(Quake Gameplay) Bigeye #9: nVidia RIVA 128

Look what we have here, one of the first AGP video cards! This thing came in a small form factor, yet delivered competent 3D acceleration, especially with the help of a dedicated graphics bus first seen in Intel's 440LX chipset.

While AGP is heavily derived from PCI, it provides a hefty sum of benefits to help increase data throughput, most notably shared system RAM for allowing larger textures. Even AGP 2x on a slow Pentium II can permit gaming at very high resolutions.

The operating system must know how to handle the AGP bus for it to be used to full effect. Windows 95 OSR2 and Windows NT 4.0 are the first operating systems to support AGP, provided the USB supplement or Service Pack 3 or later are installed, respectively. If support for AGP is not loaded, the AGP card will still work with the appropriate video drivers, but it will function as a PCI card without the extra benefits.

Specifications:
Asus P2L97-S Motherboard
Intel Pentium II 233MHz
224MB SDRAM
nVidia RIVA 128 4MB AGP
Windows 95B (GLQuake 800x600, standard OpenGL)
Timedemo: 38.0 FPS

Created on May 29th, 2020