Good old days when I could pick a team.

[u/yukiohana]

[u/Occidentally20]

3DFX Voodoo gang rise up!

Unreal Tournament, Carmageddeon and Duke Nukem 3D on my spanking new dedicated graphics card - people called me mad for buying such a thing!

[u/Wanderlust-King → u/Occidentally20]

Ah the good old days when SLI stood for Scan Line Interleave, which nvidia renamed after buying 3dfx. Ati also gave us N-patches.
And Savage, who gave us s3tc texture compression, which became the industry standard DXTC DCT1-3 for decades.

[u/biggrumpybill → u/Occidentally20]

When I first loaded gl quake and the voodoo made that click sound, I swear I almost died.

Couldn’t believe it.

Then MDK, same thing.

Gaming hasn’t had that holy shit moment since tbh

[u/Gold-Vehicle-2863 → u/biggrumpybill]

MDK?! Haven't thought about that game for a loooong time. Got a nice nostalgia hit from reading that name

[u/jonfitt → u/biggrumpybill]

It was like a different game! The lighting!

[u/starystarejstarego → u/Occidentally20]

I still got double voodoo2 somewhere in house heheh

[u/0utlookGrim → u/Occidentally20]

I ran UT on a cheaper alternative from NVIDIA using OpenGL.

[u/Occidentally20 → u/0utlookGrim]

Never heard of 'em.

They probably fizzled out as a company.

[u/neebick → u/Occidentally20]

Loved my voodoos. Still have my 5500. Then the riva tnt came along.

[u/scienceworksbitches → u/neebick]

wasnt the 5500 much more powerful? my buddy had a low end voodo 3 and there wasnt much difference to my tnt.

[u/neebick → u/scienceworksbitches]

You know I may have been thinking of the TNT2. It’s been a while.

[u/Urthal → u/neebick]

TNT2 and Voodoo 3 came out at about the same time. Voodoo 3 was slightly faster but the TNT2 from a small, underdog company was almost as fast and supported 32-bit color, which made things look much better. Six months later they released the first GeForce 256. Those days your computer was obsolete as soon as you took it out of the box.

[u/Quaxzong_xi8Y → u/Occidentally20]

the was a glide mode for duke 3d??

[u/Occidentally20 → u/Quaxzong_xi8Y]

No, but it had 3D in the name so we assumed it was doing something :)

[u/Quaxzong_xi8Y → u/Occidentally20]

ah ok :D....I remember one game that blew me away software vs Glide and that was Quake 2, I never forget the moment

[u/IntrepidusX → u/Occidentally20]

The christmas my dad bought me a vodoo extreme with 6 megs of video ram! Loaded up Darkforces 2 and the whole family watched me play it!

[u/Occidentally20 → u/IntrepidusX]

Glad to hear they were supportive!

My dad caught me 'hacking the PC" - the opening sequence of Civilization 1 was stored in plain text so you could make it say anything you liked.

He sent me to be tested for special needs soon after which was nice haha.

[u/GigaSoup → u/Occidentally20]

Duke3d never had 3dfx support or official hardware acceleration 

Some other 3dfx gems would be 

GLQuake, nfs2se, gta1 DOS version, fatal racing/whiplash, diablo 2

[u/CjKing2k → u/GigaSoup]

Half Life was the reason I bought a Voodoo3

[u/Spetsnaz_420 → u/CjKing2k]

Had a Voodoo 2 for the same reason

[u/Flash24rus → u/GigaSoup]

Guy picked games from 2-3 years apart. There was a whole new generation of graphics every new year back then.
And while first Carmageddon had no native support for 3dfx (you needed special version), UT99 demanded 3D acceleration and didn't work on 2D card alone.
And also 3dfx wasn't a graphics card, it was connected to graphics card and worker as 3D accelerator.
Just wanted to say he messed things up to look cool.

[u/CauseOptimal554 → u/Occidentally20]

My first GPU, Voodoo Banshee 16MB :D

[u/duttyfoot → u/Occidentally20]

Oh man those were the days, Quake on that voodoo card was sweet

[u/jonfitt → u/Occidentally20]

PowerVR coming up trying to compete with that Voodoo magic!

[u/FishHammer]

AMD has some serious cards out right now. Idk why they're entirely ignored but they do exist.

[u/TheSaltyJunk → u/FishHammer]

The 9070 is a phenomenal card...if you don't give a shit about RT, it's a better version of the 5070 at 1440 and 4k.

Just weird people still hate on these cards due to a driver issue from over a decade ago.

