What Is Your Personal Favorite Video Card of All Time?

I've had a lot of GPUs in the past 20+ years but honestly?
Probably Vega 64. Yeah, Vega was cursed and ran hot and failed to match 1080Ti.
But I got mine for relatively cheap after the 2018 mining crash and had tons of fun tuning it. It was the first card I hybrid modded, something I do to all my cards now.
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At 1700Mhz+ it was pretty damn good for 1080P gaming. I sold the PCB during the 2021 mining boom for a whopping $640 :-O I still have the painted shroud, been thinking of picking up a Vega Frontier Edition and sticking the modded parts on it for lulz.

Runner-up would probably be Radeon X1900XT. That thing was so fast for the time, lots of hours playing Oblivion and Gothic 3 on that one. It was the first card I had that could really handle lots of pixel shader effects.

Edit to add- it's too soon to really say, but the Arc A770 I recently picked up is quickly becoming one of my faves. Another weird cursed GPU that I'm having great fun tuning and modding.
 
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For me it is the 4090 I have now. I started with the Voodoo 1, which was cool and had a wow factor, but the graphics were still very crude, heaps better than the default cards, but still nothing special in itself. Now with the 4090 I am finally able to really enjoy VR gaming, which for me is a bigger game changer than the first 3D video cards were. When coupled with a good VR headset, the 4090 makes gaming so incredibly cool en special. I know it is a bit of a niche at the moment, but VR gaming will be huge in the future, say ten years from now.

The thing the Voodoo cards had going for them is that the video quality even regressed slightly after Voodoo went out of business. FPS went up, but the visuals took a slight hit in the process with the first TNT and even TNT2 cards. But what the 4090 can do at 4K+ resolutions and the consistent high framerates needed for VR (Voodoo couldn't even do much more than 30FPS if it could even do that consistently), makes it a very special card for me.
 
Koldur said:
For me it is the 4090 I have now. I started with the Voodoo 1, which was cool and had a wow factor, but the graphics were still very crude, heaps better than the default cards, but still nothing special in itself. Now with the 4090 I am finally able to really enjoy VR gaming, which for me is a bigger game changer than the first 3D video cards were. When coupled with a good VR headset, the 4090 makes gaming so incredibly cool en special. I know it is a bit of a niche at the moment, but VR gaming will be huge in the future, say ten years from now.

The thing the Voodoo cards had going for them is that the video quality even regressed slightly after Voodoo went out of business. FPS went up, but the visuals took a slight hit in the process with the first TNT and even TNT2 cards. But what the 4090 can do at 4K+ resolutions and the consistent high framerates needed for VR (Voodoo couldn't even do much more than 30FPS if it could even do that consistently), makes it a very special card for me.
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Nah, the Voodoo could do much better than 30fps. It's entirely dependent on the game you're playing with it.
 
ZodaEX said:
Nah, the Voodoo could do much better than 30fps. It's entirely dependent on the game you're playing with it.
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In most games and high quality settings in the better games at that time, it couldn't, even when paired with a very good CPU.
 
Diamond Viper V550 and the Hercules 3D Prophet II Ultra... First one, because it was the first real GPU I bought myself and wasn't a card I scabbed from someone else. The second because it was blue, and I loved the way it looked. The younger version of me loved weird colors that were not just Grey/Green. Like when Soyo added bright colors to their boards *chef kiss*
 
TNT 2 way back in the day. It was such a huge upgrade to the Riva 128 that I had previously. Have very fond memories of gaming with that thing.
 
ZodaEX said:
Nah, the Voodoo could do much better than 30fps. It's entirely dependent on the game you're playing with it.
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The Voodoo was hovering in the 25-35 fps area if you were playing at 640x480 resolution with the average just below 30 in most games. I had one and the only reason it didn't feel bad was because everyone was used to crappy FPS back then. If you were to go back to a Voodoo powered machine and play games from that era then you would most likely wonder why it looks like a slideshow.
 
evhvis said:
The Voodoo was hovering in the 25-35 fps area if you were playing at 640x480 resolution with the average just below 30 in most games. I had one and the only reason it didn't feel bad was because everyone was used to crappy FPS back then. If you were to go back to a Voodoo powered machine and play games from that era then you would most likely wonder why it looks like a slideshow.
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Yeah, it was way better than we had, but still miles off what we have now. But it did kick it off epically of course.
And we had CRT monitors back then, which masked a lot of the downsides of low FPS games.
 
