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Home > From Voodoo to GeForce: The Awesome History of 3D Graphics
From Voodoo to GeForce: The Awesome History of 3D GraphicsCreated 05/19/2009 - 7:30am
From Voodoo to GeForce: The Awesome History of 3DGraphicsPosted 05/19/2009 at 7:30am | by Paul Lilly77Comments
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Try to imagine where 3D gaming would be today if not for the graphics processing unit, or GPU. Without it, you wouldn't betredging through the jungles of Crysis in all its visual splendor, nor would you be fending off endless hordes of fast-moving zombiesat high resolutions. For that to happen, it takes a highly specialized chip designed for parallel processing to pull off the kinds ofgames you see today, the same ones that wouldn't be possible on a CPU alone. Going forward, GPU makers will try to extend thereliance on videocards to also include physics processing, video encoding/decoding, and other tasks that where once handled by theCPU.
It's pretty amazing when you think about how far graphics technology has come. To help you do that, we're going to take a look back atevery major GPU release since the infancy of 3D graphics. Join us as we travel back in time and relive releases like 3dfx's Voodoo3 andS3's ViRGE lineup. This is one nostalgiac ride you don't want to miss!
S3 ViRGEA virgin in the 3D graphics arena, S3 in 1995 thrust itself into this new territory with its ViRGE graphics series. Playing on the hypesurrounding virtual reality a decade and a half ago, ViRGE stood for Virtual Reality Graphics Engine and was one of the first 3D GPUs totake aim at the mainstream consumer. While nothing compared to todays offerings, early 64-bit ViRGE cards came with up to 4MB ofonboard memory, and core and memory clockspeeds of up to 66MHz. It also supported such features as Bilinear and Trilinear texturefiltering, MIP mapping, alpha blending, video texturing mapping, Z-buffering, and other 3D texture mapping goodies.
Ironically, those same cutting edge features took a toll on the ViRGE silicon resulting in underwhelming 3D performance. In some cases,performance was so bad that users could obtain better results with the CPU, causing the ViRGE to be unaffectionate dubbed the first 3Ddecelerator. Ouch.
Fun Fact: Just how far has graphic cards come in the past 15 years? Enough so that we've seen the S3 ViRGE selling for aslittle as $0.45 in the second-hand market.
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(Image Credit: Palcalova Sbirka)
Model: ViRGEDate Released: 1995Interface: PCIShader Model: N/ADirectX: 6Manufacturing Process: 0.35 micronCore Clockspeed: 66MHzMemory Bus: 64-bit
(Image Credit: pctuning.tyden.cz)
Model: ViRGE VXDate Released: 1995Interface: PCIShader Model: N/ADirectX: 6Manufacturing Process: 0.5 micronCore Clockspeed: 50MHzMemory Bus: 64-bit
(Image Credit: Wikipedia Commons)
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Model: ViRGE GXDate Released: 1997Interface: PCIShader Model: N/ADirectX: 6Manufacturing Process: 0.35 micronCore Clockspeed: 66MHzMemory Bus: 64-bit
(Image Credit: promptweb.co.uk)
Model: ViRGE DXDate Released: 1997Interface: PCIShader Model: N/ADirectX: 6Manufacturing Process: 0.35 micronCore Clockspeed: 66MHzMemory Bus: 64-bit
(Image Credit: f reewebs.com)
Model: ViRGE GX2Date Released: 1998Interface: PCIShader Model: N/ADirectX: 6Manufacturing Process: 0.35 micronCore Clockspeed: 66MHzMemory Bus: 64-bit
ATI Rage 3D and Rage IIWell before Radeon ever became synonymous with ATI, the Canadian-based graphics chip maker was best known for its 3D Rage line.Released in 1995, the original Rage 3D didn't have a whole going for it, such as slow EDO RAM, a 32-bit memory bus, and a max memoryof just 2MB.
A year later ATI released the Rage II, and while the upgrades seem minor on paper, performance was significantly improved. The newchipset traded in 2MB of EDO memory for up to 8MB of SDRAM and widened the bus to 64-bit, while also increasing the core clockspeedfrom 40MHz to 60MHz. Support for DVD playback was also added.

