The Realm of 2D

Wow, I'm writing about prehistory ! What an impression to be writing about good ol' Windows 3.1-era graphics and performance when all the kids I know never had anything less than a TNT2. But there was a time when the hype was only about processors, and 2D graphics were second rate.

No one will remember the 2D period as a history of revolution. No 2D card ever made press titles like the Voodoo 2 or the GeForce 3. Graphics cards were a basic necessity and that was the end of the story.

Of course, as the millenia passed by (from 1981 to 1991 ;-), video card makers became gradually aware that the basic stuff Windows needed to do (draw a box, a handle, a button, . . .) could actually be hardwired into the graphics chip and therefor optimize the use of the real estate that was being heavily underused at the time in that area. Getting together with Microsoft, standards were eventually hammered out and a new breed of cards were born : they included hardware accelerated functions to enhance your Windows experience.

Thus the notion of acceleration was tied into benefits of the graphics chip. Strange that nobody ever thought of marketing the CPU as a hardware accelerator for all those office suits. Then again . . .

Anyway, the true benefit of this trend was to have taught industry and consumers alike that the CPU was not the only workhorse under the hood of the PC. That notion gradually gave way to a whole new way of looking at PC performance : seperating the PC into working sections and analysing the performance of each section seperately.

But none of all this could have taken place without the advent of 3D graphics.