What Is Your Personal Favorite Video Card of All Time?

The ATi x800 as that was the last card I was able to Pelter cool using a customized generic block. After that it was just ordinary water cooling as the cards started having bad cold bugs and not seeing much gain from the pelter.

I don't the I've brazed anything since. Even the plumbing in the bathroom doesn't need it any longer.

Maybe if I ever can get a GPU for a reasonable price, I'll try this new hard piping thing instead of using tubing?
 
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madpistol said:
ATI's $300 card rendered Nvidia's $450 card obsolete. Then AMD/ATI hit with the HD 5870, and retook the crown uncontested for 6 months. It was a great time for GPUs.
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Yeah that was a great card. First to offer eyefininity which I immediately jumped onboard with.
 
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Diamond Speedstar Pro with 2mb of VRAM, it was my first with my wonderful Packard Bell 486/66.......it got my computer addiction rolling.
 
Sir Beregond said:
I remember they had a version that let you do 6 monitors too.
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I got one of those off Craig’s list back in the day. What a great card. At the time though there wasn’t a lot of display port monitors. I wish I still had it with every monitor today having display port.
 
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RS_Surge said:
Same here. I wen't from ATI AIW Vi/Vo 32mb to TI4400 and was shocked at how much performance I gained.
I was also surprised at how much the performance gained from switching to 6800gt oc from Ti4400. Good times.

When the 8800gtx/Vista came out. I stopped pc gaming for around 5 years and got into PS3 and Xbox 360 and didn''t get back into PC scene until GTX 670 came out.
That was the longest hiatus I took from the PC scene which is around 5 years.
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RS_Surge gave me that Ti4400 around 2006 and it got me hooked into PC gaming. He also introduced me to [H] forum way back so despite him being "weak sauce" he's been a long time reader of the forum (much longer than me). For that I have to thank you buddy! I remember playing Far Cry on a CRT monitor thinking these graphics are amazing and kind of ruined ps2 for me lol I also started a 2 year long subscription to MaximumPC and was completely hooked. You have to give me credit for getting you back into PC gaming though back in 2011.

I didn't actually buy my first gaming PC until 2009 (Phenom 9500 + GTX 275). The rest is history.

My favourite card would have to be the GTX 670s in SLI. Got the most use and still going strong today. DX9 era was an awesome time for PC gaming. Prices were reasonable and SLI was well supported.
 
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killroy67 said:
Diamond Speedstar Pro with 2mb of VRAM, it was my first with my wonderful Packard Bell 486/66.......it got my computer addiction rolling.
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This, the Diamon Speedstar Pro. killroy67 we are showing our age and that we are still addicted. :D
 
Rev. Night said:
Easily, personal favorite was the first. The jump from software rasterization to hardware is bigger than any hardware to hardware jump.

voodoo banshee
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Should be the original Voodoo card then. Will never forget the first time I played tomb raider on PC with my Voodoo card. Pixel and Vertex shaders (Geforce 3) was a big jump though and in some ways more significant than going from pure software to hardware acceleration. A lot of the early accelerated games were mostly higher res and better framerates (orginal Voodoo era) while hardware shaders brought effects right away that were well beyond anything that had been before on PC. Still remember seeing 3dmark and playing max payne on my GF3. It wasn't until Voodoo 2 that 3D accelerators were powerful enough to give significantly better effects. Those two jumps are IMO the most significant increases in overall graphics with full raytracing probably being a distant 3rd.
 
Geforce 8800 GT was the GOAT of GPUs when it came out, lasted like 3-4 years, very close in power to the GTX version. Second favorite would probably be the ATI 9800 pro. Really wish ATI were still around and not part of AMD, if they were on their own I think they'd be a real competitor rather than happy to be second fiddle.
 
Radeon 9700 Pro, Followed closely by TNT2 Ultra.

I never actually had one. I had a Radeon 9800 Pro softmodded to an XT and overclocked and was STILL getting beat by people with overclocked 9700 Pro’s.

As for my LEAST favorite:

NVidia 5600 Ultra, bought it during a major rebuild of my PC. What a turd...
 
