Creative 3D Blaster VLB: $395 DOS Graphics Card from 1995
video description
Date: 2022-04-14
Related videos
Comments and reviews: 10
Una
i had an early and very odd pentim board and a pentium pro board that had VLB as well as PCI, the latter boards still functional its in a system a buddy built using a pentium pro overdrive chip thats a p2 upgrade chip, and hes got one of these, only card hes got that uses the vlb in any semi-useful way in his testing. the pentium board was a weird one that was actually a later -super 7- board with 1 vlb a couple isa and the rest pci, was a weird but good board. the jumpers were not as described for clocks though unless using an intel chip. yet its last bios supported the k6-3 that it was sold with to a buddy, hes still got it all stored at his parents but dosnt know if the systems still functional, he did say the vlb slot has a weird hdd controller card in it.
anyway, i love weird old tech.
i will say, i will take a power vr pcx2 over any of these. combine with a v1000 or similar you could get amazing perf in games for the day. i had voodoo cards as well but. they couldnt run the same res. if you have a board with realy good pci(like a few i had) you could stack pcx2 cards for better game perf all done over pci no bridges involved.
if i could get ahold of what i would like, it would be the voodoo rush equiv that came with the powervr pcx2 chipset rather then voodoo. buddy of mine has 2 and to this day im jelly. great card for those old games on period hardware.
reply
i had an early and very odd pentim board and a pentium pro board that had VLB as well as PCI, the latter boards still functional its in a system a buddy built using a pentium pro overdrive chip thats a p2 upgrade chip, and hes got one of these, only card hes got that uses the vlb in any semi-useful way in his testing. the pentium board was a weird one that was actually a later -super 7- board with 1 vlb a couple isa and the rest pci, was a weird but good board. the jumpers were not as described for clocks though unless using an intel chip. yet its last bios supported the k6-3 that it was sold with to a buddy, hes still got it all stored at his parents but dosnt know if the systems still functional, he did say the vlb slot has a weird hdd controller card in it.
anyway, i love weird old tech.
i will say, i will take a power vr pcx2 over any of these. combine with a v1000 or similar you could get amazing perf in games for the day. i had voodoo cards as well but. they couldnt run the same res. if you have a board with realy good pci(like a few i had) you could stack pcx2 cards for better game perf all done over pci no bridges involved.
if i could get ahold of what i would like, it would be the voodoo rush equiv that came with the powervr pcx2 chipset rather then voodoo. buddy of mine has 2 and to this day im jelly. great card for those old games on period hardware.
reply
cheezst8ke
Back in the mid 90s I upgraded the first computer I bought which was a Packard Bell Legend 75MHz Pentium with 2MB onboard video to a Creative Labs Graphics Blaster RIVA TNT 16MB PCI graphics card. Then a couple years later I bought a faster Packard Bell Platinum tower style computer with a 200MHz Pentium MMX with 2MB onboard video and upgraded that to a Creative Labs 3-D Blaster Savage 4 Pro 32MB PCI graphics card. That second Packard Bell PC also got some other Creative Labs upgrades installed later on which included the Creative PC-DVD Encore Dxr2 DVD Drive Kit, Sound Blaster Live sound card, Modem Blaster 56K V. 92 Modem, and a CD-RW Blaster CDRW drive. I had the Playstation console version of that Battle Arena Toshinden game that you were talking about. It was a great fighting game back then.
reply
Back in the mid 90s I upgraded the first computer I bought which was a Packard Bell Legend 75MHz Pentium with 2MB onboard video to a Creative Labs Graphics Blaster RIVA TNT 16MB PCI graphics card. Then a couple years later I bought a faster Packard Bell Platinum tower style computer with a 200MHz Pentium MMX with 2MB onboard video and upgraded that to a Creative Labs 3-D Blaster Savage 4 Pro 32MB PCI graphics card. That second Packard Bell PC also got some other Creative Labs upgrades installed later on which included the Creative PC-DVD Encore Dxr2 DVD Drive Kit, Sound Blaster Live sound card, Modem Blaster 56K V. 92 Modem, and a CD-RW Blaster CDRW drive. I had the Playstation console version of that Battle Arena Toshinden game that you were talking about. It was a great fighting game back then.
reply
N.
I think the key here was that VESA was a standard that was compatible with 16-bit and even, I believe, 8-bit software where PCI was designed to be for the 32-bit workspace. Nowadays, we're comfortable always buying for the -fastest- peripheral, but back then it was really new so we bought for compatibility. The other thing that is really important to understand about these cards were that they frequently came bundled with a soundcard and a CD-ROM drive. This technology was still really new back then. I had one of these from S3 that came with the VESA video card, a sound card and CD-ROM drive and it worked with my 386dx computer.
reply
I think the key here was that VESA was a standard that was compatible with 16-bit and even, I believe, 8-bit software where PCI was designed to be for the 32-bit workspace. Nowadays, we're comfortable always buying for the -fastest- peripheral, but back then it was really new so we bought for compatibility. The other thing that is really important to understand about these cards were that they frequently came bundled with a soundcard and a CD-ROM drive. This technology was still really new back then. I had one of these from S3 that came with the VESA video card, a sound card and CD-ROM drive and it worked with my 386dx computer.
reply
lazygamereviews
All modern videocards do have a soundcard included (to support audio over hdmi.
I remember the first hdmi cards to lack this feature and having alot of sync problems while using dedicated soundcards next to the videocard (digital video vs analog audio.
