Best Graphics Card Upgrade EVER

PCI Radeon x1550 >>> 8800GT. Now I haven't been into PC gaming for that long; and I made incredible upgrade progress very quickly. In 2 years I went from an old Pentium laptop to my dad's retired 2.66GHz P4 laptop, to a 3.00GHz P4 Dell desktop with that Radeon, to finally building my own rig. Built this rig in April '08, and only major upgrades since have been another 8800, a 2nd Barracuda for RAID0, and cooling. Still runs everything I play at totally maxxed settings, although sometimes with less AA and AS. We had a family pc, 600MHz P3 Coppermine with a Radeon 7000 pci that I used for games before I had that laptop, had great memories of stuff on him. (Actually still have him, infact installing Win98 on a 120GB Seagate right now! Retro gaming system ftw)

Though the x1550 I must give credit to. I played through all of the Orange Box around christmas '07, it ran Halo beautifully, and it even played the Bioshock demo at decent fps (idk how.. then again 20fps was acceptable for me then :) )
 
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I went from a x850xt to this 5850 I have now, only because MW2 required shader 3. I played the shit out of cod4 with the x850xt and my 5 year old box lol. I'll probably keep up on hardware now that I've been exposed to this forum.:cool:
 
Bah, can't decide.

TNT2->Rad 8500 pro
Rad 8500 pro->Rad 9700
Rad 9700->GF 6800GT
Rad x1900XT->GF GTX280

I know, putting 4 is pretty indecisive. I used to wait awhile to upgrade. At least I didn't put my whole gpu history. I upgraded pretty frantically after that 6800GT which was a fine card, just couldn't help myself. I had the x1900XT awhile because I was grabbing up all the consoles for awhile and playing those. Now I'm more back in the pc camp, and gotta unload my two 280's because my Fermi came in Friday! :D
 
oxy4bf2 said:
Could you imagine going from a 8800GTS 320MB to a 5870 or even GTX285?
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... :eek:

*stares at GTX 285 box that I haven't put away yet, and the 8800GTS 320MB sitting on top of it.

Yeah, I would have upgraded sooner, but the girlfriend needed the upgrade MUCH more than I did. She went using a p4 3.0, 1gb ram on a 925 board, x700, 19" CRT Dell machine up until last October. So I needed to think about her first. C2D 2.8 (she won't let me OC it...), p45 board, 4GB ram, GTX 260 216, Vraptor OS drive (went from XP to Win 7 as well) and a 22" (1920 X 1080) LCD rounded out her upgrade.

I know it's not just a video card, but I think she qualifies for one one heck of a video upgrade on it's own.
 
VIA 32mb integrated pos graphic to a 7900gt. Best upgrade ever. Second only to 7900gt -->8800gts :)
 
Riva 128 4mb to Diamond Viper V770 TNT2 Ultra 32mb. Back on Halflife this was a monumental upgrade.

From that point I've had a relatively decent upgrade path. GeForce 256 32mb, GF2 64mb, GF3 64mb, GF4 Ti 4400(?) 128mb, 6800GT 256mb, 7800GT 256mb, 7900GS KO (RMA), 8800 GTS 512mb, GTX 285 1gb. I actually don't have anything against ATI, I just somehow don't end up with their cards, not sure why. I looked really hard at the x800's when I got the 6800gt, and was planning on getting a 5850 not this gtx 285, just happened across a good deal.
 
switchg3ar said:
3dfx Voodoo II 12 MB !!!!!! EVER!
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Totally agreed, getting my Voodoo II was amazing. I know there are some people here who aren't old enough to remember when 3D cards first came out but I first got a Voodoo II to play Half-Life 1 in OpenGL (did it support Glide?). I went from 320x240, software rendering, to 640x480 (my monitor max resolution) with 3D acceleration. I was on the 'phone with my girlfriend at the time as I switched from software to 3D accelerated and I think I said 'uhh.. buhh....'

THAT was the biggest graphical increase I will ever see. Everything now is just a new iteration.
 
Two big jumps for me

ATi X800XL to an 8800GT 512 @ 1650x1080

and an 8800GT 512 to a 5850 1GB @ 2048x1152
 
The most recent for me was 9800m GTS (9600gt) -> 5870 1GB. It was miserable being stuck on a laptop without a desktop for almost a year. :D Considering I moved from a Q9450/4850 Crossfire to the laptop.
 
