Best video card of all time?

The 9700Pro was a great card... but another card of equally large impact for me was the 6800GT, and it's OC ability made it, "more fun" for me.. in certain ways... but I had my 9700Pro for a helluva a lot longer.. :) I removed the shim, put AS5 on the core, and put Tweak Monster BGA sinks on the memory of my 9700Pro but it really didn't OC any better... a little bit of a let down for me after the time invested "tweaking" it.. but oh well..
 
if i didn't post in this thread already, gf2 gts by far. it lasted me like 4-5 years of gaming.

how can you say a 6800gt? it's been less than two years and it already can't play games at 1280x1024.
 
I guess because I had fun with my 6800GT(s) (had three of them) and they could play games at 1600x1200 just fine...games of their era.. doom3, Far Cry, etc... they were also the card that finally got the performance crown back to Nvidia... putting the horrid FX series cards in the rear-view... which were a large dissapointment.. ran too hot, were loud, and just didn't perform as well as expected.. Anyways.. just a few expanded thoughts on that.. :)

PS: I am not trying to insinuate that I am an Nvidia fan boy by any means in the performance crown bit.. just indicating the mile-stones of the 6800..
 
Ti4600

god that card was THEE card

i'll leave it at that, too many fond memories with that peice of hardware
 
I say the 9700pro is the best card of all time since it came out in summer of 2002 and still has the power to play today's games decently. Pretty good for a 3.5 year old card. ;)
 
I don't think any nubs have said 7900 yet, so....

7900 best card evr!!!!!!1111
 
in my opinion, the best cards from the past few years are the 9700/9800 cards, the Geforce 4 TI cards, the AGP 6800 vanilla (because of the unlockable pipes), the X800 GTO2 (because it can be modded into a X850XT PE), the 6600GT (because it's very good performance for very cheap), and the 6800GS because it's cheap, and overclocks so well.
 
I feel really bad since I'm still using a radeon 9800 pro, but it's just such a good card. Handles everything I need it to. However, I will be upgrading to the first generation of DX10 cards.

The effects the Radeon 9800 pro had on ATi are still being felt, it really took ATi to a whole new level where on nVidia had been before.
 
9700 Pro cause it was in a class by itself when it came out and for a long while after.
 
I think that's about right... I bought mine for $267 at www.buyxg.com.. that shoddy e-tailer.. but the price was right... everywhere else it was like $299.
 
BFG 6800 Ultra Overclocked AGP

by itself, it's not all that impressive these days, but unlock the professional capabilities with RT and you've got a card more powerful than the Quadro FX4000. Almost like a 4400, but with AGP and half the RAM.

Best card you can get to top out an AGP system. All it lacks is Dual Link DVI. And when you can get an H2O version that will damn near hit Ultra Extreme speeds while unlocked, there is none higher (on AGP). It will flat out spank a Quadro FX4000.

FX4000

375MHz core
1000MHz RAM
12 pixel pipelines
6 vertex units
4.5 Gtexels/s
133M triangles/s

6800U OC

425MHz core (up to 440 or 450 if you're lucky)
1200MHz RAM
16 pixel pipes
6 vertex units
6.8Gtexels/s @ 425, 7.2Gtexels/s @ 450
? triangles/s

Hit 1200MHz on your RAM and you're looking at 38GB/s RAM bandwidth. The FX4400 and FX4500 give 33.6GB/s by comparison. I don't know how to calculate the extra kick of the four added pipes plus the added core speed, other than texels. Can anyone tell me how that's calculated?

I've been an Nvidia fan since the late 90s when my brother bought a TNT. Good drivers and ability to be a gamer card as well as serious DCC were what won me over. If Nvidia's good enough for SGI (the XIO VPro solutions are Nvidia), they're good enough for me.

I just want one. Sure wish AGP could have 512MB, though.
 
9700 Pro / 9800 Pro

I had a chance to upgrade to the later for nothing. Great cards. Lasted me over 2 years. My 6800 Ultra lasted me 5 months. My Dual 7800GT SLI's will last me until the end of the year...i hope!
 
XT9500000XTX GTXXX-ZRX ............................XDL

has to be the best of all time .. i mean past and future .. duh..

mal
 
I dont think we're talking about cards we owned
because Everyone is saying the 9700 and patting them selves on the back for a card well bought


I think the question is which card held it's own for hte longest time and that's the geforce 256, no questions asked.


i had the benefit of being 12 years old in January 00 with my GUillemot, and that's not bias, i'm not saying my 7800 gtx, 9700 pro, or x1800xt are the bes cards.

this card was actually the BEST CARD, it was the thing that pushedfor OMG, AGP 4X!
 
Oh ,
forgot bout the geforce 4 ti4400 i woend

that thing sucked so bad, it was ok at the time but man that card was sooooooooooooooo long....


just sayin
 
Geforce 3 TI 200!! :D

Seriously though, I'm going to throw my hat in for the Voodoo 2. I feel bad for those of you who missed out on the inception of 3D hardware - that was a great time for PC gaming,
 
my 9800 has spanned 3 generations of PCs.
It's most definitley the card you give to your brother to play CS:S and enjoy PC gaming from the start.
It runs BF2 not bad, FEAR, FAR CRY, BF1942, DODS, CSS, GENERALS, etc and the card keeps on chugging.

