I remember that card, the rich kid at school had the GeForce 5800 Ultra and kept bragging about it and how great and expensive it was... lol That same year, I got some money for Christmas, and with the money I already had, I purchased a 9800 Pro. When Half-Life 2 came out about 1 year later, the 9800 Pro was literally destroying the FX 5800 Ultra and I had my own personal revenge: That rich kid admitted it was running better on my computer than his :P
after the 9800 i ran a X850 GTO. Than the rich kid in my school decided pown me with a X1800 XT with a big Zalmancooler. That was the time i give up because i was the poor kid :D
My first PC gaming experience came from a Dell Inspiron 4600 that came with a 5200. I was pretty young at the time and only really knew that it had a graphics card and that meant I could play games! I suffered my way through Half Life 2 and Doom 3 with hardly playable performance. When I finally upgraded to a BFG 6800 OC I played Half Life 2 again and it was like a brand new game!
I have to say I distrusted nvidia back then and for a long time forward, but after the HD2900XT debacle I came back and now I'm running a FX-5950 Ultra as my daily driver retro card, it really is not nearly as bad as it was made out to be back then if you look at game performance in actual games of the era. I have a 9800XT gathering dust in my collection because the FX is more consistent and compatible with the older games I play, and it's quieter in my case, I have the MSI dual fan one and it stays cool and makes almost no noice at all.
The real misstep of nVidia was underestimating ATi. After having acquired 3Dfx, nVidia really thought they were going to own the PC market. ATi, on the other hand, acquired ArtX which was making the GPU for Nintendo's GameCube. ATi's 8000 series had been complete garbage and ATi had a nasty reputation for bad drivers (and they were REALLY bad, not the stupid and unfounded reputation for bad drivers (like slow gameplay on day one of game) that follows them now.... I mean UNSTABLE UNUSABLE garbage). ATi exchanged it's GPU team for the newly acquired ArtX team and built a new GPU on ArtX's tech entirely. ATi built a brand new DirectX 8 driver from scratch (because DirectX 9 was in beta, it was built from the ground up anyway) and really worked on getting OpenGL useable (something John Carmack even noted when he first was getting Doom III's engine to work on the R300 was the massive improvement even thought it didn't fully work right). So ATi literally leapfrogged nVidia by an entire generation's worth of technology, as nVidia wasn't expecting DirectX 9 capability until its next generation anyway. All of nVidia's problems with their hardware playing DX9 games had everything to do with the hardware not being built for DirectX 9, but more of a DirectX 8+ with some fancy "FX" technology from the old hardware team at 3Dfx. Image quality for the FX series was on par with older nVidia hardware.. because let's face it, 3Dfx were the kings of IQ back then and nVidia cards looked like ass. Also, don't forget that Tom's Hardware review of the FX 5800 Ultra... the ONLY review from a major hardware reviewer that declared nVidia the winner vs the Radeon 9700 Pro. Someone should really do a video on that. I stopped going to Tom's Hardware after that review (as it proved that their nVidia sponsorship was tilting their opinions), and honestly didn't know Tom's Hardware still existed until a few years ago... I seriously was under the impression that they'd gone under after that scandal. (Seriously, that was huge news and someone should do a retrospective review of the damage it did to Tom's Hardware). ATi was beating nVidia for years hardware wise, but ATi never got its drivers to be of the same general quality and have day one game performance releases until 2016/2017 (it really did take that long)! Even though ATi released a driver 2 years into the Radeon 9700 Pro's that bumped up performance 20% to everything (no really, two years in, and a free driver added 20% to EVERYTHING with tweaked memory timings). This driver put the Radeon 9700 Pro (and the 9800 Pro was already out at the time too) on par with nVidias flagship 6000 cards! That had to hurt a lot. nVidia did not fully recover until it started its one-two punch: The 8800 series of cards (people remember the GTX, but the GT is what really made nVidia money), the first nVidia in-game optimizations that deoptimized for the competition that couldn't be overcome with simple driver fixes from ATi. Those foundations are what have slowly brought us to where we are today in the GPU market. But don't worry. I'll call my prediction here right now. In 2020... people are going to "want the Wang" so to speak. lol David Wang has returned to RTG, and he was part of the core and created the R300. It's a big deal he is back. I don't know if he can pull off another generational leap like the R300... but one thing is sure has hell, whatever chip comes after Navi will be long overdue, and it will bring RTG back to relevance. I just wish I didn't have to wait two years to see it. I also imagine nVidia's GPP program is going to blow up in their face much sooner then the BS Intel pulled in the 2000's... which was similar in many respects. If the GPP can explode in court around the same time as a 2020 post-Navi RTG card... it could be ripe for a major shake up (and Intel getting into video cards too).
