I believe it was S3 Savage with 8mb ram, after that upgraded to geforce 2 MX200. A decent upgrade back then..
GF 3 was the first Geforce I actually liked (half decent 2d image quality + very good at games).I had the S3 Savage 4 - my god the textures on S3 MeTaL in UT99 and Q3A blew 17 year old me's brain. I upgraded from that to a GeForce 3 Ti200. Generic, but fast as hell.
OMG, I remember that horrible card! I remember buying it in florida for $150 thinking I got a good deal back in 2002, then when I got home to NYC it turned out to be a turd. Thats when I switched to ATI.GeForce4 MX 440
Was fine for playing warcraft 3 and the like, but then a friend gave me a cd with the doom 3 demo (or beta, can't remember). Was really excited to try out such a modern game and got my hopes crushed when it loaded up and saw something like this:
I thought it was the tnt2.Riva 128 <--- it was awesome.
I never had a Voodoo....but wasn't the Riva 128 the first actual single-chip GPU that combined 2D and 3D?
S3 ViRGE was the first. That was 1995 and the slower versions could be beat out in sheer fps by software rendering on fast pentiums once the settings were turned up. The next year saw the Rendition verite, matrix mystique, and ati rage introduced. Nvidia's competing chip at the time was the nv1, which was a commercial failure.Riva 128 <--- it was awesome.
I never had a Voodoo....but wasn't the Riva 128 the first actual single-chip GPU that combined 2D and 3D?
S3 ViRGE was the first. That was 1995 and the slower versions could be beat out in sheer fps by software rendering on fast pentiums once the settings were turned up. The next year saw the Rendition verite, matrix mystique, and ati rage introduced. Nvidia's competing chip at the time was the nv1, which was a commercial failure.
Mechwarrior 2 on the mystique was amazeballs
Nice. Yeah I just learned about NV1 as well which was before Riva 128. But wasn't there something which made Riva 128 special? Like it was the first card that supported Direct3D or something?
"Matriix Mystique" and the other you mentioned, I totally remember coming across these names often back then when I researched what the "best" PC would be. Matrix Mystique probably the most-mentioned and most popular.
What was it that made the Riva 128 then so unique, compared to these? Was it the price..or possibly Nvidia's marketing?