from evga. Never buying Nvidia products again though... I was very sad when 3dfx went under....

"Forget the Lambo, I was now driving the freaking Space Shuttle!" voted :))

I was never around back in these times, but I kinda wish since it seemed interesting with gaming in the 90's =(

PC Gaming in the 80s and 90s was actually not all that great. On the plus side a computer built for windows 95, or 98 could be kept relevant until about 2002ish. Really it's always been possible to build a computer with 5-6 years of life in it. The sucky part is that there was a lot of conflicting proprietary standards back then. For a long time if you wanted a game to look and play the best it could, you needed the proprietary hardware it relied on. Today those graphics modes can be emulated. Elite Plus for example looks best in MCGA mode, which can be emulated in DOSBox, but when it came out it took a really expensive graphics card to run that mode. Likewise Glide API can be emulated as well, so games like Quake, Unreal, Tomb Raider, Thief, and other Glide API based games for 3dfx Voodoo card can look their best. During the time there were conflicting standards, if you had a 3dfx Voodoo card, some games ran absolutely terribly on your computer. You needed a computer with a different card and a different graphics API for the non-Glide game to look and run it's best. Although Glide support was the most common in top shelf 3D games, so that was the best investment. Today Glide API and 3dfx are dead, Direct3D and OpenGL took it's place, which is part of what helped kill Voodoo, the company that made the cards 3dfx, and the Glide API. Luckily Glide API can be emulated both in Windows and on DOSBox to get the prettiest graphics modes out of the Glide API enhanced games. This goes back to the DOS IBM XT and PCjr days too. Where there were proprietary standards by manufacturer. Most famously Tandy was a gaming dominator as a PCjr clone. It was so well realized that it blew away even many later 8086 and 8088 XT Clones. All the way to the 80286 generation of computers, Tandy support often was required for games to use the best graphical modes. During this period of time in the 1980s there was the step from 8-bit home computers, into the 16-bit machines... While the IBM PC standard format was becoming the established norm, it wasn't the only option. For 8-bit machines you had a ton of different proprietary standards, most of which were BASIC computers that used proprietary versions of BASIC. The Apple II, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, BBC Micro, MSX, Atari 400/800/XL computers, Commodore VIC 20, and more. All computers that used varied hardware and proprietary BASIC programing languages. That's ignoring CP/M and proprietary DOS variants of the time. On top of that, this persisted into the 16/32-bit home computers with GUIs. Just look at the Commodore Amiga 500, later Apple Macintosh computers, the Atari ST family of computers, and the early IBM PCs compatible with Microsoft Windows 1-3.11 and IBM OS/2. In fact that's just a handful of the GUIs operating environments at the time. Like a lot of XT Clones had their own proprietary operating environments that ran on MicroSoft DOS. This was actually a huge problem, because back then not all hardware worked well with other hardware, just like today. When you ran into a compatibility issue, it was often because you simply had the wrong hardware. This could be a hugely expensive problem, requiring anything from a time consuming work around, several hundreds of dollars for an upgrade, or even more for a completely different computer. Once MicroSoft Windows 95 and 98 became the most common standard operating systems on a unified IBM compatible hardware standard, those compatibility issues started to die out. By the time of the Pentium II and the rise of DirectX, suddenly all hardware needed to support Direct3D, or it failed in the market. With the exception of Apple Macintosh standards, with their own proprietary hardware and operating system. Around 2001 Windows XP released, which finally cemented the PC market, especially for gaming. At which point the Intel/IBM PC standard had become established and virtually all PC games required Direct3D to the exclusion of everything else. Windows was the standard for 90% of home PCs, with the remainint 10% split between Linux and Mac, mostly Mac. About a decade ago Mac moved on to the Intel standard and built Boot Camp to add the ability to run Windows on Mac hardware. So we've had a compatibility golden age. With the rise of indie game developers, the huge back catalog PC games you can run in emulators on modern computers... Now really is a golden age for gamers, even if the AAA publishers and game retail chains are attempting to screw each other and the customers over. Digital distribution is starting to phase out physical copies of games, and you can have a huge library of DOS and other old PC games that run in a multitude of Emulators that are getting better with every update. Since old games take up such little HDD/SSD space. So yeah you might have missed the 90s, but you missed a lot of frustration and heart break from mutually incompatible hardware feuds. Now you can go back to those games with relative ease, at worst having to tweak an emulator to make them work. So many older games now are getting enhanced re-releases, plus there are tons of retro style titles being released all the time, and the obsolete hardware and old physical games are dirt cheap compared to when they were originally released. So it's never been better to be into the games of the past, retro gaming is amazing now. People are even making homebrew games specifically for old computers and consoles. It really is a golden age if you want to go back and experience the past.

