What was the very first video card you ever bought?

Radeon 8500.

Going from 16mb onboard to 64mb was like night and day. I still remember thinking that in-game graphics could not possibly get any better. Playing UT at 1024x768 was heaven. Then, of course the 128mb version came out, then the 9000 series.

Now here I am about to pull the trigger on a GTX 1080 SLI setup thinking that maybe, just maybe, I'll be satisfied for more than a year.
 
silent-circuit said:
What happened to the Video Toaster guys? They were, ligitimately, way ahead of the curve so far as 3D and general video production at the time. I'm assuming they were bought out by a bigger name at some point?
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Well, one of the founders left and started Play and the other stayed with Newtek. Play made a capture device as well as the Trinity Editing system. Newtek makes the TriCaster and other production tools.
 
First purchased with my own hard earned money was a GeForce3. Whatever the lowest model was, pre-built from Best Buy. Also first and last time I ever bought a pre-built.
 
Man you guys' are freaking OLD.

My first GPU was a BFG FX 5600 Ultra I bought with graduation money, lol.
 
yeah some us are getting up there... first pc(family's) was in '92. turnin 37 in a month :(
 
With my own money... It was a used ATI Mach 64 2MB ISA card.

I replaced the Trident 8900 1MB ISA card that came with our 80386sx 25Mhz computer.

The 2D was sooo much faster - yes, I ran benchmarks even back then.
 
First "3D" card: S3 Virge in 1997. Sucked ass, and no OpenGL at the time.

After I got tired of playing Quake in software mode, I grabbed a 4MB Hercules Thriller 3D based on reviews from Tom's and Anandtech. Rendition v2200 goodness! It was only a hundred bucks, at a time when the Voodoo 1 still sold for $150.

23f6a067599ae98276b159b7685c0abf_XL.jpg


That was a couple months after the Voodoo 2 launch, which was way out of my price range!
 
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The very first video card I actually spent money on to put into a computer would have to be an ISA based video card (2d only), but I cannot for the life of me recal the chipset it used. I also remember putting in a video card at some point for the sole function of having MPEG-1 support. I can't remember exactly what they were.

My first combo card 2D/3D was an ATI Rage Xpert@Play (3D Rage Pro) 8MB PCI card. I used the TV out to play games on my TV, I thought I was the shiz back then for doing that heh.

My first AGP card was an Intel Real3D i740 AGP video card.

I did also get the Voodoo 2 when it was out, I think that was after the two above.

I think I kept in combo with the ATI Rage Pro and let the Rage Pro do the 2D which had the best 2D at the time, competitive with Matrox on 2D image quality and support. One thing was for sure, the Rage Pro sucked at OpenGL support. I was trying to get Quake to run well under OpenGL and it just didn't work well at all, I ended up using GLIDE on the Voodoo 2.

I don't think my AGP card lasted too long, it didn't perform well I just stuck with the Voodoo 2/Rage Pro combo for the longest time, till Rage 128.
 
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Matrox TNT 2 Ultra

In the late 90s I traded PS1 games towards it at a store called Software ETC that later was eaten up by Gamestop.
 
It's been a while, but I think the first video card I bought an S3 Savage 4. Maybe. Pretty sure it was a PCI version of this: Creative 3D Blaster Savage4 Review - X-bit labs

It was replacing an integrated AGP ATI 3D Rage Pro Turbo. It was quite a performance boost at the time, and playing the original Unreal with S3's Metal API was pretty incredible. That was back when the Unreal engine gave you a broad choice of rendering methods: software, OpenGL, Direct3D, Glide, Metal, maybe some others.
 
Mine was a TNT2 M64 pci - kept that thing for waaaay too long (athlon xp era) and ended up upgrading it to a 9800pro.
 
The first card I bought was probably Sierra Screamin' 3D (Rendition Vérité 1000). I wasn't too impressed with it, and later returned it. Fortunately, a little while later, the 3dfx Voodoo 1 came out.
 
Soulmetzger said:
Matrox TNT 2 Ultra

In the late 90s I traded PS1 games towards it at a store called Software ETC that later was eaten up by Gamestop.
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I think you have this mixed-up. The PowerVR card was the last Matrox card with a 3rd-party chipset.

After they released the G200, they had more than enough performance to be competitive.
 
EVGA Geforce4 MX440SE (PCI). I believe I payed about $100 for it. Vice City was smooth after that upgrade.
 
Michaelius said:
Voodoo 1 to upgrade pc I got earlier from my parents :) Took few months of collecting money from various family gifts)
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Same here, Monster 3D voodoo 1 card for $200. I upgraded the family PC, which was pretty much my PC. Mechwarrior and Quake in 3D, good times.
 
I bought a Rage with a Dell PC 800 Mhz but updgraded to a Visontek later on which did wonders.
 
The first stand-alone card that I can remember, which came with the system, was I think Cirrus Logic. ...either PCI or ISA.

The first card I bought to upgrade from whatever came with the system I had at the time was a PCI Diamond Stealth add-on.

It has been way too many years for me to remember in exact detail, but the above is probably close to the truth.
 
JATON for my 286 ... no wait, the oem add-in EVGA adapter for my Tandy 1000 EX ... am I carbon dating myself ...
 
Voodoo3 3000. Starsiege: Tribes was my favourite game at the time and ran beautifully on Glide.
 
First real video card I bought was a Diamond FireGL 1000 Pro with 3DLabs Permedia 2 around 1997. Before that, it was the Matrox Mystique but it's fuzzy a bit.
 
If you don't count the onboard Rage Pro Turbo that my very first PC had (that I owned myself), my first was an ELSA Erazor X - the very first generation GeForce 256 with 32MB of SDR memory.

The Rage Pro Turbo had been a revelation to me, as I'd previously been stuck with a Pentium 100 and no 3D card at all, but the Erazor X was incredible by comparison. At least, it was until the comically small fan that they used to cool it seized. Then it was kind of a pain in the ass, as I had to ghetto rig a CPU fan onto the little mutant heatsink it had.
 
RazorWind said:
At least, it was until the comically small fan that they used to cool it seized. Then it was kind of a pain in the ass, as I had to ghetto rig a CPU fan onto the little mutant heatsink it had.
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Same thing happened with my Visiontek Geforce 4 TI 4200.

I just removed the cheap, plastic fan and placed one of those crummy PCI slot coolers right underneath the card:

visiontek-gpu.jpg


shopping


- surprisingly, worked out just fine.
 
Diamond Viper 770 (Still have it)
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Back when Graphics Cards had cool names like Viper , Prophet , Voodoo , Annihilator & Hercules Terminator Beast!
 
horrorshow said:
Same thing happened with my Visiontek Geforce 4 TI 4200.

I just removed the cheap, plastic fan and placed one of those crummy PCI slot coolers right underneath the card:

visiontek-gpu.jpg


shopping


- surprisingly, worked out just fine.
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It's funny you post that picture, as I recall, the heatsink I eventually attached to the Erazor X was a knockoff of the Thermaltake Blue Orb that looked almost identical to that picture. As I recall, the original heatsink was held on with little spring pins, but I couldn't find one with the pins spaced right to fit in its place, so I just super clued it at the corners of the chip.
 
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