I remember playing games like Quake, Quake 2 and Jedi Knight in software rendering. Then I got my voodoo card, and omg, it was like going from VHS to 8k! Such great days...
@@gremfive4246 I still have 3 boxes of unopened "Maxi Gamer Power Of 2" VooDoo 2 SLI kits. I bought 4 from an eBayer a decade ago, for £35 a set NIB. Only ever opened one of them. Perhaps it's time to sell the others. My dream of a roomful of retro PC's never transpired, and now I'm old and fat.
For real. I remember my dad purchasing for me what I believe was a Voodoo 5 5500 at CompUSA and remember thinking the graphics uplift from whatever Dell included graphics card I had at the time was life changing. I replayed Half-Life and spent hundreds of hours in the original (good version) Team Fortress.
I remember getting the 12MB version of the Voodoo 2 for Christmas in 1998. Half Life, Unreal and Quake 2 looked and played incredible. This card really was a gamechanger.
God, I remember this card. After Nvidia released its first card. People were slamming 3dfx. I actually reached out and sent them a nice letter congratulating them on what they had done and to keep it up and ignore all the negative press. They responded to me with a sweet box of swag and told me they appreciated the letter, and they said they spread the letter around the office to boost morale. I really thought they would have retaken the 3d crown. It was never to happen though. It's probably the only reason I didn't buy Nvidia's stock. You see for me the 3dfx gaming card was the first of its kind. It was an add-on card that made games look night and day better. When they launched the second one I jumped on that right away. To me, they were the pioneers of the industry. It was sad to see them dissolve into obscurity.
My workplace put us on a bunch of different 3D cards to try to maximize compatibility in the games we were making. I was the "lucky" one who got Nvidia's first card (preceding the Riva 128). It was a piece of crap. Poor drivers. Fell back to software emulation on a lot of 3D functions. And I wasted 2 weeks of my life trying to find a bug in my code that kept crashing my computer, which I eventually tracked down to a hardware bug in the Nvidia card (as in try to make this 3D call with these values and the computer reboots, but it works fine with any other GPU). That was my reason for never buying Nvidia stock. I was flabbergasted that the company which made that POS card I suffered with somehow managed to dethrone 3dfx.
Very true, when things were developing in the 90s, a 3dfx card was THE card, it meant that you could not just play a game in 3d, you could play amazing games like turok 2 and quake that looked like it came from a super computer. 3dfx is legendary
I'm an ole 3dfx customer, or better to say... I was a kid back then and my brothers (who got me in computer science) bought 3dfx cards (we have couple of voodoo 2 and a single 5 5500) because these cards were pioneering and brute power oriented and there was a lot of expectation with voodoo 6000 series. I remember when Nvidia bought 3dfx we were all upset, and since then the only brand new geforce card I bought was soon sent back after couple of days (it was 9800gx2 bought to play crysis, but performances were not great). In time I had lot of amd cards and a 1060 and now 2070s but these were second hand cards because... I don't want nvidia to have my money for the 3dfx acquisition! If it wasn't for Blender performing a lot better with nvidia, I would be stuck with AMD!
Anytime you see a company go from #1 to bankrupt in such a short time, it's because they made terrible decisions. I was a 3dfx fan, but they squandered their opportunity with bad decisions and they got what they deserved.
@@Hadrhune0 My first 3D card was the 5500, with a P3. Played amazingly. I was very sad when they went bankrupt. I stick with AMD now mostly because Nvidia treats gamers like crap, makes everything proprietary, and overcharges. AMD had some driver issues in the past, but I never wanted to switch.
i want the prices from those old cards back !! those cards had like 100+ % performance boost. games with glide looked SO DAMN GOOD!! those were the best times of gaming.
I still have both my Voodoo 2 1000 and Voodoo 5 5500. I knew I was going to have the most amazing experience when seeing that 3DFX logo at the start of a game.
Nice! Still remember when I purchased my Orchid. My brother was giving me a lot of crap saying it was a waste of money. Installed it, showed him quake and he surrendered to might of the voodoo 2. Happy days when you got the best of the best for 300$.
It was crazy going from a software renderer to a Voodoo 2. And then crazy going from a voodoo 2 to a GeForce 256. It was such a wild time in terms of gains made year over year.
The Voodoo2 was the first 3d card I ever owned, slapped it in my Pentium 2 233Mhz w/ 48 MB RAM. If I remember correctly at the time I was playing Quake and Xwing vs Tie Fighter and it blew my mind with how good it looked.
Bought my first PC in 1997(had an Amiga before), paid over 2,000 DM for it with the monitor. It already had a "3D card", a Matrox Mystique 220. The games needed special patches to make use of it. In 1998 I paid 520 DM for the Voodoo 2 on top, only the 8 MB card. But it was really a performance upgrade. Many games were playable with over 30 FPS which was considered as smooth these days. "Ultimate Race" was a nice game that came in a bundle with some cards. And my friends and I had all bought the same bundle and when we bought the PC's in 1997 and 1998 we all had network cards installed. It was a hassle with the BNC but we had great times with different racing games and 3D shooters. Still have the card and one that a friend of me gave me later.
