What gaming video card lasted you the longest ?

My GTX 8600. I had it until I got myself a GTX 560 Ti. That one lasted for 2 years, however. Before my 8600 I had a GTX 4200 Ti, but I'm not sure if I should count that since I lived with my mom back then. I was just in my early teens. I did get my 8600 for my own cash, however, I saved it up and got an entirely new PC, too. Looking back I should have invested in a 8800, it would have been worth it, but to be honest, most games I played back then were games like CS:S or Freelancer and some MMORPGs who tend to be bigger on the CPU.

I can't prove this, but my general sense is that you could last longer on GPUs back in the day even if the progress was very fast, probably because the games that were released were typically very polished. Freelancer, for example, was amazingly stable for a 1.0 version.
 
My GTX 8600. I had it until I got myself a GTX 560 Ti. That one lasted for 2 years, however. Before my 8600 I had a GTX 4200 Ti, but I'm not sure if I should count that since I lived with my mom back then. I was just in my early teens. I did get my 8600 for my own cash, however, I saved it up and got an entirely new PC, too. Looking back I should have invested in a 8800, it would have been worth it, but to be honest, most games I played back then were games like CS:S or Freelancer and some MMORPGs who tend to be bigger on the CPU.

I can't prove this, but my general sense is that you could last longer on GPUs back in the day even if the progress was very fast, probably because the games that were released were typically very polished. Freelancer, for example, was amazingly stable for a 1.0 version.
Sorry to nitpick, but...

GTX 8600 = 8600 GT
GTX 4200 Ti = GeForce4 Ti4200

To your last point, games back in the day didn't rely so heavily on shader performance. It was more about how fast they could draw polygons and texture map, which most mid-level hardware did pretty well by the early 2000's. It really wasn't until shader model 2.0 and Half-Life 2 when shader performance became more important. Shader technology moved along pretty quickly at the time, which kept video card engineers on their toes keeping future advancements in mind. These days shader tech is pretty stagnant, so programmers are trying to do new and ambitious things to stand out from the crowd, at the cost of stability and performance.

At least those are my feelings on the matter.
 
Sorry to nitpick, but...

GTX 8600 = 8600 GT
GTX 4200 Ti = GeForce4 Ti4200

To your last point, games back in the day didn't rely so heavily on shader performance. It was more about how fast they could draw polygons and texture map, which most mid-level hardware did pretty well by the early 2000's. It really wasn't until shader model 2.0 and Half-Life 2 when shader performance became more important. Shader technology moved along pretty quickly at the time, which kept video card engineers on their toes keeping future advancements in mind. These days shader tech is pretty stagnant, so programmers are trying to do new and ambitious things to stand out from the crowd, at the cost of stability and performance.

At least those are my feelings on the matter.

And with that, enter the 9700 pro/9500 pro. A monster in it's day hah.
 
pny 4200 ti she wouldnt die and is in my mothers surfer pc still
 
Hmm, my HiS 5850 1gb lasted for over 3 years from late 2010 to early 2014 , 8800gt for about 3 years from November 2007 to the 5850 launch.

I'm not sure how long I had my AMD 9600 Pro AGP card for but it likely lasted the longest for me, partially because I was locked in on the AGP platform and didn't have the money to buy a whole new rig.

I'd say it was around 5 years with that card.

I just got these 680s in SLI last april at $200 a piece so I'll have to see how long they end up lasting especially at 2560x1440 96/120hz.

I also don't game nearly as much as I used to, and when I do it's usually older and less demanding titles like CS:GO, WoW and D3.
 
Hmm, my HiS 5850 1gb lasted for over 3 years from late 2010 to early 2014 , 8800gt for about 3 years from November 2007 to the 5850 launch.

I'm not sure how long I had my AMD 9600 Pro AGP card for but it likely lasted the longest for me, partially because I was locked in on the AGP platform and didn't have the money to buy a whole new rig.

I'd say it was around 5 years with that card.

I just got these 680s in SLI last april at $200 a piece so I'll have to see how long they end up lasting especially at 2560x1440 96/120hz.

I also don't game nearly as much as I used to, and when I do it's usually older and less demanding titles like CS:GO, WoW and D3.
Should have jumped ship :p. NVIDIA continued to make AGP cards through the 7000-series. I had a BFGTech NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GS AGP with 256MB of VRAM that I purchased brand new in 2006 :cool:.
 
