7 best GPUs of all time

[sfsuphysics]

I think people forget how dominant the GeForce4 Ti 4200 and flagship 4600 was too. That generation was coveted and on top for what felt like at the time as an eternity

I think one of those was my first big foray into real graphics, although the fan on mine (I think it was a 4400ti? I don't remember the model number) was small, fast and noisy AF, where as before that every graphics card I have had was passively cooled.

 

[Zepher]

8800GT would probably be one since it was amazing performance for $200 at the time. I ended up getting the 9800GT which was basically the same as the 8800GT.
The AMD 7970 at under $300 was an amazing value at the time as well. don't recall the launch price but it was going down below $300 every now and then.
I missed it when it was under $300 and ended up paying $330 or so I think.

 

[erek]

I think one of those was my first big foray into real graphics, although the fan on mine (I think it was a 4400ti? I don't remember the model number) was small, fast and noisy AF, where as before that every graphics card I have had was passively cooled.

yeah that GeForce4 Ti series dominated for a long time. 4200, couldn't it be OC'ed / unlocked to 4600 level basically?

Radeon 8500 was "okay only maybe"

 

[Westwood]

Pretty sure my Q6600 and 8800GTS was used for something like ten years.

 

[Bankie]

I think I'd put Polaris on the list. Most of us were disappointed with it's performance when it was released but it ended up being an incredible 'bang for the buck' series.

Riva 128 was known for bad image quality but if you didn't have a competing card you didn't know (except for reviews). Plus IIRC it was when Nvidia started investing in their driver team and making driver updates exciting (The fabled Detonator drivers although maybe I'm misremembering and they were for the TNT).

It's an absolute travesty that the TNT or the original GeForce 256 SDR / DDR aren't on the list but I'm guessing the author wasn't born yet at that point and doesn't really have much knowledge of the olden days. I still remember booting up Quake 3 after the upgrade from my TNT1 to the GeForce 256. IIRC it was $260 and I swore I'd never spend that much on a video card again.

 

[Unabomber]

My list for the "wow" factor for my personally owned ones:

3DFX Voodoo 2 - Yeah, I know the Voodoo 1 came out first and was revolutionary, but this card really made a huge difference, and allowed you to keep your regular graphics card as your mainstay, all while giving much better performance than the Voodoo 1.

ATi Radeon 9700 / 9800 - 8 pixel pipeline, and easily the most powerful card for gamers at the time, and at a reasonable price, too. Having to plug a molex power connector into it made me realize that cards were certainly getting hungry...

NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX - Easily the best of its time, but certainly set a new standard for power supply demands, especially if you wanted to use SLi. Corsair's 620 HX was the de-facto standard for people with this setup. I'd also put the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS (G.92, 512 MB version) in the same family, since it was basically the same performance as the 8800 GTX, but much cheaper and less power hungry. My CentOS systems loved these cards, once I got rid of that God-awful Nuveaux driver.

AMD Radeon RX 580 - definitely much more powerful than the GeForce 960 GTX it replaced in my system. I was thankful to get one when the miners weren't after every last one of them, at a very reasonable price as well.

Everything else between or after, has still shown good improvement, but it's more incremental.


The most disappointing card? Sadly, it was a BFG GeForce 7900 GS card. I had put some heatsinks for the RAM on the card, since it was getting warm, and the card worked well for about a month, but after that, started generating bad artifacts.

I tried to RMA it back to BFG, and they told me "no bueno," since I had put the heatsinks on the RAM. I tossed it out into the garbage. I only wish I had discussed it on this forum before, since back then, there was a BFG rep posting here, and he offered to help after I finally posted about this (after having thrown it away).

 

[madpistol]

I think people forget how dominant the GeForce4 Ti 4200 and flagship 4600 was too. That generation was coveted and on top for what felt like at the time as an eternity

The Ti 4200 was my first upgrade GPU from my Geforce 2 MX 400. I felt invincible on that Ti 4200. Playing Medal of Honor Allied Assault at 1600x1200... mother of god it was good.

 

[mouacyk]

Pretty sure my Q6600 and 8800GTS was used for something like ten years.

By time I realized I needed an upgrade, 4770k was out...

 

[III_Slyflyer_III]

Up until I got my RTX 4090, I regarded the 8800 GTX as the Best GPU of all Time. The 8800 GTX was such a massive leap forward that it made everything that came before it feel like ancient tech. It was an unbelievably fast GPU that was completely over powered for games that were on the market at the time (sans Crysis).

