Your first 3D accelerator card and experience

[Demigod]

Wondering what people's first 3D accelerator card/experience was. Mine was with the Matrox Mystique, a PCI-based 4 MB videocard capable of simple Direct3D acceleration. I got the card from my friend who got it from another friend (it didn't work on his computer). The first game that I experienced 3D-acceleration (on my computer, I had seen it on others) was Tomb Raider II. I started the game, expecting nothing unusual using my new Matrox card (I had a 1 MB S3 card before) and the water looked a bit different. It had a greenish hue to it and there was something unique about it. It then hit me like a point blank shot in the face: I was seeing 3D-acceleration! It was like a revelation and a rush of excitement came over me. I wandered around the world of Tomb Raider II, marvelling at the 3D capabilities of the card, to which there were few. I tried other games like Tomb Raider 1 (which had a 3D-accelerator patch for download), Carmageddon II and some helicopter games and they just looked amazing. I searched around for existing 3D-accelerator-capable games, especially ones designed for my card and ran just about anything that could take advantage of the 3D power of my card, revelling in this new experience.

Years later I got a Celeron with a TNT2 and 3D-acceleration was just natural but before then it was something to be marvelled at. Anyone else want to share their experiences, or something else that astonished you with PCs?

[Ali]

Compared to you I got into 3D gaming very very late, the first 3d accelerator that I had was builtin on my second PC (first PC I ever had was a 486, second one that I got was a celeron 266, which is somewhere in my Trash room). Well it has a SiS 6326 chip, and the very first game that I ran on it with the 3d acceleration was Brian Lara Cricket, which was released in the year 1998. Well that was not much of an excitement for me, as I didn't knew the difference between a 3D accelerated and sofware rendered game. However in my whole street I was the only person who was able to play this game, as rest of all my friends had 468's, this sure made me proud.

Now a days my GF4TI4200 really makes me proud again

Ali

[Gamer1]

i never really got into games, it wasn't for the pc. it was for the console and still is.

i never had a first 3d accelarator card. but i just got an ATi Rage 2 . It came with my vaio pc, stupid integrated piece of crap....

[Esturk]

My first 3D accelerator was on my second computer. It was a Compaq Deskpro EN Series. With a Pentium II 266Mhz, 64Mb PC66 SDRAM, 2.1Gb Quantum Fireball, and best of all ATI Rage 4Mb AGP piece of crap.
Later my ex-stepmother got a new Duron 900 with a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI in it!! I was like holy crap! So I secretly swapped the Voodoo 3 with my ATI thingy. I was so much happier with it.
I then proceeded to play Vandal Hearts (Only PS game I owned at the time since selling my Playstation) and I played it with Bleem! Which I had bought some time ago. And then I decided that I didn't like bleem! and tried VGS. It was alright, got the job done.

It was sometime soon after my experience with bleem! and VGS that I wanted to play FFT again (desperately) So I went and bought it hoping to play it in bleem! or VGS. I quickly decided that both of the previous emus sucked at playing the music in FFT. And decided to look up more PS emus. That is when I found ePSXe, AdriPSX and the fantastic Null2 SPU plugin or was it Iori's yet? Anyways that was my first exciting experience with a 3D accelerator card.
Bear in mind, no 3D PC games were ever played on that ATI card. To this day I still don't really play any PC games, my computers have really been only for emulation, internet and some old DOS gaming, Namely Dungeon Master.

[Kane]

The Diamond Edge 3d. The NV1 IIRC. My brother bought it and we played the specialy ported Sega PC games for it, and I was more than a little impressed.

He then got a real acceletor card. The Voodoo 2. Since then I've used a Voodoo 1, an ATi Rage pro, a Riva TNT 2, S3 Savage 3d and Savage 4, Voodoo 3 2000 PCI, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP, Voodoo 5 5500 AGP, then later a PCI, GeForce 2 original (Creative one), Elsa GeForce 2MX, and my current card: Elsa Gladiac 920 GeForce 3.

[Betamax]

A voodoo 1 card. First game I tried was Quake2. At first a didn't notice any difference. Then I realised that it was still in software mode .

[cooliscool]

Mine was back in 2000. I went to the PC store to upgrade from my p75/cirrus logic 1mb/8mb system ram cause I had just gotten quite the wad of money, hehe. It was a PIII Coppermine 733MHz with a Voodoo3 3000 AGP and 128MB PC-133. The first program I ran on the beast was 3Dmark2000, and boy, was I about to piss my pants at the sight. It was like, "how can graphics get ANY BETTER?!?!?!!"

[Player-X]

Vodoo1 stacked with a SIS some unknown card

[Hanamichi]

Mine was a 4MB Voodoo Rush card, which costed something like $170. I dont remember what first game I ran on it, most probably Die By The Sword, though I did play Quake2 on it for sometime. The difference was jaw ripping.

[zukeft]

I don't really consider that my old integrated S3 Trio 64v+ (1 MB) can be considered a 3D accelerator, so I'd have to say that my first was with my current PC, the ATi 9700 Pro.

first one: 3dfx voodoo1. a bit heavy for the pentium 75 it ran on, but cool nonetheless.

[liquid]

The first game I played that used 3d *decelleration* was tomb raider 1 on a diamond S3 Virge (4MB EDO Ram) I was really disapointed with the speed; although it looked graphically good it was utterly unplayable (about 5 fps), luckily about 6 months later a friend recommended that I should get a Nvidia Riva 128 (4MB SGRAM) It was a pretty cool card (and my first card which had tv out) but it wasn't untill I tried out Quake 2 in openGL mode that I was really blown-away :eek2: not only did it look amazing but it was very fast at resolutions that would cause the software renderer to crawl. After that I was hooked on hardware accelerated games

[psicomaniaco]

The good thing is: My first 3d card was a Diamond Monster Voodoo 2 with 12 MB. The bad thing is: I still use it
Anyway, the first game I've played with it was Incoming. The game really sux, but it came with my voodoo 2!

[Badaro]

My first 3D card was a Voodoo 3 3000 AGP. Gosh I loved that card. The first games I played with it were Quake 2 (I was addicted to the "Action" mod back then), and Snes9x with the TV-Out so I could play in a regular TV.

[]s Badaro

[Kaiser Sigma]

My first 3D card was one based on the permedia 2 chipset, it had 4 MB quite good for the time though it had a lot of issues with OpenGL... I changed after a year for a Voodoo Banshee a real good 2D/3D card with 16MB...
Finally I moved to a TNT2 with 32 MB and since then I didn't have the oportunity (actually I didn't the money) to change it... but for now it serves me the best it can so I don't complain...

[Rhombus]

My first was a ATi 3D Rage 2MB card that came with our family computer - Sony Vaio Pentium 200Mhz back in the day. I actually haven't had too many cards since then. Next was a Voodoo2, then a Voodoo 3 2000, then a GeForce256 DDR, and now my current card, ASUS GeForce3 Ti500.

My dad (family computer) has only upgraded once... from that P200 ATi 3D Rage, right to a PIII 1.0ghz with a GeForce2 MX.

Voodoo Banshee.

[Dark Watcher]

we were being left behind in emulation advancement...we forked over some cash and got a Voodoo 2 PCI...hello UltraHLE

[Kirby]

A permedia 2 for my first video card. lol, it didn't even fill triangles half the time.

[Monkeybrains]

Geforce 2 MX.