Probably my Radeon 7000. Pretty sure I got that thing in 2001 and stuck with it until the very end of 2005. Not that it was any good, I was just a broke high schooler that couldn't afford anything else.

Ended up happily replacing it with a GeForce 6600GT. My Radeon 6950 has been in my system since 2012, but I don't quite count it the same since I backed up with a second one a year ago.
 
Should have jumped ship :p. NVIDIA continued to make AGP cards through the 7000-series. I had a BFGTech NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GS AGP with 256MB of VRAM that I purchased brand new in 2006 :cool:.

Jumped ship? I'm not really a fanboy so that term doesn't apply to me. :p
ATI also made AGP cards for a while after I bought my 9600pro but the situation I was in at the time was either buy into pci-e with money I didn't really have or continue with the AGP platform and reuse all the parts in my current build sans cpu/motherboard.

I had to replace my Athlon 1500+ XP/Epox 8kha+ kt266a combo as it died so I picked up an A64 3000+ s939 winchester and Gigabyte NF3 Ultra board which was the AGP version.

If I had more money at the time I would have bought the NF4 for the pci-e slots and moved up to a 6800gt.
 
Jumped ship? I'm not really a fanboy so that term doesn't apply to me. :p
ATI also made AGP cards for a while after I bought my 9600pro but the situation I was in at the time was either buy into pci-e with money I didn't really have or continue with the AGP platform and reuse all the parts in my current build sans cpu/motherboard.

I had to replace my Athlon 1500+ XP/Epox 8kha+ kt266a combo as it died so I picked up an A64 3000+ s939 winchester and Gigabyte NF3 Ultra board which was the AGP version.

If I had more money at the time I would have bought the NF4 for the pci-e slots and moved up to a 6800gt.

I upgraded to a S939 Asrock board with both AGP and PCIe slots, best futureproof upgrade I ever made other than AMD abandoning S939 for AM2.
 
Easily 8800GTX bought it when it first came out, then because of the console generation PS3/Xbox the games didn't get anymore demanding, I kept it till it failed in 2012 :D A friend very kindly gave me a nice ATI card, which ive been using since then.

My PC is still in desperate need of an upgrade, my house however takes priority.
 
I upgraded to a S939 Asrock board with both AGP and PCIe slots, best futureproof upgrade I ever made other than AMD abandoning S939 for AM2.

I upgraded to an inbetween board at the time as well. It had both DDR1 + DDR2 and PCIe + AGP and SATA + PATA. The only problem was that the PCIe was 4x, the DDR2 could only be maxed to 2gb, and the SATA was SATA 1. It was both the best (early on) and worst (later on) upgrade I ever made. Early on things were great, but later on I was limited at every turn.
 
XFX 6950 unlocked shaders (3 years) followed closely by a PNY 6800GT which made it past the 2 year mark (2004-2006).
 
I cant remember every card i have had, but out of recent ones it must be GTX570. I had it since it was new and only year ago i changed it to GTX770 2gb, which is already starting to feel average now that next gen gaming is here. And my discovery of and getting hooked on downsampling isnt helping the matter either... :p
 
Well, two years later I am still running my Gefirce GTX Titan. Considering how fast u usually go flthrough GPU's that one is astonishing to me.

To beat that I think I have to go all the way back to my Voodoo 1 (6MB Canopus Pure 3D) which lasted me from 1997 until the summer of 2000 when I had saved up to build my next rig.
 
I guess it was the 9800PRO.
X1950Pro also lasted quite long.
 
Diamond Monster 3D - 12/97 to 8/98
Diamond Monster 3D II (12mb) - 8/98 to 9/00
3dfx Voodoo 5 5500 - 9/00 to 5/01
Innotech GeForce 2 MX400 - 5/01 to 5/02
MSI GeForce 4 Ti4400 - 5/02 to 1/05
XFX GeForce 5600 - 01/05 to 5/07
(used on the board Radeon X1250) - 05/07 to 3/08
Asus Radeon 4850 - 3/08 to 04/10
eVGA GeForce GTX 285 - 04/10 to 10/11
Sapphire Radeon 6970 (2x) - 10/11 to 12/14
XFX Radeon R9 280X - 12/14 to now

Funny it was pretty recent my longest with my dual 6970s. Getting an Xbox 360 (and then an Xbox One) has made my upgrades less and less frequent since I don't game on my PC as much anymore compared to 97 to 05ish.
 