(Image Credit: ixbt.com)
Model: Rage IIDate Released: 1995Interface: PCIShader Model: N/ADirectX: 5Manufacturing Process: 0.25 micronCore Clockspeed: 25-60MHzMemory Clockspeed: 66-83MHzMemory Bus: 64- bit
Rendition Verite 1000Headquartered in Mountain View, CA, Rendition emerged in the mid 1990s as a fabless semiconductor manufacturer whose goal was tocompete in the high-end videocard market. Throughout the company's tenure, Rendition managed to get a leg up on the competition byworking with John Carmack to develop the first 3D-accelerated version of Quake (VQuake, or Verite-accelerated Quake).
VQuake was designed to take advantage of the Verite 1000 chipset, which was launched in 1996. A year prior, Carmack stated "Verite willbe the premier platform for Quake." The card came capable of bilinear filtering, perspective correcting, and a basic pipeline configurationof 1/1/1 (textures/pixels/Z).
Poor 2D performance proved problematic for the board, as did programming for the Verite. It was the latter which Carmack would later sayled to iD's decision to move away from proprietary APIs to OpenGL.
(Image Credit: Wikipedia)
Model: Verite 2100Date Released: 1996Interface: PCIShader Model: N/ADirectX: 2Manufacturing Process: 0.5 micronCore Clockspeed: 25MHzMemory Bus: 64-bit
3dfx Voodoo1Like a modern day Greek Tragedy, the rapid rise and untimely demise of 3dfx can best be described as a wild roller-coaster ride that most

enthusiasts wish would have never ended. And in a way, it didn't, as 3dfx had a tremendous hand in shaping the 3D market as we know ittoday. But every good story needs a beginning, and this one starts with the original Voodoo card, or otherwise known as the Voodoo1,released in 1996.
The Voodoo1 launched 3D gaming into the limelight, even if the add-in card's implementation was less than graceful. While othervideocards fused both 2D and 3D functionality onto a single board, the Voodoo1 concentrated solely on 3D and lacked any 2Dcapabilities. This meant consumers still needed a 2D graphics card for day to day computing, which would be connected to the Voodoo1via a VGA pass-through cable. Only when a compatible 3D videogame was detected would the Voodoo1 then wake out of its slumber andflex its gaming muscle.
It's hard to imagine such a design being successful today, but consumers were willing to cope with the costly inconvenience at the timebecause the Voodoo1 put every other available 3D card in a headlock and gave them a noogie.
Voodoo1: No Shader Model, DX3 support, 0.5 micron, PCI, 50MHz core, 64-bit
Model: Voodoo1Date Released: 1996Interface: PCIShader Model: N/ADirectX: 3Manufacturing Process: 0.5 micronCore Clockspeed: 50MHzMemory Clockspeed: 50MHzMemory Bus: 64-bitTransistors: 1 million
Next up, Nvidia makes it debut.
Nvidia NV3The first of Nvidia's GPUs to target the "performance segment of the volume PC graphics market," the N3, or Riva 128, was designed withMicrosoft's DirectX 5 API in mind. Nvidia packed 3.5 million transistors on its first performance part, along with a single pixel pipeline.
Modern for its time, the Riva 128 came configured with 4MB of memory, a 100MHz core clockspeed, 1.6GB/s of bandwidth, a 206MHzRAMDAC, compatible with AGP 2X. It was also a 2D/3D combo card, whereas 3dfx's Voodoo line still required a separate 2D card, acostly proposition not all gamers were keen on. However, image quality was poor compared to the Voodoo line, at least early on, and somegames at the time were embracing 3dfx's proprietary Glide API.

Model: Riva 128Date Released: 1997
Interface: AGP/PCIShader Model: N/ADirectX: 5Manufacturing Process: 0.35 micronCore Clockspeed: 100MHzMemory Clockspeed: 100MHz Memory Bus: 128-bitTransistors: 3.5 million
ATI Rage ProThe next iteration of the Rage came in 1997. ATI claimed it had been working closely with both Intel and Microsoft in developing the newpart, leading to the first videocard to support AGP 2X (133MHz) mode. This gave the card a peak bandwidth in excess of 500MB/s, ortwice the throughput of AGP 1X.
Everything about the Pro was improved compared to its predecessor. It came with an integrated floating-point set-up engine that couldprocess up to 1.2 million triangles per second, improved DVD playback, and support for resolutions up to 1600x1200.
Fun Fact: Following disappointing sales, ATI added the word 'Turbo' to the card's moniker and released new drivers that weresupposed to increase performance. In reality, the drivers only helped when benchmarking.
(Image Credit: recycledgoods.com)
Model: Rage ProDate Released: 1997Interface: AGP/PCIShader Model: N/ADirectX: 6Manufacturing Process: 0.35 micronCore Clockspeed: 75MHzMemory Clockspeed: 100MHzMemory Bus: 64-bit
Rendition Verite 2000Rendition's second and third attempts at a competitive GPU solution materialized in the form of the Verite 2100 and 2200, both of whichshared the exact same architecture with one another and differed only in clockspeed. Both boards boasted a 4MB frame

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