[u/BlueTemplar85 → u/TheSaltyJunk]

And if you're on Linux, the driver issues are on the Nvidia side these days...

[u/TheSaltyJunk → u/BlueTemplar85]

The only issue on Linux has been the open source driver if you use the cards on a TV with HDMI...they are blocked from going over 60fps on 4k.

This isn't an AMD issue, it's an HDMI certification issue, which is stupid.

[u/JaceBearelen → u/BlueTemplar85]

Even that’s old news. Nvidia Linux drivers have been perfectly fine for a while now.

[u/da2Pakaveli → u/JaceBearelen]

They have gotten better but you still have a significantly higher performance loss than AMD has (negligible unless the card is brand new).

[u/lkl34 → u/BlueTemplar85]

For almost 2 year's nvidia has been making trash AI drivers that cause damage so the whole driver debate is out the window.

[u/CROdator → u/TheSaltyJunk]

Lately im hearing about Nvidia drivers issues way more often than AMD drivers issues

[u/dswng → u/TheSaltyJunk]

9070 is fine even in RT

[u/littlesirlance → u/TheSaltyJunk]

I hear there's an experimental driver that essentially enables DLSS on AMD cards

[u/Train115 → u/TheSaltyJunk]

I mean it's RT capability is pretty good, it's ability to do path tracing is a lot more dubious

[u/duplissi → u/TheSaltyJunk]

RDNA4 is far better at RT than prior amd gens (Nvidia still takes path tracing). A 9070 and 5070 are on par for RT...

RT: 5070 ti > 9070xt > 9070/5070.

That being said, the xt is still only 15% behind the ti.

[u/SignificantError6221 → u/TheSaltyJunk]

AMD arguably makes just as good (even superior) hardware when you factor for die size and wattage. The remainder and main difference is that developers are almost always are under time constraints, and rarely get time to optimize correctly. That's where CUDA gives NVidia an advantage, as it handles a lot of optimizations automatically saving developers time... so most games simply run a bit better on NVidia cards out the gate.

[u/SluttyAspergirl → u/TheSaltyJunk]

I do like raytracing though

[u/VisualPlenty1756 → u/TheSaltyJunk]

Rt isn't even that bad on the latest amd cards

[u/CavemanMork → u/TheSaltyJunk]

What do you mean 'if you don't give a shit about rt'? AMD current offerings are perfectly capable with rtand in some cases out perform their Nvidia competition.

[u/TheSaltyJunk → u/CavemanMork]

Capable, yes, but they still take a significant hit compared to Nvidia in performance.

I really don't care about it and I'm yet to find a game that can't do 4k 60fps on my XT.

It's just the tradeoff that people should be aware of, they are much closer than they used to be, but there is still a gap on a lot of games that can make or break for some people.

[u/BrotherMichigan → u/TheSaltyJunk]

They really don't. A 9070 XT is neck and neck with a 5070 Ti in most ray traced applications.

[u/lord_dude → u/TheSaltyJunk]

Well i had constant driver timeouts with a RX 7900XTX that came out in 2022.

As much as i hate nvidia pricing, their cards are just better. I am glad i sent the 7900XTX back and bought a 4090 for 1600€ and will probably stick to this card for a decade.

I would like to give AMD a chance but you don't change a gpu often, so there is not much room for a bad experience.

[u/I_think_Im_hollow → u/lord_dude]

The only driver issue I had on this card was Windows Update constantly "updating" the driver to an older version that didn't match the version of the software.

[u/LightIsntFastEnough → u/FishHammer]

They are more popular than the rx480 days that's for sure. Or maybe the people around me changed.

[u/zeek609 → u/FishHammer]

I was team ATI and continued to be team AMD right up until I started playing VR. They just don't make good VR cards.

[u/Typing-Cat → u/FishHammer]

When I was building my computer in 2023, I wanted an AMD card. But my best performance per dollar came from a used Nvidia. I think AMD cards can be stubbornly expensive even in the used market, I dunno maybe because of low supply?

[u/canigetahint → u/FishHammer]

Between AMD and Micro$lop, the drivers and software are ass. Fix this, break that with every release. It's like playing fucking whack-a-mole with updates to see if it's going to be stable or not.

[u/DuckWhatduckSplat]

Remember the 9800 Pro days?

I had me an X800 XT Platinum Edition. The last of the great AGP cards.

