What video card has served you the longest before upgrading?

It's a toss-up between the X800XT AGP and the 8800GT's in SLI. Had them all for about three to four years before upgrading. Running the GTX560Ti 448 for almost two years now and it still works fine for BF4 at 1080p with most things on high.
 
EVGA 8800 GTX, bought one at release and used it for a long time. Eventually, I installed a Thermalright HR-03 on it.
I was so attached to that card I never sold it. It's in a box in my closet and still works fine.

EDIT:

Tried Skyrim with the high res texture pack on my 8800 GTX this morning :p

1680x with no AA 16xAF, high draw distances, texture quality high, radial blur high, shadow detail high, decal quality ultra,
reflect land on, reflect trees on, reflect objects on and reflect sky on = playable.

Its low FPS in the forest around Riften was 37. Most of the time it was in the mid 40s to low 50s. 4xAA would send its FPS
down to the low 20s as would enabling ultra shadows so those options would make it unplayable IMO. I wanted FPS no lower
than 35 FPS at worst. I should note my 8800 GTX runs @ 660 on the core.
 
Last edited:
8800GTS 512mb

The original one, thing was a beast until it died and got replaced with a 260gtx, which my brother still uses
 
I think it will have to be my 470 GTX that I used up until a couple weeks ago when it died. It lasted right at 3 years. Prior to that I had an 7950 GTXm that was in an i9400 laptop that I had for about 5 years before I sold it, but in that time frame I had a desktop with a more powerful GPU that I got about 2 years after I upgraded the lappy.
 
Rage graphics for my Dell for about 3-4 years Ultima and DAOC ran smooth with it along with Quake.
I think I used the same computer and put a Visontek in and DAOC looked awesome back then.

PNY 6600 for about 10 years stopped playing games on PC once the card and CPU wasn't good enough on a socket A.
 
It'd either be my old BFG 8800GTS or Sapphire 4870 Toxic. Afaik the 8800 is still going strong in the guy's pc that it runs in now. Man, those 8800's were/are something else.
 
Another nod to the 8800GT. Bought it on release for $200 IIRC, lasted 3+ years.... what a beast it was.
 
Hmmm... My memory is pretty bad. All the cards I remember having were... um... ATI 9600 (I think?) at some point, Nvidia 7800GT at another, and then the AMD 5850 HD.... and then the 780 GTX SLI that I have right now. Oh, and the 9600M Nvidia that is in my laptop since I started college.

Out of all of those the Nvidia 9600 has likely lasted the longest because... I can't upgrade my laptop. For desktop, I don't quite remember how long I had each of those cards, but I'm going to say I had that 7800GT from high school through second semester college, so at least 5-6 years. I luckily won a Chegg prize drawing while renting books, which gave me 600$ towards building a computer.

Then I used the 5850 HD from Feb 2010 till just a month ago, so a few months short of 4 years. I then gave it to a friend and he is now using it in his rig.

The 780 GTX's are obviously rather new.

Considering some of the people in here, I now feel a heck of a lot better about how long I wait until splurging on new gear. Though that might change since I got salaried out of college and whatnot...
 
Last edited:
it's a tie between the 9800 Pro, and the 8800GTX (although i'd give the slight upperhand to nvidia. g80 was revolutionary).
 
My GTX 470. It's still doing ok at 1080p, but I can't wait for next gen Nvidia cards to be released.

Edit: don't know if it counts, but I bought a GTX 260 right after release and used it for two and a half years. It is still in use in my son's pc.
 
evga 8800gt with life time warranty, then it broke 5 years later. evga gave me a 550 gtx ti as a replacement with a lifetime warranty on it also.
 
ati x800xl I had for about 5 years but I didn't use that pc for a full 2 years.
 
My GTX 470. It's still doing ok at 1080p, but I can't wait for next gen Nvidia cards to be released.

Edit: don't know if it counts, but I bought a GTX 260 right after release and used it for two and a half years. It is still in use in my son's pc.

I have to say I got quite a bit of use out of my 470s also... two + years on them. Nice cards if you get those temps under control. :)
 
I have to say I got quite a bit of use out of my 470s also... two + years on them. Nice cards if you get those temps under control. :)

Surprisingly my 470 has always run cooler than the 260. Both have stock coolers. Both were used in the same computer case as well, granted the 470 runs at stock speeds and the 260 was the over clocked FTW edition.
 
S3 Virge
ATI rage LT1 pro 8mb (diablo 2 card)
geforce 2 mx200 32mb
9500pro flashed to 9700 pro 128mb (first card i killed pulling off ram sinks)
9800pro 128mb
6800Ultra 256mb
7900GTX 256mb
ATI 2900xt 512mb
dual ATI 3870X2 512MB x2 Watercooled
Geforce GTX280 1GB
dual AMD 4870X2 1GB x2
dual AMD 5870 1GB (Eyefinity YAY)
3X AMD 5970 + 5870 1GBx3 trifire Watercooled
Dual AMD 7970 3GBx2 Watercooled
Dual 290 flashed to 290X 4GBx2 Watercooled

These are only the cards from my main rigs. ive owned several other cards but I didnt game with them myself. ( 8800gts 320 8800Ultra TI4400 9800XT voodoo2 GTX260 8800GT and others)
 
My 285GTX lasted me 4 great years. Have a 770 now with the son gladly using the 285. It is still a great card.
 
Tough one, I had a 9800 pro but I didn't game on it, my ti4600 lasted for forever but I upgraded to a 6800gt, which lasted for ever. But my 4870's lasted me for three years till I upgraded to a 7850 for gaming, which is still going strong.
 
8800 GTX. Bought it December 2006 and used it up until October 2010. Almost four years of heavy use. About two years in I bought an Arctic Cooling Accelero 8800 for it and overclocked it as much as I could. I still have it packed away. I doubt I'll ever get rid of it.
 
I still have and use in my WHS server (or for testing as needed) a PCI ATI Rage Pro.
 
A 9800pro I brought in spring 2003 and kept until 2007 and a 5850 I brought in late 2009 and kept until 2012. I've owned way more nvidia cards but replace them much sooner for some reason. Already feeling the need to replace my 670gtx with a 290x or 780ti.
 
8800GT.

My buddy is currently using it in his computer while he waits for his 7950 to arrive. It plays Day Z on lower settings just fine even after 6 years of service.
 
Regrettably my FX 5700 Ultra. It didn't serve me particularly well but I carried it through 2-3 builds before upgrading to a 7800GT.

I couldn't afford anything else at the time because I was like 13 and it's all I had. After I turned 15 I got myself a job and built a whole new system with brand new parts for the first time ever:

A64 3200+
Biostar TForce 6100-939
2GB OCZ Plat
7800GT
75GB Raptor
WD 250GB
 
Back
Top