3dfx Rampage prototypes are tested in Unreal Tournament and 3DMark 2001

During the 1990s, the company 3dfx was highly relevant in the graphics card market, where many enthusiasts equipped their computer builds with the company’s graphics cards. Towards the end of the decade, however, the company found it difficult to compete with Nvidia, not least as the company’s investment in the then current Rampage series never really became a reality.

Very little is left of the company, as the market today is dominated by Nvidia and AMD. But in an attempt to remember 3dfx and its significance for the graphics market, a campaign is being held on Kickstarter to publish a book about the company’s history. Now DSOGaming has had a sneak peek via the author Martin Gamero Prieto.

Prieto has in fact gained access to two Rampage prototypes directly from 3dfx development lab, via colleague Oscar Barea, where the sneak peek contains both images and game tests. The menu includes Unreal Tournament, 3DMark 2001 and Max Payne, which can be run on the old cards through a specially designed driver.

It is worth mentioning that it requires a special adapter as the color rendering of the graphics cards contains errors, but otherwise they provide a playable frame rate in at least the Unreal Tournament. One of the main attractions with 3dfx graphics cards was the company’s own graphics interface Glide, which gave a significant increase in performance in games versus Microsoft’s Direct3D, something that can be clearly seen in the pictures.

The reason was that 3dfx broke down OpenGL into the most necessary components, so that the graphics interface could be integrated directly into the silicon of the graphics cards. As a result, calls could be made directly to the graphics hardware, which resulted in higher performance. 3dfx Rampage succeeds with Glide enabled to achieve approximately 29 FPS in Unreal Tournament, compared to 7 FPS if DirectX is used.

In 3DMark 2001, instead, a total of 458 points apply, and the pictures gossip that it is a slide show of rank with only 2 FPS. Whether it is due to the hardware or dubiously optimized drivers is difficult to predict, as the products never reached the market or were completely completed. The book The Legacy of 3dfx which deals with the company’s history is now on Kickstarter, and has so far reached 63 percent of the target.

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