What Is Your Personal Favorite Video Card of All Time?

Armenius said:
Of course. The original Voodoo, Voodoo Rush, and Voodoo2 were all PCI. I think the Voodoo2 Banshee was 3dfx's first AGP card. My first AGP card was a GeForce4 Ti4200.
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I have an S3 trio PCI still in my old cards tote (edit I think it's a ViRGE actually). It was the card I got with my Pentium 90. My first AGP card was a GeForce4 Ti4200 also... msi!
 
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revenant said:
I have an S3 trio PCI still in my old cards tote (edit I think it's a ViRGE actually). It was the card I got with my Pentium 90. My first AGP card was a GeForce4 Ti4200 also... msi!
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I bought nothing but BFG Tech starting from the Ti4200 up through my pair of 8800 GTX. I was sad to see them go. Switched to EVGA starting from a GTX 570 2.5GB, and now they're gone too...
 
Armenius said:
I bought nothing but BFG Tech starting from the Ti4200 up through my pair of 8800 GTX. I was sad to see them go. Switched to EVGA starting from a GTX 570 2.5GB, and now they're gone too...
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Is that your hidden talent? So who's your next pick to go out of business?

Yeah I was pretty surprised about eVGA.. I still have an eVGA GeForce2 Ultra! What a card.
 
revenant said:
Is that your hidden talent? So who's your next pick to go out of business?

Yeah I was pretty surprised about eVGA.. I still have an eVGA GeForce2 Ultra! What a card.
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My 4090 is from Gigabyte, so they're going to be the next to axe their GPU division 😢
 
Are we still talking favourites? I have a favourite but 2 other cards must get an honourable mention.
1. GTX 1080ti
I was using this card up to November this year. Still performs great.
2. Radeon 9800 Pro.
I would have picked the 9700 for this list over this card but I never owned it. By the time I could afford it the 9800 Pro came out. It was an amazing card.
3. Radeon 8500.
I opted for this card over the GeForce 3 because I wanted to try something different and ATi was up-and-coming in the GPU market. The jump in 2D image quality was astounding which is why it makes it in to the hnourable mentions. I think I still have this card kicking around somewhere.
 
1) Rendition Verite V1000. Arguably a failure relative to 3Dfx cards as the redline API never really took off, but if memory serves me it came out prior to the 3Dfx cards. It was my first hop into 3d acceleration. It blew me away at the time.

2) 980TI. It lasted years at a time when I was playing a ton of game.

3) 8800GTX. Another card that lasted me many years and held its own way past it's original release date.
 
Probably the 8800 GT if I didn't give an answer yet. If I did I'm curious what my other answer would be. That was near the peak of AAA gaming IMO. Farcry 2, Crysis, Call of Duty released the original modern warfare. I was also young and the card was affordable and one of the fastest available, maybe 20 percent behind the GTX version.
 
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Dmitri said:
1) Rendition Verite V1000. Arguably a failure relative to 3Dfx cards as the redline API never really took off, but if memory serves me it came out prior to the 3Dfx cards. It was my first hop into 3d acceleration. It blew me away at the time.

2) 980TI. It lasted years at a time when I was playing a ton of game.

3) 8800GTX. Another card that lasted me many years and held its own way past it's original release date.
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Rendition produced a unique look to games that was never reproduced. I'm sad to see nobody has ever developed a wrapper for it. I'd love to play my old Papyrus sims with Rendition graphics.
 
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Dmitri said:
1) Rendition Verite V1000. Arguably a failure relative to 3Dfx cards as the redline API never really took off, but if memory serves me it came out prior to the 3Dfx cards. It was my first hop into 3d acceleration. It blew me away at the time.

2) 980TI. It lasted years at a time when I was playing a ton of game.

3) 8800GTX. Another card that lasted me many years and held its own way past it's original release date.
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I love all these picks.
 
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My original Monster 3dfx Voodoo 1 card. It was so superior to anything else at the time it was a game changer. GL Quake and Quake 2.... OMG. Nothing else like it. I didn't keep it forever but I kind of wish I had. I still get a little misty eyed thinking about how 3dfx just completely f*cked themselves over. Some Commodore level management f*ckery happened over there.

I could list off a couple of Nvidia cards like my GF3 or 8800GTX or 1080TI (there have been more than a few), but I didn't LOVE those. They weren't game changers like the Voodoo was, they just steadily increased resolution and performance over the generations.
 
My early GeForce 2 and the the GF3 Ti200 were my first two cards, so they have a soft spot to me.
 
Reading old reviews the nostalgia flows, looking at how comparatively small the old cards were 20+ years ago coupled with the bare bones cooling with tiny fans and heatsinks, vs the 10+ LB goliaths we have today with multiple slots being needed, multiple power connections needed etc.
 
