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by _noqo 3048 days ago
I remember those days vividly.

I was just getting to know the world of computers, I think it was the year 97, I had 13 years old and my first PC, Pentium 200mhz with Windows 95, I thought the games were fabulous! Quake 1, Duke Nukem, Carmageddon, Moto Racer.

But one day I bought the Diamond Monster 2 with a Voodoo 2 chip and 12MB Ram (3DFX accelerator card), I put that thing on my PC and it was like traveling to the future, the games looked amazing and I had a performance boost.

I think the game that impressed me most at the time was Need For Speed 2 Special Edition, before the card I had it installed and played, but the "Special Edition" was for being compatible with 3DFX and adding additional features, in addition to the smoothed textures, in a track mosquitoes were sticking to the screen, I do not remember what other special features.

Moto Racer, Descent Freespace and Tomb Raider 2 come to my mind now as others that I feel huge visual gap between regular graphics and 3DFX.

Then came Quake 3 Arena in 1999 and it blew my mind, I think that in 2000/2001 I upgrade to a Pentium 4 and maintain the legendary Diamond Monster 2 because it was still kicking ass. Awesome card, it has a place in my heart.

3 comments

> I think the game that impressed me most at the time was Need For Speed 2 Special Edition, before the card I had it installed and played, but the "Special Edition" was for being compatible with 3DFX and adding additional features, in addition to the smoothed textures, in a track mosquitoes were sticking to the screen, I do not remember what other special features.

I think NFS2SE had transparent glass if you had a 3DFX card, or maybe that was NFS3, I remember wishing I had one either way!

I remember playing Need for Speed: High Stakes with a 4MB Permedia 2 card, and the game was clearly supposed to have alpha-transparent textures on some lights, but my card couldn't handle it and I got opaque textures with big black borders around all the streetlight lens flares etc.

The worst was the Dolphin Cove track where beautiful shafts of sunlight were meant to lazily filter through the tree canopy onto the road. On my screen, they appeared as fully opaque walls blocking any view of the track ahead.

I remember I bought a TNT card instead of a Voodoo for my first computer because it had a nicer looking box in the advertisement from the local electronics store. I didn't have internet at that time, so I used box art instead of user reviews for deciding on purchases. I think the box had a fighter jet.
> I put that thing on my PC and it was like traveling to the future,

Yes! It was 1998 or 1999. I remember coming home from Micro Center, installing the Diamond Voodoo2 card and trying Descent Freespace on it. I think it came with it as a demo or even a full version. Then lots of hours playing NFS as well. It was the future.