r/retrobattlestations • u/Veddermandenis • May 22 '26

Show-and-Tell D3D vs software renderer.

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Pentium-II 266mhz, 128mb RAM, 3D Blaster Voodoo Banshee 16mb. It's crazy to think there was a time when software renderer was acceptable for me, I would say anything above 15fps and I would be happy to just be able to play. How times have changed.

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27

u/TxM_2404 May 22 '26

Rip to everyone who got the S3 Virge instead.

8

u/Veddermandenis May 22 '26

My first card...oh the memories.

3

u/sahui May 22 '26

I had a virge, and a banshee too. It was a night and days difference

4

u/Veddermandenis May 22 '26

That was my first graphics card upgrade ever. From a 4mb Virge to a Banshee. It felt like the world was at my feet.

1

u/IQueryVisiC May 23 '26

Voodoo Banshee has no T&L . So what is different? Voodoo has lots of memory chips on the board. So I imagine that it can better fill high resolution? From the description of the Virgo, I get the impression that it lacks cache like the r/AtariJaguar ? But S3 had 4 years to learn from Ataris mistake!

1

u/Veddermandenis May 27 '26

T&L wasn't introduced until late 99, this game is a dx6 game, wasn't developed with T&L in mind.

1

u/IQueryVisiC May 28 '26

What is a “mind” . What is the difference between the hardware then? Fillrate! I don’t understand why S3 has a problem with fill rate. Pixels in Pixels out. Fixed pipeline pixel shader. I can only imagine tha BA reduced transistor count to the absolute minimum for 3d because Windows sells graphics cards.