Best graphics card you ever used is.......

I would have to say the 6800ultra I use today however the card that had the greatest impact or wow! factor for me had to be the 9700pro i owned. IT was ground breaking
 
chinoquezada said:
voodoo 3 3000

those were good times.

When paying $200 for a vid card was still considered top of the line.... not mainstream as it now is...
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Damnnn....my Voodoo sucked...couldn't even run a single game without overheating...nothing worked :(
 
Diamond Monster 3D (voodoo 1) had the most impact on me. (the TNT/TNT2 Ultra line was right there too)

The fastest card I have owned is a BFG 6800GT

The longest lasting (over 2 years) is an All In Wonder 9700 Pro.
 
magnetik said:
Diamond Monster 3D (voodoo 1) had the most impact on me. (the TNT/TNT2 Ultra line was right there too)

The fastest card I have owned is a BFG 6800GT

The longest lasting (over 2 years) is an All In Wonder 9700 Pro.
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I think everyone owned a 9700 Pro for about 2 years....
To this day... it seems like the card that lasted the longest for its time
 
My first real 3D card(s)...Orchid Righteous 3D Voodoo 1, coupled with a Sierra Screamin' 3D (Rendition V1000)...both GL and VQuake baby :D
 
I'm still using my 9700Pro, but it didn't give me the "ommph" of my Gainward Geforce3. Or no, not even that... I think it comes down to my original Pure3D w/ 6MB of ram. It ran quake1 very nicely. That was some ommphh...
 
even though i love my x800xt. but my favorite vid card i liked the most i had was my BFG 5900nu. i had it watercooled. and it overclocked like a beast.
 
1998 Diamond Multimedia TNT 16MB SDRAM

That puppy was for a new build consisting of a Celeron 300A overclocked to 464MHz. My old Matrox Millenium 4MB PCI card coupled with M3D 4MB 3D card was pushed by a 225MHz K6.

The power, the 32 bit graphics... the amazing 3D gaming when overclocked to 100MHz core and 115MHz SDRAM! THAT was the card that pointed the way to 32 bit color and decent frame rates (Carmaggedon II rox!) What ever became of that beast? It was used until March 2001 and then passed down to my sons. They are still using the thing after all these years. They get this XP2400/512MB/80GB/GF2 machine in two days as my sig HTPC moves into position. The GF2 will be replaced with a 6600 in a few months for a refresh as they are into gaming.

For knock you down change... the TNT 16MB displaying 32 bit @ 1024x768. The new Sapphire X700 Pro Toxic Edition (overclocked) absolutely destoys the hapless TNT but it has been 6.5 years so the TNT will be removed and saved for my sons "back in the 20th century" stories. :rolleyes:
 
Its a tie between my Voodoo 2 and my ATi 9700pro. The 9700pro is probally the best card ever made, way ahead of its time. But then the voodoo 2 was the frist time I had real 3d graphics on my computer the reaction was nothing short of :eek:
 
I have to say.. when I went from my Voodoo Banshee to the GeForce 2 MX400... man... I could run Colin McRae 2.0 at high quality, 1024x768!


Other than that... I read my my 6800GT bedtime stories every night.
 
I'd have to say the biggest wow factor I got was going from my Matrox G200 8mb + Orchid 12mb vodoo2 card to my Diamond Viper 550 TNT 1 card w/ the Orchid card for gilde games still, the first time I saw 32 bit color in 3d was amazing :) for longjevity I'd have to say my Visiontek Geforce 4 Ti 4400 @ 4600 speeds, I went out and bought it right after it was released and it lasted over 3 years until I replaced it w/ my current 9800Pro, no other card gave that much performance for so long, it's still in use today on a buddy of mines backup rig.
 
Well, most shock I ever got with geting a new video card was going from my old Radeon 9600 Pro (and the Ti-4200 I had before it which was, IMO, pretty similar in overall capabilities) is with my current card. I swear, I throw all I can at it and it can take anything until it starts to run out of memory. (Eg trying doom 3 in high res with higher fsaa+af -- highest possible details settings, naturally.) I just can't find any limits to the actual capabilities of the card itself, only with the onboard memory.