Oh dang, I didn't expect this response. I said that 2 years ago haha. I'll have to give this a good read.

I personally used a Windows 98 computer that my Dad had built in 97-98 I think, something like that. I was born in 99'. I know it had a NVIDIA GPU and a Pentium CPU, can't remember which Pentium it was. I remember from looking in the settings as the curious child I was. I played NFS High Stakes, Driver 1, Heavy Gear 2 and Tony Hawk's. Good fun!

I was born in '86, when I was 4 I got my first two computers of my own, when my dad got an IBM XT clone. His was a Headstart Explorer 8088. So the Atari 800XL and Commodore 64 were passed on to me and helped me learn to read. When my dad moved to a DOS 6.22/Windows 3.11Intel 486 machine, so the 8088 was passed on tome. Then he got a Windows 95 Pentium machine when the 486 died. That machine was passed on to me when the K6-2 was built. In 2000 I got the K6-2 500MHz machine with it's Elsa NVIDIA GeForce 256 and it's update to Windows 98 SE. Which shelved the two Windows 95 machines, the original with it's ATi Rage 128 and a nearly identical machine with a Voodoo 1. My dad had gotten a AMD Athlon 1GHz system with a GeForce 2 to replace the K6-2, which was funny because my PC consistently performed better than his despite being a lot less powerful. Few years later with the tax refund my Dad got us both nearly identical computers. Athlon Thorton CPU machines running Windows XP. His had a evga GeForce Ti 4400 for Graphics while I got the superior and much more expensive Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro. So my memories of computing throughout the 90's to early 2004. My dad had gone and become a certified computer technician and had taught me what he knew. That's just my main machines of the time. Over that period I got very acquainted with most computers and video game consoles from the late 1970s to the early 2000s between my dad and his techie brother. Since I got a lot of old hand-me-down computers and parts from my Uncle and my Dad and was made to build a lot of computers as I learned about them. So I felt a lot of the woes earlier gamers felt, I was just fortunate enough to have the right machines, along with access to parts to build other computers, when I ran into a hard incompatibility. I can now dip into my nostalgia by using an emulator. While purists have their issues with emulation, it's a lot more convenient than having a room dedicated to computers. Having to juggle desk space, or power cords to play a specific game, because a different computer is hooked to a monitor I needed.

I was obsessed to play turok but found out it wouldnt run on my pc for some reason .... :((

+Blue Baby this video got me to buy an S3 Virge, Voodoo 1 and a Voodoo 5500 AGP! Thanks LGR!

My 98 PC was a AMD K6 166mhz with 16mb of ram if I remember right. The Pentium chips had slightly more honest MHZ but the AMD was a good value. Voodoo2 for playing Quake 2 as 60fps in 800X600+. I think 1280X1024 was possible but it's been so far back I don't remember if it was worth running. It was back in a time when resolution was your only quality adjustment on your new PC game.

well if you were like me i used to run those games i couldnt in a lower rez and then use the actual display scaling to reduce the image size to get a sharper picture!! (think of a large CRT with a small frame of a picture in the middle) LOL

apache havoc

tomb raider was a lot nicer with a rendition verite v1000, but 3dfx was pushing more triangles in less time... blurry triangles, but faster

First game I saw a 3dfx running....bought one 2 days later.

It's not 480fps 12k UHDR over a CrispyFast Displayport 2.4b connection Available Only At BestBuy.com Rememebr QUALITY_Remember MONSTER TM

Plug 'and' Play

This one was not, no. I used a cheap 720p digital camera. But the oldest videos were recorded on VHS-C.

Oh man, the time alone spent on transferring tapes must be insane when it all adds up

why?

@@starfrost6816 Because it has to be done in real time. VHS and SVHS are analogue formats, so you have to play the tape and use a video capture card to get the footage onto a PC.

@@LGR Holy crap this is old.

An old comment but still - I am guessing you are just speaking off the video, anyone who remembers that time knows that Quake in Software vs Quake in hardware mode is incomparable, Voodoo made it look a thousand times better, but most also jump from 10FPS to 30+ FPS.

Quake looks so smooth in software mode because it runs on a PII which wasn't even out when Quake was released. When it came out, it wouldn't run nearly as smooth on the Pentiums of the day in 640x480.

It's all being softened/blurred by the capture method, when playing it the differences were obvious.

+Dalle Smalhals if it was 12mb my mistake. Long time ago 😉

+Dalle Smalhals There were two models of the Voodoo², namely an 8MB and a 12MB version. The difference was that the 12MB model had twice the texture memory (8MB), compared to the 8MB model (4MB). The other 4MB on each card was used for the frame buffer.

