Do you remember your first graphics card?

guitarslingerchris said:
Hmm, for me my first was a Trident 3D Image card I believe, sounds right anyways.

From there it would be:
Onboard Nforce2 crap
Ti4400
9600 Pro

snip...
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the question was the first video card and not the history of your purchases. it seems like a e-penis thing...:rolleyes:
 
integrated intel crap that came with the p3 compaq i bought way back in the day ;) :p
 
Not counting the Apple IIc or Tandy 8086 with 4kB of ram!

First real card, the venerable Diamond Viper v330 Riva 128 4MB AGP, wish I still had that lil guy.
 
IIRC the first family PC (386sx-16) we got when I was a kid had Western Digital (!) 512kB integrated graphics.
My first machine (486DX-33) came with a VLB (VESA local bus) Diamond Steath 24 w/ 1MB.

Rest of the graphics history...
#9 GXE64 VLB 2MB (sick of 8-bit color, wanted 16-bit)
Matrox Millennium 4MB PCI
Added a 12MB Voodoo 2 PCI
Matrox Millenium G400 32MB AGP
Matrox Parhelia 128MB AGP
Radeon 9100 64MB AGP (built AXP rig in iMac case, swapped tube for LCD)
NV GF2MX PCI (3rd screen)
NV 5900 128MB AGP
NV 6800GT 256MB AGP
NV 5200 PCI (3rd screen)
NV 7900GTX 512MB PCI-e
NV 6600 PCI-e (server box)
 
jarthel said:
the question was the first video card and not the history of your purchases. it seems like a e-penis thing...:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

You do realize that the OP listed his history of video cards from the past millennium, don't you?

But yes, this whole thread, as with most threads on the internet, focus on increasing the size of users e-peens.
 
First actual graphics card I bought was a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI. Ahhh 3dfx. So win.

The one I had before that was an integrated 3D Rage Pro.

Full history:

3D Rage Pro
Voodoo 3 2000 PCI
GeForce 3 2000 AGP
AIW Radeon 9800 Pro
GeForce 7800 GTX
GeForce 8800 GTX
GeForce GTX 280

Some pretty big leaps in there, as I recall. :cool:
 
TNT2
ATI 9200
ATI 9700 Pro
ATI 1950 Pro
Nvidia 8800GT

I should upgrade more often... :p

Those are just for my main rig, other computers that I don't game on get the hand me downs, or something like a 7300gs or x1600, whatever is cheap when I build.
 
first actual dedicated card was a blaster banshee later renamed to the voodoo banshee 16mb agp card.. thing was bad arse when it came out.. then after that i owned pretty much every version of ATI card, 9800SE was the last ATI card i ever bought until the 4870..
 
first 3d capable card in the house when i was a kid was ati rage 2c 2mb. what a piece of shit. didn't even use the 3d 'capability' until i got wing commander prophecy and that was very cool at the time.

after that i wanted to play quake 2 with some 3d stuff. got stiffed with another ati rage pro 8mb. it sucked too! it couldn't even draw a circle - instead of squares for blood in quake 2 (as with software rendering) this POS simply cut the corners off to make a + out of the squares. ugly!

then i stopped screwing around and got a voodoo 3 2000 pci and there was much rejoicing
 
S3th13 said:
You do realize that the OP listed his history of video cards from the past millennium, don't you?

But yes, this whole thread, as with most threads on the internet, focus on increasing the size of users e-peens.
Click to expand...

i always thought of this thread as more of a fun nostalgia thing than an e-peen booster.
 
It's hard to remember. Probably the IBM XGA microchannel adapter. It did 1024x768. I had one of the original Hercules adapters.... 720x480 addressable pixels (black and white!) which was amazing for the time, that probably came before.
 
The first card I ever bought was a Voodoo 3 3000 agp. It was an upgrade for my onboard ati iic graphics that was absolutely pathetic. I remember playing unreal and quake 2 for the first time... it was awesome.
 
