What Is Your Personal Favorite Video Card of All Time?

[Skiddywinks]

Sapphire Radeon 4870X2. My first high-end GPU purchase. Slapped an AC Accelero Extreme cooler on it shortly thereafter.

View attachment 210184

My first build's GPU. Was something like £330 back then. The high end GPU market is an entirely different beast now.

 

[Comixbooks]

Radeon Visontek that I picked up at Walmart in 2001 2002 the jump in graphics for my Dell 800mhz rig was amazing in Dark Age of Camelot.

 

[AceGoober]

First gen GTX Titan X. Received as a replacement for a failed original Titan.

12GB frame buffer meant I could push Fallout 3, Fallout 4, Skyrim and other games graphic quality, with help from ENB, to much higher levels. Speed bump over Titan was tremendous. Ran Fallout 4 perfectly smooth at 1080p on a 4790k with 16GB 2133Mhz RAM.

 

[amenx]

Every card that I've bought was my favorite of all time.... until the next one that came out. Therefore my current card (RTX 2080) is my favorite of all time.

 

[Kalessian]

9700 pro, and then any of the old cards that could unlock a good amount. Like 9500->9700 pro. Or 6800nu/le -> 6800 ultra. Or x800 pro -> x800 xtpe. There was a bunch

Also dual gpu cards like 9800 gx2, just for the novelty. Thing of the past.

 

[ecuador]

Happy to see so many fond memories of the 9600/9700 All In Wonders. The 9700 AIW was also my favorite, that bundled Remote Wonder was great, great tv tuner back when it was useful, overall the most useful graphics card I've ever had. Honorary mention for the ATI XPERT@Play. It was a 3D Rage Pro - based card that allowed me to watch DVD's with its iDCT acceleration, had excellent TV-Out when most other cards in the market had questionable tv-out quality, and while it was not as fast as my friend's 3DFX, some 32 bit games actually looked much better (my friend would come over to play an F1 game that looked much better, I think it was F1 Racing Simulation?).

 

[HAL_404]

ASUS ROG STRIX GTX 1660 Ti

 

[AMD92]

I currently am using a 1080ti. This is the beast

 

[DrLobotomy]

Matrox Millennium is my most memorable.

But this GTX 1060 6GB in my laptop is my favorite since it is about 4 times better(faster) than my GTX 660 SLI in my desktop.

 

[Factum]

Voodoo2 or 8800GT...

 

[Radium3D]

The 3DFX Voodoo 2 wins for me. Was my first time being able to enable Glide and it BLEW MY MIND

 

[RomeoGolf87]

Evga GeForce 6800 ultra. My first high-end video card purchase. It was a good experience and I learned from it.

Honorable mention: BFG 8800gts 512

 

[cybereality]

I think I might have had the one. The 6800 with Nalu on it. I liked that card a lot.

 

[erek]

Never had the chance to own one but I admire the ATi Radeon 9800 Pro MAXX

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?p=436342#p436342

 

[KillA_KIA]

Think my favorite card from recent memory is my RX 480 8Gb version from Gigabyte. Recently I upgraded to an RTX 2070 Super as I was thinking that new games that are coming out (Cyberpunk 2077) might start to slow this puppy down. It is still cranking the FPS hard in 1080p on my old FX 6300 rig. Eats stuff alive! Anywho, my real favorite card that lasted me for a few generations would have to be my first near-top-tier-at-the-time Sapphire Radeon X800XL 256Mb card. It was a beast that I used for WoW, Everquest 1,2 , Starsiege Tribes (Played competitively still during that time on Team Warfare League {Still hate the team |TF|! }), Tribes 2, Rift and a few others. That thing lasted me all the way until I bought an XFX Radeon 4850 1Gb card. The first card I purchased that I liked was the VooDoo 3 2000 PCI. It ran Quake (QuakeWorld) with the Team Fortress mod in 1024x768 (highest my ol CRT went at the time) at fast enough FPS to where I was competitive on a 33.6 Rockwell modem connection.