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geforce 2080 ti x 2 bridged together even though the second card did not offer any gains it was just so cool with the rgb bridge~
 
GTX 260 was one of the cards i bought with my own money and one i had for a very long time before i replaced it with a 970 so has to be it
 
My very first dedicated video card was GTS 250 1gb ddr3, then replaced with Evga gtx 460 758mb, both were 1080p capable card at the time (circa 2010).

For me personally, the best card I ever had was the Polaris one (be it rx 470,480,570,580) as those card(s) accompanied me from 2017 till now (currently have MSI rx 470 8gb armor installed on my younger brother's PC, bought it for only ~$56).

This polaris card has the best performance/price in my region from period 2017 till now (considering release price and also the 2nd hand price). The card can be had for average $60 now and still give reasonable performance for medium preset 1080p.
 
kirbyrj said:
8800GTX...it was a relevant high end video card for YEARS. I don't remember what brand I had...I think a PNY XLR8.
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This is the one that comes to mind for me. I'd had high-end cards that arguably pushed the needle further before and after. But the 8800GTX was a monumental performance increase AND its lifespan coincided with a few of the best titles ever released.

At the risk of recency bias, I'd say the 1080 ti due to the unprecedented time it stayed relevancy. You can *still* use it for 1080p and 1440p and be happy six years after its release.

Otherwise, the 295x2 was probably the most power (for the time) you could fit in a single card ever and could fit in a mini build - - special place on my shelf of winners.

6800 vanilla also has a special place as it was the first (and few) cards that could be soft modded up to a higher-tier model.
 
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Several cards really left me feeling good about PC gaming but...Nothing has ever beaten the feeling of going from Software Rendering to GLQuake on the original 3Dfx Voodoo card. Later on, I had an 8800GTS that was great for a bit and then I loved my ATI 5870. That thing was fantastic. Currently, my 2080 Super has been trucking since 2019. It isn't top tier anymore but man, I can still play everything I want at 1440p with high settings pretty much, so I really haven't had a push to upgrade and that feels weird.

Thinking back...man have I had a lot of cards: RTX2080Ti, GTX980Ti, MSI GTX980 SeaHawk, Titan, GTX690, GTX680x2, GTX590, GTX580x2, GTX460x2, AMD 5870, GTX 295, GTX260 (Core 216) x2, 8800GTS 640, ATI x800XL, GeForce4 MX440, GeForce2 Ti, Memory gets a bit fuzzy after that...also had...3Dfx Voodoo 3, 3Dfx Voodoo 2, NVIDIA RIVA 128, 3Dfx Voodoo 1, Matrox Mystique

And um for those with my sense of humor...who remembers the GTX 285 OCFU edition from BFG - epic name for a card.
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Not only did I have the 285 I had the original 280 that was part of that settlement with nvidia for charging too much and got sent a check for the fair price difference!
With what cards cost today if that happened many could skip a car payment! 🙃
 
I may have already answered by my favorites are:

- Radeon 9700pro. I owned this one and it was such a huge leap from what I was used to. Lasted me all the way up to 2005 and even then it played my games just fine.
- GeForce 8800GTX. I did NOT own this one but it was such a banger and so far ahead of its time. People were playing with these cards years after it originally released. Depending on the title you can still play some casual games on it now just fine at 1080p.
- GeForce GTX-580. The 1.5GB VRAM on this thing was definitely its achiele's heal. 3GB versions lasted forever. You can still play some modern-ish titles with it now at reduced settings of course. I didn't own this one either.

The newest card I have owned (and still own) that I like a lot is the GTX-970. I'm still using mine. At 1080p it still delivers enough to be locked at 60hz vsync. Yes, I have to turn some settings down to keep it pegged but it plays through all of our games just fine at this resolution. I will eventually upgrade it to a 1080 or a 3060 but for now it's still fine.
 
The RTX 4090 Founders Edition is my pick:
  • Fits in a lot of ITX Cases
  • Plays any game at 4K with high framerates.
  • Excellent power scalability. 50W-600W in 3D Games. Idles at 11W-20W
  • It's Silent
  • Low temperatures.
  • Aesthetically pleasing to look at. (subjective)
 
I miss my S3 Virge. It was a Diamond Stealth card of some kind. Only 3D card I've ever owned that made things slower.
 