Quake 2 was far more representative about the 2D / 3D gap than Q1, NFS SE or Tomb Raider as the differences between software Q2 and the 3D one where really huge in both fidelity and speed.

Bastet Furry Absolutely! Amazing 2D output from Matrox cards, and their Mystique version of Mechwarrior 2 was the best of all that generation of cards. Voodoo of course for Glide, bilinear filtering and raw power.

Got the same!!

I had the Millennium paired with the first gen Voodoo. On a Pentium Pro 200 system with 64 MB RAM. Most expensive computer I ever built.

@@magicmulder Those were the days :-)! Millennium (fastest DOS-Solution then and some especially adapted titles ran like hell such as Nascar Racing) and - all hail - the mighty 3dfx Voodoo. Unbeatable performance on a Pentium 166 clocked to 200MHZ (before the 200-variant came out!) paired with the Triton1-chipset (first to use pipelined burst cache). But best is: That system is still flying today right next to my today's gaming rig. Same fun, but with 10.996 megabytes graphics memory less :-))

@@NightRidersUrbex So did mine. Gave it to a friend's son to tinker with 3 years ago.

voodoo magic lol

Indeed. I had a Monster 3D for my Pentium Pro 200MHz. It was awesome, if you could get it to work! I actually learned a lot about tweaking, modifying and hacking settings/drivers by owning this thing. Never did get Mechwarrior 2 to run on the Monster 3D.

Pcs became the best gaming platform even before, with 256 Colors VGA Graphics. Just take a game like Monkey Island, it looked far better in VGA than on any other platform. This happened in the early 90s. I don`t like the word Masterrace, by the way.

CeleCraft, Monkey Island had only 16 colors. Craftly dithered, but still 16. Graphics were slightly better on Amiga, but Adlib sound was better on PC.

+Volo That's the EGA version. The VGA version was released a little bit later with 256 colours and slightly higher res than the Amiga. It looked better on the PC and you didn't have to keep swapping a million freaking floppys, but adlib sounds not great compared to the Amiga; even the MT32 I would put about even with the amiga. The 1992 CDROM version is the first with clearly better sound than the amiga.

I'm more amazed at how phones are now capable of close to Ps3 level of graphics.

+NitroLPR9 They never will be outlawed

+NitroLPR9 What are you smoking?

Odin's Playground aww bur 🐻

It was some kind of rubbery slug toy. Inflated it with an air compressor, haha.

+Lazy Game Reviews Oh lol

I think its a condom, Try it inside out :P

Bark yeah because if you upgraded something you would actually notice a difference

Miss that when upgrading any part or over clocking all made a massive difference

Chris Groff That difference in brightness is only present in this video. In reality, games look almost the same, only with less pixelated textures and some extra effects in 3D accelerated mode.

***** LOL what a deal-breaker! I really wanted the split-second light flashes from my weapon to be 2 times brighter. Jokes aside, I do prefer software rendering in some games. Tomb Raider 2 looks better with blocky textures and no filtering in my opinion. You can just see that it was designed with the PS1 in mind, not the smooth visuals of the PC. I know it doesn't matter anymore but if I was a PC gamer in 1996 and I had money, I'd have spent it on a good CPU instead and waited until 2002 for a GPU. Those earlier games with simple low-poly models and low render distance that were usually perfectly playable at 320x240 just didn't need most of the improvements of 3D acceleration until around 2002 when most new games started dropping software support and were benefiting more from high resolution and smooth textures.

+hristaki99 Honestly for games like Quake 1/2 and Half-Life 1, i think they look way better without texture filtering and with pixelated textures, if you have filtering on everything looks like a paint smudge and you loose a lot of the hand painted detail the texture artists put into it

jackoneill45 Yeah, I like those games without filtering too. I do like filtering on 2D games though, especially low-res like SNES and NES games. All this indie retro thing with blocky graphics is bullshit. 2D games back in the day didn't even look pixelated. The RCA cable and CRT screen were natural filters that made them look smooth and pretty realistic. The problem is that it's very hard to emulate that effect on a PC. Of course, some emulators pulled it off like ZSNES with its built-in "NTSC filter" which looks great. You should definitely check it out if you haven't already.

True, ithink it was this with Glide drivers (not sure). But dont remember Quake2 colorless on OpenGL.

still have the sidewinder force feedback wheel and connector, would be more than happy to send it over since it is risking very sadly a great chuck away...............had a terrible struggle with drivers 10 years ago