The GTX 480, by far hottest GPU in this thread. 🔥🔥🔥
250 watt TDP and 1.3 TFLOPS, quad SLI support... how could you go wrong!
 
I remember when SLI and Crossfire were the hot new thing. I experimented with it quite a bit in those days and it was fun.

The worst experience was 2x 5970's. Each board had 2 GPUs so that promised "Quadfire" performance when in reality none of the games took advantage of it and all I got was extra heat and power consumption with no noticeable increase in benefits for running 4 GPUs.

When I was in my watercooling everything is amazing stage, I played with 2x GTX 480s in SLI. They were fast for the time but boy were they hot! So the watercooling was actually justified! I ran 2x 360 rads with one water block for the cpu and two for my gpus in a custom loop.

Looking back running 2 GPUs or more was fun and you'd get higher FPS, yes but ultimately just having one fast GPU was better and felt less "choppy" experience than 2 GPUs.

Still those were the days. It felt like you were putting a hotrod in your computer by doubling up your GPU count!!
 
Red Falcon said:
The GTX 480, by far hottest GPU in this thread. 🔥🔥🔥
250 watt TDP and 1.3 TFLOPS, quad SLI support... how could you go wrong!
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Agreed. I had two of those babies in SLI on custom watercooling and a 1200 watt Antec PSU to keep those puppies fed with power!! ❤️‍🔥
 
I probably have to say my Radeon 8500 LE. It was probably the inception of me paying attention to GPUs.

I also remember it being a sneaky good deal during its heyday.
 
vjhawk said:
I remember when SLI and Crossfire were the hot new thing. I experimented with it quite a bit in those days and it was fun.

The worst experience was 2x 5970's. Each board had 2 GPUs so that promised "Quadfire" performance when in reality none of the games took advantage of it and all I got was extra heat and power consumption with no noticeable increase in benefits for running 4 GPUs.

When I was in my watercooling everything is amazing stage, I played with 2x GTX 480s in SLI. They were fast for the time but boy were they hot! So the watercooling was actually justified! I ran 2x 360 rads with one water block for the cpu and two for my gpus in a custom loop.

Looking back running 2 GPUs or more was fun and you'd get higher FPS, yes but ultimately just having one fast GPU was better and felt less "choppy" experience than 2 GPUs.

Still those were the days. It felt like you were putting a hotrod in your computer by doubling up your GPU count!!
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I had a pair of GTX 470s watercooled in SLI and overclocked within an inch of their life.. and they performed so well.. totally stable and very fast. I ran that config for a long time. I used full cover Koolance nickel plated blocks with one of those external Koolance all in one units. Man the heat that dumped out it immediately after firing up a game was so impressive! I loved those cards.. they ran 480 speeds no problem with this cooling solution..

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boss99 said:
Abit Ti4200 with the OTES cooler. My wife bought me that for my birthday and it meant a lot to me for a number of years.
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I had one of those.. I think it was the first card to dump hot air out of the back outside the case! Good stuff!
 
Legacy Editions;

9700Pro, X1950, 3870, 4870, 4890, 5850, 5870, 5970, 6950, 6990 for ATi.

FX5500, 6800GT, 7600GT, 8800GT-GTX, 9800GX2, GTX285, GTX460 SE, GTX580 for nVIDIA.
 
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revenant said:
I had a pair of GTX 470s watercooled in SLI and overclocked within an inch of their life.. and they performed so well.. totally stable and very fast. I ran that config for a long time. I used full cover Koolance nickel plated blocks with one of those external Koolance all in one units. Man the heat that dumped out it immediately after firing up a game was so impressive! I loved those cards.. they ran 480 speeds no problem with this cooling solution..
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Very sweet setup! Yeah I found some very old pics for my watercooled SLI setup that i had posted on the internet. I went with 2x 360 radiators, one at the top, and one at the back to keep temps frosty.

I used a drive cage mounted reservoir plus pump and that particular HAFX case had a fill port at the top that led straight down into the reservoir.

And I just realized those were EVGA GTX 480s. Remember when EVGA made the highest quality partner boards for Nvidia GPUs? Those were the days!

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vjhawk said:
Very sweet setup! Yeah I found some very old pics for my watercooled SLI setup that i had posted on the internet. I went with 2x 360 radiators, one at the top, and one at the back to keep temps frosty.

I used a drive cage mounted reservoir plus pump and that particular HAFX case had a fill port at the top that led straight down into the reservoir.

