Best Graphics Card Upgrade EVER

9600 se --> 4870.

I might get a Fermi card when it comes out, but other than that I'll probably sit tight for a few more years.
 
I went from a voodoo banshee to a geforce 2 mx. I built a new system and then had a 9700pro. I killed that card by pushing it too hard and bought a 5900xt(garbage card btw...) and then I went to a laptop with a mobility 9600m with 64MB of DDR. I kept that laptop for a long time. I finally built a new system in December 2006 and I had a nvidia 7300gt with gddr3. I then upgraded it to a 7900gs about a year later. I kept the 7900gs for about a year and bought a radeon 4670. I then went to a radeon 4850 and I now have a radeon 5770.

Honestly, I feel that the 9700pro was the greatest card I have ever bought. It ran all of the games I played in 2003 at max settings at 1280x1024. I never really felt anything similar from any of my future video cards. Even my 5770 doesn't give me that 'oh wow' even thought it is many times faster than the 9700pro. In my experience, the only other thing that gave me a 'wow' factor was when I went to an SSD this past month.
 
I've never had an "oh wow" moment from a video card purchase.
onboard crap Intel graphics (P2 era) - GF 2MX - 5700 Ultra - 7900 GS - 8500 GT - 4850 - 9600 GSO
 
You must have thought you died and went to heaven. haha.
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Oh yeah. It was an awesome new experience. I stopped buying new games after I got Far Cry, since I could just barely run that at lowest possible settings. I revisited that when I got the 4870, and it felt so good playing it on max settings at 1920x1080 at 400-ish fps...

The only thing I regret is not waiting for another week and letting the 4890 come out, so that I could have gotten 2 4890s for the same price as that one 4870.
 
I still have my Rage 128 o_O
I went from that to a 9800Pro for BF2. Before that I was just completely broke and played R6 (which is also sitting here under my desk :)). Truth be told, I have yet to experience a game approximating the R6 experience in terms of team play vs. AI.
 
6800gt agp to 7900 gto sli. the 7900gto was a limited edition card that had the gtx engine but gt memory. (prob gtx cards that could not pass memory binning). and they actually sold for a tiny bit higher than a gt. but iirc, i more than doubled frame rates, going from an epox nf3 board to the dfi ultra-d sli mod at the same time.
 
I just upgraded from an 8800GTS to a 5850 black edition. Can't get enough of it. All i've played is mw2 and dirt 2. Any suggestions?
 
Hahaha, I remember the good ol' days of CS. Blood spatter that looked like red lego's bouncing around...:p
 
I remember when I went from Half-Life in software at 320x240 to a Radeon 32MB SDR at I think it was 800x600.

*choir sings while lights shine down from Heaven*

Then I got a 9700 Pro

*more singing and lights*
 
Nvidia Riva 128zx to Voodoo 3 3000. For some Quake 2 goodness :) Then the biggest leap was the same Voodoo 3 to a Geforce 3, then Geforce 3 to 6800GT. And now the biggest leap I had was 8800GTX to 5870. Other jumps but not really big:

6800GT to 7800GTX,

7800GTX to 8800GTX
 
Two times:

1st: Went from an S3 Virge with a Voodoo 1 to a Gainward 750Ultra/XP Golden Sample. Heaven, pure and simple. So much detail was revealed I was having sensory overload. I could run every game at max res (1600x 1200) with performance room to spare.

2nd: Gainward 750Ultra/XP Golden Sample to ATI Radeon 256MB. Black and White had textures! I could see the detail on everything. Stunning!
 
from i810 to radeon 9200 :eek: for the first in my life i could enter T&L supporting games i remember the joy i had at that time .... nearly cried when i finished the game damn that was relief no wonder intel canceled larabeee
 
The best GPU upgrade I ever had was from a no name 2D card to a Voodoo 3000 AGP. Playing Quake 2 not in software mode was amazing. Any game that could run Glide was crushed. :D :eek: :eek:
 
The 9700 Pro had the greatest staying power of all GPU's ever released. The 8800GTX comes next, although it still has "considerable" staying power right now.

The 9700 Pro was around for roughly 2 years until the next generation was finally released in summer 2004 (X800XT).

The 8800GTX was around for about 17 months until the next gen came out in summer 2007 (GTX 280).

Both GPU's were leaps and bounds ahead of their competitors. However, the 8800GTX was not so far ahead of the dual-chip 7950GX2 (let alone the rare 7900GX2) that was already released earlier in the year. On the other hand, it did take a while for the 9700 Pro to gain greater acceptance among the crowd with maturing drivers. Both GPU's were way ahead of its time with support for new DX API (DX9 and DX10).

