Favorite GPU you have owned?

ATi Rage 128 and Geforce 4 Ti4200 < I still have it in a server hardmodded and biosflashed to a Ti4600
 
hmm my favorite gpu had to be the 7950 gx2 as it was my first higher end gpu at the time :)
 
My PNY 5900 on an AGP8x interface. Still have it in a box somewhere in my closet. Waiting to be reused for a nostalgia machine.
 
oh man, no doubt it has to be my Voodoo3 3000 AGP.
voo30.jpg


This card back then would DESTROY anything thrown at it. HL, CS, Q3, UT. Truly an amazing card.
 
Im getting a lot of good life out of this 4870. We'll see if it outlasts my 8800gts in terms of price per time used.
 
I remember I was one of the first to get a Voodoo 3DFX card, what a huge jump. Made Quake and Shadow Warrior look so much better!
 
Siorus said:
Just ran across this thread. It's not that old so I'm gonna go ahead and revive it...

My absolute favorite GPU that I've owned is the SimFusion 6000q that's sitting behind me on a shelf. 4 Radeon 9700 Pros on two PCBs, using one PCI and one AGP slot. It took me years to find one for sale. Here's an article about it; maybe I'll post some pictures of mine later when I have a camera handy if anyone really wants to see it. All I have right now is a couple of pictures of the aftermath of one of the heatsinks coming loose in shipping. :( (this being the only one that you can actually see enough of the card to tell what it is [fair warning: it's a 2500x1667 picture]) I haven't fixed it yet-I may never bother, I may just frame it and hang it up the way it is.

Besides that thing... My Radeon 8500 (upgraded from a rage 128; first "fast" card I bought; used and abused it for years), my Voodoo 5 5500s, and my GeForce FX 5800 Ultra (bought it off ebay a few years back just to play with. It's so awful that I love it).

I saw a lot of people mention the 6800; that thing deserves an honorable mention here too, simply because I have never owned and used a GPU for as long as I've had that thing without feeling any real need to upgrade. (part of that is because I don't game anymore really, but still... :p)
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lol, from that review site:


I wonder if I could run Halo smoothly on it
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NOTHING can run halo smoothly :p
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I still remember being annoyed at Halo's (piss-poor port from the xbox, IMO) high PC requirements :p Though my Intel GMA 950 still ran it, through the entire campain (some strange sound issue, but I think that is something else to blame).
 
matrix563 said:
5870 :)
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Now that's a card that I would say the polar opposite of. I'll be on my deathbed and people will believe I've gone senile as I will still be babbling about my utter hatred of that card 'til my final breath has left my lips...

My favorite would have to be my Voodoo3. Finally 2D & 3D on a single card, and I'm no longer stuck at 640x480 when gaming.

I had just bought a new 1600x1200 monitor. The leap in visual clarity from 640x480 to 1600x1200 isn't even comparable to the jump from 1080p to 2560x1600.

It came with Descent 3. That was amazing for the day @ 1600x1200.

I immediately had to re-play Quake/Quake 2/Unreal/HL.

Doom was utter-f-ing amazing @ 1600x1200. Whole new game when everything is no longer pixelated to hell. (pun intended?)


The original Voodoo was amazing to get out of 320x240 software and quadruple the res. But Voodoo3 brought so much more clarity, and finally out of a single-card solution.

(Sorry, never owned a TNT/2, so can't speak for 32-bit color, though I never considered it as it was quite the performance hit IIRC... yes, I was a 3dfx fanboi, and I think 3dfx was the last time that shit just worked right out of the box...)
 
AdamNesvick said:
STI Blackmagic Voodoo 2 12MB PCI

I remember starting up Quake 2, and Mechwarrior 2 Titanium, and nearly shitting myself. Totally changed my view of PC vs Console.
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Same here. It was such a huge jump from 2d to 3d. I had a Creative Voodoo II though.
 
It would have to be the original ATI Radeon 256MB. I was in awe playing Black & White and be able to see the enhanced textures applied to the characters and landscape.
 
The 4890's are a complete home run when I bought them, and has gotten even better with mature drivers. Reasons why they are FTW:

1. Price: Back in summer '09, the 4890 being ATI's flagship card, could be had for as low as $160.

2. Performance: They were able to max out almost all games in 1080p, and made Crysis on Very High playable.

3. Crossfire Scaling: As shown by TechPowerup's Analysis, 4890's crossfire scaling is near-perfect at the 1920x1200 resolution.

Coming from previously owning a 6800 GT, I bought not just one, but two 4890's, and even today, wouldn't trade up my near-perfect crossfire scaling for anything else.
 
