What was your first HOLY COW! moment with an actual video card?

The jump from my first personal rig: 300mhz K6-2 with a TNT2-M64 to a Duron 700mhz with a Geforce 2 GTS was definitely insane.

Followed up by going from an X2 4400+ with a 3850 to an i5-750 with a 5850.

I literally felt like a king in 2010 with the i5-750/5850 setup lol

Playing Bad Company 2 every night with all settings maxed out was a real treat.
 
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Going from my 1MB Diamond Stealth 64 VLB Video Card in 1996 to my 8MB Matrox G100 paired with a 4MB Matrox M3D (PowerVR) in 1997 was my biggest "WOW" moment in video card history.

I dont think anything will ever beat going from software rendering to hardware 3D Rendering for the first time no matter how rudimentary Hardware 3D was back in those days.
 
Easy, quake with the monster voodoo 1 card add on.

Quickly bought 2 monster 3d brand voodoo 2 8mb cards then upgraded to 12mb cards when they hit!

3dfx is the whole reason why I have a ton of old school stuff and still play around with building old systems every couple of years when I get the itch.

I still need to make the quake benchmark we used back when as a benchmark as a screen savor! Haha

Can't remember the 2d card used with them.. prob a matrix card or something.. not that it mattered!
 
Easy, quake with the monster voodoo 1 card add on.

Quickly bought 2 monster 3d brand voodoo 2 8mb cards then upgraded to 12mb cards when they hit!

3dfx is the whole reason why I have a ton of old school stuff and still play around with building old systems every couple of years when I get the itch.

I still need to make the quake benchmark we used back when as a benchmark as a screen savor! Haha

Can't remember the 2d card used with them.. prob a matrix card or something.. not that it mattered!

This is pretty much my exact story except I held on to the Voodoo 1 card until the 12MB then upgraded to the Obisidan X24 so that I could cool my stuff a little better.
 
Original Riva TNT not the TNT2 (unfortunately), and a month or 2 after a 12mb VooDoo2, all praise the GL wrapper and Quake II, so many hours and days sacrificed to the gaming gods in those days!
What a bitch the TNT was to get running on my AMD k6-2 350 machine with MVP-3 shitset er, chipset. Man the early days of AGP were tough :)
 
when i got a 4mb diamond stealth s220 with a rendition chip playing vquake

also seeing some real AA for the first time on a hercules geforce 2 mx in UT99 with the s3tc textures... I think it was only 1.5 x 1.5 AA @ 1024x768 but oh man the jaggies were going away!
 
Going from playing UT99 with integrated graphics on a Pentium 233mhz machine (from 95/96) to installing an nvidia FX5200 in 2003ish? Was night and day difference. Then I think I went with a Radeon 9600XT, stayed with that until a Radeon HD5770, then that till Radeon 7950, then 280x, and now 1080ti.
 
X-Wing Collectors Edition (CD-Rom version) on my parents 486dx2 66mhz + 4mb of ram.. the music and voice acting blew me away and I thought the graphics were great for the time! I was maybe 10 or 12 and was hooked on space sims for many years later
 
I had 2 moments. First was my GeForce4 which allowed me to play 3D games for the first time. And then my jump from my ATI 9600XT to an Nvidia 8800 GT which allowed me to play Crysis on medium. My mind was blown.
 
I played Quake in software mode until like '98, so I kinda missed out on that being the first experience with a video card.

The old Sierra Alien vs Predator was pretty awesome on Riva TNT2.


Personally, I'm gonna have to go Half Life 2, on a 9600 XT.

Nothing had felt more real for me than landing a headshot in HL2 since seeing Doom in like '93.
 
Replacing the X1950 pro with a 8800GT for my 30" ACD. It was the first card i got that could play the cutscenes from HoMM5 at 2560x1600 10 years ago.
 
Glide was actually the shit. any game that supported glide, on 3dfx hardware was freaking awesome. I didnt get to experience this until after the death of 3dfx, but my wow moment was going from a Sis onboard vga display to a TNT2 Ultra, during the counterstrike beta days, somewheres between 2 and 6.
Playing Jaynes F15 on a newer radeon (7000 or better, dont remember), then seeing my buddies voodoo 3 3500 output and dropping my jaw... that was another. Fucking glide.
 