I remember rushing home with my hard earned Voodoo Banshee card. Mowed a LOT of lawns to get that sucker. Loved every minute of it. Sold is and bought a Monster 3D... those were the days... MDK, Unreal, etc.
Somewhere.. in the attic, I still have my Orchid Righteous 3D in the box. I'll never forget the first time I saw accelerated Mechwarrior 2, the Timberwolf was so curved and smooth. It was like dark sorcery at the time. Tomb Raider also looked amazing. Now I'm waiting for Portal and Witcher3 RTX for my 3070FTW. We have come far.
I remember buying my first Voodoo 1 card, then the two and then putting them on all my PCs with 19" monitors and running a network for my kids to play in 1024 mode and it looked crazy good (but expensive at the time). I went right up to Voodoo3 but stopped there and switched back to NVidia when the Geforce 256 and then DDR came out - and stuck on the NVidia upgrade path until the R300 came out with the 9700 Pro and then 9800 Pro. It wasn't until the 6800 and finally the 8800s came out that graphics took a mega jump forward...I think I must be on my 20th GPU by now - but still primarily use my 1080Ti as it is plenty fast and powerful enough for all I need. I am old enough to remember when 2D accelerators where the big thing!
As a person who love's retro stuff, these videos make me happy and sad at the same time, because i was a proud owner of two Voodoo 2 pci 8 and 12 Mb, and of a Voodoo 3 2000 agp , but not anymore. :(
My friend had the 1st iteration and it turned his normal PC into a beast, i was never able to match his performance, this is back when we thought the soon arriving 500mhz PCs were way over the top.
I had a Canopus 6mb Voodoo 1. Later upgraded to a 12mb Voodoo 2. Then a 16mb Riva TNT. Really was the greatest age of PC gaming. Never has a bigger and more important change happened since those days.
I loved this time in computers. I ran Diamond Monster cards and my brother ran the Black Magic cards. We ran this while running Quake II. Clan Wars. Played an helped run the Nostromo server that was actually in a bank in Missouri. Was awesome. I remember editting the .config file in QII, changing the pitch and yaw rates, FOV, you name it. Then there were all he skins you could use. Good times. I miss Clan {GDI} and those clan war days.. Woohoo!! Amazingly, I still have my cards and my brothers cards along with the SLI cables. I just can't throw them away either.
Bulit my first computer back in '97 and bought the 4mb Voodoo card and an 8mb Matrox Millennium 2D card. Some time shortly after I purchased a pair of Voodoo2 cards. Man, Quake and Unreal looked amazing!
i had the same Matrox card and ended up swapping it for a TNT 2 Ultra and Voodoo 2 instead. It was amazing for Pentium 2. Add in the awe 32 sound card and it was like heaven :)
Absolutely. I'll never forget those times. They were the most exciting times to be a gamer. A voodoo card with games like Quake, Quake 2, Unreal 1 (Never been as immersed in a game as this one), Hexen 2, Half-life. Amazing times!
My first 3D accelerator! I didn't have anything apart from 2D Graphics card before that (VGA). I remember it changing the look of Quake 2 especially. And later there were games that wouldn't play without it. Funny thing is that the most beautiful game that I remember was "Forsaken" on Unreal Engine, I think. Just as we got Voodoo 2 the demo was released. My jaw dropped at beautiful lighting effects.
I remember purchasing my first PC and sticking a Voodoo 2 in it. I wanted to play Jurassic Park: Trespasser. Classic but deeply flawed game that still holds such deep fond memories for me.
what a great time i had with the voodoo 2 card! My 2nd PC was a P1 166 including a matrox mystique. Damn, I wanted to play NFS3 so much, but that Matrox could only go by software render. In early 1999 I found a cheap Voodoo 2 (Miro HiScore 3D 2,performance and prices changed so fast) for 100 Deutsche Mark and built it into my PC. What a game changer! It opened so much more possibilities! And the best thing? It had analog Video out so I could attach it to a large TV! Take this, PlayStation 2! PCs came and go, but the Voodoo2 still has a special place in my nerdy heart. And guess what is built into a retro-PC in my living room: that very Voodoo2 card, along with a sister for SLI (of course it HAD to be a 2nd Miro due to the TV out PCB layout, a generic one would not work) and a P2 233 Voodoo2 and Slot- CPU, a dream combination
A trip down memory lane, for sure! Remember when me and my pal, both with a new Voodoo card, and we put both card in my rig. Unlimited power! xD It was a rush tho! Just being able to play QW in higher resolution was a blast!
And the sad fact about "double the prices" like this is, only the consumers are to blame for it. These double price hikes didn't happen overnight or just from one gen to next. It happened gradually in last 4 or 5 gens where it went from 20-25% increase to 40-50% increase from previous gen and so on, you get the idea. A fool and their money is soon parted and that's exactly what happened.