Canopus Spectra 2500 on a 300a@450 in my mind that setup is the fastest I've ever owned. I remember going to a computer fair in Pomona CA asking for the video card with the TNT chipset, and the sales guys laughing at me saying "TNT chipset boom boom hahahaha" =\ so mean those asian guys.
 
back in the day, Monster 3D. I remember playing Quake 2 for the first time. My mind was blown... majored in Comp Sci because of it.

More recently the 9700 Pro and then 8800GTS (I feel like I could pop it back in now and it would still be able to play most games)

My progression:

Sierra (every quest you could imagine!), Lucas etc ... games -> Monster 3D -> 3D II -> TNT II -> GF2 Ultra -> 9700 Pro -> X800XT -> 7800GTX -> 8800GTS -> 4850 -> (4870x2 <> 4890cf >= GTX470)
 
Favorite really old card is my V5-5500 AGP I bought brand new. Still have it in my retro gaming rig.

Later on I had a 7900GS that I majorly volt modded and had a 50% overclock on it... it lated a whole year that way until it finally fried.

Then I went to an ATI HD3870.. sooo much faster than the 7900GS was. And now I have my 4850 which amazingly enough plays Crysis quite well even at 1920x1080 with most details set very high.

I really never understood the whole "but can it play Crysis" because even my 3870 handled it quite well.

I've had so many other cards, but those I listed have been my favorites so far.

I have a an ATI 9700Pro laying around that was given to me not too long ago. Still haven't messed with it. It will most likely go in another retro rig when I get a chance to build another.
 
8800gt is the king. I was also barely introduced to computing and went from onboard g31/g33 > 8400gs > 8500gt >8800gt and OMG I jizzed. :eek:
 
I remember getting the Voodoo Banshee.............I played games for days until the new wore off. Good old days.......
 
Voodoo Banshee and then my 8800gts were the 2 biggest "jumps" in performance i had. So they are my favorite
 
My EVGA GTX 480 - hear me out...

In the few months I've had this card, I don't think it has ever given me a problem, except some standard minor things that were fixed by upgrading the drivers. And that counts for a lot, when I had a 5870, well sure, it was fast and had a lot of check boxes filled on the spec sheet, but I had issue after issue with it, from videos stuttering in mpc and wmp, to buzzing noises, to graphics corruptions in games - that the driver updates never fixed. Now, some of the issues could've been an isolated bad sample (other issues seemed inherent in the design such as the buzzing noise), but after sucking down a $75 restocking fee I wasn't about to take a chance on a second one (and I needed a lot of time to try to fix the issues so I couldn't get a second one in the 30 day period newegg allows.)

Got my GTX 480, and yea it was a little hotter, a little noisier and a little more power hungry, but damn if this card hasn't been solid as a rock, not so much as one driver restart and no blue screens, no graphics corruption, no buzzing noise when scrolling in IE or Chrome (which I personally hated), no problems with stuttering videos in mpc and wmp, and so on. And this thing is blazing fast at everything. $500 well spent IMO.
 
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I had a rendition verite around 1996-1997 which allowed me to play v-quake (thus team fortress) on some game network (possibly mplayer) - which was a good leg up on the software rendered quake.
 
Well, Voodoo 1 because it was the first time i had REAL 3D graphics. I'll never forget the clicking sound it made when it engaged.

Other than that, my ATI 9700 was the one that gave me the biggest performance jump and lasted the longest.
 
GTX 480 for sure but I will always have a soft spot for the 3dfx ...the first time I saw a game go into "highres" mode it was like a revelation!
 
my old 4850 was my favorite card, the price was spot on, performance wise lasted me longer than any other card before it and it played almost all games except crysis for a while until this year a 1920x1200. Got me through a lot of heavy gaming sessions.
 
Without a doubt my orginal Voodoo Monster 3d. Nothing will ever top seeing Quake run in OpenGL for the the first time.
 
DooKey said:
Without a doubt my orginal Voodoo Monster 3d. Nothing will ever top seeing Quake run in OpenGL for the the first time.
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1. Voodoo Monster 3d best buy got me with that one. money well spent. came with some off road demo game that was terrible. kicked ass with a pelt cooled celeron

2. ati-9800pro - finally able to max everything in battlefield 1942 1280x1024

3. nvidia 7800gt/ 4200ti (tie) 7800gt was light years above ati's offering and allowed playable frame rates with eye candy on call of duty 2. 4200ti was the best $200 card ever most clocked well and rulled the roost untill the 9700pro came out.

4. x800gto2- x850xt bois flash. worked great and best value card ever. to bad the nvidia 7xxx beat them bad.

worst mistakes
1. 6800nu pci-e although it clocked pretty well it had severe playability issues with nforce 3 chip sets. it worked well when it would work right.

2. x1800xl underpowered and the drivers never worked right for me. last ati board i vowed to ever buy.

3. fx5800ultra no explanation needed. what a pos
 
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