[u/grantrules → u/DuckWhatduckSplat]

Back when high-end cards were basically the same price as your CPU

[u/Raph0uX → u/DuckWhatduckSplat]

HD3850 was better 😜

[u/DuckWhatduckSplat → u/Raph0uX]

Insert 3D Mark stats here and furious argument ensues.

[u/o_oli → u/DuckWhatduckSplat]

I have my X800 Pro mounted on my wall in my office. It was my first GPU upgrade that I bought myself as a teen. Artwork is rad too

[u/VariationDry → u/DuckWhatduckSplat]

I had a 9500 that I bios flashed to a 9700. Then I made custom heatsinks for the ram and gpu die in shop class.

[u/Eta_Beta_3-14 → u/DuckWhatduckSplat]

First card I bought with my own money.  Ah, memories.

[u/Mal_Dun]

I still catch myself saying "ATI" instead of "AMD" lol

[u/Hopefully_Realistic]

Corporations aren't your friends so buy what gives you the most performance for your budget. Nvidia seems to be starting their Intel 2010s stagnation, hopefully a competitor will take advantage like AMD did to Intel.

[u/_eESTlane_]

amd bought ati...

[u/Wanderlust-King → u/_eESTlane_]

Fun story I just got an RMA on a AMD reference 7900xtx, and it on receipt the shipping label still says ATI.

[u/Rough_Associate3291 → u/_eESTlane_]

Oh you swear!?

[u/_eESTlane_ → u/Rough_Associate3291]

only when i'm drunk

[u/Beneficial-News-2232 → u/_eESTlane_]

No shit, Sherlock

[u/Particular-Poem-7085 → u/Beneficial-News-2232]

as if that is obvious knowledge to anyone seeing this post. Please consider touching grass.

[u/mikecandih → u/Particular-Poem-7085]

Right? Half the people in here were in diapers at best when AMD bought ATI. I’m a fully fledged adult and I was barely a teenager at the time.

[u/ADotxt]

They still do, they got bought my AMD, and they are competitive.

I'd certainly pick a 9070xt or 9070 compare to their Nvidia counterpart.

They just haven made a 90 tire competitor since 6000 series.

[u/bigbugzman → u/ADotxt]

Do they compete with NVIDIA though? It’s like 92% market share vs 6.

[u/lkl34 → u/bigbugzman]

Fyi it is 98-2 now with everyone grabbing the 5-7 year payment plan and buying there 5080/5090/5070 cards.

[u/Lewinator56 → u/bigbugzman]

At a hardware level yes, apart from the 4090 and 5090, AMD has a competitor at every class. AMD even had a 3090TI competitor with the 6950XT.

But, somehow AMD got, then kept a reputation for being hot and slow - which hasn't been true since the likes of the R9 series cards. I mean... Nvidia literally had memes about using the gtx 480 as a grill lol...

I genuinely don't know why people didn't buy AMD, especially in the GTX days. AMD released some truly great GPUs like the HD7970 (or the stupidity of the 7990) but people still bought Nvidia. I can only assume it came down to the same sort of issues that plagued AMDs CPUs - OEMs wouldn't ship any AMD parts in their laptops and desktops for fear of intel cutting off their CPU supply (remember, this was back when intel was paying dell and others not to use AMD parts). And this just led to AMD not being a well known brand - if you bought a flagship business PC in 2010 it came with an intel CPU and an Nvidia GPU, if they offered an AMD system it was crap and hidden away so you wouldn't find it anyway.

[u/LunaTheExile → u/Lewinator56]

AMD/Ati had some very rough patches back in the day that it got a lot of us, me included to go with Team Green + Intel. I remember the absolute disappointment and frustration with HD 5770 giving me bars of death, and it happened on 3 different 5770 cards to me. Then I had an AMD cpu build which would make every single available version of Windows bsod with irql not less or equal, unless it was 64 bit XP. For some reason the 64bit XP didn't bsod. Safe to say I played through Wolfenstein New Order on that, then immediately bought a new mobo + intel i5.

I returned back to AMD last year with buying a RX 9060 XT since I use Linux, and the driver support is better for AMD. Gonna try and get me a new AMD cpu build going on too at some point in near future too.

[u/Yayatouu]

Gaming PCs were crazy expensive back in the day I'm not nostalgic with that. And it's happening again 😢

[u/TheRtHonLaqueesha → u/Yayatouu]

Not even gaming, even a plain ol' PC.

[u/Beans2177 → u/Yayatouu]

What do you mean. You could just get some retired office PC and whack a GPU in it, bam. Unless you mean mid 90s

[u/RAMChYLD → u/Beans2177]

Yes, but most people back then bought Amigas or Atari STs which were sub-$1000 machines.