I still have my old Voodoo2, haven't had a computer that can run it in decades.. but it's such a classic piece of hardware. Gaming on that back in the late 1990's was a revelation when you could finally upgrade from softwear rendering. I remember a guy rocking up to a lan party with a brand new AMD k7 and his voodoo 2 setup, pushing 100fps in Unreal Tournament.. Minds were blown.
I saved every cent I could muster back in the 1990s to get the Original Voodoo card with $MB of memory. It transformed my Quake 1 experience!! It cost me $300 USD back then. A lot of money for a teenager. I was lucky enough to have a computer that could run it. Best memories ever.
How did 3dfx not rule the world in terms of graphics tech? They had an unrivalled branding mindshare in the late 90's. I'd love to see a documentary on how they dropped the ball.
My first gfx card. Ahh the memories. Something went wrong with mine and all rendered textures were slightly corrupted. Even though, I still used it for what seems like years. Remember playing Final Fantasy 8 with those corrupted textures for over 100 hours.
Great memories. Had one with an matrox milennium 2 and a AMD k6-2 @266mhz and a whopping 16mb memory. Life was good back then... Nice to see some back in action! 😂
I remember the one ad in PC Gamer in either 1997 or 1998, advertising the DIamond Monster3D-II and how much better Descent II was with it. I drooled so much over that ad due to how much I wanted the Voodoo2. Now (though the machine is in FL), I have a build that has a V2 12MB and is ideal for games of the late-90s. I just need a second card, and to get my GeForce 4 Ti-4600 repaired, and I'll have quite the kickass machine (as it also has a Diamond MonsterSound MX-300).
I still got my creative Voodoo 2s SLI in the garage , couldn't bear to throw them out because of what I paid for them at the time . Good to know it's now a collectors item !
I remember running 2 of these in my puter. I had 2 of these plus an ATI 2D card. I was working at CompUSA at the time. The employee discount came in clutch when buying all of this.
I still remember back in the day as a teenager buying my 1st 3DFX Voodoo 2 which you still need a 2nd 2D video card to handle that monster. Got another job, saved every penny and got a 2nd 3DFX Voodoo 2 card and had a SLI setup which was the envy of all my friends. Having a soundblaster Awe32 or Waveblaster was another mortgage for me back then and still got it. Thankfully my parents didn't ask for any monetary contribution from me since I was still in school. Less than a year, I was selling my 3DFX video cards to buy a new motherboard with a new intel Pentium III CPU 866 and a Voodoo 3000 AGP video card. I really enjoyed my life back then, no responsibilities and everything I earned came to my PC hobbies.
I can only say 2 things. Something about how those cards presented 3d graphics was so new to us, it made everything look 3d with a depth that even modern games don't seem to match. I'm sure some of that is just we've become used to it. But even watching your video of these old games there is a depth and a sensation of movement I don't feel even on modern PCs / Consoles. I'd love to peek into an alternate universe where instead of the disaster that was the banshee, 3dfx had just paired with someone like Tseng or S3 and built an all in one card with an existing 2d chip. I think that could have kept their headstart alive long enough to come up with a real all in one solution that actually worked. Banshee was a disaster they never recovered from, it gave Nvidia an in to the market that just wasn't there before.
I’ll never forget going from Quake to GLQuake with my first voodoo. My jaw hit the floor, and again when I got the voodoo II and SLI’d them to run at 1027x768 on the 17” monitor I’d ‘borrowed’ from work. Still have all of them 😄
My rig was crap compared to my mate's but I scored a voodoo 2 second hand for a good price. For it to be second hand, it was mid-late 98 I am guessing? I installed it at his place when we were doing some LAN gaming. I fired up Quake 2 and stood there firing the pistol. We spoke in hushed tones, watching the lighting effects coming off each round as they sailed across the room. Our fragile, baked little minds were blown.
My favorite video card of all time. I still have my Creative Labs 12mb Voodoo2 SLI in my Win98 retro box. Was one of the first to pick up it as soon as it became available at my local Gamestop.
I remember the day I installed my voodoo and will never forget it. I’ve never had that experience to this day and I’ve just updated my 1080gtx to the 4090rtx and it’s still didn’t give me the chills I had. The only thing that has come close is jumping in to modern day VR
I started with the Jazz Adrenaline Rush 3Dfx GPU. Feels like it was not that long ago. So many changes, not just in computers, but in Silicon Valley, since then.
I think I paid £150 (second hand) as a young nerd for my voodoo 2. It took ages to save up for it. The excitement of being able to run Unreal, Blood 2, Unreal Tournament, Carmageddon 2, Quake II etc. not as a slideshow has rarely been matched in my years of pc gaming! I think if I'd been getting into pc gaming now it probably would have taken me about 7 years to save up for one. Still, games seem to scale a bit better these days - my 970 still played pretty much most things I wanted it too! And you have the wonderful steam deck at a much more affordable price. Oh and I kept my voodoo 2 as well. No way I'm letting go of that thing! RIP 3DFX - even all these years later, just seeing your logo excites me in a way that nVidia could only dream of!
