Do you remember your first graphics card?

tnt2 m64 was the first real one prior to owning a s3

lol couldnt use opengl on it for like 3 months cause i didnt now about mobo agp drivers :p
so denied when i couldnt see quake 2's colored lighting.
 
I don't remember it, but it is still being used so I can check! From my first computer 1995 built by a local "computer expert" (I knew nothing at the time) for $3500, supposed to be top of the line.
 
Cirrus Logic 5424 on an old z-station 486

ATi Mach 32 Windows Accellerator Module

first 3d card S3 Virge 4MB followed by a rendition vertite
 
packard bell = 2mb s3 trio 64V+ - 4mb diamond stealth s220 - 16mb voodoo3 2k

gateway =16mb TNT2 M64 - 16mb voodoo3 2k (it ran UT wayyyy better) - 32mb geforce2 mx - 64mb geforce mx440 (AA in tribes 2 yay!) - 128mb geforce 4 ti4200

first build = 128mb geforce 4 ti 4200 - 128mb radeon 9800np

second build = 256mb 7800gt - 256mb 8500GT (its an htpc now)

third build = 256mb 7800gt - 512mb 8800gt - 2x 512mb radeon 4850
 
My first card was a Canopus Pure3d Voodoo card. I remember it was $250 or so. O_O but I had so much fun with Quake Lithium and Team Fortress that it didn't matter. lol
 
2k3eblade said:
I remember my first gaming PC. I had a Pentium MMX @ 166mhz, with a whopping 96mb of EDO ram, Sound Blaster AWE32 (this sound card was like a length of a 8800GTS), initially a Voodoo Banshee 16mb and then I added a Voodoo 2 12mb. I thought it was a pretty beefy machine back in 1998. I remember fondly playing Quake2 and Total Annihilation with that machine. I really wanted to upgrade my machine to a Pentium 2 @ 350mhz back then but instead I held back for a total machine upgrade.
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TA, what a game. I remember that game....Was this the game that when you loaded in the game room you could see the loading screen and who was loaded fastest you knew had 128MB+ of ram? lol

I also remember playing quake2 on gamespy and back then I was on a 33.6 dialup and all the dicks with there 56k would brag about how much faster they could download then me. Funny stuff...
 
I remember buying my first graphics card (voodoo 3) when I was in 5th grade. I went to a friends house that had one and he installed my copy of Mechwarrior 3 and when he would use jump jets smoke would shoot out the back of the mech and I almost died. I directly went home and boxed up my n64 and ps1 and every attachment and game I owned (I kept every single box and instruction in my closet so everything was mint) and took it to gamestop. I cashed it all in and had 4 dollars of in store credit left over after I picked up the voodoo 3. From that point on it was pure bliss in Mechwarrior 3 and Quake 3 :). WAAAAAY before that though I had a packard bell and torn me up some doom and return to castlewolfienstein. But I was so young then my mom wouldn't even buy me the full games but buy me those 12 disc cd sampler pack of pc games from wal mart. I'd have so much fun with those. It was just a bunch of demo's but the doom and CW demo's were the first episode of the game which was pretty long and fun by itself.

Ah those were the days. I remember Doom giving me nightmares. NIGHTMARES I TELL YOU!
 
quinnyfizzle said:
My first card was a Canopus Pure3d Voodoo card. I remember it was $250 or so. O_O but I had so much fun with Quake Lithium and Team Fortress that it didn't matter. lol
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I remember that card...it was sweet. I had a friend in college who had one and I used to go over to his dorm room just to see how much different Team Fortress looked with OpenGL.
 
Voodoo 2

Anyone else out there that had a Voodoo 2 laughing at all this sli/crossfire stuff that's coming back? ;) Any old mathematics aficionados laughing at all the multi-core parallel processing algorithms that are making a comeback? :p
 
Got to go wayyy back to 1989 for the first "real" graphics card. I used cga in my homebuilt XT clone before this one, so I won't count it. Summer of 1989, I went to a computer fair and plunked down $150 for a ATI VGA Basic. Basic meant 540x480 at the time, awesomely huge display in color for the time. That served me until AGP came out and I plunked down another $150 for a Diamond Stealth 24 with the S3 Virge chipset. That lasted untill 1999 when I went with a ATI Rage IIC, then a Riva TNT2, also from diamond. Then, a PNY GF2-400, A GF4-ti-4400 from winfast/leadtek, and a PNY 6800nu AGP to end my AGP cardline. since then, only a 6800GT and my current ATI X1900XTX, which while still 2 and a half years old, will probably do me for one more year as I plan to acquire a used x1900xt/xtx and crossfire till the end of '09. Also from the ATI rage era, I had 2 different stealth voodoo II, and an 8 and a 12 megger, and right before that a voodoo 1!! lots of 3dfx/ Nvidia there, but I like both manufacturers. Usually my experience is Nvidia is faster, ATI is prettier.
 