I have a few old cards that I have collected (not too old) in recent years. The oldest one I have on hand is an X 850 XTX Platinum 512. Last time it worked (is AGP) was when I put it in an old PC to test it. Fricken blower! OMG! However, it was just a junker and haven't made an age appropriate PC for it yet.

 

[sphinx99]

It’s a tie between the Matrox Millennium and the 9700 Pro for me.

 

[Rvenger]

Past time - Nvidia Riva TNT2 32mb - was my first card that I bought off a friend that worked at the Video game exchange back in the day for $20 cash because he bought a Voodoo to replace it in his prebuilt. So a good score for youngster me on a elementary school budget.



Honorable mention:

Geforce Ti 4200
Radeon 9700 Pro
HD 5850
HD 7970
R9 295x2 (Had a ton of fun with this card)

Currently have a 2080ti and I am quite enjoying it.. still TBD but its crazy fast and I like that.

 

[ManofGod]

My personal favorite was the 3D Monster II with 12MB of VRam. It was my first 3D graphics card, which was a PCI expansion card, and it was incredible.

 

[Brian48]

Creative Labs 12mb Voodoo 2 SLI.

I still run it in my legacy Win98se box for old school Glide games.

 

[exlink]

Probably the 8800 GTX followed closely by the 1080 Ti.

 

[CruisD64]

9700 Pro, 1080 ti, 2080 ti. All monsters of their generation

 

[BrandonMllr]

For me, at the moment the best card is 2060. And the year so in 2013 gtx650 and it was the best card for me. The main thing that minecraft pulled, haha

 

[*Ç|®8tË<ETH>]

Visiontek 4600Ti

 

[HAL_404]

RTX 2070 SUPER

 

[sethk]

For me, at the moment the best card is 2060. And the year so in 2013 gtx650 and it was the best card for me. The main thing that minecraft pulled, haha

Put the bottle down, sir.

All kidding aside, cards that were a massive leap forward that you could get on day one and remained useful for years afterwards feel special, for me that card was the 9700 pro. Later cards are slightly faster, but at that point you think, well I've been enjoying that level of performance for years now. 1080ti is similar.

 

[lopoetve]

Hmm.
GeForce3. First time I ever bought the top-end card at the time. Loved that beast.
9500 Soft-Mod. YAY overclocking and free upgrades!
GTX 1080; such a huge jump at the time, still running strong.

But overall...
Intergraph Intense 3D 100. My first 3d card; Rendition Verite 1000. VR Quake, F1 Racing, and Tomb Raider, omg what was possible. And the Rendition guys were great to talk to back then - they asked the community about OpenGL support and we argued that it should be there, even if slow, so we could make our own choices. So they did it

 

[Nebell]

I'm a bit undecided.
As a kid, I always let my parents buy a computer for me.
And it always sucked. Except when I got 6800 Ultra. On paper that should be great, but for some reason that GPU was not impressive.
8800GT was when it first felt like "wow!". That thing ran every game I had.

Afterwards I had a ton of other GPUs, but I didn't feel the next wow factor until I went from 670SLI to 980Ti.
But then I added a second 980Ti. And afterwards upgraded to 1080Ti.

On the paper I think 1080Ti is the most impressive. I mean it's still going strong.
Bjt the real wow factor came from 8800GT, so I vote that one.
I think I even have that card stashed somewhere, in working condition.

 

[cybereality]

I think the first GPU I got on my own build was a Voodoo3 3000 in 1999.

But I'm pretty sure I played some 3D games on my family computer like Quake and Descent prior to that but maybe it was in software mode.

Do definitely remember Unreal 1 on the Voodoo, OMG.

 

[Killahurtz]

I think the first GPU I got on my own build was a Voodoo3 3000 in 1999.

But I'm pretty sure I played some 3D games on my family computer like Quake and Descent prior to that but maybe it was in software mode.

Do definitely remember Unreal 1 on the Voodoo, OMG.

seeing that razer disc pinging down a corner hall way in Glide was excellent!

 

[McClintoc]

Out of all the cards I have owned, I have 2 favorites.

1) 3dfx Voodoo 3 2000 AGP - my first video card ever. I bought this card and a NIC back in high school to upgrade my parents' Compaq so I could go to LAN parties. There was a massive difference playing things like Half-Life and Quake 2 going from integrated graphics to a video card.

2) Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra AGP - another "wow factor" card for me. I upgraded to this card from an FX-5500 which could barely run Battlefield 2. The 6800 Ultra made BF2 so much smoother and better looking. I bought it used from right [H]ere and was excited to have a top-of-the-line card for once.

Compared to these two scenarios, every other video card I have had always seemed like an incremental step up from the card before it. These two are memorable as they were huge leaps forward for me.

 

[cybereality]

Yeah 6800 Ultra was top notch.

I mean the Nalu demo... game hair still doesn't look that good, lol.

 

[Hakaba]

ATI Rage XL?? I think that was the card we used for GLQuake, made the game feel brand new again.

 

[CraptacularOne]

I would say my favorite is whatever card is the current fastest consumer level card. In this case that would be my RTX 2080 Ti. Never really was one for nostalgia, I've had many cards through the years and all were fine for their time.

 

[AeonF1]

My first graphics card was a S3 Trio? Next card was a Diamond Viper V330, it was a meh card (Riva 128) but I felt some big things were coming from this little fledging local company called Nvidia but unfortunately i was too young to buy stock. Ended up pairing it with a Voodoo 2 12MB which was a monster at the time.

 

[tool_462]

I had an 8800GTS 512 that did 100% OC on water. Probably the most fun I've had with a card.

But the real winner is probably the MX 440 I bought that was AGP and I only had PCI slots and didn't know any better, forcing me to learn about PC hardware and down a 20 year rabbit hole.

 

[CraigHB]

For favorite video card I'm going to have to say it's my current card which is a PNY GTX 1660 Super. As a casual gamer I've always used a mid-range card. I pretty much always expected to spend around 300 USD and that's what I always budgeted for my graphics card. This card was less at 230 USD. The cards I've used before have always been pretty big. The PNY card is a small single fan job. Previous cards have always run hot and noisy. The PNY card runs cool and quiet. With the older 1080p titles I play it does not go to full utilization. As a result it stays relatively cool which keeps fan speeds down. That's a new experience for me. So yeah, winner.

 

[Domingo]

An ATI 9800 Pro. I bought it back when I had just finished college, so it had to last me a long time. It did. I think I kept that card for 5 years and it did well with everything I threw at it. Minimal driver issues, too. It showed up at the right time, didn't cost much, and served me well.

Another big winner would be the original 3DFX Voodoo card. In my case, an Orchid Righteous 3D. The first time I saw Quake running on that thing was a jaw dropping moment. Outside of the first time I saw Super Mario Brothers (or Outrun in the arcade) I can't think of many graphical milestones like that. I ended up keeping that card for 3-4 years, too.

 

[tangoseal]

Hands down my SLI (Scan Line Interweave) 3dfx Voodoos. They allowed me to crush thencompetition back in the quake 2 days of the late 90s.

Though I cant remember the exact brand the card was made by. Something tells me it was 3dfx brand but that was so long ago.

 

[tool_462]

An ATI 9800 Pro. I bought it back when I had just finished college, so it had to last me a long time. It did. I think I kept that card for 5 years and it did well with everything I threw at it. Minimal driver issues, too. It showed up at the right time, didn't cost much, and served me well.

Another big winner would be the original 3DFX Voodoo card. In my case, an Orchid Righteous 3D. The first time I saw Quake running on that thing was a jaw dropping moment. Outside of the first time I saw Super Mario Brothers (or Outrun in the arcade) I can't think of many graphical milestones like that. I ended up keeping that card for 3-4 years, too.

I remember being very jealous of my buddy who had the 9800 Pro with the HIS cooler on it. I'm not a historian of such things but it had to be one of the first with the big blower like that.

 

[madpistol]

Radeon HD 5870.

There was something magical about that card. AMD/ATI had just found their footing again with the HD 4870, and then they decided to clobber Nvidia on the performance front with the HD 5870. It took Nvidia 6 months to answer with Fermi "Jensen Grillin" GTX 480. Seriously, that HD 5870 was an amazing card, especially priced under $400.