#3dfx

[never-obsolete]

3D Blaster Banshee PC/Computing - January 1999

[mvfm-25]

" She doesn't need to use her body to get what she wants... She's got yours! "

Computer Gaming World n184 - November, 1999

[techturd]

[tamara-kama]

Look at what I have leftover from the 90's.. I believe this is my original 3Dfx Voodoo 1 graphics board from Diamond Multimedia!

They called it the Diamond Monster 3D!

Some time I'd like to mount it in a special shadow box with maybe the best ad for it as the background and lighting as a display.

TBH the 4MB of VRAM it has would be considered a miniscule amount these days now that we have GPUs with multiple GBs of VRAM.. haha

[roadworxx]

i've been meaning to post this for a while now, so here it is

The Gateway GP6-400

this is my retro pc setup - a modified gateway gp6-400 from 1999. this model in particular really appealed to me; it's powerful enough to run most games up to around 1998 or so, but it still has fairly realistic performance for a typical gaming pc of that era. i still went ahead and swapped out some parts as well as added some new ones in order to get exactly what i want out of it, however.

here's the specs:

- Pentium II 400mhz

- 128mb RAM

- 250gb HDD (win98 partition only uses 6.4gb for accuracy

- Voodoo3 AGP graphics card

- Integrated Ensoniq AudioPCI audio

- ES1868F ISA audio card for DOS gaming

- DVD-RW drive

- 3.5" floppy drive

- 250mb ZIP drive

on the pc there exist two operating systems: windows 98 second edition and ms-dos 6.2 with windows 3.1. now, you likely find this odd considering that ms-dos 7.1 is already accessible from windows 98, but i reeeally wanted a true early 90s dos experience. so, i have a full installation of dos 6.2 on a separate 425mb partition (the size of a decent hdd from 1994 or so) that i access via boot disk.

as you can also see from the pictures, there's a crt monitor as well: the 17" princeton eo710. it was expensive - well-kept crt monitors tend to be that way unfortunately - but it works wonderfully and the display is gorgeous. i try to keep it at around half brightness and contrast, which can make seeing things in games hard at times, but i really would rather not risk wearing it down lol.

overall, it works splendidly. i'm able to run any games made up to around 2001 or so fairly well, and while there's been issues dealing with stupid win98 bullshit, it hasn't been too bad to work on. it's been a dream of mine to own a computer like this for ages, and now that i finally have one...i'm really happy :)

here's some more pics

the windows 98 desktop:

running dos:

@esselfortium 's KDIKDIZD looking amazing on the crt (it looks so much better in person):

and finally, some half-life along with a better view of the front of the pc:

[dimalink]

Funny summer bug

Three dimensional scene for today based on bugs. I remember, that for PC Windows 95 it was a racing game with bugs. There, you can select from several bugs. And, even, game was with usage of 3d accelerators 3DFX. And, even, more – there was a game Frogger 3D about a frog. Also, it was in times of three dimensional graphics accelerators. Racing with bugs! And jumps as frog! It is so funny!

And, this is my 3d scene based on. Full of joy and happy bugs are living in a field. And, there are here lots of trees. And, it is such a plane. Planes of bugs. They can fly here and having fun. So, it is here - all the time a good weather! Bug even can to turn and rotate in the air! And rotate! And sit at the tree. And there are few hills. To train in accuracy. And fly straight certain between these two hills. Such a rare few hills. And lots of wood!

Bug and his funny company. So, here he has lots of friends. They are flying all the time! And sit at the little grass. Or, at the trees. There are lots of them here. And, in the evening bugs are drinking tea. And they go to ants! Those lives – here - not so far away!

And, what a sky is here! Such a summer! Endless summer! Bug, when he is flying – always, he is happy. And, when he is tired – then, he sits at the wood and he will have a rest!

It is arcade about bugs, can be. Or racing with bugs. Or just slow explore – where you move slowly as a bug. How much can be done, when you are a bug! Funny summer bug! Play with bugs – it is so funny!

Bugs they are good and kind! So they can fly very good! And they have lots of wings and lots of little legs! Bugs smiling a lot! And they do a noise. And every little bug has his own little house. Such a small world for every bug. And there is a house in it.

And every, little bug is living in his little house. There, there is a tea. And bugs can fly across interspace tunnels. In another worlds. And explore them! There is one world with big big grass. There, grass is so big, that can touch the sky! So even this can be real! Sometimes, bugs are doing explore everything around, and sometimes they play racing with each other. Sometimes they just crawl or fly.

Dima Link is making retro videogames, apps, a little of music, write stories, and some retro more.

WEBSITE: http://www.dimalink.tv-games.ru/home_eng.html ITCHIO: https://dimalink.itch.io/

TUMBLR: https://dimalink.tumblr.com/ BLOGGER: https://dimalinkeng.blogspot.com/ MASTODON: https://mastodon.social/@DimaLink

[56k-modem]

1999

[swarmik]

What about Twitter/X?

I have ~5500 followers here on tumblr after years of activity, but I never liked the lack of interaction here. When I started the "blog" here, one of the goals was to get feedback and interesting insights from others when I was working on something retrocomputing related. This never worked. Tumblr was never really good for text interaction.

This, along with a lack of time, caused me to reduce my activity here. Things got worse when many of the people I followed here moved elsewhere. Some of them are on Twitter/X, so I decided to try that platform as well. This time it will work a bit differently - I will share the retrocomputing things I do as soon as I do them.

