Best Graphics Card Upgrade EVER

1. 8800GS AGP to 8800GTS 640MB PCI-E
2. HD4870 1GB to GTX275
3. HD4890 to GTX295

all the rest are just evolutionary steps in upgrades every few months.
Of all the cards though the 8800GTS 512MB was the best single card for it's time, and most memorable card(cool, quiet and dominated it's time)
 
kuyaglen said:
7950GX2 to 8800GTX
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I own both these cards and they are approximately equal at 1920x1200 and below. Can't see how that was much of an upgrade.



Edit: well for some games that didn't have great SLI driver support I could see it being a decent upgrade.
 
4MB dell celeron onboard -> ti4600 -> 9800pro -> 7800gtx 256MB - > 8800gts 512 -> gtx260 216

The biggest jumps for me were the onboard to ti4600, then the 7800gtx to 8800gts.
 
Not sure if the OP meant my biggest upgrade or just the biggest change from one generation of chips to the next from a particular hardware vendor.

My personal biggest upgrade would probably be a toss up between an integrated ATi Rage3D 4MB -> TNT1 16MB (oc'd to 115MHz :cool:) and GF2 GTS 32MB -> 9800 Pro 128.

Talking strictly about improvements from the vendor, I would have to say the ATi 8xxx series -> 9xxx was pretty ridiculous in terms of features and speed that was added (not counting simple rebrands). The GeForce 5xxx -> 6xxx was nothing to sneeze at either. The generation that started us toward the shader driven world we all know and love today would be the GF2 -> GF3 though. I remember The Carmack® saying that it was the biggest leap in image quality and speed between generations at that point in time and it stood as a minumum/recommended requirement in games for quite awhile.
 
After going from my 8800gt to a 5850 I have to say the biggest was my 7600gt to the 8800gt. It was the first time that I could play every game maxed when I bought it. Even the 7600gt when new couldn't play games higher than 1280x1024, after the jump I could play everything maxed at 1680x1050.
 
biggest 2 changes I remember are adding a voodoo2 to my ati xpert@play, and then going from that voodoo2/ati combo to a geforce2. Since then I've always bought either top of the line last generation cards, or middle/higher end current gen cards. I love this 5850 I have right now, eyefinity is amazing.
 
Easy - GeForce 4 Ti200 to Radeon 9700. Also I was very pleased with the upgrade from a 320mb 8800GTS to HD4870/GTX260 - I never really got the G80 'bug', perhaps because I came from a ludicrously overclocked X1900XT (just shy of 800 MHz on the core) to a card that wouldn't OC worth a damn and had less memory (yeah my fault for cheaping out, the framebuffer was an issue in several games). The GTX260 gets bonus points for being the most overclockable card I have ever owned.
 
Kaos_Drem said:
The biggest jumps for me were the onboard to ti4600, then the 7800gtx to 8800gts.
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That must have been night and day difference.

Silent.Sin said:
The generation that started us toward the shader driven world we all know and love today would be the GF2 -> GF3 though. I remember The Carmack® saying that it was the biggest leap in image quality and speed between generations at that point in time and it stood as a minumum/recommended requirement in games for quite awhile.
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I have fond memories of my GF3 Ti200, but it didn't have that much effect on my experience as far as I can remember (and I was coming from a GeForce DDR). Maybe I didn't play enough games that were not Quake3 :D (I think Giants: Citizen Kabuto and Black & White were about it)
 
Etch A Sketch to Lite Brite.

8 brightly illuminated colors dominated the black and grey!
 
Well, the biggest was from whatever 2D PCI card I had (Trident, I think) to a Voodoo Banshee. It had Half-life bundled with it, which was amazing. Then, I went from the banshee to a GeForce Ti4200, which was another big jump. That died (damn you Chaintech), so I went down to a GeForce 2 and then back up to a X800. Nothing quite so dramatic from there.
 
oxy4bf2 said:
I still envy those who threw down the big bucks for the 8800GTX because that thing stayed competitive for forever.
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I've only bought a top of the range component twice, an 8800GTX because I found an Asus card priced 10%-15% below the rest of retail near launch, so it was cheap at the time. It was superb, I didn't regret it even though it was hard to justify the expense. The other time I got one of the original Geforce cards in 1999, again a 'bargain' at 25% off at launch (another fluke) Impressive card, but really failed to justify the price.
 