I dont remember the video card, but it was going from an apple ii playing games like Pool of Radiance to a PC and playing Descent and Hexen
 
1. Panasonic was the first to offer an HDTV for sale in the US in 1998(?) it was a 57" rear projection.. and I bought one for almost $7K. Hooked it up an HTPC using a bunch of crazy expensive hard to find adapters connected to some flavor of Geforce4 and Athlon thunderbird 750Mhz SLOT-A system. It took months to collect the parts..When it all came together the first game I played on that huge TV was Freespace 2 in full HD LOL.. It was one of the handful of games that properly supported 16:9 back then I believe... it blew my mind... boy did computers struggle with 1080p HD back then like how we are struggling with 4K now 17 years later..

2. Quake 3 on an 8800GTX (?) and core2duo... the part where you come out from underground and into a trench maze with a battle raging all around you in surround sound.. blew my mind

3. Need for speed hot pursuit on a 3 monitor nvidia surround setup with a steering wheel, a pair of 4GB 670GTX in SLi and an x58 system.. blew my mind

still looking for the next thing to blow my mind.. probably VR as I've never tried that yet
 
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Upgrading from Onboard graphics to a Visiontek Radeon everything was smoothed out graphic wise =)
in a 800mhz Dell Dimension circa 2001-2002

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This is a tossup...

1st time was when I went from a Pentium II with onboard graphics playing 5 year old games like Warcraft 1 and 2 to a Pentium 4 with a Geforce 2 GTS. Even when I got that machine, it was behind the times as the Geforce 3's had just came out.

2nd time was when I upgraded that same Geforce 2 to a Geforce FX5600. I was completely underwhelmed by the FX5600, and it also shit the bed 6 months after I had it. I replaced it with a card that I should have bought in the first place, a ATI 9600 Pro. It felt like double the performance in some cases and that was a helluva wow factor. It was also the All-In-Wonder version with the TV and FM radio tuners, so my PC really became my go to for nearly all my digital entertainment. That aspect was indispensable when I had zero money and moving out of my parent's house permanently.
 
1. Panasonic was the first to offer an HDTV for sale in the US in 1998(?) it was a 57" rear projection.. and I bought one for almost $7K. Hooked it up an HTPC using a bunch of crazy expensive hard to find adapters connected to some flavor of Geforce4 and Athlon thunderbird 750Mhz SLOT-A system. It took months to collect the parts..When it all came together the first game I played on that huge TV was Freespace 2 in full HD LOL.. It was one of the handful of games that properly supported 16:9 back then I believe... it blew my mind... boy did computers struggle with 1080p HD back then like how we are struggling with 4K now 17 years later..

2. Quake 3 on an 8800GTX (?) and core2duo... the part where you come out from underground and into a trench maze with a battle raging all around you in surround sound.. blew my mind

3. Need for speed hot pursuit on a 3 monitor nvidia surround setup with a steering wheel, a pair of 4GB 670GTX in SLi and an x58 system.. blew my mind

still looking for the next thing to blow my mind.. probably VR as I've never tried that yet

From your past of living on the bleeding edge it's shocking you've not had 've for 2 years so far!!

Go buy it!!! Oculus rift is what I bought months ago and I'm like you.. will blow your mind!
 
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From your past of living on the bleeding edge it's shocking you've not had 've for 2 years so far!!

Go buy it!!! Oculus rift is what I bought months ago and I'm like you.. will blow your mind!
Aren't next gen headsets coming on the horizon? I swear I heard something about a new Oculus DK the other day.
 
this thread really identifies the generations of gamers lol, sadly i fall into the old guy vodoo/vodoo 2 crowd, i missed most of my tnt 2 days since my Asus card was on constant RMA to asus and the physical damage game they still play to this day, always went back to the vodoo 2 until the 32 meg geforce 256

5 years in a pc shop, 16 years in IT for 3 companies with around 500 computers between the 3 and still to this day I refuse an asus product in the store, or in the office computers. amazing how much that tnt 2 rma fiasco has cost them but they still have the same issue lol. PNY wasnt much better in the 8000 series era, blown caps and has to pay duty fees on every exchange. Maxtor drives used to last 6-12 months, fujitsu drives sucked right out of the wrapper... i dont miss those days. I do miss my dual celeron 300a on the BP6 however, even if abit couldnt make a board with caps that lastest longer than a year
 
Saw the Unreal Flyby in a Comp USA in 1998. My jaw legit hit the floor. I had your standard family level PC at the time. Would save up all of the money I made from a summer job I had in 1999 to build my first PC. I would end up not getting Unreal though as Unreal Tournament & Quake III would become my go to games in that year. Starcraft as well.