And I just realized those were EVGA GTX 480s. Remember when EVGA made the highest quality partner boards for Nvidia GPUs? Those were the days!

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Dude.. great stuff!!! Ahh.. miss those days heh
 
OFaceSIG said:
I have a special place in my heart for my EVGA 8800GS AGP. One of the last great AGP cards. Still have it!
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You mean the 7800GS (I had one too!)

- The LAST "great" AGP card was the ATI HD 3850 512mb (owned one of those too, it got me through Fallout 3 on my trusty A64 x2 4400+ rig) (y)

* There was also an AGP HD 4670 variant that released later on, but the general consensus is that the 3850 was the superior card etc.
 
horrorshow said:
You mean the 7800GS (I had one too!)

- The LAST "great" AGP card was the ATI HD 3850 512mb (owned one of those too, it got me through Fallout 3 on my trusty A64 x2 4400+ rig) (y)

* There was also an AGP HD 4670 variant that released later on, but the general consensus is that the 3850 was the superior card etc.
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I'll be dipped. You are correct! Dunno why I thought it was an 8800.
 
horrorshow said:
You mean the 7800GS (I had one too!)

- The LAST "great" AGP card was the ATI HD 3850 512mb (owned one of those too, it got me through Fallout 3 on my trusty A64 x2 4400+ rig) (y)

* There was also an AGP HD 4670 variant that released later on, but the general consensus is that the 3850 was the superior card etc.
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Yeah I own both of those cards sapphire 3850 and an XFX 4670, they were my last gasp of my AMD XP system before I was finally forced to replace it.
 
I remember getting an AGP 6800 Non Ultra back in like 2005 and unlocking it to 16 pipelines and 6 vertex shaders. Was glorious 😃.
 
n370zed said:
I remember getting an AGP 6800 Non Ultra back in like 2005 and unlocking it to 16 pipelines and 6 vertex shaders. Was glorious 😃.
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How stable was it? without that second molex connector? just curious.
 
revenant said:
How stable was it? without that second molex connector? just curious.
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Tbh I don’t remember if I had any problems but I do remember playing HL2 and Counter Strike Source and had a blast. And I remember getting a higher score on a 3DMark benchmark ( cant remember which one tho, all I remember was a female with a big emphasis on her hair and I think she was holding a torch….? ) and it scored higher unlocked. Gosh it’s almost been 20 years sorry 😆
 
Probably my first GPU ever:

NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 XT PCI​


The good 'ol days of playing Hitman (the first one, around 2003) and getting artifacts on the screen left and right.

HARDOCP actually did two reviews on it but can't get access to them.

https://hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDc4
 

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Once VR hits our level of human reality with the glasses, it's over. People will just escape to virtual worlds.

The level of graphical power will be crazy. Plus the VR headset would have to have huge lenses to completely saturate your view.. Can't wait to see what the next 60 years brings.

Checking my newegg account, they have my purchase history back from 2001. I bought an ATI Radeon 8500. Man that was ages ago. Can't believe they have the purchase history go back that far. Crazy to look at.
 
jarablue said:
Once VR hits our level of human reality with the glasses, it's over. People will just escape to virtual worlds.
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Creative concept but not happening for the next 16 years. And once it does, many won't feel as raw as immersing it with our own eyes.
 
Xar said:
Creative concept but not happening for the next 16 years. And once it does, many won't feel as raw as immersing it with our own eyes.
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In my opinion it will be close enough that it won't matter. Big time game changer. 20 years is a drop in the bucket.
 
Oh yeah? What about when quantum computers hit the market? Things are going to get a lot more interesting (what a time to be alive).
 
I had the voodoo3 2000 pci then upgraded to voodoo3 3000 agp. Then later upgraded to voodoo 5500. Then the radeon 8500 came later. Before the voodoo cards for me was ATI Rage Pro 128. Was out of the pc scene from 94 to 98.

Favorite was my voodoo 5500. Was so happy to get that card in 2000. Bought it at the bestbuy in the Greendale Mall in Worcester, MA. Back when Malls were a thing.
 
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Armenius said:
The 7800 GS was my last AGP card, too. I had one made by BFG Tech. Powered by a single 4-pin Molex connector. It had a hard time running Oblivion.
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Yup.

I had the BFG 7800GS, then a Sapphire x1950 Pro, and finally the Sapphire HD 3850 as the final AGP curtain call..

('Member back when upgrading your card every 12-18 months was MANDATORY? .... I 'member....)
 
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