I don't know, I guess some next gen games might finally start to push it now that 256MB is starting to get standard especially, but, for the meantime, it's amazing playing games like Doom 3, HL2, and Far Cry with the highest quality settings possible and a reasonable resolution.


Before this, I think I actually jumped straight from a Geforce 2 GTS (32MB) to a Geforce 4 Ti4200. Well, that's a huge jump, but, it never impressed me like this one. I guess it didn't help that the 4200 began it's whole existance as being a bit behind the pack (mind you, good card, just not nearly as good as, say, a 4600 or a 9700 Pro or whatever was current with ATI at the time.) I didn't get to max out quality settings or any of that stuff, but, Morrowind sure looked beautiful compared to the GF2 for obvious reasons (first time I ever saw pixel shaders.)

EDIT: BTW, I'm surprised to learn that the MX series works on HL2. All I can say is I HATE those things. IMO nvidia really screwed their customers over with that series. Claiming it's a Geforce 4, but, it's really just a super-powerful Geforce 2... A lot of newer games are starting to require a GF3 minimum for those pixel shaders and all, I'm amazed HL2 isn't one of those (I had heard they meant to be conservative in their requirements, but... darn, not even requiring pixel shaders?)
 
Well i used to own a Power color 9200se128mb and a Nvidia TNT 2 32mb and now i got a 6600GT i gotta say the 6600GT is the best, worth every cent of my money.
 
My biggest wow factor card was the 9700 Pro. That was the first card that I could turn the eye candy on and not suffer a performance hit. This was after owning the GF2 GTS and GF4 Ti4200. Those were both great cards but would be penalized if you cranked any eye candy to them. Then there are the fond memories of my beloved 3DFx Voodoo 3 with the Wicked drivers installed.
 
By far my Voodoo 3 :D. I bought that card out of necessity and I never regretted it, infact I still have it and it will be used in my later PC Mod project (Can't wait to show it off :))

This is a picture of my baby :D
voodoo3.jpg


Also I have to give props to my ATi Radeon 9200 128MB 128-Bit, mofo served me well after I fried my Sapphire Radeon 9500 128MB 128-Bit (Fan died on it and over heated, I had no idea the fan died) and did a good job till I got my Radeon 9800, too bad my 9800 is 128Bit (I thought it was 256!!!)
 
My Matrox Mystique + Canopus Pure 3d Combo.

It was an awesome 1 - 2 punch ; games never knew what hit them .
 
I went from Intel Extreme Graphics ('rents computer) to a 9500 pro when I got my own system, so I would have to say that was my favorite card ever. Sweet overclocker, too. Straight up best card would be the X800 Pro I have now.
 
Biggest awe factor for me was going from an iMac G4 800mhz Geforce2 MX to my first PC with a 9600XT. I could not believe that Warcraft 3 didnt chop! Was so amazing.
 
8500 GPU (handled games at the time quite well, IMO)
digital TV tuner
composite and s-video input / output
stereo RCA audio input / output
firewire port

Man, that thing was the freaking swiss army knife of videocards. Great card. :)
 
My Radeon 9700 n/p is still amazing to me. Still have no problem playing the latest games at max settings!
 
I jumped from having intel i810 integrated graphics to that plus 2 Diamond Voodoo2 12MB's in SLI and it was like night and day. Software quake2 @ 640x480 up to 3dfx OpenGL @ 1024x768. And then to pail that jump I moved up to a Ti4600 Golden Sample. Everything since has been far less dramatic.
 
The best card I've ever owned must be the ASUS V6800 Deluxe(GeForce DDR) that's hanging on my wall right now, it worked flawlessly in everything until the heatsink dropped and it kinda burned itself, now an array of grey horizontal lines roll over the screen. Still, the best card ever and quite a performance jump from a Diamond Viper 550(Riva TNT) :)

For newer cards I'd have to say my Sapphire 9800Pro which really whipped my GeForce 2 GTS(ASUS V7700)
 
ATi X800XT PE, but if you're considering the card that had the most impact on my games...a Radeon 9700 Pro.
 
Went from a Geforce2 MX 400 64MB to a 9800XT. It was like night and day. I love my X800 xl but not as much as I liked my 9800XT. It was my true first video card.
 