[u/booveebeevoo]

https://giphy.com/gifs/1Zp10Q8RS3WDIZDaPn

[u/firedrakes → u/booveebeevoo]

Love the clean look

[u/Defenite-Parsley733 → u/firedrakes]

Minimalist yet stylish

[u/Setsuna_Kyoura → u/booveebeevoo]

Ahh the Radeon VII, most beautiful and classy card ever made. Still rocking one in my battlestation. Plenty enough power for 1080p gaming.

[u/Exnummis]

Matrox was also a thing for a while.

[u/Sad-Author-729 → u/Exnummis]

I had a G400max. Still remember seeing the EMBM water in expendable for the first time. I even kept using the G400 in my work system after getting a faster geforce card for games. Took nvidia and ati a bit to get dual monitor working well and I couldn't go back to using just 1.

[u/Next-Ability2934]

2010 was the last year for ATI.

[u/PPSSPPGamer]

i think ATI made the Wii's GPU

[u/URA_CJ → u/PPSSPPGamer]

Yes and the GameCube before that, they technically did the Wii U as well, but under the AMD banner.

[u/lkl34 → u/PPSSPPGamer]

gamecube/wii u ps4/xbox one/series x/ps5 all powered by ati/amd it is the only reason they have a gpu market share.

[u/Maeglin75]

I remember Cirrus Logic, Tseng, S3...

[u/Sad-Author-729 → u/Maeglin75]

Oak, Matrox, Trident, Rendition, PowerVR, Alliance and even Western digital

[u/ceramicsaturn]

Back in my day they had 3DFX.

[u/Infinitrium]

S3 bros represent! 😂

[u/mdistrukt]

ATi...makers of the Radeon. You only had to learn two new letters and even got to keep the same color.

[u/ValveinPistonCat]

I've always used ATI/AMD, NVidia can bite my ass.

[u/Beans2177]

It's called Radeon and that's the best GPU you can buy right now for the money

[u/Affectionate_Oil28]

https://reddit.com/link/pgswpfx/video/4xzjoenmzivh1/player

[u/oldmoldycake]

Ready for China to get in the GPU game man. I just don't think I could leave Nvidia because of CUDA which saddens me.

[u/Jaz1140]

Bro so old he paid $50,000 for a house and $200 for a top of the line GPU

[u/vitimiti]

You cannot pay me enough to switch from my current AMD card to any NVidia card

[u/Independent_Wear1714 → u/vitimiti]

If someone got you a 5090 for the free you wouldnt use it?

[u/PlayNeth → u/Independent_Wear1714]

If I were given one for free I'd sell it for a profit and get a 9060 XT + max out my AM4 build. I don't need a fire hazard in my home

[u/Independent_Wear1714 → u/PlayNeth]

Correct answer

https://giphy.com/gifs/82MkOzEyyXeSLkgWyv

[u/BlaBlub85 → u/PlayNeth]

max out my AM4 build

Why tho? Sell it for 5k, enough money for a 9070xt + an upgrade to AM5, those 9xx0 x3d CPUs are beasts. And yes your still gona have enough money left over for DDR5 , and if you dont wana pay these prices out of principle use the old DDR4, almost all mobos are downwards compatible

Edit: Ignore the crossed out part, im very regarded

[u/Independent_Wear1714 → u/BlaBlub85]

I could be wrong but I think youre wrong, DDR4 and DDR5 are keyed different and will not slot in eachothers slots

[u/Quacky1k → u/Independent_Wear1714]

You're right, there were combo mobos for intel that had ddr4 and ddr5 slots so you could upgrade, but you can't just shove a ddr4 stick into a ddr5 slot

[u/RAMChYLD → u/Quacky1k]

AMD is not like Intel tho- they yeeted DDR4 support from their CPUs and went it fully on DDR5 when they switched to AM5.

[u/BlaBlub85 → u/Independent_Wear1714]

Welp, they are indeed, the notch is slightly offset, fixed it

[u/lkl34 → u/BlaBlub85]

Also right now the 5090 msrp has hit 8kusd due to them being discontinued.

[u/zepherth → u/Independent_Wear1714]

Or I could sell it for 6k.

[u/vitimiti → u/Independent_Wear1714]

Nope, I wouldn't. I'd sell it though, make some money

[u/RAMChYLD → u/vitimiti]

Same. Went full AMD since 2016. Will not go back.

Especially since I also dumped Windows in 2024 and AMD cards are generally better supported in Linux.

