Digitaltrends Top 6 Nvidia Cards of All Time List. Agree or disagree?

[Eshelmen]

Digitaltrends made a short list of their top 6 best Nvidia Cards of All time.

Personally, I'm disappointed to not see the ti4200 on there. Every lan center in the country practically had one. Remember those? They were such a clutch option to basically run anything and everything, with affordability.

List goes as this :

• GeForce 256
• GeForce 8800 GTX
• GeForce GTX 680
• GeForce GTX 980
• GeForce GTX 1080
• GeForce RTX 3080

They explain in detail on why they chose these - do you agree? If not, what's your top 6 best Nvidia Cards? And no, this isn't obviously the most powerful list.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/best-nvidia-gpu-of-all-time/

 

[polonyc2]

8800 GTX for sure...I'm surprised the 3080 is on the list...excellent card but all-time great?

 

[pututu]

I had 680 and 1080 before but I think 1080 Ti would be a better card (I owned 2 before) for price/performance than 1080 when both were initially released (for same generation cards). IIRC 1080 price tanked immediately when they announced 1080 Ti which I think most people would see that it is a better value card. Surprised that 1080 Ti wasn't in the list though the article talks about it.

 

[lilfiend]

I would argue the 8800GT 512MB Is the better pick since it was something like $50 cheaper and basically just as fast.

 

[workshop35]

I had 680 and 1080 before but I think 1080 Ti would be a better card (I owned 2 before) for price/performance than 1080 when both were initially released (for same generation cards). IIRC 1080 price tanked immediately when they announced 1080 Ti which I think most people would see that it is a better value card. Surprised that 1080 Ti wasn't in the list.

I second that. 1080 Ti was the best performance for value card I ever had. My son uses it now and it still runs everything great.

 

[Tengis]

This list is bogus.

The very first card that came to mind when I read the title was the Geforce 3 for some reason. Back when cards used to progress rapidly, each new generation had some kind of wow factor. I havent been excited about a card release in so long... I cant even remember which card I was last excited about.

 

[Tengis]

I second that. 1080 Ti was the best performance for value card I ever had. My son uses it now and it still runs everything great.

I have just a 1080, still gaming at 1080p on high with pretty much anything that I play. Maybe my new nick name should just be grey bush, but I havent seen a real reason to upgrade in so long.

 

[sharknice]

8800 for sure, but I would have went with more of the older cards like GeForce 3. They had massive leaps in performance and nothing else competed

 

[Algrim]

As others have mentioned, I'm really surprised the 1080 Ti isn't on this list.

 

[auntjemima]

As mentioned, the 8800gtx deserves to be there hands down. The 3080 I wouldn't have added. The 1080 I would have replaced with the TI. The performance difference was massive over the 1080.

 

[Brackle]

Some of those cards I would have to disagree with. The 8800GT was a way better value, and if I remember correctly could overclock to 8800gtx levels back in the day.

The 980 was a let down because everyone knew it was not the top card, yet Nvidia was trying to price it as such.

I also would have to disagree with the 3080. It was only good value IF you could find a founders card. Then it only came with 10gb of memory. I think the 3070 should replace it on that list.

1080ti > 1080 if you ask me.

And last thing. The 4200ti was a fucking beast card, and should be on that list over the 980 imo.

 

[staknhalo]

7600gt impressed me a lot more than my 6800gt before it or 8800gts 320 after it

That one goes on my all time greats list

970 FTW would be my next one even with jUsT 3.5 gIGuhBiTeS

Edit: 650ti Boost 2GB (basically a 660 lite) goes on the list too

 

[auntjemima]

Some of those cards I would have to disagree with. The 8800GT was a way better value, and if I remember correctly could overclock to 8800gtx levels back in the day.

The 980 was a let down because everyone knew it was not the top card, yet Nvidia was trying to price it as such.

I also would have to disagree with the 3080. It was only good value IF you could find a founders card. Then it only came with 10gb of memory. I think the 3070 should replace it on that list.

1080ti > 1080 if you ask me.

And last thing. The 4200ti was a fucking beast card, and should be on that list over the 980 imo.

I definitely found it weird that none of the Gf3 or gf4 cards were on the list, or hell, even the gf2 GTS. That thing was something else.

 

[Fenris_Ulf]

I'd agree with the first three and number 5. I still have a 8800GT that I use as a backup since it's still PCIe. I just retired my 680 GTX a few months ago, only because I wanted to play Halo Infinite with my son. My kids all have 1060 cards which work just fine for 1080p gaming, which I think is the sweet spot for price.