I remember my first 3D video card upgrade. It was a Voodoo3 2000 PCI. I was confused as to how the PC would know to use the PCI card rather than the onboard video on my Gateway PC. I remember sitting on hold for 2 hours to ask Gateway tech support if it would work. LOL
 
My first video card was the Sapphire Toxic 4870 1gb I just bought. Played onboard all before that. I will never play with onboard graphics again :)
 
ATI Rage 32mb
nVidia FX5200 128mb
ATI 9600XT 256
nVidia FX 5900 (exploded)
~> back to the 9600XT
X800pro (modded to XT)
X1900XT (OC'D and still running)
 
My first ever Graphics card for my first ever PC was bought back near the end of 2003. It was a £350 Hercules 9800XT, 256MB job. This was all in anticipation of the release of Half Life 2.
 
jonathonball said:
i always thought of this thread as more of a fun nostalgia thing than an e-peen booster.
Click to expand...

Maybe the first 2 pages before every graphics card created hadn't been listed 200 times, but at this point its just people listing listing listing while their e-peen gets bigger bigger bigger.
 
The first discrete graphics card that I remember was an nVidia Geforce 5200FX that I got for my Intel Pentium III system back in 2001-2002. I know my earlier computers had graphics cards, but they were always part of the system and nothing special so I don't remember them.

My upgrade progression:

<stuff> (pre-2002)
nVidia GeForce 5200FX (2002)
ATi Radeon x850 XT (flashed to XTX) (2004)
ATi Radeon x1950 XTX (2006)
nVidia 8600M GT (laptop, 2007)
ATi Radeon HD 4850 (2009)

...with hopefully an HD 58xx before Christmas! I've had plenty of other cards at various times but I never actually used them in my gaming rig. Most notable are an ATi Radeon x1900 XTX, an nVidia GeForce 6600LE, an nVidia GeForce 7200GS, and a Radeon x800 XT.
 
The first card I picked out myself was an eVGA 5700LE 256MB DDR. It was such a huge improvement over the onboard I was using at the time.
I'm not sure what my VERY first video card was though. I think it was some ISA card.

It might've been this bad boy.
tridenttvga94vlir0.jpg
 
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I built my first "new/non hand me down" pc in 8th grade with a STMicro Kyro II. I remember convincing my friend that it was better than his geforce 2 gts, and indeed in some benchmarks it was even faster than the geforce 2 ultra. No TnL and it was only direct x 6 though.

Before 8th grade/shared family computer
some card from the 286 era that I don't remember
s3 virge
rage pro
S3 2000 which had to be returned due to driver issues
geforce 256

My Computers:
st micro kyro II - sold to a friend
geforce 3 ti 200 - sold to a friend
radeon 9500 moded to 9700 - sold to a friend
x800 returned
geforce 6800 gt - sold to a friend
geforce 7800 gt - died
geforce 8800 gt - died
current radeon 3850(the 8800 died and I was short on cash... based on how my last 2 nvidia cards turned out my next one will probably be ati)
 
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S3 Virge (Graphics Decelerator)
STB Velocity 4400 16MB TNT
Riva TNT2 16mb?
Voodoo 3 1000agp (the kind they put in Compaqs) Performance in Tribes/CS/Quake 3 was pretty good!
ATI Radeon 32MB
ATI Radeon 8500
ATI Radeon 9700
ATI X850XT
Nvidia 8800GTX (great switch from terrible ATI drivers)
ATI 5870 (ASUS) Just purchased last night!!! (hopefully ATI driver headaches are not as bad as my extensive past experience with ATI)
 
I believe the Dimond Multimedia Viper was my first discreet graphics card.
maybe?
only one I remember...

oh wait no... I remember a good ole VLB card. Might still have it too, in my tub o' computer crap.


edit: Viper V770 I believe.
 
I think it was a Matrox card. Back when they were still making discrete graphics cards for the PC. It came with my Dell XPS P90. I remember thinking back then that my 1GB Hard drive was HUGE and there was no way I'd use up all the space, LOL.
 
Radeon 9800pro 128mb. I had gotten it for my 12th or 13th birthday, I believe. I was so amazed by the newfound reflections on the headcrabs. :D
 
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