Yessssss. I'm the first one XD. I have to admit, it's a pretty obscure title. Good choice. Even I haven't played the game, I just like listening to 90s shmup soundtracks while I work, and Android Assault has one the best soundtracks out there.
The BFG FX 5500 OC edition works great in my Windows 98SE. The FX wasn't the worse, I give that to the GeForce 8 series because the company knew of many issues. They choose to cover it up, got a class action lawsuit.
Are you kidding? the 8 series is legendary for being one of the best series nvidia ever put out with the 8800 models. This must have been a small class action laswsuit since I was building pcs at the time and used the 8800 cards a lot and NEVER had a single person complain to me.
Very creative video! thumbs up! I never had a GeForce 5 (FX) card, because of the bad DX9 performance, for example Half Life 2. 2003 was the year of the Radeon 9800 Pro and 2004, I have bought a 6800 GT.
@@TohaZhirnij The FX series used to be AMD top of the line series, I think what he meant was the FX series from Phenom-Bulldozer series which was loud, hot and perform worse than even an i3. The old Athlon64 FX series was amazing though, but very expensive
Fun fact: Microsoft was fed up with Nvidia because they never gave them discounts for the GF3 chips for the Xbox so they invited ATI to work with them on DX9 instead while giving Nvidia the specs for DX9 very late (maybe even the wrong ones via 16 bit). So basically the fail of FX is caused by Nvidias greediness regarding the Xbox GPU
Nvidia got too big for their britches. Thought they could bully developers, and gaslight home consumers. ATI practically saved the home desktop industry by exposing Nividia's growing cancer, and we're all better off for it now, including Nvidia itself.
And thats the stupid reason that the Geforce4 dont support DX9 but the DX9 was developed on the original xbox geforce4 prototype and the Xbox can handle DX9 effects but the Geforce4 not, and ATI got DX9 6 months earlier than Nvidia. So you can play Far-Cry, Half-Life2 or Doom3 on the original xbox with dynamic lighting, transparen shaders and water reflections... but not on a Geforce4 lol because its capped to dx8.
@@SargentoDuke that direct x shit , anyone who started playing pc game in the late 90s and early 2000s couldn't have missed that direct x thing . it was required for multimedia too , remember " couldn't find direct sound dll etc.. oh my gosh ! that was the good old days
Great video! I still remember being rewarded for my good grades in 8th grade with a visit to the computer store with my dad to buy me a graphics card. It was a... Geforce FX 5200 :/ And this was in 2006.
Well it was serviceable for sure, and thanks to it I could experience a lot of games that I wouldn't have otherwise been able to play at that time, til I got a more up to date PC by late 2011. My country and especially the part where I lived was really behind in terms of technology, everything got there late and at ridiculous prices. Now it's a lot better, thankfully.
@@Roshan_420 If you are unlucky with the card it might need a later OS and the performance so bad you cant play the old games. Games before 2004 even ut2003 i pretty much to much for the card.
Nvidia did everything wrong with NV30 that could have been done: 1. New architecture on a new manufacturing process, usually resulting in sub-optimal TDP. 2. Narrow pipeline at high clock speeds, with strict vector format packing. 3. Over-engineered features, well outside of the contemporary API scope, at expense of the raw throughput. In other words, that generation was the "Pentium 4" of the GPUs. NV35 (FX5900 Series) fared rather well, to be honest -- lots of sales and the saving grace, until NV40 was ready. By the way, the record short R&D time for NV40 was due to the fact that most of the work was already done with the NV3x series and the only effort left was to beef up the performance per clock and smooth the SM3.0 validation. By that time (2004), the work on the future G80 and CUDA compute frame-work was gearing up for a big surprise.