Ati ragefury 128 16mb with 550mhz P3/128mb ram/12gb hd, geforce 3 ti500 64mb with AMD 1.6ghz 1900+ Palomino/512mb ram/80gb hd, geforce 6600gt 128mb with AMD 2ghz 2800+ Sempron/1gb ram/same 80gb hd, geforce 9600gt 512mb with q6600 oced to 3.4ghz/4gb ram/750gb + 1tb hds. Biggest jump was the ati to ti500.

Currently considering getting a 5770.
 
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ati rage 2c to voodoo 2... wow... what a massive difference... my need for speed 3 instead of running 2 fps with artifacts, ran some 60fps, perfect.

was rocking also descent freespace later in glide. still play freespace 2...
 
Geforce MX 440 to EVGA 9800GTX+

I had a 8600GTS in between but I never played video games on it.
 
I will be going from 8800 GTS (640mb version) to 5870 (Toxic 2gb version) next week. I hope that will be my biggest jump
 
3D rage to 9700 xt to 4870 and now 5550.
First two were new boxes. P1 to P4, then to i7.
 
GeForce 2 MX 200 --> Radeon 9600 Pro

3D Mark 2001 went from being slideshow to playable
Delta Force Black Hawk Down went from unplayable slide show to playable

Soldier of Fortune 2 was my then Crysis. I just had to play it again the day I got my new P4 system with that card, with all quality turned on.


Actually 9800GTX to GTX 295 is quite a leap too in terms of raw performance. Its just that unfortunately, there isn't any games to appreciate such improvement. 9800GTX pretty much able to handle all games today, GTX 295 just allows me to go from "High" to maximum quality, and just more fps.

I didn't get the feeling I get when I upgraded to 9600 Pro, where it make the difference between playable and not at all for some games., and from absolute low to high quality for others
 
ATI Rage Pro Turbo -> Radeon 9800 Pro
Was a P2 -> P4 HT system...sonuva the change was beyond epic proportions.
 
It would have to be my ati x1950gt (card came out in 2006) to the 5850 which i hope to get soon. a 4 year difference in release dates.
 
S3 Virge to Trident Blade3D
Quake 3 at Very High settings, at last!!!

I feel old.
 
im right up there with ya

voodoo 4500 <sapphire 9500 flashed to 9700 non pro softmod

I still play quake 3 :(
 
for me, it was:

Ati All In Woder Rage II ---> Creative 3dfx Voodoo 2
Radeon 9800xt ---> eVGA nVidia 8800GTX

every other upgrade is only incremental IMO
was planning for GTX285 --> GTX480 but that upgrade is not worth the $500 at all.... hopefully something better comes along :(
 
my first computer upgrade ever was dropping a Voodoo3 2000 into an old 400Mhz HP. Going from the onboard video to that was HUGE. I was completely addicted to Viper Racing at the time, and holy crap was it so much better.

Another big jump that I can think of was going from a 9600 Pro to a 6800LE modded to a 6800 Ultra (one of those weird evga cards that came out a while ago). Coming into the world of Shader Model 2.0 was a big deal at the time.
 
radeon 9800 pro-> radeon 4850

I gamed on other comps that had better cards at the time at LAN cafe's but being able to play shit at home was awesome.
 
FX5200 to a 9700pro or from my 9700pro to my 7800GS

both were huge upgrades
 
Whatever 3D card I bought after my Matrox G400. Or maybe when I went from ISA/VLB to PCI. Hell, I don't remember. How the heck do you guys remember all your old PC parts?
 
Voodoo to a GeForce 2 GTS (a special edition 64MB version). Man, that was fucking incredible.

I mean the transition from software (S3 ViRGE DX) to hardware (Voodoo) was a major one, but the performance became underwhelming so quickly. That GF2 held me for quite a long time.
 
Biggest jump in graphics card upgrades ever is EASILY 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics.

Forget performance. This meant game-not-working / not playable to £33tsauce.

For me it was from a S3 Virge GX that came with a PII 266MHz Dell (which did have 3D acceleration - which was called "3D deceleratrion" back then).

More like "lol" than "wow".
 
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Yep...bggest upgrade ever: software rendering to 3Dfx Voodoo. However...software rendering wasn't all that bad, depending on your PC and how well set up it was (e.g. you could run in 640x480 at 20-30 fps if you were lucky). The 3Dfx board made it possible to play 1024x768 at 60fps, which nobody had ever seen before. And then you started seeing games that were actually designed to take advantage of 3D video cards...nothing was the same after that.
 
Onboard G33 (1280x1040) -> 9600GT (1650x1080) -> GTX 260 216SP (1920x1200), all decent step ups for the prices I paid ;)
 
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