The reason I say "up until I got my RTX 4090" is because the RTX 4090 is giving me the same vibes. It's a massive leap forward in performance, so far in fact that my 4K120hz OLED seems to be the limiting factor in most games I play. That's insane to me. The 4090 is just nutso powerful.

I feel ya there... the 4090 feels like a MASSIVE leap over my 3090. Beyond that, the 1080s I had in SLI were up there, along with the GTX 285 which felt amazing as well. Going further back I really enjoyed my 6800GT and GeForce 4 4200Ti. Going even further back im into GeForce 2 Ti and my Voodoo cards in terms of standing out. Everything in between was a moderate upgrade at best.

 

[madpistol]

I feel ya there... the 4090 feels like a MASSIVE leap over my 3090. Beyond that, the 1080s I had in SLI were up there, along with the GTX 285 which felt amazing as well. Going further back I really enjoyed my 6800GT and GeForce 4 4200Ti. Going even further back im into GeForce 2 Ti and my Voodoo cards in terms of standing out. Everything in between was a moderate upgrade at best.

The 6800 GT and Geforce 4 Ti 4200 were both awesome. The Geforce 4 Ti 4200 was my first "enthusiast" GPU, and I felt invincible with that thing. Same feeling when I upgraded to a 6800 GT and was able to run 3DMark03 at a decent framerate.

 

[nthexwn]

Pleased to see the 9700 pro at the top of this list! I got my first official job flipping burgers in high-school specifically so I could save up for that thing. Upgraded from a Geforce4 MX440 and felt like the king of world playing UT2003 at max settings!

I feel like this list could go back a bit farther though. I seem to recall the Riva TNT having a bigger impact for its time, but my dad put it in his boring work computer and I was still stuck with a lame ATI Xpert@Play for a couple more years.

 

[Dan_D]

I don't entirely agree with the list, but a lot of GPU's that should be on the list are. Though, I think the 8800GTX was more significant simply because it was the dominant high end graphics card well after the 8800 Ultra launched. That card probably dominated the high end longer than any other and retained its usefulness far longer than most. The AMD Radeon 7970 would be another one that I would rank very highly for similar reasons despite the flaws I encountered with its design. The GTX 1080 absolutely deserved to be on that list but the 6800XT, I don't think does.

 

[reaper12]

I don't entirely agree with the list, but a lot of GPU's that should be on the list are. Though, I think the 8800GTX was more significant simply because it was the dominant high end graphics card well after the 8800 Ultra launched. That card probably dominated the high end longer than any other and retained its usefulness far longer than most. The AMD Radeon 7970 would be another one that I would rank very highly for similar reasons despite the flaws I encountered with its design. The GTX 1080 absolutely deserved to be on that list but the 6800XT, I don't think does.

Surely the 1080Ti was the best of the Pascal cards. The 1080 was way overpriced at launch, remember the 1080 FE was $699, the 1080Ti was also $699.

And can you really include the 7970 when it took them 9 months for them to get it right, and it too was overpriced at launch?

 

[mkppo]

The fact that we're debating whether the 7970 should be in the list is interesting because, had most people known just how far ahead the GCN arch was over the GTX680 during launch would drastically change the sales ratio of those two products. Most reviewers just failed to see that, ignored the theoretical performance advantage of the 7970 and the complete lack of compute for the 680, and just heaped praise on it for consuming some 20W less and performing ever so slightly faster depending on games. That would flip once they were overclocked, because the 680 was pretty much factory overclocked and 7970 had insane headroom.

I'm so glad i saw right through and got the 7970 instead, it lasted me a good 7 years and I even sold it for a good chunk of $$ thanks to the mining boom and the fact that people still wanted it because of how they performed. 680 was nowhere in sight by then.

 

[Dan_D]

Surely the 1080Ti was the best of the Pascal cards. The 1080 was way overpriced at launch, remember the 1080 FE was $699, the 1080Ti was also $699.

And can you really include the 7970 when it took them 9 months for them to get it right, and it too was overpriced at launch?