Ah yeah the times. My favorite budget “gaming” pc back then was Pentium 4 3GHz Prescott + FX5200. Ah you just cant beat this combination. Even better yet when it’s FX5200 256MB 64bit - what were they thinking :D
I gotta say, I had a BFG nVidia geforce 5600 ultra and i used it until about 2010 or 2011, and it did me well, never had a framerate issue with that card. DooM 3 ran great. But i couldn't play COD4 on it :( darn pixel/vertex shader 3.0 rquirement
6:52 Lowspecgamer was impressed on how the FX5200 ran on Far Cry despite being poor on everything else. He thinks it was due to optimization. Now we know the reason why
When you have something like FX5200, you really dont care about quality. It was my first card and I remember it as relatively capable card, able to run many games. Sadly most of cards had only 64kb memory interface, that was main reason why it was so slow... Best feature was BIOS edit to make it report as 8800 Ultra on boot and in system. Many friends was jealous about my poor little 5200....128MB.....with that fkin 64kb interface...no i dont miss that thing, HELL NO! Those memories i just got ...
I was gaming more on my PS2 and Dreamcast to care about how good shaders looks because games were dominating in console platform. The only game I was happy that I was running Giants: citizen Kabuto and that was ported to consoles later on.
I think this video is a huge step up in quality, really well realised ! I'm really impressed, you've worked hard on it, it's obvious. Everybody in the comment section should respect that ! Keep up the great work dude ;) Greetings from France
I had the FX5200 Ultra and later upgraded to the FX 5700 Ultra. The 'Dawn' nude patch...Good times. My 5700 Ultra (can't remember the brand, maybe PNY) had about 20 dollars worth of copper pennies as the heatsinks (top and bottom)! Up next for me was the 6600GT, a true beast for its time, and the FX series redeemer.
Everybody likes to think Nvidia always held the GPU crown. Let's not forget how Nvidia had been struggling against Radeon for the majority of the company's existence, as well as releasing duds like the FX series.
In the early 2000's AMD had been really good in gaming and most of the time beat Nvidia up until the GeForce 7 series came out. But then and there like 2012 with the radeon hd 79xx cards and in 2020 with the Rx 6000 gpu's have been able to overtake Nvidia.
I remember trying to play doom 3 on a 5950 ultra turning up the detail to ultra and literally being disappointed at the frame rate. I still have the 5950 ultra, staring at me in an old AMD 3200 Clawhammer build next to me on my basement floor
Ahh 3dfx remebr them days, i had 3 black magic voodoo 2's. I feel that was the birth of sli. Then nvidia bought them and shelved 3dfxs ability to run more then 1 you for some years. I think I still have what was the name. Voodoo 5500agp ( think that's the name ) got the mouse pad that game with that card.
It used to be all about the pipes! I remember getting my X800XT after having a 9800Pro for so long, and it felt magical having 16 whole pipes! My mouth was hanging open the whole time 3dmark was running lol. NV's cards at the beginning of the DX9 era were... unfortunate, until the 6 and 7 series somewhat redeemed them and then the 8 series cemented the fact that they were going to be running this joint for a long time to come.
ATi was my favorite company before AMD bought it and ruined it. I'm still rocking with my vmodded ATi HD4670. I can play AAA games like The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion/Skyrim, The Witcher 2, Dragon Age 1/2/3 and Fallout 3/NV/TTW. Too bad I can't play Fallout 4 or The Witcher 3, because my GPU doesn't support DX11, but I can watch ''Let's play'' videos and it's almost like playing the game. I have my studio tour and gaming setup video on my channel.
AMD owned ATi before the HD 2000 series launched bud. Your "favorite" GPU is an AMD card. The last full ATi series was the x100 series. Also, 5870? 6950? 7970 GHz edition? 290x? 480? AMD has made a lot of great GPUs, their problem lately has always been timing or drivers.
