What graphics card impressed you the most?

3Dfx Voodoo2 before that everything else looked like crap. I still run that faithful voodoo card look at my signature. It was a beast of a card for it's time and I remember when I first got it I had no idea what to expect. Once I saw those graphics that was it. Every other card after that just added more features with higher frame rates. Quake GL omg I think I will install it and play it again. Those were the days.

Nothing not even the legendary ati 9700 pro card came close to that feeling again. It was like opening your eyes for the first time. That card coupled with a game like quake, damn it was the best gaming of my life.
 
my cards in order by Maker.
Riva128 my first card came with machine I bought, card by STB
TNT by Creative First driver I ever saw that had AA as an option
2x 12MB VDIIs by 3DFX
TNT2U by Creative
Geforce2GTS 64MB fr0m Hercules the one that came OCd for stock clocks and caused an uproar from Nvidia
Geforce3 Ti500 by ASUS
Geforce 4 Ti 4200 by VisionTek
Geforce 4 Ti 4600 by VisionTek (niether card had 2D filter issues as VisionTek used high quality filters)
Geforce 5900XT flash to 5950 Great card by Gainward
Geforce 6600GTOC x2 AGP from BFG
6800GTOC AGP OCd well and recently got a BFG 9600GT in exchange for it
7800GS by PNY
2x BFG8800GTSOC 640MB awesome jump in performance
2x XFX AlphaDog 9600GTs same performance as teh 8800GTS but much better power usage
2x eVGA 260GTX 216s another great performer for the cost spent total for both was 20 over a sinlge GTX285 but I get about 10-20% more performance, money well spent

and ATI cards
Rage3D 64
Rage3D 128 first experience with their over alpha/brightness settings(god I wish they wouldn't default to that)
Radeon 7500
Radeon 8500
Radeon 9600XT
All above were by ATI
Radeon 3870 by VisionTek and because I traded for it, RMAd it and got a 4870 for a friend to use in his rig
VistionTek 4850 Good performer

Bolded are cards of note

To The op who said the FX5900XT was junk compared to the GF4 MX440 he had before, WHAT PLANET ARE YOU FROM?
 
My ATI X800XT was the first card that really maxed out everything I played (was also the first card I paid $400 for). Served me well for a few years, so I got my money's worth.

8800gts 640mb was great as well, big leap over the previous generation cards
 
That would be my Geforce 2 MX (first purchased video card) and my 9800xt.

Seeing the moving water effects on HL for the first time was amazing.
 
We're talking technological leaps here folks. Every card is faster, yes. But what do they bring to the table? We're seeing the 9700 Pro alot because it brought the speed refresh we needed, while allowing the use of anti aliasing and anisotropic filtering at very high framerates in (then) current games. That was a game changer. Everything today is all about anti aliasing and anisotropic filtering. So that was a technological triumph for AMD/ATI.
 
9500pro. never owned one but the price to performance ratio was spectacular.
 
That was a great card as well, great value. You could mod them to 9700 pro speeds and unlock the bus. ;) Hard to find them though and I think Ati eventually stopped producing them quick.
 
GeForce 3 for its sheer horsepower when it was first released.
9700 Pro as it brought AA performance to a level where it could actually be used.
HD4870 for it's price/performance ratio.
 
ShuttleLuv said:
That was a great card as well, great value. You could mod them to 9700 pro speeds and unlock the bus. ;) Hard to find them though and I think Ati eventually stopped producing them quick.
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yes they did they learned the error of their ways :p
 
GeForce 6800 GT: It was the first premium desktop card I ever bought after wasting a couple of years with so-called desktop replacement gaming laptops (Alienware 51M, Sager 4780 and 8790).

I was very impressed with my XFX 5870 'til it bit the dust last weekend. I returned it for an XFX credit and will wait and see what the new Nvidia cards have to offer before deciding how to use the credit.
 
AMDXP said:
I remember the 3dfx Voodoo1. Still have it. :D Should probably throw it out.
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Don't throw it out, send it to me! :p

At any rate the graphics card(s) that impressed me the most was the 6800GT/Ultra. Seeing HDR in a game for the first time was truly a sight to behold. :D
 
TNT2. It finally dropped the reliance on SLI voodoo 2s and brought me into 32bit color with very good frame rates.
 
When i got a Generation one 3dfx card in my PC paired with my ATI rage fury! Quake 1 was never the same, i think this was the upgrade that made the biggest splash on any of my systems to date!
 