My point is, the list is very short sighted. It omits a lot of ground breaking and game changing GPU's that advanced technology forward or stood the test of time with architectures that were reiterated upon for multiple generations. There is no Voodoo cards mentioned, no Riva TNT or Riva TNT2, no GeForce 4 Ti 4200 which was the Celeron 300A of GPU's. The GeForce 8800GTX was the dominant card when it came out and had no equal. The 8800 Ultra was so expensive it wasn't worth it over the GTX model. The card also supported up to 4-Way SLI and in such a configuration, it was faster than Quad-SLI using two 9800GX2's due to the latter's gimpy memory bandwidth. The Radeon HD 7970 was generally upgradable to the GHz edition that replaced it and the architecture would be rebranded and repurposed for generations and it was still more than capable of doing what it was designed to do far longer than most architectures.

If I could pick the 7 best GPU's of all time, I'd have to define "best" because there are way too many ways to evaluate a card or GPU. Beyond that, I think the list omits a lot of more deserving cards. Don't get me wrong, I think the Radeon 9700 Pro and GTX 1080 Ti deserve to be on the list, but virtually nothing else on the list does.

 

[NightReaver]

To me, "best" cards of all time would have to mean cards that went above and beyond. Everyone knows what great cards are because people still talk about how great they were. Doesn't need to be overthought.

I don't think expensive halo cards should be considered because at the prices usually demanded, well, anything less than "the best" would be asinine. Really don't think anything past the 1080ti should make a list like that.

 

[reaper12]

The fact that we're debating whether the 7970 should be in the list is interesting because, had most people known just how far ahead the GCN arch was over the GTX680 during launch would drastically change the sales ratio of those two products. Most reviewers just failed to see that, ignored the theoretical performance advantage of the 7970 and the complete lack of compute for the 680, and just heaped praise on it for consuming some 20W less and performing ever so slightly faster depending on games. That would flip once they were overclocked, because the 680 was pretty much factory overclocked and 7970 had insane headroom.

I'm so glad i saw right through and got the 7970 instead, it lasted me a good 7 years and I even sold it for a good chunk of $$ thanks to the mining boom and the fact that people still wanted it because of how they performed. 680 was nowhere in sight by then.

Well, a few things you have to remember, AMD priced the card as a high end card even though it was only a midrange one. It was a good bit slower than the 680 when it launched. They had to release a Ghz edition just to get equal to the 680. And It wasn't until November that it was actually faster. Remember the 680 was really only a 660.

I also think you are misremembering how long it lasted. Hardware unboxed did an article on both the 280X(7970 Ghz edition) and the GTX 680 back in 2018. The 280X was faster but, the GTX 680 wasn't "out of sight" by any means. The 280X was only around 9% faster than the GTX 680.

I had both cards in family computers until around 2019. And to be honest, gaming on one didn't feel any different than the other.

 

[reaper12]

My point is, the list is very short sighted. It omits a lot of ground breaking and game changing GPU's that advanced technology forward or stood the test of time with architectures that were reiterated upon for multiple generations. There is no Voodoo cards mentioned, no Riva TNT or Riva TNT2, no GeForce 4 Ti 4200 which was the Celeron 300A of GPU's. The GeForce 8800GTX was the dominant card when it came out and had no equal. The 8800 Ultra was so expensive it wasn't worth it over the GTX model. The card also supported up to 4-Way SLI and in such a configuration, it was faster than Quad-SLI using two 9800GX2's due to the latter's gimpy memory bandwidth. The Radeon HD 7970 was generally upgradable to the GHz edition that replaced it and the architecture would be rebranded and repurposed for generations and it was still more than capable of doing what it was designed to do far longer than most architectures.

If I could pick the 7 best GPU's of all time, I'd have to define "best" because there are way too many ways to evaluate a card or GPU. Beyond that, I think the list omits a lot of more deserving cards. Don't get me wrong, I think the Radeon 9700 Pro and GTX 1080 Ti deserve to be on the list, but virtually nothing else on the list does.

Yeah, I wasn't saying that his list was right. And you are right best is subjective. During the earlier days of GPUs, things were easier to define as "best" as there were clear differences and bringing completely new graphic technology to the market(Voodoo's, Riva's etc). Or there was massive jumps in performance (9700Pro, 8800GTX) or there were a lot of bang for your buck (8800GT) or unlockable cards (6950)

Now, it's been stagnant for the last number of years and "best" is getting harder to define. Prices are rising, performance jumps are getting smaller and its more features now as much as anything else. You could make a case for several GPUs at any time based on the features that you consider important.

 

[Dan_D]

To me, "best" cards of all time would have to mean cards that went above and beyond. Everyone knows what great cards are because people still talk about how great they were. Doesn't need to be overthought.