I owned a 5700 Ultra back in 2003, I got it for $155 at Best Buy due to a pricing error on their part. For the price I couldn't complain about the performance, it ran Doom 3 at medium settings at 1024x768 and Half Life 2 at high settings at 1024x768 in DirectX 8.1 (Had to get the Radeon 9800 XT for DirectX 9 to truly appreciate Half Life 2).
At least they learned with it and released the excellent Curie architecture with the GeForce 6000 and later 7000 series putting them back in a good position which led them to the legendary Tesla architecture and the development of the CUDA technology with the 8000, 9000, 100, 200 and 300 series.... then again they are committing some serious mistakes again...
NVIDIA FX serie from 5700 and up wasn't too bad. But agree, 5200-5500 cards were very-very slow. These video cards are great for retro gaming: good compatibility and performance in DOS games, good performance in old Windows games with high quality settings, very compatible 4X.XX-5X.XX Windows 9X drivers aviable, it is the last generation of video cards with "8-bit paletted textures" feature supported, also "table fog" feature is natively supported. And also these cards are the best in Voodoo Glide API wrapping, maybe because they were developed by ex-3DFX developers.
Ati 9800 pro had its own problems tbf, lack luster and frankly terrible cooling, a measly 128mb of ram(which was "fixed" by the rare ddr2 model and the XT) and were notorious for dying, they artifact frequently and if you had a 9800 pro back in the day and you DIDNT have a 3rd party cooler I have a hunch its dead today, ive gone through 3 of the damn things
NVIDIA's Huge Misstep lol ... GeForce FX Ultra 5950 it was the best ... was and is the holy grail of consumer grafix !!! there are no competitions or comparisons until the 6000 series has appeared with pixel shader 3 ... which is beautiful even now !!! and will be the basis of the future in 3d on the planet !!! AIT IT UAZ t but was not sold at all !!! and have not become relevant in the series ddr5 and HD 6950 / HD 6990 2048 MB ON THA LINE !!! ,AND OLD CARD X800 GTO / ATI 9700 PRO VERI OLD !!! AND AT THA TIME VERI EXPENTIV SIMILAR PTICE OR GRETER THEN THA GeForce FX Ultra 5950 ... end also that ATI was not very on the market ... veri veri rar !!! ?!?! in tha era of 2002 - 2007 ... but that doesn't mean it didn't work ... eu pina am avut bani sami eau si eu nvidia in cuntie .. I had an x800 gto and was impressed ... but we were still dreaming of a GeForce FX 6800 gt at least .... it remained an unfulfilled dream ... budget only took me to a single board 6600 gt ddr2 256 bm ... but it was mine in the box too ... new without dust sealed !!! and after that we had 4 , 8800 gt .. and my first SLI and on the dual core intel D930 !!! IF 24 FPS IN CRYSIS 1 MAX OUT 1080P ... SO IT IS POSIBIL ... and NVIDIA remains THA TOP DOG !!! IN GPU !! only the bad shit with the NOT WITH BLACK SCREENS !!! those intended !!! which should no longer exist after 20 year ray tracing only / direct x 12 only / shredder 5 only / or AMD Volkon only God forbid !!! it has to work by power and qualiti and performing AND PRICE!!! NOT WITH BLACK SCREENS !!! INCOMPATIBILITY !!! to choose the most resentful apple that has kept them ever since they started .... Direct x 9/10/11 12 tha end . until the year 2050 !! quiet and buy and play and don't comment anymore ... until they do that in the tha global problam !!! BLACK SCREENS !!! INCOMPATIBILITY !!!
Bought GF4 4200Ti with 128MB of slower mem (nothing else in my budget was in stock of local wholesale market). Year or so later, schoolmates buying new PC's with FX5200 (supposed replacemet of 4200Ti) .......... and oh boy, they were f**ked. FX5200 was total marketing scam. It was total budget card (I think with ~1/2 transistors) but did cost roughly the same as 4200Ti.
