Ah yes S3. I went through 3 S3 Verge cards before the shop that sold me my first comp found one that worked! This was 1997 of course. A different world!
Xerio_the_Herio
No heat sink or water cooled option required
Jon_E_Dad
It was me, I bought the S3 Savage based on the Unreal 1 Texture Compression screenshot.
infectedscrotum1
Back when a graphics cards were actual cards
ohthedarside
Can someone explain to me why they weren’t as big as they are now havs the idea of just makng it bigger only been a recent thing and how did they not need fans on them as they were less efficient than they are now so wouldn’t they be harder to cool than modern cards of that size
SgtMoose42
The first Graphics card I remember having in “my own” pc was a Diamond Viper 770.
This is a Trident 64 Class (circa 95/96) card also referred to as the Trio and was S3’s first fully integrated graphic accelerators. As the name implies, three previously separate components were now included in the same ASIC: the graphics core, RAMDAC and clock generator. The increased integration allowed a graphics card to be simpler than before and thus cheaper to produce. Many thanks are due to this process discovery.
In 1999, Diamond and S3 merged and the Savage 2000 GPU was the first product from the combined companies for the market.
cheers!
NamelessDegen42
You vs the guy she tells you not to worry about.
MonkeyCartridge
Best era was probably the GeForce 6 era, +/- 2 generations.
The advancement in that era was nothing short of absurd. Remembering that UT2004 and Crysis were only a couple years apart. And that Doom 3 and Half Life 2 were in there.
Going from fixed function and barely touching the pixel shaders to GPU-accelerated physics and entering the era of deferred rendering. Which was, of course, famously brown at first.
All the ideas were out there and available. Where it seems like nowadays it’s mostly post-doctoral stuff.
Or pulling up the card’s BIOS in an editor and hard-flashing your overclocks. Or in the case of the 6800GS, literally unlocking 4 extra pipelines.
Or not having TDP limits. As long as you can cool your card, you could keep ramping the clocks. I mean they exist now for a good reason. But over locking was still more fun. I used to get 50% speed boosts before the heat would start messing things up. Now my 3080Ti barely hits 70, and I had to do a 350W->440W BIOS mod to even get to that.
Old_Durian_8968
That thing should play crisis, it runs on magic
eulynn34
Back in those days it was like your computer either had the S3 Trio64 or Trident TGUI9680.
nycplayboy78
JFC an S3 Trio VGA Card 🙂
According_Gate_8107
Oh the times have changed allright back then it was more fun to play actual games vs today its more fun to build a pc than it is actually playing “games” today we build high end pc’s to scroll reddit and youtube
PseudoEmpthy
That build is way too good looking.
Anyone know what cooler? Anyone know what case?
MortonAssaultGirl
Gold/yellow themes look so good.
WackyBeachJustice
I don’t remember the exact S3 card I had in 97/98, but I sure as hell remember playing Redneck Ramage with it.
Piranha2004
Im keeping all my ancient stuff to show my son when he grows up. Already have a Voodoo2, sound card, audio tapes, VHS tapes, Zip disks and floppy disks. Heaps of other random crap at my parents’ house too.
WhosYoPokeDaddy
God _damn_ I remember when that was cool card. Wish I kept some of my old shit.
25 Comments
Is that a GPU ???
Now find an ISA graphics accelerator card.
Very cool, isn’t it crazy how far we’ve come. Both hardware and aesthetics wise. Still got a lot of love for the old skool stuff though.
https://preview.redd.it/felhc3ls1vwc1.jpeg?width=568&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6039207c37c1d0866fcf2c08db47704c2ec39f66
Oh, great S3. I was to poor to have it, so I had to be content with my Oak-77.
I’m too young to have seen one of those
The oldest pc I have used was a pentium 4
I remember when this thing was refered to as “needlessly huge” and “a waste of metal”
At least it’s still close to the PCIE bracket depth
https://preview.redd.it/czxgpyn66vwc1.jpeg?width=900&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a7f2122e707b9d88aaa261b5d86b25867138e6b2
Ah yes S3. I went through 3 S3 Verge cards before the shop that sold me my first comp found one that worked! This was 1997 of course. A different world!
No heat sink or water cooled option required
It was me, I bought the S3 Savage based on the Unreal 1 Texture Compression screenshot.
Back when a graphics cards were actual cards
Can someone explain to me why they weren’t as big as they are now havs the idea of just makng it bigger only been a recent thing and how did they not need fans on them as they were less efficient than they are now so wouldn’t they be harder to cool than modern cards of that size
The first Graphics card I remember having in “my own” pc was a Diamond Viper 770.
https://preview.redd.it/cbjj5xq3ivwc1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=8f279cb0683457471ee8d4de7fc34aef114d457a
Look at that BEAST of a heat sink and fan!
This is a Trident 64 Class (circa 95/96) card also referred to as the Trio and was S3’s first fully integrated graphic accelerators. As the name implies, three previously separate components were now included in the same ASIC: the graphics core, RAMDAC and clock generator. The increased integration allowed a graphics card to be simpler than before and thus cheaper to produce. Many thanks are due to this process discovery.
In 1999, Diamond and S3 merged and the Savage 2000 GPU was the first product from the combined companies for the market.
cheers!
You vs the guy she tells you not to worry about.
Best era was probably the GeForce 6 era, +/- 2 generations.
The advancement in that era was nothing short of absurd. Remembering that UT2004 and Crysis were only a couple years apart. And that Doom 3 and Half Life 2 were in there.
Going from fixed function and barely touching the pixel shaders to GPU-accelerated physics and entering the era of deferred rendering. Which was, of course, famously brown at first.
All the ideas were out there and available. Where it seems like nowadays it’s mostly post-doctoral stuff.
Or pulling up the card’s BIOS in an editor and hard-flashing your overclocks. Or in the case of the 6800GS, literally unlocking 4 extra pipelines.
Or not having TDP limits. As long as you can cool your card, you could keep ramping the clocks. I mean they exist now for a good reason. But over locking was still more fun. I used to get 50% speed boosts before the heat would start messing things up. Now my 3080Ti barely hits 70, and I had to do a 350W->440W BIOS mod to even get to that.
That thing should play crisis, it runs on magic
Back in those days it was like your computer either had the S3 Trio64 or Trident TGUI9680.
JFC an S3 Trio VGA Card 🙂
Oh the times have changed allright back then it was more fun to play actual games vs today its more fun to build a pc than it is actually playing “games” today we build high end pc’s to scroll reddit and youtube
That build is way too good looking.
Anyone know what cooler? Anyone know what case?
Gold/yellow themes look so good.
I don’t remember the exact S3 card I had in 97/98, but I sure as hell remember playing Redneck Ramage with it.
Im keeping all my ancient stuff to show my son when he grows up. Already have a Voodoo2, sound card, audio tapes, VHS tapes, Zip disks and floppy disks. Heaps of other random crap at my parents’ house too.
God _damn_ I remember when that was cool card. Wish I kept some of my old shit.