Post your favorite card of all time

Spare-Flair said:
Quantum3D_Obsidian_50SB-4440.jpg
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That's like looking at 80's pron. Its old and hairy but still sexy.
 
Two of the best, everlasting performance cards I've ever owned:

GeForce4 Ti4600
ATi Radeon 9700 Pro

Both of these cards are still being used in some of my various machines.
 
My two favorites were my sapphire 9500 128mb that softmodded to a 9700 pro and my 6600gt

there is no doubt about it that the 6600gt was the best bang for your buck at the time. It still runs many of todays games at decent settings, it was pretty cheap (considering video card prices now) and it held its value really well.

I wish I never sold my 6600gt :(
 
ahh i remember my ASUS TNT2 ULTRA 32Mb (V3800 Ultra Deluxe) , it was soo badass.
it's either that one or my old Radeon 8500, i broke 10 000 in 3dmark 2001 with this one and a crappy computer.
 
bullen said:
it's either that one or my old Radeon 8500, i broke 10 000 in 3dmark 2001 with this one and a crappy computer.
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I bought an 8500 off the forums here for $5 shipped three weeks ago. Its going in my mom's Christmas computer.
 
I work at a company called gill digital services atm and I have about 5 interns and I am teaching them how to trouble shoot hardware. The company had all of its old computers from its last (few) upgrades. That's what sparked this thread. All the old server hardware woulda been an ass load at one time. I think my favorite is the P2/P3 450. I mean I'm talking like 386s and 286s and P 133's.

It's pretty cool cause I found like over 10 or 15 sticks of (probably) 16mb or less ram modules in all those servers. I forget exactly what they are called but it was the standard ram before the sdram modules came onto the market.

I couldn't resist jumping in with all the interns and doing most of the trouble shooting myself. I am like a kid in a candy store. Alot of that stuff I woulda killed for when I was like 15.

~Adam
 
CleanSlate said:
I work at a company called gill digital services atm and I have about 5 interns and I am teaching them how to trouble shoot hardware. The company had all of its old computers from its last (few) upgrades. That's what sparked this thread. All the old server hardware woulda been an ass load at one time. I think my favorite is the P2/P3 450. I mean I'm talking like 386s and 286s and P 133's.

It's pretty cool cause I found like over 10 or 15 sticks of (probably) 16mb or less ram modules in all those servers. I forget exactly what they are called but it was the standard ram before the sdram modules came onto the market.

I couldn't resist jumping in with all the interns and doing most of the trouble shooting myself. I am like a kid in a candy store. Alot of that stuff I woulda killed for when I was like 15.

~Adam
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Its called EDO ram or something close to that, makes great keychains :D
 
EDO, or for a while there, RAMBUS. God I hated RAMBUS... RIMM modules, termination cards, a load of crap, all of it.
 
I'd have to say my favorite board would be the ASUS Ti4200 128MB I used to own. It was unique compared to most other Ti4200 boards out there in the fact that it used a 4400/4600 PCB with BGA memory modules, and came clocked at 4400 speeds. I had that card for a year and a half until the fan crapped out. Awesome board for the day, and at $200 I certainly got my money's worth. :D

Before that 3dfx was my choice. You will not be forgotten. *sniff*
 
My first taste was with a Riva128....WOW!!! Quake looked incredible compared to the S3 Virge I had before. Then the addiction started.....

TNT
TNT2 M64
GeForce2 GTS
Radeon 64mb DDR
GeForce3 Ti4200
Radeon 8500DV AIW
Radeon 9500 softmod 9700 Pro
GeForce 6600GT
GeForce 7800GTX

I am currently running a GeForce 7950GT.....I want a 8800GTS but keep talking myself out of it.
 
I really loved my 9800pro that I had like 2 or 3 years ago. Never had a problem with drivers and it took everything i threw at it back in the day. HL2, CS:S, Colin McRae, BF2....etc
 
My first real graphics cards was a ATI 3D Expression 2MB, Now my first REAL 3D Graphics card was a Hercules Stingray 128bit 3D voodoo 8MB graphics card... Wow those were the days playing Quake 2.

Now my favorite Video Card has to be the ATI 9700PRO because that card completely blew away Nvidia's tech at the time, and that card lasted me a good 2.5 years. That was the best upgrade ever.
 
aggr1103 said:
That's like looking at 80's pron. Its old and hairy but still sexy.
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ROFL. That's absolutely true. The 80's cranked out better stuff than the wam-bam nowadays.

