I was a little late to the game and didn't get a 3d card until Quake 2 was out and had been patched a few times. I bought a Diamond Monster 3d (add on card), plugged it in, installed the drivers and loaded up Quake 2... no difference. After being frustrated, I finally found that I had to enable the OpenGL driver/mode and the console screen dropped, then revealed those rockets flying down the hallways in glorious, well lit 3d! I played for hours before finally going to bed, that was truly amazing.

I eventually got GLQuake and did the same for Quake 1, it was so exciting!

Definitely. Going from a max workable resolution of 320x240 up to 3d accelerated 640x480 (with far better looking textures due to mip-mapping) was amazing.

The first games I got working on my 3dfx was Quake and Tomb Raider, both game changing for the time.