 

[d3athf1sh]

should be 980ti instead of 980. even the 1080 was only marginally better than an oc'd 980ti also 980ti is the most powerful card you can get that still had analog out for crt's and it also overclocked like a beast. it was rated at 1000mhz but overclocks of 1500mhz were'nt uncommon which may make it one of the best overclocking cards to ever hit the streets?

also wasn't the geforce 4ti a big deal? and the 560ti was the first card to use the ti moniker, since the 4ti, which has lived on to this day

edit: just noticed you already mentioned the 4ti

 

[skiddy]

It seems like they're mentioning generations and not the refreshes inside of them - the summary of the 1080 does mention the Ti and the performance increase it had. With that said, I personally believe the 1080ti was one of, if not the best card Nvidia has ever made. The card was a monster.

 

[Eshelmen]

should be 980ti instead of 980. even the 1080 was only marginally better than an oc'd 980ti also 980ti is the most powerful card you can get that still had analog out for crt's and it also overclocked like a beast. it was rated at 1000mhz but overclocks of 1500mhz were'nt uncommon which may make it one of the best overclocking cards to ever hit the streets?

also wasn't the geforce 4ti a big deal? and the 560ti was the first card to use the ti moniker, since the 4ti, which has lived on to this day

edit: just noticed you already mentioned the 4ti

Damn - I didn't know that could overclock 50% of its base clock. That's insane.

 

[gvx64]

Honestly, I was really only following the NVidia vs. ATI war closely during the 2003-2006 period, and so my qualifications to comment here are fairly limited. That said, I would honestly say that the vanilla GeForce 6800 was a truly great card and probably deserves to be somewhere on this list especially if considered from the point of view of an enthusiast. The 6800 was a bottom-tier performance video card released in 2004 that was probably around the $250 price-point. Anyways, the 6800 had 12 pixel pipelines while the higher end 6800GT had 16, but the 4 extra pipelines were not actually laser cut in the 6800 and were only disabled in the firmware I guess to save money on the part of NVidia. As a result, there was an extremely high success rate unlocking the 4 extra pipelines via flashing that basically gave an immediate 33% performance boost and that is before overclocking (it was basically like going from a RTX 3060 to an RTX 3070). In other words, if you bought a 6800, you had a very high chance of getting a card that was a price-point above it's performance for free. It was an extremely popular card even for a few years after its release because of it's unlocking potential: it took a long time for the mainstream cards to catch up even with the newer tech.

 

[THRESHIN]

Lists like this are also heavily influenced by your own experience which makes it difficult. For me, the 7900 GTO was incredible because of the insanely low price. I bought 2 and put them in SLI. This card obviously isn't special to everyone.

 

[vegeta535]

I remember buying a 4600ti from Best buy on black Friday. They were sold out by the time I got there but I saw one sitting on the counter back in computer area. I snatched it and ran. It probably was someone's card that put it down for a sec. It was a hell of a deal for like $250 then.

 

[HeadRusch]

I agree with everyone who stated that the launch cards (980, 1080) don't deserve to be on the list.......but the Ti versions do. You got a significant bump in performance while spending just a little bit more, the downside was you usually had to wait a year into the generation to get the Ti parts and at first you had to wait in line a bit before the deals started to trickle down. I just got rid of my 980 Ti not too long ago and my 1080 Ti is what I have today, and because I don't do a whole lot of PC gaming anymore (xbox from the couch, sue me) every time I do fire something up off a steam sale or in VR, I always have....decent enough details....and plenty of framerates.......If I see a 3080 at like $500 I'd just buy one for the overhead and VR extra performance.....but generally it's hard to deny the Ti's are arguably better than their vanilla forebearers. Not sure I'd have the 680 on there, I think the 670 was the one everyone bought because it would overclock to 680+ speeds easily, whereas the 680's didn't have as much headroom (from memory)....

 

[M76]

Hard disagree. Top 6:

Geforce 2 GTS
Geforce 4 Ti4200
Geforce GTX 660 SLI (obliterated even the 690 in some games / tests, for a fraction of the price)
Geforce GTX 970 (I know the RAM thing, but nothing really needed more than 3.5GB VRAM at the time)
Geforce GTX 1080Ti
Geforce GTX 2080Ti (history made this card a good investment)

I exclude everything newer due to Nvidia direct selling to miners and scalper prices which made them horrible value or unobtanium.

 

[TangledThornz]

No love for the Geforce FX 5800? 🤪



Seriously tho. I have fond memories of my Geforce 6800 GT as it was a great card for the money that made up for the Geforce 5 series mess, see above.

 

[Bigbacon]

not the TNT or TNT2? that was a start of the glide death. Loved both of those and I still had voodoo2s as well at the time.

 

[pandora's box]

"Nvidia’s flagship GeForce4 Ti 4600 at 100mm had no hope of beating even the midrange 9700 Pro"

Wtf? Since when was the 9700 Pro midrange? Sure it got replaced by the 9800 Pro the following year, but it was definitely a high end card.

 

[Domingo]

The 8800 was the first one that came to mind. That card felt like an absolutely massive jump over the other cards available at that time. The 1080 wasn't half bad, too.
For older cards, I remember the cards after the 256 being a much bigger deal. That was the era when people were stuck using a 2D card and a 3dfx card at the same time. The first one wasn't enough to replace the need for 2 cards, but the subsequent versions were.