Anyways, here's a proper image of the Quantum3D Obsidian2 X24. I remember when my local Babbage's had one in stock for $600. I thought that was outrageous, but still that's what you paid for two 12MB Voodoo2 cards. Now look at today's high-end. :rolleyes:

800px-Quantum3D_Obsidian_X-24_SLI_P.jpg


Anybody want to sell me theirs? :D
 
My x800GTO^2.

I've never heard of any other card than can pretty much double it's performance and still run on the stock cooler.

Unlock from 8 to 12 Pipes... then overclock from 400/490 all the way up to 600/600.

At the time it was $275 CAD, performing faster than the x850XT PE, which was nowhere under $575 CAD at the time.

My Counter-Strike: Source video stress test went from 50~ FPS all the way up to 110fps.
 
I had an old Hercules TNT2 Ultra that was absolutely killer, but my favorite card of days past was probably my 6800 GT. It was a fast, reliable card that represented the end of the single-slot high end.

You'll be missed, single-slot coolers.
 
Forgive me for I must post two:

1. The Paradise VGA card I had in my old ALR PowerFlex 286. 256 colors, 640 x 480 and everything in between. This is at a time when there were still plenty of EGA and even CGA cards still in use.

2. The bastard love child 3dFX Voodoo 1 card I got for my Macintosh Performa 631CD. It was my first 3d accelerated card and there was no going back after that.
 
^^ I still lust after that picture!

My favorite card(s) are the ones I'm currently running: 2 GeForce 7800GTX in SLI.
Best set up I've ever had for pure power, AND I got them both off of eBay for about $35 per card. Seriously - they were advertised "AS IS", and when they arrived, indeed, under a small black heatsink, there were 9 mosfets, one of which had obviously overheated and burned out. I carefully pulled off the destroyed mosfet, reseated the heatsink, and bingo! Cards booted up no problem, and I have been running at near GeForce 8800 speeds for the past three weeks. :D
 
Borgschulze said:
My x800GTO^2.

I've never heard of any other card than can pretty much double it's performance and still run on the stock cooler.

Unlock from 8 to 12 Pipes... then overclock from 400/490 all the way up to 600/600.

At the time it was $275 CAD, performing faster than the x850XT PE, which was nowhere under $575 CAD at the time.

My Counter-Strike: Source video stress test went from 50~ FPS all the way up to 110fps.
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12 pipes at 600MHz Core? Doubtful that It could outperform a X850XT PE, a 12 pipe card like the X800GTO would have to have a core clock of over 720MHz to run as fast as the X850XT PE. But still one of the best unlocked cards.
 
rbanzai said:
Forgive me for I must post two:

1. The Paradise VGA card I had in my old ALR PowerFlex 286. 256 colors, 640 x 480 and everything in between. This is at a time when there were still plenty of EGA and even CGA cards still in use.

2. The bastard love child 3dFX Voodoo 1 card I got for my Macintosh Performa 631CD. It was my first 3d accelerated card and there was no going back after that.
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I had one of those, I think it came out around the time of Duke nukem 3d. I remember playing with old DOS games like Doom2 and Duke3d. It was also used as my 2D card to pair with the Richeous3D Voodoo1 when that came out.
 
I have a special affinity for all of the 3d accelerator cards I've owned in the past. All of which I have given away to friends to share the 3d love after each upgrade :). I didn't even know what 3d or AGP was back then in high school when I was running on my parent's compaq presario with onboard video until the advent of the Voodoo cards. Heck, dial-up to me back then was blazing fast, lol. They are as follows:

1) 3dfx Voodoo3 2000 AGP 16MB (My first 3d video card, it was so purty and flashy...nvidia huh?, ati who?) - lasted 2+ yrs
2) Asus Geforce 3 V8200 Deluxe AGP 64MB (Got in my 1st DIY build and boy was it expensive at $300+ USD but it was worth it along with my Athlon 1.4 Ghz T-bird to run Giants: Citizen Kabuto, Max Payne, Half-Life, Unreal Tournament, Warcraft 3, NOLF, and many other great games during what I consider to have been the golden era of pc gaming, lol. The icing on the cake were the cool stereoscopic 3d glasses included) - lasted 3+ yrs
3) Asus Radeon 9600xt (My Geforce wasn't making the cut any more and I had the upgrade itch so I had to get rid of it like a loaf of moldy bread. Plus, it was the reason I moved to the other side on Team Ati with the carrot waved in front of me on a stick known as Half-Life 2 since it came with the free coupon voucher, giving it insane value. The VIVO functionality was nice as well. Oh, and the fact that I could run it without a molex connector helped alot since my psu didn't have a spare) - lasted 2+yrs
4) Asus Geforce 7950gt pci-e x2 sli (my pc died after running almost 6 years, so these are in my 2nd and current build since SLI and Xfire seems to be all the rage these days. Nothing fancy here, but they get the job done on my setup. I didn't go with Ati this time because the comparable cards were dual-slotted and power hungry monsters, which I can't handle :D. And unfortunately my mobo was itching for SLI. Hope they hold out for sometime during DX10 because I just don't like Vista, lol) - lasts ???
5) Super Xtreme Intel Geforce HD 4950xt DX11 pci-e 3.0 4GB mem quad-SLI 15" pcb triple-slotted with 50 amp req.* (*to be released in the year 2010?)
 