USMC2Hard4U said:
I think everyone owned a 9700 Pro for about 2 years....
To this day... it seems like the card that lasted the longest for its time
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I hope ATi comes up with another card that can match the phenomenon that was the R9700Pro. I hope R520 is that card, as I can still wait.
 
I can't really say which was best, since each generation gets better. My two fondest memories of vidcards though are my dual Voodoo2's (SLI) and my original Geforce.

Then again, when I got my first SVGA card that could do 256 colors @640x480 I was pretty stoked too!
 
MooCow said:
I'm still using my 9700Pro, but it didn't give me the "ommph" of my Gainward Geforce3. Or no, not even that... I think it comes down to my original Pure3D w/ 6MB of ram. It ran quake1 very nicely. That was some ommphh...
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Ahh! Good 'ol Canopus days of GL quake.
 
My Elsa Erazor 3 with video in/video out. Beautiful card that lasted me ages. Or maybe my GF3Ti200 Vivo that clocked up to Ti500 specs.

Least favourite card isn't even a video card (but I believe it should be mentioned (Apocalypse 3Dx). The second worst card ever (after the Apocalypse 3D). Probably not so much the card's fault, as lack of game support in its early days (remember this is before DirectX).
 
It's gotta be the Geforce2 GTS for me.

geforce2.jpg


I remember going from a Voodoo3 to this and really getting some nice advantages. Don't get me wrong, the Voodoo3 was probably the best upgrade I got in terms of upping performance, but the Geforce2 just lasted me so long.

And 32-bit colour! Wow, I couldn't finally play Delta Force2 in 3D acceleration mode. And the video overlay was so much better, not to mention general windows 2D performance. Yeah, it certainly was a quality card and easily the one that lasted me the longest. I honestly can't remember how long, but the next card I got was a 9700pro a year after that card had come out.
 
ThomasE66 said:
Then again, when I got my first SVGA card that could do 256 colors @640x480 I was pretty stoked too!
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Oh, I remember that. Probably around those times, the thing that shocked me first was when I got a Trident SVGA 512KB card myself. I had some Cirrus Logic thing that had only 256K before it and suddenly finding myself able to do some high resolution graphics I couldn't before was really nice. I probably had a bigger shock later on when I got a 4MB video card that could do 1024x768 though. Lol, my 15" monitor was meant for 800x600 and 1024 came out all funny, but, it semi-worked, so I used it anyway and I was the only person in the house who could read it...

BTW, spine, jc, but, what's that little extra PCB attached in to the bottom left of the card? Some sort of VIVO related thing? Ah well, personally, I had the Asus V7700 Deluxe, which had the VIVO built in. Never saw another one to directly compare with. Nice card, but, it sure cost me a bundle...
 
My good ol' TNT2 M64. Nothing has given me that "wow" factor since. Quake2 in all its OpenGL glory, ah the good ol' days. Before that it would have to be my Sierra Screamin' 3D (Rendition Verite 1000 chipset), man Tomb Raider 1 in speedy3d was great :)
 
The TI4200, it really changed things for me and still held its own against cards 3x its price and specs. Visual bliss and really made me a hardcore pc gamer being that I could crack up all my games with it. It still runs almost every game out now decent and will always be my back up card.
 
Sapphire Radeon 9700 non-pro 128MB AGP. Flashed its bios to Pro, and put a VGA Silencer on it. Unlike current cards, it was available in reasonable quantity at the time it was promised to be, and it did everything it said it was supposed to do. Drivers were excellent. Color quality and video playback were great, as well as gaming performance.

The first video card I ever bought was an ATI VGA Wonder which I upgraded to 512k with DIPP chips, and I've owned cards from every generation since then from ISA to PCI to AGP (PCIe probably sometime this year, but not yet). That card was the best of all of them.

After that, my Creative TNT2 Ultra and (out of sheer innovation for its time) Orchid Righteous 3D 3Dfx Voodoo I, which opened up the world of 3D gaming.
 
My 9700 Pro 128MB I bought when it first came out.. I'm still amazed at how well it holds up and handles everything today. Definitely don't mind spending that new release price when you can get something that holds up that well.
 
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