Thanks for watching! Wanted to share a couple of corrections: First, it looks like I was wrong about not being able to use an 8MB and 12MB card in SLI. I don't think it was possible initially, but 3dfx improved mismatched card compatibility through driver updates at some point. Numerous people have reported success using 8 and 12MB cards together, which is awesome. If I can ever get my 8MB card repaired, I'd love to give this a try. Second, it is indeed possible to do 1024x768 using a single card when certain 3D features (like Z-buffering) are disabled. Most games don't allow this, but wanted to mention this for historical correctness 👍 And I apologize for my mispronunciation of "Nvidia" and "RIVA" - looks like I've been saying it incorrectly for years! 😂
The only thing that topped getting a Voodoo2 was getting a Sinclair ZX81 after using the ZX80. The frame rate, the resolution blew my mind, never thought it was possible that computer could display ASCII so fast and without crashing every 5 minutes.
Thank you, this video re-activated a few dormant neurons. ;) Playing games like Forsaken, Unreal and Half-Life on a dual 12MB Diamond Monster 3D II setup was certainly something back in '98.
Oh Man back in the day . I ran a Voodoo 2 with an stb velocity 128 for 2d as well as the P2 400 i built the pc when i worked as an apprentice pc tech what a power house that machine was it was my first pc that i ever owned myself !
I remember begging my dad to get me this when we were at Pace Club (Now Sam's Club) and all the fun I had with computer gaming from that moment on. My card came with the game Ultimate Race Pro and man... back then, it looked "so real." Let me tell you, I played the heck out of that game because I never experienced anything like it before.
In my PC from that era I had the Obsidian X-24, the dual 12MB V2s in a single PCI slot. By the end of it's life, it was pretty visibly curved due to the weight of the components on that long of a card.
I remember playing games like Quake, Quake 2 and Jedi Knight in software rendering. Then I got my voodoo card, and omg, it was like going from VHS to 8k! Such great days...
I still, to this day, remember the moment I saw opengl Quake 2 on my brand new Voodoo 3. What a time to be alive.
Same, got my first "gaming PC" shortly after the release of Voodoo 2, it was amazing!
I still have the packaging of my voodoo and voodoo2 cards. The cards got lost somewhere along the way sadly.
It was a glorious time!
the best was a quake 2 mod called : "action" had like a cops vs robbers theme and you could bandage your wounds or you would die. best gunplay
Actually being able to play Unreal with a playable framerate, let alone a good one, was the ultimate shit for me at the time!
Nowadays the only thing that doubles between GPU generations is the price.
Actually nowadays the price of a 3Dfx Voodoo 2 doubles about every year.
Yep. I remember the times whey you could get v3 for 7€. Last year i paid 70€ for Banshee and I still consider it being cheap for the time.
@@gremfive4246 I still have 3 boxes of unopened "Maxi Gamer Power Of 2" VooDoo 2 SLI kits. I bought 4 from an eBayer a decade ago, for £35 a set NIB. Only ever opened one of them. Perhaps it's time to sell the others. My dream of a roomful of retro PC's never transpired, and now I'm old and fat.
And the performance.
@@TheVanillatech Lmao, those last few words cracked me up, I feel ya 😂😂
I Had a Pure 3d VD2
good times! :)
The Voodoo2 12GB was my first proper 3D card and it blew my mind. It was a monster card that made games so smooth and good looking.
The nostalgia hits hard on this one for me.
For real. I remember my dad purchasing for me what I believe was a Voodoo 5 5500 at CompUSA and remember thinking the graphics uplift from whatever Dell included graphics card I had at the time was life changing. I replayed Half-Life and spent hundreds of hours in the original (good version) Team Fortress.
I was king of quake ii with that 56k modem
I remember getting the 12MB version of the Voodoo 2 for Christmas in 1998. Half Life, Unreal and Quake 2 looked and played incredible. This card really was a gamechanger.
God, I remember this card. After Nvidia released its first card. People were slamming 3dfx. I actually reached out and sent them a nice letter congratulating them on what they had done and to keep it up and ignore all the negative press. They responded to me with a sweet box of swag and told me they appreciated the letter, and they said they spread the letter around the office to boost morale. I really thought they would have retaken the 3d crown. It was never to happen though. It's probably the only reason I didn't buy Nvidia's stock. You see for me the 3dfx gaming card was the first of its kind. It was an add-on card that made games look night and day better. When they launched the second one I jumped on that right away. To me, they were the pioneers of the industry. It was sad to see them dissolve into obscurity.