 

[Armenius]

The 8800 was the first one that came to mind. That card felt like an absolutely massive jump over the other cards available at that time. The 1080 wasn't half bad, too.
For older cards, I remember the cards after the 256 being a much bigger deal. That was the era when people were stuck using a 2D card and a 3dfx card at the same time. The first one wasn't enough to replace the need for 2 cards, but the subsequent versions were.

The original 256 was kind of a dud, wasn't it? The selling point was the hardware T&L, and it was slower running it on the GPU than it was on the CPU at the time.

I would argue the 8800GT 512MB Is the better pick since it was something like $50 cheaper and basically just as fast.

Not at the resolution I was running games at during that time (1600x1200). It took two 8800 GT using SLI to match the FPS I could get with a single GTX in Crysis at the same settings.

 

[LZ_Xray]

Fully agree with the 8800GTX. Coming to that from a 7900 GT, I don’t think I ever had such a quantum leap in gaming ability from a one-generation upgrade before or since. Closest would be going from an ATi Rage Pro to a GeForce 2 Ultra, but those were very early generation cards.

The others are quite debatable to me.

 

[THRESHIN]

Hard disagree. Top 6:

Geforce 2 GTS
Geforce 4 Ti4200
Geforce GTX 660 SLI (obliterated even the 690 in some games / tests, for a fraction of the price)
Geforce GTX 970 (I know the RAM thing, but nothing really needed more than 3.5GB VRAM at the time)
Geforce GTX 1080Ti
Geforce GTX 2080Ti (history made this card a good investment)

I exclude everything newer due to Nvidia direct selling to miners and scalper prices which made them horrible value or unobtanium.

Definitely the 970. I'm still using one! Never used a card for this many years but so far I don't need better - at least until I upgrade monitors one day.

 

[Armenius]

Definitely the 970. I'm still using one! Never used a card for this many years but so far I don't need better - at least until I upgrade monitors one day.

Agreed. Despite the 3.5GB fiasco, it was still an affordable card with solid performance. Probably the last SLI darling from NVIDIA.

 

[Tactlesss]

It looks like the article is using one card for an entire line-up because it references the 980ti and 1080ti interchangeably.

Of course that makes the exclusion of the 8800gt even more confusing because I thought that card was effectively the basis for the gtx 200 line-up.

 

[Ranulfo]

Eh, if you're going to put in the overpriced 980 and 1080 cards you might as well say the Geforce 2 MX or GF 4 MX cards were the best Nvidia cards of all time.

 

[w1retap]

My list would be..
Older:
- TNT2
- GF2 GTS
- GF4 Ti 4200/4600
- AGP 6800 Ultra
Modern:
- 8800 GTX
- GTX 780 Ti
- GTX 1080 Ti

 

[w1retap]

"Nvidia’s flagship GeForce4 Ti 4600 at 100mm had no hope of beating even the midrange 9700 Pro"

Wtf? Since when was the 9700 Pro midrange? Sure it got replaced by the 9800 Pro the following year, but it was definitely a high end card.

Yea.. the 9700 Pro was a $400-500 top end card upon release.

 

[Axman]

This list is bogus.

There are only two cards that go on the list:

1. Whatever flagship next-generation card that enabled gamers to play a new game with never-before-seen tech, and,
2. Whatever mainstream next-generation card that enabled gamers to play an old game that couldn't be played except on the previous generation's flagships.

These also require games taking advantage of a bleeding-edge tech. A card can be great, but won't be memorable without a game to make it stand out.

 

[auntjemima]

There are only two cards that go on the list:

1. Whatever flagship next-generation card that enabled gamers to play a new game with never-before-seen tech, and,
2. Whatever mainstream next-generation card that enabled gamers to play an old game that couldn't be played except on the previous generation's flagships.

These also require games taking advantage of a bleeding-edge tech. A card can be great, but won't be memorable without a game to make it stand out.

Well, for the 1080ti it was "all games". That cards increase over the 980ti was just astounding

 

[NickJames]

Good to know every card I purchased is on that list.

 

[legcramp]

No 1080 Ti? Failed list.

 

[Axman]

Well, for the 1080ti it was "all games". That cards increase over the 980ti was just astounding

All of the games definitely counts. Also, why isn't the 295 on there? Why do we hate on multi-GPU now? It was great at the time.

 

[Geforcepat]

Agreed. Despite the 3.5GB fiasco, it was still an affordable card with solid performance. Probably the last SLI darling from NVIDIA.

Yeah, Man i liked my 970. Allowed me to go 1440 for a good price. I say the Fermi 460 in sli was the last sli "Darlings" With maybe the 660 behind it.. By the time the 970 was in effect that was never a consideration for about 99%

No 1080 Ti? Failed list.

lol