Its been a few years and a few more generations of GPUs I wanted to update mine.

My ATI 9600xt is still my all time favorite. The value for the money was insane back then. My local shop was always sold out of them and I ended up begging one of the employees to call me when they restocked them. They did, and me and my room mate went the moment they called and bought them. $140 out the door and we could play most games on high/medium settings.

The 8800 GTS 320mb is a close 2nd place. Again the price for value was crazy. The 8800gtx and Ultra were way out of reach for me then. The funny part is I worked at the store that I bought my ATI 9600xt from. The guy who called me about the card being in stock recommended me when they had an opening and it was enough for me to get my first "tech" job.

GTX 1080 is 3rd. This card came out 8 years ago and is still a good budget value today. It was an absolute powerhouse when it came out, almost doubling the performance of the gtx 980.
 
AltTabbins said:
The 8800 GTS 320mb is a close 2nd place. Again the price for value was crazy. The 8800gtx and Ultra were way out of reach for me then. The funny part is I worked at the store that I bought my ATI 9600xt from. The guy who called me about the card being in stock recommended me when they had an opening and it was enough for me to get my first "tech" job.
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8800 GT G92 512 was $250 when it got out then became $200 from Dec 07' - Jan 08'. It beats GTS G80 (320 & 640) completely, roughly on par with GTS G92 512, and fell slightly behind GTX-Ultra.
 
RV770 that I bought on hardocp forums for $169 shipped on day one… launch. top tier enthusiast performance, flagship

Never seen a better economy
 
ItzTripi said:
The card that got me into PC gaming . 9500 pro back for asherons call 2 ! A lot of great cards over the years though . The 7970 and 4200 ti were awesome cards as well !
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Yup, I had a GF4 ti 4200 when AC2 released, and my buddy had just picked up a 9500 Pro (I was jealous)
 
My personal favorite?

8800gt1.jpg

The nVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB. It was the first GPU that allowed me to turn everything to max settings in the shader model 3 era. And it was the last enthusiast grade single-slot GPU from nVIDIA.

Apologies if I've already posted. Disregard the old one if I have.
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
My personal favorite?

View attachment 646168
The nVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB. It was the first GPU that allowed me to turn everything to max settings in the shader model 3 era. And it was the last enthusiast grade single-slot GPU from nVIDIA.

Apologies if I've already posted. Disregard the old one if I have.
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Nice. That was one thin performer for sure. Didn’t Nvidia make a dual card variant of that? Or was that the 79 series? 7950gt?
 
revenant said:
Nice. That was one thin performer for sure. Didn’t Nvidia make a dual card variant of that? Or was that the 79 series? 7950gt?
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The GeForce 9800 GX2, yes. There was also a 7900 GX2 that was OEM only, and a consumer 7950 GX2 as well. The card that followed the 9800 GX2 is behind it: the GeForce GTX 295. :cool:
 
Yup I had a GTS 250. Needed it to play GTA 4 at decent frame rates. Pretty sad that a modern Potatoe WX4100 basically maxes GTA 4 at 60 FPS at 1080P
 
Unboxing the 3090FE. What an experience. Such a heavy, cold and dense hunk of what felt like milled aluminum. It felt like such a quality item and at the time, late 2020, early 2021, getting it for MSRP was damn near impossible so it just felt really good.

Everything else prior even going back to my Voodoo3 2000 just showed up on my doorstep without any fuss. Hell my Asus 4090 that replace the 3090FE didn't feel half as special.
 
criccio said:
Unboxing the 3090FE. What an experience. Such a heavy, cold and dense hunk of what felt like milled aluminum. It felt like such a quality item and at the time, late 2020, early 2021, getting it for MSRP was damn near impossible so it just felt really good.

Everything else prior even going back to my Voodoo3 2000 just showed up on my doorstep without any fuss. Hell my Asus 4090 that replace the 3090FE didn't feel half as special.
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I kinda get it... Unboxing my *used* nVIDIA GPUs from the Titan X Pascal on have been a treat. The RTX 3080 FE I have now definitely has that "premium feel" in your hands. For as much as nVIDIA charged for it, though, it had god damn well better...
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
I kinda get it... Unboxing my *used* nVIDIA GPUs from the Titan X Pascal on have been a treat. The RTX 3080 FE I have now definitely has that "premium feel" in your hands. For as much as nVIDIA charged for it, though, it had god damn well better...
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3080 FE was priced well. 2080 Ti was priced high.
 
My old rig from that era with dual 8800GTX's (Asus top / eVGA bot).. and the wonderful Abit IN9 32x max (n680sli) motherboard that didn't squeeze the cards right next to each other.. and that crazy zalman cooler. I loved that thing lol!

IN9-101.jpg
 
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