The tumblr blog (and the copy on my web) will stay, and I plan to use it for the medium sized posts.

My Twitter/X retrocomputing profile can be found here: https://twitter.com/retro_swarm

My current activities focus a lot on the mid-90s Macs and other non-x86 machines.

[retrocgads]

USA 1997

[lmttn]

Gabriel Knight 3

Picking up from where my free trial of Twitter left off, here are some truly awful photos of Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned (1999) running on my Windows 98 machine. Adventure games have always been a blind spot for me, but last year I played through The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery (1995) and it really turned my opinion around on the genre, as I had done so right after playing through a couple of LucasArts adventures that I didn't really dig. While The Beast Within (GK2) was presented via live actors on prerendered backgrounds, Sierra made a proprietary fully 3D adventure engine for GK3, with one of the most bizarre interfaces I have ever experienced in any video game ever. It feels like a simulation of an out-of-body experience. It is like you are playing as a ghost possessing a guy. You really should check out video footage of the game to see what I mean. The game was a commercial flop, and was Sierra's final adventure game. It also had a mixed critical reception, and is mostly remembered for having a puzzle so ridiculous it has its own Wikipedia article. I'm only two chapters in (right before the notorious puzzle in question) but so far I'm invested in its world and story, despite its completely insane interface.

Also, some PC info as an aside: this computer has a Pentium III 800, a 16MB 3dfx Voodoo3 2000 PCI, a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 (with EAX support!), 192MB of RAM, a 40GB IDE hard drive whose manufacturer I can't remember off the top of my head, and a CD-ROM drive that refuses to open sometimes. I have a driver installed to enable USB flash drive support, so I usually load ISO images into Daemon Tools instead of wrestling with the optical drive.

[maverickuk]

3dfx Voodoo 3 3000 + Noctua NF-A4x10 fan = overclocking

Or at least, it'll run a little cooler and hopefully add a few more years to the old girls life.

It's not that I need to overclock an old video card when I can easily use a newer card if I'd like more performance. It's more that by enhancing the cooling and seeing how much more performance is hidden in the device takes me back to my younger years when it became a way to saving a good chunk of money by investing in a cheaper CPU or video card and then squeezing out more FPS through some TLC.

The Voodoo 3 range runs pretty hot by default and don't feature any active cooling. So back in the day it was fairly common for people to slap on a fan in a basic way in order to try and cool down the card a little.

The Voodoo 3 2000 ran at 143Mhz (GPU & RAM) by default which typically gave it quite a lot of headroom for speeding up. Where as the Voodoo 3 3000 running at 166MHz was normally running close to it's limit. Those with a Voodoo 3 3500 were already at 183MHz and would be unlikely to squeeze much more out.

From research it seems that typically it's the memory on the cards that give out before the GPU. With memory chips being used with speed ratings ranging from 6ns, 5.5ns to even some 5ns. Those with lower ratings having more headroom to run at higher speeds.

So what could I get some my card? First up, let's attach that fan

The stock 3000 heatsink features two little holes at opposite ends which I thought would be perfect to looping a cable tie through. The first one went in without too much difficulty.

Unfortunately with the second I just couldn't squeeze the damn thing through. After much frustration I instead put a screw through the fan and used some pliers to squash the metal of the heatsink onto the thread of the screw.

Not as elegant as I would have liked, but it's held in place securely enough for my needs.

Once in the Pentium III mainboard it fits in nicely and thankfully doesn't hit the PCI header next to the AGP slot (Of course I checked this prior to securing the fan...)

So after all that, how much more performance does this card have to give?

I turned to Unreal, as it was already installed and felt like a suitable game for the era of the hardware and ran a timedemo at 1024x768 and 1280x1024 resolutions

An extra 14MHz gives an additional 6.5% performance at 1024 with a higher 1280 resolution giving a higher 9% uplift. Not earth shattering, but certainly a nice little bonus.

Unfortunately if I pushed the card any further Unreal would get a little psychedelic

Yay for overclocking!

[gamesthatwerent]

XMAS UPDATE 1: Missing 1997 Argonaut prototype 'Cult' recovered (PC)

Our first Christmas update sees release of a very early remains of Cult on the #PC. A third person zombie game due for release in 1997 by Argonaut Games that aimed to showcase the new Voodoo 1 3DFX card and BRender engine at the time. @ArgonautGames_

https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2024/12/cult/

We have also produced a video showing what remains of the Cult prototype, some of the map files, main protagonist model and screenshots from the game.

With huge thanks to Martin Piper for allowing us to preserve the title.

[mvfm-25]

" Question everything! (Except the power of Voodoo 5!) " Computer Gaming World n194 - September, 2000.

[techturd]

[brutish-impulse]

This is so absurd!

Someone reverse-engineered an unreleased graphics card that 3dfx was making when they went under. It's such a bizarre creature! It's actually 4 GPUs on a single, huge (for the time) board. At one point, it was supposed to have a dedicated power supply! And the box in the video is labelled Strange God!

They tried to benchmark it against other GPUs from the time, and they had to source parts from the local e-waste recycler to do it!

[robertmatejcek]

Untitled Portrait with Sparkler No. 2 - mixed media - robert matejcek - 2022

'I'm radioactive, radioactive…' - Imagine Dragons - Radioactive

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