My workplace put us on a bunch of different 3D cards to try to maximize compatibility in the games we were making. I was the "lucky" one who got Nvidia's first card (preceding the Riva 128). It was a piece of crap. Poor drivers. Fell back to software emulation on a lot of 3D functions. And I wasted 2 weeks of my life trying to find a bug in my code that kept crashing my computer, which I eventually tracked down to a hardware bug in the Nvidia card (as in try to make this 3D call with these values and the computer reboots, but it works fine with any other GPU). That was my reason for never buying Nvidia stock. I was flabbergasted that the company which made that POS card I suffered with somehow managed to dethrone 3dfx.
Very true, when things were developing in the 90s, a 3dfx card was THE card, it meant that you could not just play a game in 3d, you could play amazing games like turok 2 and quake that looked like it came from a super computer. 3dfx is legendary
I'm an ole 3dfx customer, or better to say... I was a kid back then and my brothers (who got me in computer science) bought 3dfx cards (we have couple of voodoo 2 and a single 5 5500) because these cards were pioneering and brute power oriented and there was a lot of expectation with voodoo 6000 series. I remember when Nvidia bought 3dfx we were all upset, and since then the only brand new geforce card I bought was soon sent back after couple of days (it was 9800gx2 bought to play crysis, but performances were not great).
In time I had lot of amd cards and a 1060 and now 2070s but these were second hand cards because... I don't want nvidia to have my money for the 3dfx acquisition! If it wasn't for Blender performing a lot better with nvidia, I would be stuck with AMD!
Anytime you see a company go from #1 to bankrupt in such a short time, it's because they made terrible decisions. I was a 3dfx fan, but they squandered their opportunity with bad decisions and they got what they deserved.
@@Hadrhune0 My first 3D card was the 5500, with a P3. Played amazingly. I was very sad when they went bankrupt. I stick with AMD now mostly because Nvidia treats gamers like crap, makes everything proprietary, and overcharges. AMD had some driver issues in the past, but I never wanted to switch.
this video took me back to my childhood
Community drivers are amazing
I had them video cards and that sound card dam I'm old.
And still gaming at 50 years old.
that setup would been mind blowing back then !!!
Brings back memories.
I owned Voodoo 1 and Voodoo3 and Unreal 1 is my favorite game.
Those were nice times indeed.
Ah the good old days!
I played Unreal as a BETA tester a lifetime ago I still have My SLI Twin Voodoo 2's all the way up to My 3500TV Card and I have a rare voodoo 5000
i want the prices from those old cards back !! those cards had like 100+ % performance boost. games with glide looked SO DAMN GOOD!! those were the best times of gaming.
I still have both my Voodoo 2 1000 and Voodoo 5 5500. I knew I was going to have the most amazing experience when seeing that 3DFX logo at the start of a game.
I had SLI’d 12mb Voodoo 2 cards running at 1024x768 and I was the absolute king!
Hey, that was my 1st card! Good memories 🤟
Nice! Still remember when I purchased my Orchid.
My brother was giving me a lot of crap saying it was a waste of money. Installed it, showed him quake and he surrendered to might of the voodoo 2.
Happy days when you got the best of the best for 300$.
It was crazy going from a software renderer to a Voodoo 2. And then crazy going from a voodoo 2 to a GeForce 256. It was such a wild time in terms of gains made year over year.
3dfx changed everything for sure. It was an amazing time for gaming. Back when games weren't mind numbing grindfests. They were fun.
The Voodoo2 was the first 3d card I ever owned, slapped it in my Pentium 2 233Mhz w/ 48 MB RAM. If I remember correctly at the time I was playing Quake and Xwing vs Tie Fighter and it blew my mind with how good it looked.
this video is pure nostalgia
Bought my first PC in 1997(had an Amiga before), paid over 2,000 DM for it with the monitor.
It already had a "3D card", a Matrox Mystique 220. The games needed special patches to make use of it.
In 1998 I paid 520 DM for the Voodoo 2 on top, only the 8 MB card.
But it was really a performance upgrade. Many games were playable with over 30 FPS which was considered as smooth these days.
"Ultimate Race" was a nice game that came in a bundle with some cards. And my friends and I had all bought the same bundle and when we bought the PC's in 1997 and 1998 we all had network cards installed. It was a hassle with the BNC but we had great times with different racing games and 3D shooters.
Still have the card and one that a friend of me gave me later.
I remember rushing home with my hard earned Voodoo Banshee card. Mowed a LOT of lawns to get that sucker. Loved every minute of it. Sold is and bought a Monster 3D... those were the days... MDK, Unreal, etc.
never forget the joy of putting this in my beige pc and loading up my doom demo disk !
Somewhere.. in the attic, I still have my Orchid Righteous 3D in the box. I'll never forget the first time I saw accelerated Mechwarrior 2,
the Timberwolf was so curved and smooth. It was like dark sorcery at the time. Tomb Raider also looked amazing.
Now I'm waiting for Portal and Witcher3 RTX for my 3070FTW. We have come far.