What hit me the most personally was the Voodoo2 SLI in 1998, hands-down. Yeah, the $500 price tag was crazy back then, but 1998 was the best year of PC gaming ever, with the biggest influx of awesome games being released ever (Half Life, Sin, Unreal, NFS3, etc.. etc.. etc..).
 
Above poster is right. The Radeon 9700 Pro probably was the best graphics cards of it's time overall. No other card has lived as long as this one.

For me though, it was probably VooDoo2. That was a great card.
 
DyNe__ said:
I think I went from some geforce 2 to a 9700 pro... that was pretty sweet. Then I went from my 9700 pro playing bf2 to a 7900gt, such a big difference in graphics quality.
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You sir walked the path of a warrior. :D

Mine was software>voodoo 2>geforce 2 TI>9700 pro>7900gt>8800gt..Now i'm stuck.
 
Let's see...

Savage 32mb-->Kyro 64mb-->GeForce Ti4200-->Asus 9600XT-->XFX 6600GT-->BBA X1950XTX-->EVGA 8800GT (damn thing died) -->Sapphire 4870 1GB

Felt the biggest leaps were from the 9600XT to the 6600GT (FarCry, Doom 3, Deus Ex 2, UT 2004 and HL2 were all playable at a decent FPS) and the Savage 32mb to the Kyro 64mb (could finally run Deus Ex 1 and Serious Sam). Back in the day upgrading was worth it. The last 3 upgrades post-6600GT were either darn cheap or because a card died there's been no game that's compelled an upgrade for awhile imho. And no,Crysis doesn't count.
 
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GF2 MX -> GF4 Ti4200 -> Radeon 9500 PRO (bios-modded) -> 8800GTS 640 -> GTX295 -> 5870

The 9500 pro lasted me about 4 years. I'd say that's darn awesome for a $200 card.
 
Readon 7000 LE to an X1800XTX... the whole new computer had something to do with it as well!
 
think i started with a GeForce MX4 or something

from there it was > BFG 6800GT > 7950GT > 8800GT > 8800GTX > with an HD5850 on the way
 
Ti4200 that was underclocked due to overheating to an 8800GTS 320mb.

Massive, massive upgrade. Words cannot describe the feeling to be able to play games like Oblivion at max settings compared to the Oldblivion mod.
 
oxy4bf2 said:
The Radeon 5000 series has been out for months now and has shown us some pretty amazing performance, giving the "fastest (single & dual) GPU" crown back to ATI. Now we've got a buzz around the internet about Nvidia's Fermi 100 GPUs being up to 30% faster than the 5870. With all the speculation about Fermi's potential, I started thinking about graphics card launches of the past.

I only got into hardcore PC gaming five years ago, so the oldest card I've owned was the Radeon Sapphire x850xt pe. I remember finally investing in a desktop PC and installing the x850 so that I could run Battlefield 2 at good fps on my 19" CRT monitor. The step up from onboard laptops graphics was astounding, to say the least.

I occasionally read people's threads asking for upgrade advice from their 2+ year-old graphics cards and, every time, what comes to mind is how impressed they will be if they get anything from the Radeon 4000 series and up or GTX200 series. Could you imagine going from a 8800GTS 320MB to a 5870 or even GTX285?

My biggest upgrade was probably going from my 7800GT to 8800GTS 320MB (the original G80 version). I still envy those who threw down the big bucks for the 8800GTX because that thing stayed competitive for forever. I think that card, the 8800GTX, has been THE BIGGEST leap in graphics computing power. Then again, I've only been around for five years, so what do I know?

So what do you think, people, what's the biggest step up from generation to generation of graphics cards ever???
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8800GTS 320MB to 285GTX 1GB was what I went through and honestly it's not that WOAH. My TNT2 to Geforce 4 Ti-4200 was a much greater jump.
 
I think my biggest jump had to be from an MX420 to a overclocked FX5900 Ultra.

Yay for pixel shaders!!!
 
Without a doubt it was going from ANY 2d card to the original Voodoo. That card is the reason we are gaming like we are now.

/thread
 
DooKey said:
Without a doubt it was going from ANY 2d card to the original Voodoo. That card is the reason we are gaming like we are now.

/thread
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I totally forgot about that era!

Going from a Cirrus Logic 1MB chip to a 8MB ATi xPert [read: ATi Rage Pro with crap drivers] was pretty amazing. Okay, 75MHz Pentium 1 to 350MHz Pentium II was cool too.
 
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