[u/Schmenza]

Intel Arc exists

[u/Errorr404 → u/Schmenza]

AV1 encoder/decoder being its most useful application.

[u/CauseOptimal554 → u/Schmenza]

You said it.. it exists... thats all it does :D

[u/marsfisch44 → u/Schmenza]

Lol

[u/WINNT21 → u/Schmenza]

I thought the only gpus they made are integrated gpus like intel uhd or hd

[u/lkl34 → u/WINNT21]

Next line of intel cpus are using the same tech switch has with a intel cpu nvidia gpu with arc on the death row wall.

[u/Coretrayn]

Gotta watch out for big bad intel arc now.

[u/Raph0uX]

HD4850 Crossfire 🥵

[u/blackcell1]

I can remember the custom driver packs too.

I can remember getting a bonus from work and dropping £500 big ones on a ati 1900xtx.

[u/Smooth-Chest-1554]

I've had ATI Radeon 9200 in my first PC!

[u/Nobodytoyou_ → u/Smooth-Chest-1554]

Same I had the all in wonder version with a built in tv tuner, many fun memories playing games with tv playing transparently where ingame chat was.

[u/Smooth-Chest-1554 → u/Nobodytoyou_]

Woah, great memories! Sometimes I'm thinking about building a pc with the same specs as my first one. But I don't remember much after all those years :D.

[u/Ill_Seaworthiness379]

Back in my day i needed a voodoo 3 3000 to play need for speed porsche unleashed

[u/uceenk]

well matrox and 3dfx as well

[u/RAMChYLD → u/uceenk]

And S3 and PowerVR.

[u/lavafish80]

don't forget about 3DFX too.. I wish there still was actually competition and not just a money circlejerk like today

[u/mister2forme]

They still do, just not at the 1500$+ range.

[u/URA_CJ]

ATi All-in-Wonder my beloved!

Imagine if AMD kept the AIW series alive, it probably would be the top card for streamers! Hell, you can stream retro consoles from these OG's if your determined!

[u/Directdrivelife]

It was all the Rage

[u/Altruistic-Azz]

Back in my day Nvidia had a competitor called 3DFX

[u/RAMChYLD → u/Altruistic-Azz]

Back in my day Nvidia had two dozen competitors.

And every respectable semiconductor company made DRAM.

And there were at least one dozen x86 CPU manufacturers.

God I wish those days would return.

[u/3InchesPunisher]

They all bought them, now we dont have competition. Consumers are always the loser.

[u/lkl34]

Canada vs america with America doing what they do best steal from others then claim it as there own.

Jensen hung worked for ATI they taught him then he went to his garage got a grant made his own graphics card and now ati is dead it became radio which is hardly a spec in the market.

[u/codythewolf → u/lkl34]

Honestly, it's more like buy them out or corner them out of the market.

It really pisses me off that if it wasn't for US intervention and the top two largest Canadian tech companies cheating the market, Vancouver and Toronto would have been the tech centers of north america and not Silicon Valley and Dallas.

[u/lkl34 → u/codythewolf]

Here here

Just like all the boo's to the canadien astronaut to the point he had to quit so much of space tech is also from canada but nope nasa only talk.

[u/Whoknew1992]

Shit. There used to be several brands to pick from.

[u/deadeye-ry-ry]

You still can pick a " team" Nvidia is only better if you're buying a 5090 which the majority aren't

[u/Personal-Inflation63]

Meanwhile here I am praying for a Chinese competitor one day

https://giphy.com/gifs/ovC0d5raRYtCaUsH4y

[u/TheRtHonLaqueesha]

It lives on through AMD.

[u/jamesrggg]

Competition leads to lower shareholder value so is not to exist.

[u/Timinator01]

ATI is amd these days but unfortunately AMD and Intel don't compete on anything but value cards. I think Nvidia also lost something when EVGA got fed up and stopped making cards. They will eventually shift focus back to gaming but I think it's gonna be a while before data centers compute is oversaturated and they need gamers to buy the cards again.

[u/Burninator05 → u/Timinator01]

...but value cards

Value cards no longer exist without getting a really old old one. It is accurate that AMD does not compete on the high end but a 9070xt is about the same performance as a 5070ti and is slightly cheaper. It also has better driver support in Linux.

[u/Greedy-Thought6188 → u/Timinator01]

A Mac studio can run DeepSeek flash. I think it's just as likely the consumer GPU demand is driven by local AI embedded in tools we use. Will likely happen to businesses first.