Can't remember what brand was in my first PC (486DX2/80), but I know it was some 1MB ISA card that was crap even back in 1995. The first video card I remember buying and installing myself was a Number 9 Revolution 3D.
 
cards I have purchased in order of use

Trident 1mb ISA 8900
Trident 9440 2MB Vesa Local Bus
ATI Rage Pro 8MB PCI
ATI 9200 AGP 128mb
ATI X800Pro AGP 256MB
ATI 3870HD PCIE 512MB
 
My cards from 1993 to today:

1MB Trident 8900C (Slowest. Card. Ever.) -> 1MB Diamond Speedstar 64 (CL5434) -> 2MB CL5434 -> 2MB S3 Virge + 4MB 3dfx Voodoo -> 4MB Matrox Millennium II + 8MB 3dfx Voodoo2 (1998's best 1-2 punch) -> 8MB ATi All-in-Wonder Pro -> 32MB Geforce 2 GTS -> 128MB Geforce 4 Ti4200-8x -> 128MB Radeon 9800 Pro -> 256MB Radeon X850 XT

Next card will be a Radeon HD 4850.
 
So I went out and bought my first AGP card to play ultraHLE (remember that?) roms I found out quickly that it didn't fit into a PCI slot. Oops, That in turn forced me to get a new mobo (Intel SE 440 BX) which also forced me to get a Slot 1 processor. This single initiative turned me into into a hardware junkie.
 
Acoustique said:
tnt2 m64 was the first real one prior to owning a s3

lol couldnt use opengl on it for like 3 months cause i didnt now about mobo agp drivers :p
so denied when i couldnt see quake 2's colored lighting.
Click to expand...

Same for me, I bought first VideoCard to see the new OpenGL features in Quake. If you missed out on those early days back over 10+ years ago, or got into video cards after that your a newb, and will never truly understand the awesomeness if VideoCards as much as we old schoolers
 
I had many older 2D video cards (with DIP memory) which I don't really count.

The first real 3D card I had was a Diamond Stealth. I forget the exact model, but I hated it because it didn't support the version of Direct-X that was required to play X-wing vs. TIE Fighter. :mad:

My first real card I saved up to purchase was a Voodoo Banshee. It was awesome because it had good 3D, amazing 2D performance, and came bundled with Half-life. I bought it around the same time I started reading [H]. :D
 
Zorachus said:
Same for me, I bought first VideoCard to see the new OpenGL features in Quake. If you missed out on those early days back over 10+ years ago, or got into video cards after that your a newb, and will never truly understand the awesomeness if VideoCards as much as we old schoolers
Click to expand...

QFT!! I still brag about being the first one with a P2-333 with a Matrox Millennium II video card and 2 Voodoo2 SLI. I kicked ass all over the place in Q2. Wow, there were some great games back then. Quake 2, Interstate '76, StarCraft, Fallout, Grim Fandango, Myth: Fallen Lords, Thief, Tribes, System Shock, Half-Life.... sigh!!!:(
 
maw said:
QFT!! I still brag about being the first one with a P2-333 with a Matrox Millennium II video card and 2 Voodoo2 SLI. I kicked ass all over the place in Q2. Wow, there were some great games back then. Quake 2, Interstate '76, StarCraft, Fallout, Grim Fandango, Myth: Fallen Lords, Thief, Tribes, System Shock, Half-Life.... sigh!!!:(
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I know how you feel man. Times have sure changed.
 
maw said:
QFT!! I still brag about being the first one with a P2-333 with a Matrox Millennium II video card and 2 Voodoo2 SLI. I kicked ass all over the place in Q2. Wow, there were some great games back then. Quake 2, Interstate '76, StarCraft, Fallout, Grim Fandango, Myth: Fallen Lords, Thief, Tribes, System Shock, Half-Life.... sigh!!!:(
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Quake2-CTF was the best multiplayer ever for my Brothers and I, so addicting, and then HalfLife1 owned, and StarCraft1 is all time classic.

