The 3dfx Voodoo1
I worked with all of the cards mentioned in the article. It was a pretty sweet time, where the card manufacturers would happily send out a reference card.<p>Some things the article did seem to miss out on:<p>- You could have two Voodoo's in your PC for extra throughput (I can't remember the numbers). I seem to recall there was a ribbon cable between the two boards...<p>- The reason 3dfx ultimately failed was due to hefty lawsuits ongoing with NVidia about IP theft and headhunting the 3dfx staff.<p>During this time there was a mailing list (can't remember it's name) that existed and a lot of game devs operated in it, mainly around DirectX (v1 onwwards), but it was in existence much before that. All the card manufacturers were on it that I recall. 
One day John Carmack posted a comment (I'm paraphrasing somewhat) how rubbish DirectX and Direct3D was. A month or so later glquake was available.<p>I think it was about 12-18months later Unreal (the game... before the engine) was announced as a demo on this list and we all thought: Awesome -- who the <i></i>* are these guys!?<p>I'd like to say 'Good times' were had, but seriously, I burnt out due to the insansely fast changing pace of 3D dev during those times.