I remember buying my first Voodoo 1 card, then the two and then putting them on all my PCs with 19" monitors and running a network for my kids to play in 1024 mode and it looked crazy good (but expensive at the time). I went right up to Voodoo3 but stopped there and switched back to NVidia when the Geforce 256 and then DDR came out - and stuck on the NVidia upgrade path until the R300 came out with the 9700 Pro and then 9800 Pro. It wasn't until the 6800 and finally the 8800s came out that graphics took a mega jump forward...I think I must be on my 20th GPU by now - but still primarily use my 1080Ti as it is plenty fast and powerful enough for all I need.
I am old enough to remember when 2D accelerators where the big thing!
As a person who love's retro stuff, these videos make me happy and sad at the same time, because i was a proud owner of two Voodoo 2 pci 8 and 12 Mb, and of a Voodoo 3 2000 agp , but not anymore. :(
My friend had the 1st iteration and it turned his normal PC into a beast, i was never able to match his performance, this is back when we thought the soon arriving 500mhz PCs were way over the top.
river of memories... thank you
I had a Canopus 6mb Voodoo 1.
Later upgraded to a 12mb Voodoo 2.
Then a 16mb Riva TNT.
Really was the greatest age of PC gaming. Never has a bigger and more important change happened since those days.
I had one back in the day. It was like getting a new computer when you slapped that bad boy in it.
I loved this time in computers. I ran Diamond Monster cards and my brother ran the Black Magic cards. We ran this while running Quake II. Clan Wars. Played an helped run the Nostromo server that was actually in a bank in Missouri. Was awesome. I remember editting the .config file in QII, changing the pitch and yaw rates, FOV, you name it. Then there were all he skins you could use. Good times. I miss Clan {GDI} and those clan war days.. Woohoo!! Amazingly, I still have my cards and my brothers cards along with the SLI cables. I just can't throw them away either.
Bulit my first computer back in '97 and bought the 4mb Voodoo card and an 8mb Matrox Millennium 2D card. Some time shortly after I purchased a pair of Voodoo2 cards. Man, Quake and Unreal looked amazing!
i had the same Matrox card and ended up swapping it for a TNT 2 Ultra and Voodoo 2 instead. It was amazing for Pentium 2. Add in the awe 32 sound card and it was like heaven :)
Voodoo 2. 25 years old. Used to have 2 of them. This makes me feel old.
I'll never forget playing Quake and Quake 2 with my 3dFX card for the first time. The graphics, speed, and smoothness was amazing!
Absolutely. I'll never forget those times. They were the most exciting times to be a gamer. A voodoo card with games like Quake, Quake 2, Unreal 1 (Never been as immersed in a game as this one), Hexen 2, Half-life. Amazing times!
My first 3D accelerator! I didn't have anything apart from 2D Graphics card before that (VGA). I remember it changing the look of Quake 2 especially. And later there were games that wouldn't play without it. Funny thing is that the most beautiful game that I remember was "Forsaken" on Unreal Engine, I think. Just as we got Voodoo 2 the demo was released. My jaw dropped at beautiful lighting effects.
I had Voodoo 2 SLI rig back in the day.
I remember purchasing my first PC and sticking a Voodoo 2 in it. I wanted to play Jurassic Park: Trespasser. Classic but deeply flawed game that still holds such deep fond memories for me.
what a great time i had with the voodoo 2 card! My 2nd PC was a P1 166 including a matrox mystique. Damn, I wanted to play NFS3 so much, but that Matrox could only go by software render. In early 1999 I found a cheap Voodoo 2 (Miro HiScore 3D 2,performance and prices changed so fast) for 100 Deutsche Mark and built it into my PC. What a game changer! It opened so much more possibilities!
And the best thing?
It had analog Video out so I could attach it to a large TV! Take this, PlayStation 2!
PCs came and go, but the Voodoo2 still has a special place in my nerdy heart.
And guess what is built into a retro-PC in my living room: that very Voodoo2 card, along with a sister for SLI (of course it HAD to be a 2nd Miro due to the TV out PCB layout, a generic one would not work) and a P2 233
Voodoo2 and Slot- CPU, a dream combination
Yes, good old time! Very nice👌
Good old gaming times 😊
I had a rig with dual Diamond 3Dfx running in SLI. Good times!
A trip down memory lane, for sure! Remember when me and my pal, both with a new Voodoo card, and we put both card in my rig. Unlimited power! xD It was a rush tho!
Just being able to play QW in higher resolution was a blast!
And the sad fact about "double the prices" like this is, only the consumers are to blame for it. These double price hikes didn't happen overnight or just from one gen to next. It happened gradually in last 4 or 5 gens where it went from 20-25% increase to 40-50% increase from previous gen and so on, you get the idea. A fool and their money is soon parted and that's exactly what happened.