I don't think expensive halo cards should be considered because at the prices usually demanded, well, anything less than "the best" would be asinine. Really don't think anything past the 1080ti should make a list like that.

I disagree completely. While it may not be the price point you buy in or prefer, the high end cards can represent a value on their own. In some cases, they provide the same gaming performance as cards two and three times their cost. Some people buy ultra-high end cards and run them for several years without having to buy upgrades during the service life of the machine. Paying that cost up front sometimes saves you money down the line. Value is subjective.

For me, the RTX 3090 at MSRP was fine. I used to purchase GPU's in pairs so the cost (I got mine at near MSRP) was a bargain. Not only that, it was an enormous upgrade over my RTX 2080 Ti. Mid-range cards are of little value to me in most cases because they don't provide the performance I'm looking for. So they aren't even on my radar. Now, that being said, there are cases where my decisions were based on cost. For example: I bought the 6800 GT as I needed two of them and there were 90% or better the performance of the 6800 Ultra. In SLI, the gap was even smaller. That got me what I wanted while saving me some cash. I have often purchased Titan class cards but for $2,500, the Titan V made no sense to me over the $1,200 RTX 2080 Ti. Of course, people whined about the RTX 2080 Ti being so much more than the GTX 1080 Ti, but I had bought two of those so in the end the RTX 2080 Ti didn't seem all that expensive to me.

Also, when you want to play games at 4K@120Hz or better, you frequently need to buy new GPU's to keep up. I care about price, but I care about performance a lot more. A lot of cards aren't worth looking at as they wouldn't meet my needs despite being solid value cards.

A card being the most expensive doesn't mean it isn't a good value. Some of those cards would be refreshed and ultimately retain their performance crowns for multiple GPU generations. The 9700 Pro became the 9800 Pro and eventually the 9800 XT. The next three GPU's that replaced the 8800GTX at the top of the stack were underwhelming for one reason or another and weren't big improvements over it. Even if you paid full price for the 8800GTX on launch, if you were paying attention there wasn't a need to upgrade for quite a long time. That card literally saved you money as the 8800 Ultra wasn't fast enough to justify its existence over the older card and the 9800GTX was just about the same thing and the 9800GX2 flagship card depended on SLI and had a gimpy memory bus that severely curtailed its performance. If you had a pair of 8800GTX's, you were better off sticking with that and didn't need to upgrade until the next generation after the 9800GX2.

The RTX 2080 Ti was a great card but it's $1,200 price tag was too much for many people to handle. It was a great card that cost too much. However, it was the only thing in the 20 series that was an upgrade for users of the GTX 1080 Ti. Again, the 1080 Ti had long legs and was an incredible value despite being a halo card.

In contrast, the FX 5200 is one of the best selling GPU's of all time and it was cheap. However, it was a bad GPU. It was slower than the Ti 4200 it replaced in the lineup and worse in just about every way. Manufacturers even put massive amounts of RAM on some models which made people think they were getting something that competed with the high end because they incorrectly equate performance and speed with larger amounts of RAM. It was a cheap card and sold well but it was no value. The Ti 4200 was a great value. The RTX 3080 10GB was a great value because of its price point. Availability and scalping not withstanding of course.

In other words, price point is just one aspect of value. A card can be the cheapest on the market and still suck or be super expensive, but still be a value depending on your use case and what the card brings to the table. A card like the RTX 2080 Ti was the best card of its generation without question, but it represented a relatively poor value compared to the RTX 1080 Ti that it replaced. Of course when compared with the Titan V it could be seen as a value. Meanwhile the Titan V was absurd even for a Titan class card.

 

[NightReaver]

I disagree completely. While it may not be the price point you buy in or prefer, the high end cards can represent a value on their own. In some cases, they provide the same gaming performance as cards two and three times their cost. Some people buy ultra-high end cards and run them for several years without having to buy upgrades during the service life of the machine. Paying that cost up front sometimes saves you money down the line. Value is subjective.

I mean yeah, I see your point, but I come from a different mindset. I don't blow tons of money on gpus, and quite frankly most people don't. For a very large amount of time the most I ever spent on a gpu was $300. People here on [H] generally have different views from the average consumer base that I come from.

 

[Dan_D]

I mean yeah, I see your point, but I come from a different mindset. I don't blow tons of money on gpus, and quite frankly most people don't. For a very large amount of time the most I ever spent on a gpu was $300. People here on [H] generally have different views from the average consumer base that I come from.

