GPUS THAT MADE HISTORY

3Dfx Voodoo

Launched way back in 1996, the Voodoo started life in arcade machines, and jumped to the PC when RAM prices fell far enough. It brought decent accelerated 3D graphics to home machines, and was, at the time, simply awesome. It was also expensive, and required a companion card to do all the 2D work. The proprietary API from its arcade machine roots didn’t help, either. Technically inferior, but significantly cheaper, and better supported cards won out in the end. But, for a while, it was king, especially when playing Quake. No card of merit since could go without accelerated 3D. Thank you Voodoo.

GeForce 256

Nvidia’s first true star dates from 1999. The company even coined the term “GPU” to describe its silicon heart. It was the first to provide full DirectX 7 support, now Microsoft had finally coded a DirectX version worth supporting. Its transformation and lighting engine was superb. It was fast, reasonably priced, and swept all before it. Nvidia’s climb to the top started here.

Radeon R300

This surfaced in the Radeon 9700 from 2002. It was the first to offer full DirectX 9 support. The jump in performance was huge, especially when antialiasing and anisotropic filters were enabled (it effectively made them usable features). The R300 cards trounced all comers, and three years after launch, it was still a contender.