A new feature? What? No sarky (“sarky” is used in the East end of London as a colloquial term for "sarcastic," you little blighters) comments about the title/theme of this either… The weekend is once again upon us and even after two years of doing this thing we do, I still can't believe how much the industry has changed. Thus the thought of dedicating a new weekend feature to see just what we were saying back in "those days" I felt would be fitting. You'll see where we/I went right, where we got egg on our faces and where we went so far off-road that we ended up southeast of Pluto.
Two years ago (which was when we kicked the site off) we were a slightly different outfit. Language was a little more risqué (parental discretion is advised and if I had a kid, which I don't you nosey buggers, I wouldn't let them read this) testing methods were very different, system specs were by today's standards a snail's pace and best of all we had those charts with the bubble background (hey, they were “in” in '98!).
The Rear View #6 - October 12th 2000
Two years ago, the weather was much better, the lab was much smaller but the amount of hardware was fairly similar to what we've got on our gourmet plate today. We were all waiting with baited breath to see what 3dfx, back then 3Dfx but soon to change to 3dfx, had up their sleeve.
The Rear View #5 - October 5th 2000
I'm late. Really late, so bloody late that we're already half-way through the week (that'd be mid-week where I come from) and trash day is just around the corner. So what better time to roll out issue number 5 of this lil' ‘ol column. Pardon my French folks but I got the living liver kicked out of me this weekend and played overtime at the Mad Onion Benchmarking Boot camp, which went really well.
The Rear View #4 - September 24th 2000
3dfx took their hard-learned success, superb know-how with technology that was so far in advance and did the nasty. They took away one TMU, added 2D and called it Banshee, hence starting the long and bumpy route of avalanche proportions from the top of the “We believe our own hype and press releases" mountain right down into 4th place and off the podium, just ahead of Matrox but certainly not behind Bitboys Oy or Gigapixel (they picked up that pile of snow on the way down and continue down the mountain together). To this day, I truly believe that this was the turning point for 3dfx and their SuperG downhill slide (that's a winter Olympics event).
The Rear View #3 - September 16th 2000
Sharky Extreme wasn't always owned by a multinational public corporation, supported by writers and staff and a sales team in every corner of the globe, you know? In the old days (that's two years ago) Sharky Extreme had very humble beginnings. Yes, before there was an office in San Jose, a buyout by internet.com and the rest of it, this time two years ago, Sharky Extreme had just survived its first month on the internet...
The Rear View #2 - September 9th 2000
In the top drawer for this issue let's take a step back in time to the NVIDIA Corporation of two years ago. The then "small" company was trying to rise out of the doldrums of NV1, RIVA 128 (not a bad 2D/3D card then) and attempting to steal some of 3Dfx' thunder with a 2D/3D product, the NVIDIA TNT, targeted at the Voodoo market. This was one of those days when saying it like it was won out, I feel. Not being afraid to stick your hands in your pants and grab the truth was the order of the day. However, parental discretion is advised on this one…
The Rear View #1 - September 2nd 2000
First up, let me point you to what we felt was the real story behind the infamous delay to the PowerVR Second Generation chip. PowerVR/VideoLogic partnered with NEC to contract the graphics chip for a new console called Dural, Highlander and then finally Dreamcast for the 5000 pound gorilla, otherwise known as SEGA. Remember? Let us refresh your memory with “Whatever Happened To the PVRSG.” It's packed full of gossip (and other stuff that's small, brown and smells bad on really hot summer days) and caused quite a stir on the financial stock bantering message boards.
Happy Clicking!