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Interesting finds on old 3dfx Retail Boxes (Read 293 times)
FalconFly
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Interesting finds on old 3dfx Retail Boxes
28.01.04 at 19:24:02
 
Collecting those since quite a while, I often like to look at them and remember the glorious days Smiley

And while doing so, besides the 'normal' things, I came across some odd things as well, for which  I have no real explanation :
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Diamond Monster Fusion (Voodoo Banshee)
Features :
- Hardware-accelerated GDI commands for screendrawing speed
- Versatile video functions for multimedia applications :
-> bilinear horizontal and vertical filtering


* I always thought the Hardware GDI acceleration for Windows was first implemented in the Voodoo3, but seems I was wrong Smiley
* Bilinear filtering for Multimedia/Videos ?
Sort of sounds a bit like ATI's SmartShader feature (which I still haven't seen in action to date), basically a Hardware supported bilinear Filter for Overlay surfaces ?!
(never heard of that before)

Anyway, odd, but it says so on the Box...

Orchid Righteous 3D (Voodoo1)
Advanced 3D Features :
- Double and Triple Buffering
- Anti-Aliasing

3D API Compatibility :
- MicroSoft Windows 95 Direct3D
- Intel 3DR
- Argonaut BRender
- Criterion RenderWare
- Gemini Technology OpenGVS


Hm, I can't remember ever seeing Triple Buffering on a Voodoo1 (?)
Also, the first Anti-Aliasing I ever saw from 3dfx was the Voodoo2's Edge Anti-Aliasing.

And honestly, most of those 3D API's listed, I can either not recall at all, or they are a mere faint memory.

Again, odd, but... It says so on the Box Wink

Intergraph Intense 3D Voodoo (Voodoo Rush)
Optimized 3D Features :
- Anti-Aliasing (Point, Line, Polygon)
- 24-Bit Alpha Blending and 8-Bit Transparency
- Bilinear and Trilinear Texture Filter
- Sub-Pixel and Sub-Texel correction

2D Features :
- Hardware Video CSC and bilinear filtered scaling
- Simultaneous 2D/3D rendering
- Hardware Color Cursor


Quite a number of surprises here Shocked
Again, several Anti-Aliasing Methods are mentioned...
24bit Alpha-Blending and 8bit Transparency would make it seem like a 32bit capable Device ?!
Trilinear Texture Filtering on a Voodoo Rush ?!
Can't really make sense of the sub-pixel/texel correction...

The Bilinear filtered Scaling for Video/Overlay surfaces seems a default Scaling technique I guess (clears above Overlay/Video question).
And nice to know, that it has Hardware color cursor support (AFAIK, not all Cards have Hardware support for it) Wink

---------------------------
Surprising, as these things always escaped me; never really noticed them.
Any Ideas or explanations welcome Smiley

PS.
Did I mention that those good old (and at their time, quite expensive) Retail Boxes are gorgeous Tokens of 3D History to look at ? Grin
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« Last Edit: 28.01.04 at 19:26:55 by FalconFly »  
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Blazkowicz
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Reply #1 - 30.01.04 at 14:11:29
 
well, hardware GDI acceleration sounds like a standard feature on any 1995 2D card ?  Cheesy

and I think the S3 virge has bilinear overlay

voodoo rush being 32bits capable.. I thought voodoo1 has 32bits as internal precision anyway

still strange to see trilinear on a rush
as for anti-aliasing, it's in the specs for other prehistoric GPUs . I always wonder if there's really some anti-aliasing. maybe it's because of the incredibly high res : 640x480  Shocked
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FalconFly
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Re: Interesting finds on old 3dfx Retail Boxes
Reply #2 - 30.01.04 at 17:45:18
 
I know many 2D Cards had GDI Acceleration, but 3dfx were the first to actually put all of it into Silcon AFAIK.
(at least that's how I remember it)
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Micha
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Re: Interesting finds on old 3dfx Retail Boxes
Reply #3 - 31.01.04 at 20:13:43
 
Quote:
Orchid Righteous 3D (Voodoo1)
Advanced 3D Features :
- Double and Triple Buffering
- Anti-Aliasing

3D API Compatibility :
- MicroSoft Windows 95 Direct3D
- Intel 3DR
- Argonaut BRender
- Criterion RenderWare
- Gemini Technology OpenGVS

Well, the voodoo1 is able to use edge-aa! check the 3dfx registry entries to enable it...as i remember even every voodoo could make use of trible buffering, again a registry thing.
maybe some of the apis were implemented but never used due to a lack of games running on those apis..as i remember, there were a few opengl-based apis supported by early voodoo boards --> maybe these ones! but i bet they were never supported by any drivers..

Quote:
Intergraph Intense 3D Voodoo (Voodoo Rush)
Optimized 3D Features :
- Anti-Aliasing (Point, Line, Polygon)
- 24-Bit Alpha Blending and 8-Bit Transparency
- Bilinear and Trilinear Texture Filter
- Sub-Pixel and Sub-Texel correction

2D Features :
- Hardware Video CSC and bilinear filtered scaling
- Simultaneous 2D/3D rendering
- Hardware Color Cursor


- Anti-Aliasing (Point, Line, Polygon) --> again edge-aa.
- daniel & raziel have proven there is hardware tf for most voodoos
- Simultaneous 2D/3D rendering --> possible, but not useful, we know that  Wink
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« Last Edit: 31.01.04 at 20:15:14 by Micha »  

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Alan Cox
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Re: Interesting finds on old 3dfx Retail Boxes
Reply #4 - 01.04.04 at 03:32:42
 
(Just passing collecting 3dfx info)

The Voodoo2 does indeed have 2D acceleration for most operations, while the Voodoo1 lacks this. In the Linux world the new Xorg 2D Voodoo2 driver I wrote uses this so you can use Voodoo2 cards for accelerated 2D. I don't know which windows drivers did (if any). Glide uses the 2D acceleration solely to clean up and work around some SLI hardware problems needing blank lines at the display top.

Alan
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