Adding Voodoo 2 8mb card to help Matrox Mystique or better known as "Mistake" :eek: :D...
 
rincewind said:
I have fond memories of my GF3 Ti200, but it didn't have that much effect on my experience as far as I can remember (and I was coming from a GeForce DDR). Maybe I didn't play enough games that were not Quake3 :D (I think Giants: Citizen Kabuto and Black & White were about it)
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The GF3 Ti500 fared a little better, but I think GF3 suffered from a bit of first out the door syndrome. Had a ton of new awesome (DX8) features available with pixel and vertex shaders, but it wasn't the fastest or most efficient one on the block by the time games using the features were out. GF4 Ti's get most of the praise, but they were mainly just a suped up oc'd GF3. It was a huge move to go from fixed-function hardware to programmable shaders so it was quite the paradigm shifting card, even if the speed wasn't there yet. Doom3 and HL2 were about the first games I remember to "require" a GF3, tho they would run on an GF2 if you felt like stabbing your eyes with an uglystick. The original XBox GPU was a NV2x derivative so it was a base dev platform for console ports of that generation as well.
 
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I started in hardcore gaming when the Voodoo 3's were the biggest baddest cards in existence. From there, I traded a M:TG card - Mox Pearl for a 4200 Ti, which at the time, was the biggest upgrade known to man.

Sadly, the graphics card is a paper weight now and the magic card is actually worth $800 dollars.

Damn it.
 
i went from geforce ti4600 to 6600gt... was a good improvement. also just recently went from a 7900gt to a gtx260... helluva improvement.


oh yeah, btw... i still have the system that has the ti4600... i let my mom use it because she had this POS laptop... i bought here a new laptop for christmas, and she doesnt use the system anymore... it would be funny to go back and fool with that system.
 
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HD 3850 agp to 8800 Ultra.

Was also a socket jump so playing with a Q6600 @ 3.8Ghz + 8800 Ultra was a huge jump from s939 x2 3800 @ 2.85 + 3850.
 
Nvidia Riva 128zx -> Asus Geforce 256 SDR

everything after that was just kinda.... whatever.
 
This thread got me thinking about how many cards I have had so I went back through some newegg invoices and wow I think I have a video card problem. Only went back to 3/5/05 which I bought 2- 6800U, then 8/13/05 2-7800GTX, 12/1706 2-8800GTX, 9/17/08 2-GTX 280 FTW, and now my current 3- 5870s. Best upgrade in that batch was the 7800GTX to 8800GTX. Had that card the longest. Maybe I better not look at the Fermi when it comes out!
 
My biggest improvement was from a x800xt to an 8800gts (g80), although the jump from an FX5700 to the x800xt was pretty impressive - the 8800gts can still play most anything at 1280x1024 and get a good gameplay experience, albeit not at highest settings.

Since then, I've been upgrading too often to get that big of a jump
8800gts --> 9800gtx (meh)
9800gtx --> gtx260 (meh)
gtx260 --> gtx260 SLI (better)
 
2 years ago I went from a 4x AGP Radeon 9500 with a broken fan(didn't realize it was broken until i pulled it one day).. to a new system with dual pci-ex x16 8800GTX in SLi..
 
LordBritish said:
2mb VGA (2D) card -> 3DFX Voodoo 1.

OMFG is all I have to say :eek: !!!
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Voodoo1 from Circuit CIty...freshman year of college 1996 rode the city bus to get it. Unreal Tournament original was awesome. :) I tihnk I powered it with a P2-333mhz slot design.
 
First time I saw hardware accelerated graphics was at college in late 1997. We played Quake II in the computer labs at Michigan Tech (all of the PCs had fancy headphones for LAN gaming).

It was mind blowing to see OpenGL over 2D software graphics. I don't recall what they were running at the labs.

The next year I built my first PC, a K6-2 350mhz with a Voodoo3 2000. Nothing since has ever been as drastic a jump IMO.
 
P4 1.5ghz Radeon 8500 -> E6600 X1900XT

6 year gap ftw. And still using my E6600 rig (updated to a 8800GTS 512)
Seems like game requirements have stablized some what, I just dont have the urge to upgrade my GPU.
 
Went from a 9600XT to an X1950 and it was like night and day, then again from the X1950 to a 3870x2. I think it was really about the same size jump each time, a pretty decent gaming increase on both accounts. Maybe a slightly larger jump was going from the 3870x2 to this GTX 275, although the games I play haven't changed that much and the 3870x2 topped most of them off.
 
Rofl now i just feel like a greedy kid... Guess normal people dont upgrade much... I do everytime something is better...
First ever.
Voodoo banshee + 2 voodoo2's ---> geforce3
geforce3-->9700pro
9700pro-->9800pro
9800pro-->6800gtxsli
6800gtxsli-->7800gtxsli
7800gtxsli-->8800gtxsli
8800gtxsli-->9800x2sli
9800x2sli-->4780cfx
4780cfx-->4790cfx
4790cfx--> TODAY 5870cfx WEWT! made iT!
Oh and those voodoo boxes where so sick... i remember being like 15 looking @ those voodoo5 boxes wishing i could afford 1
 
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