The problem is that when you talk about a piece of technology or a given item as "the best", it will always be the top performing model that deserves that accolade in the most simple connotation. Its always going to be the item with the superior technical specifications, the most reliable design or the design that performs better than the rest that earns the title of "the best product." It's really that simple when you get down to it. The problem is that most people are either unwilling or unable to purchase "the best" GPU's, the best "CPU's" or whatever.

People can rarely see beyond their own financial means when it comes to products. Most people do not seriously look at exotic cars when shopping for a new car even if performance is the primary characteristic that interests you. Its easy to discount a Ferrari if you can't afford one. However, it doesn't change the fact that these vehicles exist. You shouldn't confuse the best you can afford with the best that's available. I don't think anyone would put a GeForce GTX 1650 on a list of the best GPU's of all time despite how prolific it is among the masses. It wasn't the best in any category when it came out aside from perhaps being the best offering within its particular price point.

The truth is the best products are rarely if ever the best value. The best values are rarely ever the best products available. However, there are rare cases where a convergence occurs that most everyone can agree on. The 8800GTX is more fondly remembered than the 8800 Ultra and the value it represented comparatively is part of the reason for that. However, if you take cost out of the equation the 8800 Ultra is the better card even if its only by a very small margin.

People should be very careful when applying the term "best" to anything. Best what? Again, best value and best performance rarely coincide. Sometimes the best performing products aren't necessarily the most reliable either. In some cases, you have products that are the best in specific use scenarios while others may be better overall. The 5800X3D was AMD's best gaming CPU at the time but not the best for multithreaded workloads. You have to qualify what the "best" is and frankly, there are a lot of potential and equally valid viewpoints on this.

 

[NightReaver]

You have to qualify what the "best" is and frankly, there are a lot of potential and equally valid viewpoints on this.

Well that's what it really comes down to. What does "best" mean to the person making the list. I stated what mine would be, but yeah, it's probably going to be different from someone else.

 

[mullet]

The 9700pro and 9800pro were the real deal back in the day. I had the 9700 pro, loved it.

 

[mkppo]

Well, a few things you have to remember, AMD priced the card as a high end card even though it was only a midrange one. It was a good bit slower than the 680 when it launched. They had to release a Ghz edition just to get equal to the 680. And It wasn't until November that it was actually faster. Remember the 680 was really only a 660.

I also think you are misremembering how long it lasted. Hardware unboxed did an article on both the 280X(7970 Ghz edition) and the GTX 680 back in 2018. The 280X was faster but, the GTX 680 wasn't "out of sight" by any means. The 280X was only around 9% faster than the GTX 680.

I had both cards in family computers until around 2019. And to be honest, gaming on one didn't feel any different than the other.

I agree that the 7970 MSRP was too high at launch, they wanted some $ before nvidia's launch 3 months later. Also agree that 680 was on average around 7% faster with the margin shrinking at 1440p at launch. But I guess it's debatable as to whether 7970 and 680 were the respective flagships at the time. The 290X/780 came a year and a few months later as the "true" flagships, but that's another topic I suppose.

I do have quite a good idea of how long it lasted though as I had a buddy's 680 to compare it to till '16. I'm comparing the 2GB 680 (4GB wasn't released at launch IIRC) vs the 3GB 7970GE. A few years down the road there would be games where the 7970GE would be 5-10% faster but some games were like 25-30% faster. A couple of games also had weird stutters, missing textures etc because the 680 ran out of framebuffer. Playing around with the settings helped a lot with that though, textures mainly.

HUB tested a small sample of games with the 4GB 680 vs the 7970GE was 10% faster but you can see that some games are >20% faster on the 280X. Another point of reference is TPU's GTX 1080 review in 2016 where they tested a variety of games. At 1080p the 280X is around 20% faster than the GTX 770 (overclocked 680) and some 33% faster at 1440p. That's really what it seemed like in my case and funnily enough, the 280X is within splitting distance of the 780 by then. That's pretty good scaling I must say.

They should really have launched it at $400 though.

 

[Usual_suspect]

I also saw a list today of nVidia’s biggest failures without mentioning the NV30 U

Source: https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/biggest-nvidia-fails-all-time/

—

I laughed way harder than I should have at that video. lol

To put my two cents--the only GPU's I can hard agree on are the AMD 9700, the 8800 series, and GTX 1080.

