Most aesthetically appealing Video Cards of All Time?

Is this pretty to anyone?

(sgi ge7 geometry engine)

Extreme Graphics offers the world's fastest graphics on the desktop. Using eight Geometry Engines, Indigo2 Extreme provides 630K triangles and 1.25 million 3D vectors per second from the 256 Mflops of dedicated, floating-point performance for the fastest 3D graphics on the desktop. Complicated MCAD, animation and molecular modeling projects come alive with the help of 31 custom VLSI gate arrays with over 1.2 million gates.

A new level of performance is achieved with Indigo2. Things happen faster, more convincingly. Indigo2 works at the speed you work.

Command Engine - The HQ2 is an 80,000 gate device that delegates graphics primitives to the Geometry Engine Processors.

Eight Geometry Engines - Provide 256 MFlops through an effective multi-chip module design.

Dual Integrated Raster Engines - Two RE3 Raster Engine hold 200,000 custom gates running at 50 MHz.

Live Video I/O Slot - A port for video expansion using Indigo2 Video and Galileo Video options.

0aNhjte.jpg
 
The magnesium alloy reference cooler on the original TITAN that has now become ubiquitous on NVIDIA products is the most pleasing to me. It's simple, industrial, and has the right lines.

I'm a fan of the STRIX cooler from ASUS, too, but I might be biased since I own 2 cards with it right now. Black and red seems to be a tired color scheme these days, but I think ASUS did a good job of keeping the use of red to a minimum. I also like the contrast of the visible heatsink and heatpipes against the black shroud. That the fans look like owl eyes is pretty neat, too, it's just a shame you'll never see it when the cards are sitting in your case.

burger.jpg
 
Oh my, a video card pageant contest. :eek:
My fellow nerd friends are having a slow Monday... :p
 
Oh and what is that monster before the voodoo card?? Thing is nuts! Haha.. sweetness.
 
3870x2a.jpg


3870x2. Used to have two of these in a crossfire, picked them up for pennies on fleebay. Hate to think about how much power they munched through.
 
I've only been into pc hardware for 7 years, so it's cool to see items that were before me.

Asus 7970 matrix is still my fav.
 
This to me feels like the start of the war!

Green vs Red

Love these cards!

vs-x1800xt.jpg

I had the ASUS version of the 7900 GTX. The King Kong of video cards back in the day:

P_500.jpg


In the modern era, there is no denying that the Titan cooler is very sharp. There is a certain simple, yet industrial elegance to it.
 
I always loved the simple aesthetic of the 5970, especially with the two ports on the back

IMG_9581_zpskiw7i4rx.jpg

I agree. Those cards were always kind of neat looking. The new titans are also pretty nice

Less is more and all that. Couldn't stand the silly graphics that manufacturers would slap on GPU's back even a few years back. They were cringe worthy lol
 
3870x2a.jpg


3870x2. Used to have two of these in a crossfire, picked them up for pennies on fleebay. Hate to think about how much power they munched through.

Actually not a lot - two HD3870X2s would use less power than a single R9 295X2. Quite a bit less! Idle, of course is a different story ;)

It might be cheap and flimsy plastic, but I still like the look of my HD4830 :)
1071725_0_original.jpg
 
I really liked the look of the old (antique?) Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 cards:

683092powervrkyro4500.jpg


Good old Kyro II. :)

I actually have one of these and a 3D Prophet 4000 (Kyro).
 
I was always partial to the 8800 Ultra, was the best card you could buy for eons

TzfzQnq.jpg
 
Yeah I really dig the designs of those old ATI blower cards. Although the Titan X reference cooler is pretty slick too :)
 
I like the last couple of generations of XFX DD style cards. Clean and well presented,
 
I liked single-slot GPU coolers. Shame they usually did a pretty poor job :p

Yeah, the 8800GT single-slot was pretty cool, but NOTHING tops the design of the HD 4850 single-slot reference cooler! Under that clear red airguide was a massive copper heatsink shaped in a paper fan, expanding out from the blower wheel at the root!

yAqJuDb.jpg


Here is a detail of the card without sticker:

0ARZ7N9.jpg


But as sexy as it was, it was noisy at full load. I was so happy when my next card was a 2-slot axial cooler.
 
Last edited:
Wait, so you think that two of their respective companies biggest failures are the best looking cards...at least they had something going for them.
 
xfx_geforce8800gt_side.jpg


was always a huge fan of the way this looked

Had one of those (still do). The stupid housing warped and the fan blades start hitting one of the mosfets. Had to replace it with a Zalman aftermarket thingo (which was totally sweet).
 
iunno, i always liked the 9800gx2's unique design. from what i know, it's the only gpu with designs on both the fan side and the pcb side.

for some reason, i also liked the gtx480s design.. it was so ugly that i loved it hahah

im weird i know :(
 
IMG_20150327_021457869_zpsxvemi2po.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]

Used this card up till i went with x58 platform with pic express.....just cant seem to part with it even though its ancient and worthless by today's standards...but it was my proudest agp card and got my moneys worth of use out of it.....and to be honest i always thought it was a sweet looking card so ill just keep it on display to bring back those sweet memory's
 
Yeah, the 8800GT single-slot was pretty cool, but NOTHING tops the design of the HD 4850 single-slot reference cooler! Under that clear red airguide was a massive copper heatsink shaped in a paper fan, expanding out from the blower wheel at the root!

yAqJuDb.jpg


Here is a detail of the card without sticker:

0ARZ7N9.jpg


But as sexy as it was, it was noisy at full load. I was so happy when my next card was a 2-slot axial cooler.

ATI made some very nice looking cards them days.....very nice indeed;)
 
I really like Galax's current offering of cards as some else posted, very sexy. Anything (older) with a lot of copper heatsink is also a plus.
 
This thread is full of win. I also really liked the 5000 series coolers. Mostly for this though.
fullscreencapture917200u.jpg


I really like the MSI 290x/780 Lightnings.
25961_msi-r9-290x-perspective.jpg

25959_msi-r9-290x-profile.jpg


The 780 still has the awesome reactor.
GTX-780-LIGHTNING-10.jpg


Also a fan of Sapphire's Latest Batch of Vapor-X Coolers.
Sapphire-Vapor-X-R9-290-full-645x453.jpg

Sapphire-Vapor-X-R9-290-Back-645x248.jpg


I like big cards with LEDs apparently.
 
Back
Top