8800 GTS 512MB (G92) - This card was BEAST, lasted 7 years of gaming, most of which was done at 1600x1200. Was the best $100 craigslist purchase I've ever made, no doubt in my mind. Speaking of which the card was finally put to rest this very morning, it had been baked multiple times to extend its use, but alas RIP 8800 GTS, you served me well. ^S^
 
Been through soo many cards but the BEST ones that I use the longest are:

Voodoo 2 8meg(Creative 3D Blaster)
Geforce 2 MX400(forgot which brand but this card had the best price/performance during its time)
ATi Radeon 9700 Pro(BF1942 + AA = no sleep for days on end)
8800GTX(The only card during its time that can handle anything I throw at it)

Other worth mentioning: Ati 9800XT, Gainward Geforce 4 ti4600 Golden Sample, 8800GT, eVGA 8800GTS(G92), eVGA GTX 280, Ati HD7970
 
In my main machine, I suppose it would be my first GTX 680. I had that sucker from the beginning of April 2012 to around June this year, so about 26 months. However, I have an ATI 5870 that still runs surprisingly well that I've had since February 2010 (going on 5 years). I tend to upgrade often, taking my current GPU and putting it in my "backup" rig, and taking the GPU from that and selling it on Craigslist.

Honorable mentions to my 9700 AIW, 7900 GTX, and 8800GTS 640MB that all last more than 4 years each as well.
 
HD4870x2. I got it for next to nothing on Ebay. I'd probably still be using it if it hadn't died. As long as you were willing to fiddle with the drivers to get crossfire working it was a beast of a card. Went from that to a GTX480 because apparently I like my computer imitating a helicopter.
 
Probably my 6600GT or GTX260, however my GTX680 is still going strong and have no plans to upgrade for a while longer.
 
My HD4890 was the card that lasted me the longest. It definitely started to show it's age and I just finally upgraded in November from that rig with an E8400 and 4GB of RAM to my current setup.
 
Probably my 6600GT or GTX260, however my GTX680 is still going strong and have no plans to upgrade for a while longer.

6600gt was a beast. I didn't feel the need to upgrade until the 8800gts 320mb came around, and even then the 6600gt wasn't a slouch.
 
6800, especially once you were able to unlock the 4 disabled pipelines effectively making it an ultra model.
 
6600gt was a beast. I didn't feel the need to upgrade until the 8800gts 320mb came around, and even then the 6600gt wasn't a slouch.

Well, I used my 6800 GT from 2004 until 2010, but that's only because I kind of stopped gaming/caring for a while.

Actually, it was one of the biggest wastes in my computer building history.

It was about a year after I graduated college. I had a real job and some money. My first post college build. Socket 754 Athlon, 2Gigs if RAM, a GTX 6800GT.

Met a girl, got distracted, and proceeded to not play a single game for 5 years. In 2005 I did invest in a HUGE (by the standards of the day) 24" Dell widescreen monitor (2405FPW? cant remember) and then proceeded to barely every use it.

Got back into computers, games and the H in 2010.

Wish I'd never met that girl.
 
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GTX 480. I think when I finally upgraded the 680's were just being replaced by the Titan.
 
GTX580. It made it 3+ years, which is a long time when it comes to GPU hardware. It was the last of 3 successive cards that I paid $400 for - first was an eVGA 8800GTS KO ACS3 640mb, then a BFG GTX280 OC, then the Zotac GTX580.And with that ended my string of Nvidia video card purchases dating back to the original Nvidia 16mb TnT card.

I picked up a Powercolor 7970 in October, and it will get me to March-April, at which point I will then be looking for a 290/290x when the prices drop with the release of the new AMD cards.

Many of my earlier cards may have been used for a longer timeframe, but that was before Quake (and 3D gaming in general) which drove the never-ending quest for higher and higher FPS.
 
Long time ago, I had a Radeon 9800 pro which lasted me 2.99 years. I had a 3 year warranty on it and exchanged it 1 week before it expired at comp USA for a radeon 1800 XT LOL due to a broken fan. Nothing like 120 fps on counterstrike 1.6 LOL.
 
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