But my favorite was my first... a bit nostalgic, I guess.

A Visiontek nVidia Geforce2 MX400 - 64 MB... or was it 32 ? Anyway, first real video card I bought... Back then I didn't know much about video cards... used to play Quake Arena with an 8MB integrated chip and an OpenGL emulator... hehe. That card ran Deus Ex pretty well... it was PCI.

However my first real "awesome card" was the next one I got, a Ti4200 ... That has been one of the best cards ever to come out, in its generation ofcourse... reasonable priced and could handle anything at the time... Later I got a 9600PRO ... not a killer but a very decent card to keep me in the game. And no to my current card: ATi X800PRO ...

As you can see, Im not an ATi or nVidia fan... I just go with whoever´s got the best bang for my buck... Problem now is you got to make the jump to 512+ MB of video memory if you wanna be able to play DX10 games at decent resolutions (1280x1024 or more)... And that expensive...

**I Loved my Ti4200, I'm still nostalgic for my first, but my fav has to be the Ti4200. The only reason I upgraded was because the card gave up in the 13th month... one month after my warranty ended, like clockwork. The card was still great, the problem was Visiontek and f-ing "white box". I've never bought anything "white box" again...**
 
I got a FX5200 for christmas. Threw that into my Compaq Persario. Bam... been addicted to computer games since..


The 5200 gets props for holding my videocard V-card.

Next up would be the 9700pro that died, and got replaced with a 9800pro from ATI. That thing was awesome.


The faith of the two cards:

the fx5200... given to a buddy. Now he's a fellow gamer.

the 9800pro.. sold in April of 07 on eBay for 35 bucks.
 
Canopus Voodoo2 12mb. Canopus made some neat changes to the ref. board design on this one. This was my first 3d accelerator. I remember that a friend had the same one and we took his out and did sli on my computer at a LAN. Everyone stood around in awe as we played Quake 2 at 1024x768 and noone had ever seen 3d acceleration at that resolution before. Then the second card came out and I went back to 800x600, because neither of us could afford a second $300 card.
 
how can you beat the gforce 4 ti 4200 for $99?? it was a steal in its day!!!
 
Or the 9600xt I got in a 9600se box (I think that what is was. There was a shipment that went out and if you checked the serial numbers on the box you could tell if it was an xt or an se).
 
Thinking on it further it's a toss-up between the Voodoo 3 3500 16MB AGP and the original Radeon 64MB DDR AGP (there were SDR versions of the 32MB card so they wrote "DDR" in huge letters all over everything...)

The Radeon was great. It hung in there for a long, long time and while the original drivers were /horrible/ they kept improving... and improving... and improving. I think my 3DMark 2001SE score went up by something like 50% over the course of a couple of years. Games that were near to unplayable became very reasonable and smooth. It was kind of nice because it felt like you were getting something for nothing with each driver update... and yet not so nice, in that it left you wondering why the hell it hasn't been that fast out of the box. ;)
 
I can't remember the name right now (jeez- I'm getting old), but I think it was a Matrox 3D card or add in card that let me play Quake GL.
The TI4400 was pretty good also, but for staying power I would say the 9800 Pro.
7800GS was okay, but I'm really liking the 8800GTS.
 
reswob said:
I've always wanted a 9800pro back in the day but never had one.
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I had one briefly until the mosfet heatsink dropped off during operation. While gaming I heard a "clink" in the bottom of my case and then Windows bluescreened. Powered down the machine and looked at the card and it was all black around the mosfets. Toast.

It was great while it lasted. Grabbed a FX 5900 Ultra after that.
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
I had one briefly until the mosfet heatsink dropped off during operation. While gaming I heard a "clink" in the bottom of my case and then Windows bluescreened. Powered down the machine and looked at the card and it was all black around the mosfets. Toast.

It was great while it lasted. Grabbed a FX 5900 Ultra after that.
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damn how did that happen? :eek:
 
my two favorites:

msi ti4400 with a purple pcb and vivo.

pny 5900nu

both were amazing...
 
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