AMD always brute-forces their solutions, while Nvidia eventually found elegant solutions. Just looking at the 40-series alone, I have a 4070Ti, and the power consumption for the level of performance is unheard of. The 7900 cards, while a step in the right direction, shows that AMD, no matter what node they use, no matter what process they use, just can't nail down the power consumption to performance like Nvidia can.

 

[d3athf1sh]

Just looking at the 40-series alone, I have a 4070Ti, and the power consumption for the level of performance is unheard of

doesn't the 4090 require 450w worth of pcie? trying to remember the last time we had a 450w gpu? kinda sounds like some brute forcing going on over their side too

but really that 4070ti should have been the 4060 at best with it's anemic memory bus. i was just looking at how they're charging more for that card than what you could have got out of a 3000 series card for less money. ought to rename themselves to ngreedia

 

[Usual_suspect]

doesn't the 4090 require 450w worth of pcie? trying to remember the last time we had a 450w gpu? kinda sounds like some brute forcing going on over their side too

but really that 4070ti should have been the 4060 at best with it's anemic memory bus. i was just looking at how they're charging more for that card than what you could have got out of a 3000 series card for less money. ought to rename themselves to ngreedia

The level of performance of the 4090 is basically untouched, and even then doesn't use the entire 450W, usually hovers anywhere from 50-60W below that under load, but you're getting the bonafide best gaming experience possible at that consumption level, and performance per watt it's ahead of the 7900XTX, in fact it's a top 3 performance per watt card, the only card ahead of it is the 4080 at both 1440p and 4k. In fact, the 4070Ti and 7900XTX are tied at performance per watt at 4k, while the 7900XT is behind at every resolution. So yes, the 4090 is a power hog, but the performance justifies its consumption. I was just discussing this in the AMD subreddit, in a thread where they linked a story with AMD claiming they could have released a card that would have competed against the 4090, but it would have been too costly, but considering the 4090 is roughly 20% ahead, for AMD to compete they'd have to release a card that uses more power than the 4090 since on average the 7900XTX is within 40-50W of the 4090's power consumption.

How long has it been since an xx70 part beat the best of the best of the generation preceding it? No way it should have been an xx60 level card. So far, only very few games have shown to be an issue for the "anemic" memory bus/VRAM, all of which were in games notorious for being poorly optimized, at 4K Native with Ultra settings and RT enabled, otherwise no game has really given the 4070Ti issues AFAIK.

I will agree with the price though, insane pricing, but hey when you're getting the same performance as a card that cost $2000 months before this was released, the price doesn't seem AS bad, still bad, just not as bad.

Source on power consumption: Source: https://www.kitguru.net/components/...x-4070-ti-review-ft-gigabyte-gaming-oc/all/1/

Anyways, I'm gonna get back on topic: I miss the days of cheap graphics cards, making upgrading a more feasible thing, granted it happened way more often back then. I had the 9700 Pro, and 8800GT, and man were those phenomenal cards.

 

[HockeyJon]

Here I am, still rocking my 980Ti. Surprisingly I can play Battlefield 4 under Linux at 4k and the frame rates are in the 90-120 fps region, which is fine considering I have a 60Hz monitor. As long as I can play on my fav Battlefield 4 servers I'm happy, although I'm sure Nvidia will drop support of my venerable 980Ti soon enough, so I may be forced to upgrade.

At least I got my money's worth from a card that cost me $1200.00 brand new.

Buy a higher refresh rate monitor if you’re just doing FPS and your eyes will thank you. I’m a huge BF4 fan and had a 60Hz monitor for years before I finally bought a 165Hz monitor and wow, I’ll never go back!

 

[HockeyJon]

My picks are the ATI 9700 Pro (or the 9500 to 9700 soft mod if you got lucky enough like I did) and the GTX 1080Ti. Both of those cards were amazing for years longer than I’m sure either company intended since they were so powerful that there was simply not a whole lot of incentive to upgrade even two generations later with those cards providing more than acceptable performance.

 

[HockeyJon]

The 7970 was great, eventually. Remember, it released at a stupid high price of $550, nearly a $200 price increase on the 6970.

Do you remember when $550 MSRP and an increase of $200 over the previous generation was considered “stupid high”? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

 

[NightReaver]

Do you remember when $550 MSRP and an increase of $200 over the previous generation was considered “stupid high”? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

Yup. Now it's "toss $800 at a mid range card, pleb. Dont you see what a value it is?"