GG 9800 PRO/XT You've been a great friend and hopefully to be mounted on the same wall with my dual Voodoo 2s.
 
MisterDNA said:
BFG 6800 Ultra Overclocked AGP

by itself, it's not all that impressive these days, but unlock the professional capabilities with RT and you've got a card more powerful than the Quadro FX4000. Almost like a 4400, but with AGP and half the RAM.

Best card you can get to top out an AGP system. All it lacks is Dual Link DVI. And when you can get an H2O version that will damn near hit Ultra Extreme speeds while unlocked, there is none higher (on AGP). It will flat out spank a Quadro FX4000.

FX4000

375MHz core
1000MHz RAM
12 pixel pipelines
6 vertex units
4.5 Gtexels/s
133M triangles/s

6800U OC

425MHz core (up to 440 or 450 if you're lucky)
1200MHz RAM
16 pixel pipes
6 vertex units
6.8Gtexels/s @ 425, 7.2Gtexels/s @ 450
? triangles/s

Hit 1200MHz on your RAM and you're looking at 38GB/s RAM bandwidth. The FX4400 and FX4500 give 33.6GB/s by comparison. I don't know how to calculate the extra kick of the four added pipes plus the added core speed, other than texels. Can anyone tell me how that's calculated?

I've been an Nvidia fan since the late 90s when my brother bought a TNT. Good drivers and ability to be a gamer card as well as serious DCC were what won me over. If Nvidia's good enough for SGI (the XIO VPro solutions are Nvidia), they're good enough for me.

I just want one. Sure wish AGP could have 512MB, though.
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sure the X850XT PE beats the 6800 Ultra. According to http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=179&card2=57, the X850XT PE has a 37.76 GB/s thoroghput for RAM, whereas 6800 Ultra has a 35.2 GB/s thoroghput. Also, the X850XT PE boasts a 3DMark05 score of 6395, where the Ultra only pulled off 5218. I think it's safe to say that the PE is the winner. That said, I'll have to say the 6800GT was pretty good bang for the buck...most everyone had one back in the day while I still had my cowardly FX5200 :p
 
Cereal Killer said:
this is far from the best video card of all time, but it was definatly very popular, the FX5200.
Click to expand...
Heh...I remember playing NASCAR 2003 or something on it and thinking to my self "ehh...whats with those wierd looking textures ahead of me?" I didn't know that AF wasn't turned on, and when I did turn it on, I couldn't even play the game :p :mad:
 
i Love my Gainward 5900XT

it is the ONLY card you can flash to a 5950Ultra and get some whoop Butt performance.
stock speed 400/700
new speed,
475/950
and i only paid $100 bucks for it a year ago.
best bang for my Buck
 
TheOmniscientCreator said:
I'm pretty sure the X850XT PE beats the 6800 Ultra. According to http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=179&card2=57, the X850XT PE has a 37.76 GB/s thoroghput for RAM, whereas 6800 Ultra has a 35.2 GB/s thoroghput. Also, the X850XT PE boasts a 3DMark05 score of 6395, where the Ultra only pulled off 5218. I think it's safe to say that the PE is the winner. That said, I'll have to say the 6800GT was pretty good bang for the buck...most everyone had one back in the day while I still had my cowardly FX5200 :p
Click to expand...

But you can't Quadro an ATI card. FireGL, yeah, but Nvidia is still the better solution for pro applications. ATI has their merits, too. They were good enough for SGI to use in their Itanium systems.

I'm not sure how well a soft-FireGL'd Radeon plays games, though. I know SoftQuadro'd cards lose about 1-5% depending upon tuning. But when your gamer card runs faster than a true Quadro to begin with, it doesn't really mean much in the long run.

I wish ATI had a solution like Nvidia's Gelato app. Using the GPU as hardware assistance for final rendering is pure genius.
 
Orchid Righteous 3D (I think it was an 8MB card :)
ATI 9700 Pro
ATI 9800 Pro
ATI 9800XT (I just replaced this card this week with an x1800XT SLI setup).
 
I would say the origional geforce. When it came out, it pretty well blew everybody away, probably more than any other vid card release to date. Also, the origional radeon was prety shweet in it's day. I remember having a $500 gf2 ultra get trounced by a card that was around half its price when the radeon came out :)
 
I would also like to nominate the Sapphire GTO2, for those who have one, you know what I mean.
 
Voodoo and voodoo 2

Voodoo since it kick started 3d accelerators.

Voodoo 2 since it enabled to cards to link together, and the basic idea of 2 cards connecting is in use today.
 
Thought about this long and hard and I am going to say Voodoo 5 5500.
Awesome fillrate, dual GPU on a single card and one of the first if not the first cards to do FSAA and you could run all 3 API's of the time. Glide, OpenGL and DirectX.

I miss Glide.
 
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