I still have my old Voodoo2, haven't had a computer that can run it in decades.. but it's such a classic piece of hardware. Gaming on that back in the late 1990's was a revelation when you could finally upgrade from softwear rendering. I remember a guy rocking up to a lan party with a brand new AMD k7 and his voodoo 2 setup, pushing 100fps in Unreal Tournament.. Minds were blown.
I remember buying a 3dfx Voodoo 2 or 3 for like $150 back in the day! 😍😍
1998 was awesome. If I could go back, I would, without hesitation.
I saved every cent I could muster back in the 1990s to get the Original Voodoo card with $MB of memory. It transformed my Quake 1 experience!! It cost me $300 USD back then. A lot of money for a teenager. I was lucky enough to have a computer that could run it. Best memories ever.
My first GPU was a Voodoo 3 and it was running games as smooth as butter.
How did 3dfx not rule the world in terms of graphics tech?
They had an unrivalled branding mindshare in the late 90's.
I'd love to see a documentary on how they dropped the ball.
My first gfx card. Ahh the memories. Something went wrong with mine and all rendered textures were slightly corrupted. Even though, I still used it for what seems like years. Remember playing Final Fantasy 8 with those corrupted textures for over 100 hours.
I had the PCI Voodoo 5500 back in the day. I upgraded to a AGP (Swapped motherboards but kept CPU and RAM) GeForce 2 64Mb and it blew the Voodoo away!
Great memories. Had one with an matrox milennium 2 and a AMD k6-2 @266mhz and a whopping 16mb memory.
Life was good back then...
Nice to see some back in action! 😂
I remember the one ad in PC Gamer in either 1997 or 1998, advertising the DIamond Monster3D-II and how much better Descent II was with it. I drooled so much over that ad due to how much I wanted the Voodoo2. Now (though the machine is in FL), I have a build that has a V2 12MB and is ideal for games of the late-90s. I just need a second card, and to get my GeForce 4 Ti-4600 repaired, and I'll have quite the kickass machine (as it also has a Diamond MonsterSound MX-300).
Amazing remembering! I had 2 of this in SLI behind a GeForce256... 90 fps on Quake 2 @ 1024x768... nostalgic!
I still got my creative Voodoo 2s SLI in the garage , couldn't bear to throw them out because of what I paid for them at the time . Good to know it's now a collectors item !
Remember Power VR I still got one
This was my first video card! Ah, memories.
I remember running 2 of these in my puter. I had 2 of these plus an ATI 2D card. I was working at CompUSA at the time. The employee discount came in clutch when buying all of this.
I still remember back in the day as a teenager buying my 1st 3DFX Voodoo 2 which you still need a 2nd 2D video card to handle that monster. Got another job, saved every penny and got a 2nd 3DFX Voodoo 2 card and had a SLI setup which was the envy of all my friends. Having a soundblaster Awe32 or Waveblaster was another mortgage for me back then and still got it. Thankfully my parents didn't ask for any monetary contribution from me since I was still in school. Less than a year, I was selling my 3DFX video cards to buy a new motherboard with a new intel Pentium III CPU 866 and a Voodoo 3000 AGP video card. I really enjoyed my life back then, no responsibilities and everything I earned came to my PC hobbies.
The good ole days of glide! I have 2 of the monster3d voodoo2’s with all the cables.
NFS2 with 3DFX was awesome!
This brought up memories! I got SLI Voodoo 2s at 2x 12mb mated to 8mb ATI card. Ah... 20 years ago.
I can only say 2 things. Something about how those cards presented 3d graphics was so new to us, it made everything look 3d with a depth that even modern games don't seem to match. I'm sure some of that is just we've become used to it. But even watching your video of these old games there is a depth and a sensation of movement I don't feel even on modern PCs / Consoles.
I'd love to peek into an alternate universe where instead of the disaster that was the banshee, 3dfx had just paired with someone like Tseng or S3 and built an all in one card with an existing 2d chip. I think that could have kept their headstart alive long enough to come up with a real all in one solution that actually worked. Banshee was a disaster they never recovered from, it gave Nvidia an in to the market that just wasn't there before.
I remember shelling out for an Orchid 3DFX card... amazing technology at the time.
I’ll never forget going from Quake to GLQuake with my first voodoo. My jaw hit the floor, and again when I got the voodoo II and SLI’d them to run at 1027x768 on the 17” monitor I’d ‘borrowed’ from work. Still have all of them 😄
Nice! I know exactly what you mean. GLQuake had a huge impact on me the first time I saw it. Thanks for sharing 🙂👍
Still have my SLI pair. 1024x768 was just crazy for it's time.
My rig was crap compared to my mate's but I scored a voodoo 2 second hand for a good price. For it to be second hand, it was mid-late 98 I am guessing? I installed it at his place when we were doing some LAN gaming. I fired up Quake 2 and stood there firing the pistol. We spoke in hushed tones, watching the lighting effects coming off each round as they sailed across the room. Our fragile, baked little minds were blown.
My first 3D card.
Bought specifically for Unreal.