JayteeBates said:
Several cards really left me feeling good about PC gaming but...Nothing has ever beaten the feeling of going from Software Rendering to GLQuake on the original 3Dfx Voodoo card. Later on, I had an 8800GTS that was great for a bit and then I loved my ATI 5870. That thing was fantastic. Currently, my 2080 Super has been trucking since 2019. It isn't top tier anymore but man, I can still play everything I want at 1440p with high settings pretty much, so I really haven't had a push to upgrade and that feels weird.

Thinking back...man have I had a lot of cards: RTX2080Ti, GTX980Ti, MSI GTX980 SeaHawk, Titan, GTX690, GTX680x2, GTX590, GTX580x2, GTX460x2, AMD 5870, GTX 295, GTX260 (Core 216) x2, 8800GTS 640, ATI x800XL, GeForce4 MX440, GeForce2 Ti, Memory gets a bit fuzzy after that...also had...3Dfx Voodoo 3, 3Dfx Voodoo 2, NVIDIA RIVA 128, 3Dfx Voodoo 1, Matrox Mystique

And um for those with my sense of humor...who remembers the GTX 285 OCFU edition from BFG - epic name for a card.
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kind of wonder why they did away with the 285 or 295's
 
I've been reflecting on this..
The big jumps have been
  • 3dfx Voodoo
  • 9700 pro
  • 7970
  • 1080ti
  • 4080
The first jumps were massive jumps in fidelity, then from the 1080ti it's been about frames per second with details/shadows up. Thinking about this has really made me realise how much harder (order of magnitude) it is to get improved fidelity these days.
 
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AMD XFX R9-FURY X


Bought it from Amazon about 7 years ago for super cheap (I think like $350) because all the reviews said that it sucked and even here on Hardforums it got a bad rap. Ran that bad boy till about two months ago when is finally started showing it's age when playing "Days Gone" and I had to turn everything on low to get 60fps on my 1920x1200 monitor. I'm sure the 4670K from 2013 didn't help much either. Finally sold it on the ebay for $80. Funny thing is, even a 6700xt is twice as fast at the Fury X!

The Fury X came with "HMB" which features a bus width of 1024-bits per stack versus 32-bits of a GDDR5 memory chip. This means even at much lower clock speeds the wider bus allows HBM to deliver over 100GB/s per stack compared to 28GB/s per GDDR5 chip.

Maybe someone else can chip in on how HMB differs and why they stopped putting it in graphics cards. I really liked this card because of how quiet and cool it ran. I only had one fan on it, I let it spin at 15% while just doing regular PC stuff and ran it up at around 35% when gaming and it never got over 60 degrees celsius. Also, the card itself was like only 7 inches long.
 
Hulk said:
The Fury X came with "HMB" which features a bus width of 1024-bits per stack versus 32-bits of a GDDR5 memory chip. This means even at much lower clock speeds the wider bus allows HBM to deliver over 100GB/s per stack compared to 28GB/s per GDDR5 chip.

Maybe someone else can chip in on how HMB differs and why they stopped putting it in graphics cards. I
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HMB is akin to the "3d" memory that is stacked on ryzen dies in some ways. It's marginally more expensive to produce, but it's also harder to engineer for. As those with fast processors know, fast memory only gets you so far. Wider interfaces are also "different" to code/manage - I'm guessing this is why it never took off as memory management could have been a nightmare.
 
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Not sure how to rank them, but some favorites :
- Tseng ET6000
- Matrox Millenium
- Canopus Pure3D II
- Canopus Spectra 2500
- GeForce4 Ti 4400
 
WhoBeDaPlaya said:
Not sure how to rank them, but some favorites :
- Tseng ET6000
- Matrox Millenium
- Canopus Pure3D II
- Canopus Spectra 2500
- GeForce4 Ti 4400
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h yes, the Ti 4400 was one of my favorites as well. Sadly it was a victim of my early, wcing meets ocing mishaps. PNY replaced it with a fx5700 (never hated a GPU until I met this thing). Went from a badass card to a lamer in one fell swoop. 🤮
 
hititnquitit said:
h yes, the Ti 4400 was one of my favorites as well. Sadly it was a victim of my early, wcing meets ocing mishaps. PNY replaced it with a fx5700 (never hated a GPU until I met this thing). Went from a badass card to a lamer in one fell swoop. 🤮
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Still have one from Leadtek. Felt that the Ti 4400 was kind of overlooked compared to the 4200 and 4600
1686659386025.png
 
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