As hdmi video cards eventually supported audio we had a new problem; the audio cut off when the display went into sleep mode which is what we are all used to now (gone were the days of listening to mp3's with the screen in power saving.
Maybe you could do a video sometime about the first videocards supporting hdmi as that was also pretty prototype-y.
reply
All modern videocards do have a soundcard included (to support audio over hdmi.
I remember the first hdmi cards to lack this feature and having alot of sync problems while using dedicated soundcards next to the videocard (digital video vs analog audio.
As hdmi video cards eventually supported audio we had a new problem; the audio cut off when the display went into sleep mode which is what we are all used to now (gone were the days of listening to mp3's with the screen in power saving.
Maybe you could do a video sometime about the first videocards supporting hdmi as that was also pretty prototype-y.
reply
Siana
This looks like a good effort at a spectacularly bad idea. The overhead of CGL and the overhead of communicating with the card over VLB while it stalls the CPU (no Bus Master) is just so much higher than just rendering stuff in software. Plus 25MP/s fillrate is a little on the low side if you want to hit that 480p resolution, giving you the overdraw factor of 5 at 30fps. They should have considered targeting 400x300 or 512x384, which looks a ton better than 320x200 but also isn't quite as slow as higher resolution modes.
reply
This looks like a good effort at a spectacularly bad idea. The overhead of CGL and the overhead of communicating with the card over VLB while it stalls the CPU (no Bus Master) is just so much higher than just rendering stuff in software. Plus 25MP/s fillrate is a little on the low side if you want to hit that 480p resolution, giving you the overdraw factor of 5 at 30fps. They should have considered targeting 400x300 or 512x384, which looks a ton better than 320x200 but also isn't quite as slow as higher resolution modes.
reply
TheSteelRodent
I never knew this card existed till this video. I had a Creative 3D Blaster Voodoo2, which obviously didn't have much relation to this card. Pretty sure it came with all the same games, though, and they definitely ran a hell of a lot better. But when I first got the Voodoo2 I still had a Tseng ET4000 (PCI) which was so not good for games, so I ended up replacing it with Matrox Mystique 220 which actually was pretty decent at 3D as well, although the Voodoo2 definitely had more oomph and of course Glide
reply
I never knew this card existed till this video. I had a Creative 3D Blaster Voodoo2, which obviously didn't have much relation to this card. Pretty sure it came with all the same games, though, and they definitely ran a hell of a lot better. But when I first got the Voodoo2 I still had a Tseng ET4000 (PCI) which was so not good for games, so I ended up replacing it with Matrox Mystique 220 which actually was pretty decent at 3D as well, although the Voodoo2 definitely had more oomph and of course Glide
reply
Lyndon
I had the PCI version of this card that came out a few years later based on the Cirrus Logic chip and 4MB of Rambus memory. I had a budget socket 3 board at the time, AMD 5x86. I was a Windows 98 beta tester in high school and remember it blue screening during setup because MS didn't ship a Direct X compatible Cirrus Logic driver on the CD until later in the beta cycle after I reported my weird configuration.
reply
I had the PCI version of this card that came out a few years later based on the Cirrus Logic chip and 4MB of Rambus memory. I had a budget socket 3 board at the time, AMD 5x86. I was a Windows 98 beta tester in high school and remember it blue screening during setup because MS didn't ship a Direct X compatible Cirrus Logic driver on the CD until later in the beta cycle after I reported my weird configuration.
reply
Keith
Interesting you mention technical spaghetti being thrown at the wall to see what sticks. My friends and I at the time used to make fun of Packard Bell and the computers they delivered, but they were the Mercedes of PC's at the time. If someone even had a hint of an idea for something to add, PB would almost always give it a try. Say what you will about them, they were trend setters.
reply
Interesting you mention technical spaghetti being thrown at the wall to see what sticks. My friends and I at the time used to make fun of Packard Bell and the computers they delivered, but they were the Mercedes of PC's at the time. If someone even had a hint of an idea for something to add, PB would almost always give it a try. Say what you will about them, they were trend setters.
reply
Maciej
In the 90s I read about a graphics card that wasn't a graphics card - you installed it in your pc, but connected to your original graphics card via a VGA cable, and then from it, witha VGA cable to the monitor. It would enhance the graphics of the original card. Anyone knows what I'm talking about? I'd like to do some research, and it would be great to see LGR do an episode on it.
reply
In the 90s I read about a graphics card that wasn't a graphics card - you installed it in your pc, but connected to your original graphics card via a VGA cable, and then from it, witha VGA cable to the monitor. It would enhance the graphics of the original card. Anyone knows what I'm talking about? I'd like to do some research, and it would be great to see LGR do an episode on it.
reply
Bco1981
oh my god, i had one of those. but. i returned it. i was too young and didn't know what i had bought. i thought it was just a graphics card with 3d. so i took out my regular graphics card because. there is no need for two cards. then i ran doom2 and it lagged like crazy on this brand new graphics card. Only years later i found out. it's JUST a 3d card. it does not do 2d. -sigh-
reply
oh my god, i had one of those. but. i returned it. i was too young and didn't know what i had bought. i thought it was just a graphics card with 3d. so i took out my regular graphics card because. there is no need for two cards. then i ran doom2 and it lagged like crazy on this brand new graphics card. Only years later i found out. it's JUST a 3d card. it does not do 2d. -sigh-
reply
Add a review, comment
Other channel videos