The fx 5700 was the gpu I chose for my first pc build in middle school. What a piece of crap lol. Never upgraded till the 8800GTX, until that died in less than a year🤦. I remember reading that Microsoft was bitter about how much Nvidia charged for the gpus in the original Xbox and then didn't inform Nvidia that they were planning on using 24 bit precision in DX9.
The FX seemed to have some very close design elements to the GF4 and even had a nearly identical pipeline length. Rumor has it the first actual design that was developed from 3DFX technology was the gForce 6 series in a project on the old companies roadmap only known as "Fear". 2 full generations after Napalm. Much of the underlying theoretical work for the upcoming design had been worked out. And its basic pipeline layouts were also already put to paper by its designers not more than weeks before 3dfx's demise. Ex 3dfx designers have talked about this, and talk about how those building blocks were the very foundation of the gForce 6 and 7 series, and were greatly expanded for the Tesla, Tesla2 and Fermi architectures. Only at Kepler did they adopt a new foundational philosophy to the core design. It certainly had some longevity and would 3dfx survived, it would have had something for the next decade.
yes it is. And Geforce 6 pixel standard redesign also done by Emmett Kilgariff team (He is Vice President, Architecture in 3DFX and Join Nvidia after they got acquired in 2000. Currently he also Vice President of GPU Architecture in Nvidia.)
I quit pc gaming for 1 year in 2003. Came back in mid 2004. Bought a new pc and got the fx 5200. Had no clue how bad it was till i got a 6600gt and got 6x the proformence over the 5200
I remember when my parents upgraded my old P3 866Mhz desktop to the newer 2.8Ghz p4 (“Prescott”, it was an oven, extremely hot processor) coupled with an FX 5200 - I didn’t know anything about GPUs back then, but what I did know is that the card was GARBAGE. Anyway, a year later my PSU’s fan was struggling to start up, so I used to help it with a nice “push” using a screwdriver, one time the screwdriver slipped, shorted the PSU and the thing pretty much blew up (seriously, with huge sparks and shit, idk how I’m still alive, I should’ve received the Darwin’s Award for sure) PSU died, GPU died (just these two) - got a new 6200 GPU, that thing was a beast for it’s price. And some time later I got the newer I7 920 + EVGA 285 GTX that I still keep for it’s.. emotional value? This vid is borderline nostalgic - borderline giving me nasty flashbacks from my childhood. I would’ve shoved the screwdriver into the darn PSU if I could, no doubt
FX 5900/FX5950 are probably best cards for 2000./2004. period pc games.Great compatibility,great image quality,they just work much better than Ati Radeon 9700/9800 in almost all game from that period of time(except only one).
was it really called GeForce FX because people from 3dfx made it??? why didn't they just call it GeForce 5? RIP 3dfx, will never forget the first time I played Quake on a Voodoo, seeing the difference between software mode and a graphics accelerator was the most amazing experience ever. Gaming changed for me after that revelation.
I had an FX 5200 ultra and it played games and everything else just fine. Every time I bought an ATI card I had to deal with it's catalyst or some other such software just get the desktop looking normal, whereas nVidia came out just fine with no twiddling. I'm thinking this guy is just an AMD fanboi who's aggravated that nVidia has been on top of the game ever since ;)
I knew at least two people who had FX cards back in the day. They were terrible, tons of errors, and one burned out completely after just 1 year (just after warranty expired no less). As far as I know, they both switched to ATI/AMD for at least the next decade, not sure what they use now.
I loved my 5700 Ultra which was a huge upgrade from my 4200 Ti which came after my gf2 gts. later I had a 6600GT. last AGP card was 7800GS then the regretful 8600GT. I loved my 250 GTS though. then gtx 460 to 670 to my current 970 which I dont plan to upgrade anytime soon. also had rvia tnt and diamond vipers before that btw. good old days.
it was really strange. I remember people hating NVidia at that time for having bought 3dfx. For some people 3dfx was like a god. There were rumors that they used the FX name to honor 3dfx to convince those people from their products. It was so odd that of all things this series sucked badly. Geforce 1, 2, 3 and 4 were all great. They all dominated the market. And then there comes the FX and suddenly it´s all garbage. Especially considering the strangely wrong steps nvidia made with the architecture, it really reminded on what 3dfx did since the Voodoo 3 until finally they went bankrupt. It really had a smell of a curse. As if there was a curse of this FX name.
