"Why list these cards on the date they were announced, and not when they were
actually released?"

It's more a personal decision to do this, the thought behind it is, that when a card or
3D architecture is announced, it's known to the public, so in a way, it's already
competing in the market, it's part of the timeline.  Also some cards never made it to
retail, but because I'm using the announce date, it's easier to put it in a category. 

When a card's announce date can't be found, the date is simply replaced by the
nearest news item date, or actual release date.

Today, when cards are announced, they usually have immediate availability, or within
weeks. T hat was not always the case in the timeline that this website is about.
Good example is the Videologic Neon 250, which took 1.5 year to reach the market
from when it was first announced.

"The info on [name of card] isn't correct, it should be : "

Although owning many of these video cards, I'm certainly no expert, so mistakes can
be made, also it's quite difficult to pinpoint the exact specifications or dates of a card.

I would like to be 100% accurate, so please if you find something that you think is
incorrect please contact me and I will look into it.

"Why isn't [name of card] on the list?"

It might be on the list of cards to collect, or I forgot to include it in the list, or I simply
haven't heard of it yet. Please contact me and I will look into it.

"Where is the xMb version of [name of card] or why not the All In Wonder boards,
surely they are more high end then the regular [name of card]?"

The goal of this collection is to collect all high end cards yes, and generally speaking, I
do try to collect the board with the most features, and most memory, but due to the
rareness of some cards, some of the boards have less features.

Please do not confuse having less board features or memory with having less powerful
graphic chips on them, most boards had the same chip on them, but not necessary all
of them had TV-out,  or TV tuners on them. Gathering the high end chips is the main goal
of this collection, having extra features on the card is a bonus.

"Why aren't all professional workstation boards on the list, like the 3DLabs Wildcat
III or nVidia Quadro series?"

At the moment I'm in two minds whether to include all workstation boards, but the
answer below still generally applies.

Generally speaking, I've decided to keep the collection limited to the PC aspect of 3D
acceleration, focused on accelerating games. Many professional cards were not
designed to accelerate 3D games. Some of these cards were thousands of dollars
upon release, which is another reason why they weren't suitable for the PC user.

There was some cross-over in the early years simply because the new wave of
consumer cards from 1996 (3dfx, matrox, etc) were rubbing shoulders with the
workstation cards. However, the workstation cards suddenly look poor value in
comparison. That's why most died out. They had the market to themselves for around
10 years (1985-95), but the need for 3D gaming put an end to their market dominance.

There are a number of exceptions in the collection, some are technically speaking
workstation cards, but were accessible enough for the PC user, and could actually
play some games. For instance the 3DLabs Oxygen VX1's chip (Glint R3) was
essentially a workstation version of the Permedia 3 core. The Permedia 3 driver even
works with the VX1 and runs games.

Interesting trivia is that the slogan for the VX1 was : "Graphics Productivity for
Business and Web Professionals who need to work fast all day and play hard all night".

"Haven't I seen some of this info on cards before?"

Some of the info can readily be found on the web and some of it was so complete
that I simply couldn't put it any better, or could have been more thorough, hence
the info has been slightly edited, or with a little bit more info, but is more or less
original. Naturally all credit goes to the original writer of the article in question.

"Are all these cards fully functional?'

I have not been able to test each and every board, but I do keep a personal list which
keeps track of whether they are 2D/3D stable, if any card isn't, they will be replaced as
soon as possible.

"Where are all the boxes?" 

To collect all boxes would be near impossible, saying that, I do have a number of
boxes, some quite rare, but for me it's all about the videocards. Also, I don't have
the space for all the boxes.

"Do you own all of these cards?"

Unless noted otherwise , yes I do own all of these cards and chips.

"I have a [name of card], would you be interested in it?"

Depending on what card yes, please have a look at the cards to collect page, which
isn't exhaustive, there are some variations on cards that would have their place in the
collection as well. Best thing is to give me an email, and we will see from there.

"When did you start collecting cards?"

I love building my own PC’s, with the greatest and latest graphics cards, but when I
was younger, I never had the chance to buy any of the then high end graphics cards,
ever since I needed a ‘VGA card’ to display Monkey Island, California Games, and
Paperboy in full colour on my 286, to 3Dfx later on, I simply didn’t have enough
money to buy any of them. My first graphics card that I had was an S3 Virge/DX, the
famous 3D decellerator, after a long time using that and playing many games, the 3D enthusiasm cooled down a bit (probably because the card just wasn't fast enough, especially not for newer games.) After quite some time I bought myself an nVidia Geforce 2 Ti. Unfortunately before that I never had the chance to own many of these cards that I have today. 

Fast forward to May 2007, when I was reading up on one of the cards that I badly
wanted back in those days, the 3Dfx Voodoo 2, and after finding sites like
accelenations 7 years of graphics and falconfly.de, I bought my first piece of video card
history, a Maxigamer Voodoo 2 SLI (8mb) box set, brand new, and still sealed. 

Initially the plan was to only collect a couple of 3dfx and nVidia cards, but then
I realised the importance of collecting all high end graphics cards from this era, to make
a graphics card "museum". Also, later on the 3dfx and Quantum3D part of the
collection grew as well, collecting budget to high end cards, and partially managed in
collecting all, apart from the vendor specific cards, prototypes, and some rare cards.

Work on the website started 25th December 2008.

 
180+ cards later and many hours of researching architectures and GPUs here we are.