For me, the best card I ever owned was the 9700 Pro. The raw power of it for the time, the feature set, and the price was unbelievable (it didn't help that nVidia's answer to it was the dustbuster FX series). It look several years for that card to finally begin to show it's age in the games I played. Every gaming card I have purchased since has been judged by the 9700 Pro.
 
now that I tihnk of it, I should really make mine the Rage Pro 4meg card. First 3d accelerator I ever had and playing Jedi Knight at 800x600 was just amazing and thats what sold me on PC gaming since... I have to look back at that for my addiction to having a fast ass PC for playing games with all the eye candy.
 
I remember buying a card and being blown away by the improved speed when executing a dir command in a directory with many files in WfW 3.11... I must be getting old.

Anyway, for gaming it has to be the voodoo 1. Running GLQuake made me realize that the graphic card would become one of the most important components in a gaming pc.

I suppose the introduction of shaders could be seen as another revolution, but it didn't give me the same immediate "WOW" effect as the voodoo 1.
 
3Dfx Voodoo2, coming from Amiga I couldn't believe how far PC graphics were behind before this card.

The first time I saw 3Dfx Voodoo2 running I knew PC was saved as a gaming platform :p
 
nVidia TNT. This card put nVidia on the map.

Radeon 7000 series - This card caught people by surprise I think. ATI (at that time) was no longer thought of as a second rate video card maker.
 
^^^ I disagree. TNT was a good card, but it had its share of problems. For one, driver problems were really a problem. Second, 32 bit color on that card did put a damper on performance. As a whole though, it was a good card and did start putting Nvidia in the right direction. TNT2 is what really made nvidia shine imho, and made 32 bit color gaming playable with revised detonator drivers.
 
9700pro I say. 8800GTX too but it has only had a better run because of years of games running the Unreal3 engine.
 
Voodoo brought acceleration to the masses. Nothing most likely will ever impress us gamers as much as the first voodoo card. The jump from consoles / pc that didn't have one to a pc equipped with one was nothing short of phenomenal. Eyefinity? Great stuff, but no, nothing like the first time running GL Quake or Need for Speed on a voodoo card. For anything to impress us with such a leap, would literally take a whole re writing of gaming. It has to be something so big, so impressive, and so visually awe inspiring, that we'll forget what Voodoo did for us.
 
1st Place: Without question the Voodoo 2 Sli had the biggest impression. I remember my kids gathering around the computer watching Unreal. The monster jumping out in the hallway scared them half to death.

2nd Place: ATI 9800 was a great all around card that extended speed and smooth rendering to higher resolutions. It ran hot but the heat was worth the fun.

3rd Place: The GeForce 8800 GTX represented a quantum leap in graphic, especilly in SLI. It was the card that made SLI a "must have" for us enthusiasts.
 
Got a resistor broken 3dfx Voodoo 2 card still and a Matrox MGA Mystique, not chucking it away. Quake FTW. They are still around, memories :0
 
ShuttleLuv said:
TNT2 is what really made nvidia shine imho, and made 32 bit color gaming playable with revised detonator drivers.
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Oops, I actually meant the TNT2. I upgraded my nVidia Riva 128 (default card) when the Diamond V770D TNT2 came out.
 
The HD Radeon 5850 has been the card that has impressed me the most and actually caused me to go out and buy games. Until now I've always lagged behind by several generations and never could afford cards costing more than $100. At $259 launch, it has probably represented the highest level of performance relative to the marketplace at that price point.... ever.

The 8800GTS 320 was launched at $299 and didn't wreck as much shop as the 5850 has and continues to do. I feel that at $300 it's still probably a great value in comparison to past launches.
 
^^^ I disagree. TNT was a good card, but it had its share of problems. For one, driver problems were really a problem. Second, 32 bit color on that card did put a damper on performance. As a whole though, it was a good card and did start putting Nvidia in the right direction. TNT2 is what really made nvidia shine imho, and made 32 bit color gaming playable with revised detonator drivers.
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32 bit color was playable on the TNT2 Ultra that I had until the Q3 point releases started coming out and reduced performance so much that I had to drop it back down.
 
When I first got my GF3 Ti 500 and had a 9700 pro on another machine those two were fantastic cards for the time. I still have some Voodoo 3 and 5 cards lying around.
 
Thats odd, Quake 3 worked great on my TNT2 non Ultra. Even after point releases. Maybe a driver bug? hmmpf. :confused:
 
Voodoo 5 6000 taught me about lies and disappointment. Kind of like DNF.
 
