Sharok's Graphic Card Collection

ISA cards

Orchid Farenheit 1280 (1Mb)

My first Windows-accelerator card. I used this card with Windows 3.11. As you can see, the Orchid Farenheit has 512Kb standard on-board memory, with an extension of 512Kb in four modules (the chips in the lower left-hand corner of the card).

PCI cards

Diamond Stealth (2Mb)

My first PCI card. Not so good-looking as the Farenheit is, but hey, a lot more powerful.

Matrox M3D

My first acquaintance with add-in cards. The M3D is a daughter card for the Mystique, in other words, without the Mystique it is useless. The PowerVR chip on it provided partial 3D acceleration. For the games that were compatible with it, it worked OK. It was, however, a real nuisance finding games that could recognize it.

Creative Labs Voodoo 2 (12Mb)

Ahh, the magic of the Voodoo 2. When I grabbed this from the shelf, I really did do myself a favor. Other than the pure performance of the card, all of a sudden I had loads of games open to me that would use its power. A wonderful experience.

The Voodoo 2 is also a daughter card that needs a 2D card installed. But, unlike the M3D, the Voodoo 2 has no qualms about which 2D card is installed. You can even put a Voodoo 2 next to a GeForce card. In the games, you can then choose which card is to be used.

AGP cards

Hercules Prophet II GeForce 2 GTS (64Mb)

Need I say anything about this card ? The GeForce 2 has set a standard of performance. When I shelled out major bucks to get this card, I was overjoyed to see that the results were as good as I expected them to be. In addition, I discovered a lot of things about 3D reading the forums and reviews and checking out the specs. Finally, I could play Quake III in 1024x768 with fluid graphics.

PixelView GeForce 3 (64Mb)

Okay, I did it. I was resisting up to now, but I finally broke down and got one. My, I never would have thought I could run Quake III in 1600x1200 and keep five bots busy on a Thunderbird. Wow !