But today and soon we will have another golden age, we have Team Fortress 2 right now which to me is as fun and silly as Q2-CTF, WoW is still a great game, StarCratf2 is coming, and Left 4 Dead will be a new classic, plus id's new game Rage should be original and fun
 
I honestly don't know what my first video card was, but the first one I really took advantage of was a Radeon 7500 back in the day. Then it all went uphill...
 
My first 'real' card was in an eMachine eMonster 700 (700MHZ Athlon w/512MB cache) - it was an 8MB TNT nVIdia Vanta lol, but it was pretty good for it's time, and the mobo was an MSI 751 irongate AMD chipset motherboard.
 
My Dell Inspiron 8000 laptop had an ATi Rage 8mb... when I built my first desktop a couple years later, good god did the 9800pro feel good.
 
dandrop said:
Lol. I remember those days. I was playing EA Michael Jordan vs. Larry Bird, King's Quest 1 and Wizardry 1 on a green monitor.

BTW, I believe CGA is 4 glorious colors. Then about a year later EGA came out with 16, then the early VGA with 256. Woooo!!!
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Yes, EGA, not CGA! We were fortunate at the time to have EGA graphics, I fondly remember Kings Quest, Space Quest, Heroes Quest, and others. We had this ridiculous monitor at the time, 14" SVGA up to 1024x768. We couldn't even use that res for several years to come. When MCGA and VGA came out and 256 graced our screen, it was a whole new world.
 
286sx pac-bell pac-mate III whatever was in that LOL
MUCH LATER
Voodoo 2 x 2 SLI BABY!
Voodoo 3 (I sense a pattern?)
Ati Rage something or other 2
Geforce
Matrox g400 in there somewhere
Geforce 2
Geforce 3
Ati 9700 Pro
Ati 9800 Pro
Geforce 6800gt current but not for long.....
(HOPEFULLY) 7950gt from init6 (LOL)
 
ATI Rage 3d pc2tv. wasn't really good at anything 3d wise, but I also had an overclocked Cyrix and that was a big part of it. The first 3d one I actually used was a Diamond Monster 3D, right when voodoo cards dropped to under $300.
 
First one was a GeForce4 MX440 PCI (don't remember if it was the SE or not). I added it to my first HP desktop that originally had integrated graphics. Everything I've got after that is in my sig.
 
VooDoo 3 3000 AGP in my top of the line Gateway PC. I had no clue what anything was as it was my first PC and I was the only one in our LAN group with a CD burner (4x baby) and a DVD ROM. P3-450 and 128MB. A few days after we placed the order to build the computer the TNT 2 came out and my buddy suggested we try to get them to change my PC before it shipped...didn't happen.
 
Nvidia 4200 > Nvidia 5200pro? > Nvidia 5500 Ultra > ATI 9800PRO > Nvidia 7900gs > Nvidia 8800GT OC

I'd have to admit, i loved the ATI card the most.. That 9800pro stuck with for about 3 years..

I never squezzed as much life out of a card as I have that one.
 
Discounting the older Macintosh and 386 era PC’s I tinkered with that were already old at the time, the first “modern” computer I had (in the sense that it was new when I got it) had integrated S3 Trio64 Video with 1MB Video Ram. I later upgraded that to a 3DFX Voodoo Banshee PCI 16MB.

After that, I had a S3 Savage4 8MB (only slightly faster than the banshee and only in some games), TNT2 Ultra, Geforce 256, Geforce2 Ultra, Radeon8500, FireGL X1 (9700 Pro), X800XTPE, 8800GT, HD 4850 (current)
 
f1y said:
Nvidia 4200 > Nvidia 5200pro? > Nvidia 5500 Ultra > ATI 9800PRO > Nvidia 7900gs > Nvidia 8800GT OC

I'd have to admit, i loved the ATI card the most.. That 9800pro stuck with for about 3 years..

I never squezzed as much life out of a card as I have that one.
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i agree, the 9800pro was a beast in its day:D

Guys remember the 3DFX Voodoo Banshee? I think that was my first card
 
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