What's funny is that the word "FX" was cursed even for Kawasaki when making large ZTR motors (commerical lawn mowers). The FX engines overheated and or blew head gaskets quickly.
I had a 256mb fx5500 and thought it was an amazing card till my friend showed me his 128mb 9600 pro. I thought he was crazy and there was no way a card with half the memory could be better. That was the day I discovered the amount of video memory didn't mean jack. I ended up going to a 6600gt and was very happy.
I still remember the FX5200 I had once, it shorted out and almost caught fire. It also broke my motherboards AGP port and left me with a broken computer and I had to buy a new cpu, ram. Gpu and motherboard.
I was one of the victims. Unfortunately had bought FX5500. Then 6800Gs was good though, then 8800GS heating problem, then 9800GT underperfming was my last nVidia Chip. Long live the new King AMD!
You had mad communication skills as a commentator, well done... Too many folks rush their pitch and step over facts that you cover with clarity... Keep up the great work...
Ahh the dustbuster FX series! I was on the red side of the fence in those days. I had a ATI 9500 Pro that I kept for way too long back then (ATI 8500 before that and a Radeon DDR before that!) I didn't jump onto the green side until the 750 Ti was released!
Pretty much everyone not a fanboy and who knew a thing or two about hardware were on the red team back then. The 9800 pro could be flashed as a 9800 XT after replacing the stock cooler for a mere 30$. I've been on green team for a while (until i recently bought a 5700 XT because of how expensive RTX is) but the 9800 pro flashed to a 9800 XT remains one of the best card i ever owned.
Really nice video! My first real graphics card when I got into PC gaming properly was a 6800 GT, so I missed out on all the FX series drama. Interesting to see some of the reasons behind it all!
I used to have FX 5200 and 5500 back in the day, and play HL2 in very degraded quality (rendered in DX8.0 instead of DX9.0). I used to envy my friend that uses Radeon 9700, rendered in DX9.0. Because the image quality difference is like day and night.
Doom 3 was stunning on release, it instantly became the new gpu testing benchmark, the only other that had a bigger impact was crisis! When Doom 3 released i had just upgraded to a radeon 9800 Pro, with my high end gear all overclocked and water cooled in the days before you could even buy water cooling gear such as pumps, blocks and rads, I had a self made wc loop! The card didn't need it but with my fsb, gpu and cpu all over volted and clocked, I was getting butter smooth fps in Doom 3 at high res and max settings. I will never forget the look on my mates face when he saw the graphics and witnessed the high resolution! He said how console gaming had a long way to go and he didn't realise the clarity that pc gamers were playing with! Bearing in mind that at that time they were playing ps2 games on old crt televisions with resolutions not much higher than the game boy screen! So resolutions way higher than 1080p at a time when HD tvs didn't exist, was too much for his brain! He finally conceded that day that pc gaming was by far, the best way to go! My 9800 Pro ran this game like a dream too, back then I was all team red because I refused to pay 3 x the price for a gpu just because it gave slightly better visuals and half the games had a 10fps increase over the top ati card and the other half were identical fps! Same with processors, back then I was full on amd and radeon! The early 2ks were the absolute best time for pc gaming. We experienced ALL the original game types, the advent of overclocking, modding, cooling and case design and all the important changes! First cpu to hit 1000mhz! First dual core cpu's! First double gpu builds via crossfire and SLI, ddr ram, high res and high hz gaming! It all happened in the early to mid 2ks and I'm so glad that was the peak of my gaming years!
At the time I had a gf2 pro, then a gf3 ti 200, then a gf4 ti 4200se ( volt modded and super clocked) Then I had some FX cards and man what a waste of money that was. I even skipt the 6000 series cuz of the 5000's. I kept my gf4 ti till a 7600gs then went a gts 250, 285 (kept till gtx 770) Now on a gtx 970 and 1060 6 gb.