Had to find a true old school video of it of it & not a modern one
 
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GLQuake with the original 3DFX cards. Mine was the Orchid Righteous 3D. Before seeing that, I actually didn't like Quake all that much. It was fun to play as a MP game, but it was ugly as sin.
However that changed everything. I don't think I'd been that blown away by anything since the beginnings of the NES era.
 
Playing Janes WW2 fighters with my Voodoo 4 with FSAA turned on. That was my wow moment.
 
Using my first VGA card (ATI VGA Wonder XL) with a 14" VGA monitor - after dealing with a ATI EGA Wonder the photorealism was a real eye-opener.
 
this thread really identifies the generations of gamers lol, sadly i fall into the old guy vodoo/vodoo 2 crowd, i missed most of my tnt 2 days since my Asus card was on constant RMA to asus and the physical damage game they still play to this day, always went back to the vodoo 2 until the 32 meg geforce 256

5 years in a pc shop, 16 years in IT for 3 companies with around 500 computers between the 3 and still to this day I refuse an asus product in the store, or in the office computers. amazing how much that tnt 2 rma fiasco has cost them but they still have the same issue lol. PNY wasnt much better in the 8000 series era, blown caps and has to pay duty fees on every exchange. Maxtor drives used to last 6-12 months, fujitsu drives sucked right out of the wrapper... i dont miss those days. I do miss my dual celeron 300a on the BP6 however, even if abit couldnt make a board with caps that lastest longer than a year
Been gaming on PC since 1990, me and my parents just never had the money to afford the good stuff. My family was on the bottom edge of lower-middle class for most of my childhood. I would have loved to have gotten in to the 3D accelerator renaissance with 3dfx and Voodoo.

My first real gaming PC was built in 2001 with my dad when I was 17, using mostly mid-range parts (AMD Athlon XP 2000+, GeForce4 Ti4200). I finally built my first dream PC six years later in 2007 when I was 24 (Intel Core 2 QX6700, 8800GTX SLI).
 
Going outside the first time playing Unreal on my brand new Creative Labs Voodoo Banshee.

Then Half-Life hit and I never went back and finished Unreal...
 
These are games Growing up that I remember playing and I was amazed at each of them. There are other games that I played but I can't remember the names to look up screen shots.

Alley cat
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Chips Challenge
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Monkey Island
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Police Quest
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Leisure Suit Larry
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Red Baron
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but my first "wow" moments started with:
Wolfenstein 3D
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Then Chex Quest
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Then Quake
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Quake II
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Then Half-Life
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Then, I got my own PC with my own video card, a GTX 570, and I went back and played games that I had to skip because I couldn't get them to run well on the family computer. These are my real "HOLY COW" moments, when I played Doom III, Unreal & Unreal Tournament, Half-Life II, Far Cry, Crysis, they just blew me out of the water.
 
Mine had to do with the price to performance ratio. I was using a 7600gt when the 8800gtx came out. The GTS 640mb version was out but still out of my price range. I worked for a computer parts store at the time when I saw a new box from EVGA in our shipment. I opened the box to find 3 new 8800gts 320mb cards in it. I checked the price on them. Just under $300 with my company discount. I couldn't believe the performance increase going from the 7600gt to the 8800gts. It's probably one of my favorite cards of all time for that fact alone.
 
Quake I, with the Monster 3DFX Voodoo 1 card. I was floored by the performance and frame rate I got with the Glide API and that card.

My experience was similar. The first graphics card I got was a Voodoo Banshee (16MB) in 1998 or 1999 I think. I was amazed the first time I loaded GLQuake.exe.
 
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