Voodoo 5 6000 was made fun of back then for the size (look at a 5970 now???), the power draw (again look at power draw today), price (nowhere near as bad as a 5970 or xfire), and lack of new features. Ok the features is what did it. Cards were moving forward with new technology and 3dfx was still stuck in the speedy 16 bit color mode which gamers weren't buying into anymore. Now Voodoo 5 6000 did support 32 bit color gaming, but the lack of feature set killed it, period. People wanted T&L, more memory that could be accessed, true agp support, anti aliasing, etc. 3dfx went under because of bad timing. They made incredible products and every single one advanced this gaming industry to the point it's at now. 16 bit color gaming was what a Voodoo 5 still did best, period. Coupled with glide, it was actually incredible. Glide was an incredible api when it was implemented in gaming. It was extremely stable and wrote directly to the hardware, effectively making it fucking speedy as hell. Shame Glide had to die with 3dfx. Nvidia should've kept it alive. I still think this many years later, having tested all kinds of stuff, that Glide was the most speedy and STABLE api to be used. OpenGL has been problematic for years on cards at different times, until more recently. Glide never gave me a problem.
 
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the TNT Riva, the Nvidia Ti4200 and then an Nvidia 7900GT, the 9600GSO 384Mb card I have now is nice too
 
ShuttleLuv said:
^^^ I disagree. TNT was a good card, but it had its share of problems. For one, driver problems were really a problem. Second, 32 bit color on that card did put a damper on performance. As a whole though, it was a good card and did start putting Nvidia in the right direction. TNT2 is what really made nvidia shine imho, and made 32 bit color gaming playable with revised detonator drivers.
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I beg to differ. I still have and use a TNT card in a P3 450 system that dual boots Win3.11 and Win98 without issue for any of the games installed on the machine which numbers around 30.

ShuttleLuv said:
Voodoo 5 6000 was made fun of back then for the size (look at a 5970 now???), the power draw (again look at power draw today), price (nowhere near as bad as a 5970 or xfire), and lack of new features. Ok the features is what did it. Cards were moving forward with new technology and 3dfx was still stuck in the speedy 16 bit color mode which gamers weren't buying into anymore. Now Voodoo 5 6000 did support 32 bit color gaming, but the lack of feature set killed it, period. People wanted T&L, more memory that could be accessed, true agp support, anti aliasing, etc. 3dfx went under because of bad timing. They made incredible products and every single one advanced this gaming industry to the point it's at now. 16 bit color gaming was what a Voodoo 5 still did best, period. Coupled with glide, it was actually incredible. Glide was an incredible api when it was implemented in gaming. It was extremely stable and wrote directly to the hardware, effectively making it fucking speedy as hell. Shame Glide had to die with 3dfx. Nvidia should've kept it alive. I still think this many years later, having tested all kinds of stuff, that Glide was the most speedy and STABLE api to be used. OpenGL has been problematic for years on cards at different times, until more recently. Glide never gave me a problem.
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3DFX was done it by its own aroggance. They locked out AIBs when they needed them most after buying up STB. They were massively late with the V5 line and it lack features people wanted for games that were out and they were buying. As to Glide being a good API, that is open for debate. There isn't 1 single game out that hasn't needed countless patches for D3D or OGL that was a glide game. And this comes from the Devs doing Glide first because it was easier to work with and worrying about or making D3D and OGL support an after thought.
 
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There were driver problems with the TNT alot back in 98 when it came out. Trust me, I had one. There was game incompatibilities and some driver issues. Later detonator drivers corrected alot of problems though. But initial release drivers were not very good.
 
ShuttleLuv said:
There were driver problems with the TNT alot back in 98 when it came out. Trust me, I had one. There was game incompatibilities and some driver issues. Later detonator drivers corrected alot of problems though. But initial release drivers were not very good.
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What do you think I'm using on the Win3.11/98 box? release drivers and not 1 issue with 30+ games, all work just fine. Altho, I'm using an Intel 440BX board so that may be why I'm not having issues.
 
First card was obviously a massive event for me, it was a Voodoo 4 something. I dont even remember what I played on it, but I remember it was fantastic.

Next tide turning card was the GeForce 3 Ti 500 [story]which I got by buying a "geforce 2 ultra something" that "didnt work" from ebay, cleaned up the contacts on it, etc, and it turned out to not be an ultra, but a quadro, so I sold it for a grip of cash and got the newest bestest video card.[/story]. Comanche 4 ran like gangbusters on this. Thats really the only game I remember playing on it. Quake 3 also.

Had a few in between those but the next big move for me was the GeForce 7950GX2.

an in between later and now a XFX 4890 calls my computer home, and I vannot be happier that I went back to Ati (had a 9600XT somewhere in between ti500 and 7950)
 
Of the many cards I've had over the years, the only one that actually was revolutionary was my old Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 card. It was one of the first accelerated 3D cards on the mass market and ran about $250 when I got it in 1996. Wicked fast PCI interface, and a whopping 2 MB of EDO memory. Every card after that was a big bump up, but never the same actual change from the previous generation.
 
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