It was stunning.
Wow, this takes me back. I had two of these in my PC back in the day.
These were a game changer at the time. I believe I still have a old pc with voodoo 1 somewhere.
I had S3 Trio64v+ and 3dfx Voodoo 2. Good old times :)
My favorite video card of all time. I still have my Creative Labs 12mb Voodoo2 SLI in my Win98 retro box. Was one of the first to pick up it as soon as it became available at my local Gamestop.
I still have my original pair and remember the day I fired up Quake with it. Those were the days.
I remember the day I installed my voodoo and will never forget it. I’ve never had that experience to this day and I’ve just updated my 1080gtx to the 4090rtx and it’s still didn’t give me the chills I had. The only thing that has come close is jumping in to modern day VR
Agreed! I don't think I've ever been as blown away as when I saw GLQuake running on the original Voodoo for the first time.
We sold so many of these cards in my computer store back in the day !! Game changer !!
Happy days. Had a pair in SLI :-)
aaah, those were the days, playing quake online with 3DFX in my username, it was a badge of honour ;)
I remember getting this card for my birthday when I was around 13 in 1998. Smashing quake and the worms series man. Take me back.
The voodoo2. My first graphical card ❤❤❤
3D card ;-)
@@dallesamllhals9161 ih ih ih yes
I started with the Jazz Adrenaline Rush 3Dfx GPU. Feels like it was not that long ago. So many changes, not just in computers, but in Silicon Valley, since then.
I think I paid £150 (second hand) as a young nerd for my voodoo 2. It took ages to save up for it. The excitement of being able to run Unreal, Blood 2, Unreal Tournament, Carmageddon 2, Quake II etc. not as a slideshow has rarely been matched in my years of pc gaming! I think if I'd been getting into pc gaming now it probably would have taken me about 7 years to save up for one. Still, games seem to scale a bit better these days - my 970 still played pretty much most things I wanted it too! And you have the wonderful steam deck at a much more affordable price. Oh and I kept my voodoo 2 as well. No way I'm letting go of that thing! RIP 3DFX - even all these years later, just seeing your logo excites me in a way that nVidia could only dream of!
Thanks for watching! Wanted to share a couple of corrections: First, it looks like I was wrong about not being able to use an 8MB and 12MB card in SLI. I don't think it was possible initially, but 3dfx improved mismatched card compatibility through driver updates at some point. Numerous people have reported success using 8 and 12MB cards together, which is awesome. If I can ever get my 8MB card repaired, I'd love to give this a try. Second, it is indeed possible to do 1024x768 using a single card when certain 3D features (like Z-buffering) are disabled. Most games don't allow this, but wanted to mention this for historical correctness 👍
And I apologize for my mispronunciation of "Nvidia" and "RIVA" - looks like I've been saying it incorrectly for years! 😂
Loved that card... The first time you opened Unreal Tournament in 3DFX Glide was AMAZING! I also ran it with an AGP Matrox G200 Millenium...
I had one of these , 3dfx glide was next level at the time
The only thing that topped getting a Voodoo2 was getting a Sinclair ZX81 after using the ZX80. The frame rate, the resolution blew my mind, never thought it was possible that computer could display ASCII so fast and without crashing every 5 minutes.
love thoose days good memory's of the area
Thank you, this video re-activated a few dormant neurons. ;) Playing games like Forsaken, Unreal and Half-Life on a dual 12MB Diamond Monster 3D II setup was certainly something back in '98.
I remember being 14(ish) and buying and installing my own Voodoo 2, feeling like a mad scientist. Good times.
So hard to believe this was all 25 years ago, seems like just yesterday.
Oh Man back in the day . I ran a Voodoo 2 with an stb velocity 128 for 2d as well as the P2 400 i built the pc when i worked as an apprentice pc tech what a power house that machine was it was my first pc that i ever owned myself !
I had a 3 card Canopus SLI setup. spectra 2500 and 2 3Dfx cards. Good times.
A great video! Thanks for sharing! I still have the Voodoo 2 Helios 3D card. Also I have a Voodoo 3 3000 PCI Video card.
To me the crazy big jump in cards was in 2002 when the ATI 9700 came out.
It changed gaming forever.
The 9700 Pro was an incredible card, that’s for sure! I never owned one but did have a 9800 Pro back then. Really loved that card.
I remember begging my dad to get me this when we were at Pace Club (Now Sam's Club) and all the fun I had with computer gaming from that moment on. My card came with the game Ultimate Race Pro and man... back then, it looked "so real." Let me tell you, I played the heck out of that game because I never experienced anything like it before.
In my PC from that era I had the Obsidian X-24, the dual 12MB V2s in a single PCI slot. By the end of it's life, it was pretty visibly curved due to the weight of the components on that long of a card.
I still remember when I got it and it was unbeliavable graphics at that time
I had the creative blasters voodoo 2. I loved it. Pc gaming was so exciting back then, first person shooters were getting better and better