While I don't know much about video cards, the IBM Monochrome Display Adapter (MDA) is often called the first video card and had a couple of contenders for first that were either designed earlier or released at almost the same time in 1981 and were all for displaying text only. The first GPU card sold to the public was the GeForce 256 in 1999. I'm assuming there's some in between that were not really used by the public that would have been used in movies and whatnot.

The reason why nobody was selling GPUs before Quake was because quake was THE first 3D game. Doom and other games before Quake were 2.5D and didn't have 3D models only sprites. Games before Quake essentially mimicked 3D while Quake IS 3D

[–] scutiger@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago (5 children)

The first GPU card sold to the public was the GeForce 256 in 1999

3dfx cards like the Voodoo and Voodoo2 were 3d accelerators that predated nVidia's offerings.

And even from nVidia themselves, the Riva TNT was a GPU released before the GeForce models.

[–] Thaurin@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Ohhhh! I think the Riva TNT (or Riva TNT 2?) was my first 3D accelerated graphics card! What a time to be alive was that.

[–] scutiger@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The first PC that I bought myself has a TNT2 with 8mb of memory. I upgraded it some time later with a GeForce 2 and the difference was shocking.

[–] Thaurin@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I remember having a GeForce 2 as well. Yes, I was really into graphics at that time. :) Ever since Wolfenstein 3D, or DooM, to be honest.

Colored lighting in Unreal for the first time!

Did you have dreams of DooM back then? I remember opening doors in DooM with that iconic sound in my dreams, lol.

load more comments (2 replies)

load more comments (5 replies)