I was in the same boat: gf2 gts, gf3, gf4 4200. When FX came out I remember thinking "wtf is wrong with Nvidia...man I want that 9700 pro". I sometimes wonder what would have happened to ATI if they never got bought by AMD....but with how often engineers get poached in the industry there's no telling how good or bad ATI might be these days
are you going to talk about the FTC and Nvidia on using unfair contracts with the broad makers and How its making a AMD not able to keep up its rate of cards
2:00 Actually, from what i know, doom 3 is a reboot rather than a sequel, as its history isnt anyhow related to the original doom saga (1, 2 and 64), and even is from a slitly different genre, its still a first person shooter, but now with some horror mixed in (even tho for many it isnt a scary game at all).
The FX5900 was a good card for its time. It was a decent upgrade over my GeForce 4 Ti 4600 and the feature set was great. Hell, I still play mostly DX9 games today in 2018. (Guild Wars 2)
I had a FX5200 for a while and it was absolute crap. I was able to find a 5950 Ultra for around the same price and it beats the ever loving crap out of it. I'd use AMD for the retro PC but then I wouldn't be able to runs Stubbs the zombie.
A nice video, had a ati 9550 64 mb at the time this series was new on the market in a pentium III at 1 ghz, mostly playing older direct x games at a max of 1280x1024 which was the crt's highest resolution that me & my brother shared on that pc.
I remember this era well. From memory my brother had a FX card, and I got myself an ATi card, although neither of us had anywhere near top of the product stack, I think he had a fx 5500, with a Pentium 4 (I don't remember which one) and I had a Radeon 9550 with an Athlon XP 1800. Neither machines were exactly top of the line, and I know my rig couldn't run Doom 3 at a decent frame rate, yet I still tweaked the heck out of it to try to get the frames per sec into double digits and beat the game, even with it more resembling a slide-show, hahaha.
Troy Wilkins definitely that athlons fault. A 9600m runs doom 3 40-60fps no problem, so that 9550 should too. I had the 1700+ and compared to even a pentium 3 it sucked so bad not even doing bf1942 respectively. Not to mention your brothers p4 stomped all over it no matter what p4 it was. Would have been a sweet rig if you combined that 9550 with the p4 :D
The 1700+XP "Palomino" WAS a MUCH better chip than even the final P3's. They were also on par with the early p4's... From what I recall a lot of the 9500's could be flashed and turned into a 9700. (There was a way to check). It has been so long though that I can't fully remember. Heck I still have a vintage rig sitting in my closet That I will boot back up sooner or later to enjoy some late 90's early 00's retro goodness! (Athlon XP 3200+ with the classic Abit NF7-S2 mobo!
I had a p4 with ht, that processor was, literally, a hot mess. Ran hot as hell and the performance was not great. I suppose it was ok, as long as you only did one thing at a time and kept the computer sparkling clean with no background tasks. A hard thing to ask for back then...
I have the FX5700 AGP, I use it in a Windows 98 gaming computer, it supports DirectX 9.0a, that along with the Nvidia driver v56.64, and nGlide v1.05 allows me to run all my 62 Windows 95 & 98 games I have for that machine.
I was lucky enough to get an FX 5800 (non ultra) card as part of a recycle lot for $0. Its not a terrible card, at least for the Pentium-3 era retro box Its planned for. On launch I bought a dumb FX 5200 card, worst card ever (except what it replaced, a GeForce4 MX something, rebadged GF2).
I had an MSI 5950 (for the video capture capability) and it wasn't a bad card, IIRC. Of course I wasn't really that deep into the nuts and bolts of performance and image quality, but I do know I got better framerates than the 5200 it replaced :P Next card was a 6600, I think, and that was again a better card.
One of the rumor back then,the Geforce FX is more like a comeback story of 3DFX.( Some products of 3DFX live inside NV3Xand NV4X codename Sage live in NV30 family. The real fight back of Geforce 6 NV40(leading design and architecture is done by Emmett Kilgariff former Vice President of Architecture in 3DFX.)
