What was the very first video card you ever bought?

Geforce 2 GTS replaced a Voodoo 3 3000 that came in a Quantex with Pentium III 600E. I still have the Voodoo 3 3000.
 
xorbe said:
We're working up to it, let's just get it out of the way ...

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Haha! Man, that pic is oldschool!
 
First was the ATI Rage 128

Later I did my first total scratch build with a Slot A Athlon 600Mhz CPU and a Matrox Millenium G400 GPU with Dual VGA out baby!

love reading these!
 
First video card (that my parents bought) was an ISA card that I can't remember the make/model, but I do know it gave me SVGA resolution on my 486DX4-100. First card me and my brother pooled our money together for was a 3DFX Voodoo2. First card I bought myself was an ATI 8500. Oh the memories!
 
Hmmmm, it has been a long time, but if I recall correctly I got a TNT2 to replace whatever my Gateway tower came with. It was my first and only pre-built computer (circa 1999 if I recall), unless you count my Texas Instruments TI-99 from when I was a kid.
 
Radeon X700Pro AGP. My first high end GPU came a generation later with the Radeon X1900XT.
 
Oldest I can recall needing drivers for was an Orchid Fahrenheit. Or maybe just the oldest video accelerator. Might be wrong.
 
First card I bought with my own money was an X1900XT in 2006. First card I ever had though was something with a Trident 9000i chipset with a whopping 512KB of VRAM paired with a 386SX-16.
 
The earliest one I can remember is a TNT2 Model 64.

Tried playing BF1942 with that one.

Checkerboard black and white.

Don't know what we used with our older Pentium 1 / Pentium 3s
 
Well, I didn't purchase (heck, I was around nine) it but it came with my PC. ATI RageIIc. The worst graphics card that I've ever had. It was actually 3d-deaccelerator since software rendering was always faster and every game had rendering issues. That scarred my relationship with ATI.
 
Creative Labs Graphics Blaster Exxtreme (Permedia 2, 4mb ram) --->Voodoo Banshee (Diamond Monster Fusion) ---> Voodoo 3 2000 ---->Geforce 2mx 400 64 mb ----->Geforce 4 mx460 (for about a month)---->Geforce 4 ti 4600 ------> ATI 9800 Pro ---->ATI X800 GTO---->ATI X1800XT--->3850---->4850--->5830--->6950----->7970--->R9 390
 
A sordid history of GPUs.

3dfx Voodoo 3 2000 pci >>Tnt2 m64 Pci>>ATI Radeon 8500>>ATI Radeon 9700 Pro <died> best xmas present ever while it latsted.>>ATI Radeon 9600 256mb <cheap ebay replacement>>>MSI Geforce 9600GT SLI <First Bought with own money>>>EVGA Geforce Gtx 260 Core 216 SLI>>Asus Radeon 5970 <died>>>AMD OEM 5970 <400$ newegg special>>>EvGA Geforce GTX 560 Classified SLI>>XFX Radeon HD 7950 DD>>MSI Gaming 4G Nvidia GTX 970 SLI.
 
The first video card I actually bought separately was a TNT2 Ultra but I don't remember the brand. The fan sucked balls and died within a couple weeks. So I super glued a cut down copper cpu heatsink to it and did a volt mod to push the clocks up. Coming from a built in Ati RAGE PRO with an amazing 1 MB of vram, it was a huge jump.


I kind of miss the days when gaining a few Mhz actually made a big difference in performance. Don't miss soldering clock crystals in and out at all though :p
 
Some no-name SVGA with 512 kB memory, that was with 386DX/40. Back then, even 2D acceleration was not a topic.

First 3D card I bought (if I discount S3 Virge DX that was rather 3D deccelerator) was 3dfx Banshee from Creative.
 
Sierra Screamin’ 3D with the Verite V1000 96 or 97 i think.

Did the SLI voodoo 2's not too long after.

THen the geforce 1, remember my whole dorm oohing and ahhing over the spherical tech demo.
 
Apple Computer's "Extended 80-column Card" for my Apple ][e was my first video card purchased in 1984 'ish. Doubled the number of text columns from 40 to 80 and increased the computer's RAM from 64KB to 128KB.

For PCs my first video card was an EGA (640x350) card purchased in 1986 'ish. Can't remember video card vendor (maybe PGS?) but the monitor was a 12" Princeton Graphics Systems EGA monitor. Blew all the CGA 320x200 monitors out of the water.
 
Diamond Stealth SE 1mb to replace the 512k Cirrus Logic that came in the system (A 486 DX2 66Mhz). Windows acceleration!!!
 

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Number 9 Imagine 128 Series 2 was the first video card, followed a couple of months later (Spring 1997) by my first 3D card - Diamond Monster 3D. It had to be one of the first 3Dfx cards out there. I actually found this card helping my parents move last fall.

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Ok, Gaming wise Videologic ET6000 - before 3d came along, to replace the ati in my gateway PC, then a GeForce 256DDR in my first build>Creative 4400Ti>6800 AGP, then I bought a brand new 8800GTX on launch, 1st and last time I'm ever doing that, although it was nice for 3 years to not have to both looking at the specs box on the game when you bought it>GTX460 and currently on a 670.

I also run the F@H program and have had 3x 8800GT, 1 x GTS250, a 275/250 combo card, the 460 mentioned above, a 970 and a 980ti, one of which will be going in my main rig later this year. I don't have outlandish gaming requirements so older tech doesn't impact as much. I'm also lazy and tend to just upgrade the whole rig in one go every 4-5 years or repurpose an old F@H rig
 
The first video card I remember replacing in a PC was in the early 1990s...I was having graphics corruption issue with Wing Commander 2 Add-on (back before DLC LOL) with the background. What fixed it was 512Kb video card vs the 256Kb video card that came with the computer we had. This was back in the day of $400 Sound Blaster sound cards and $800 for 8MB of RAM LOL

My first real 3D accelerated video card was a Orchid Righteous Voodoo I card back in 1996 I think...I actually still have it!
 
Technically the first one I played on was the integrated i740 on the 810 PIII chipset, upgraded soon to my first real one a Geforce 256 SDR with 32 MB of RAM!!
 
Matrox millennium of some sort (G200?), iiirc. Only worked for 2D, so then I went to a Voodoo 2 and Blaster Banshee for 2D/3D. First dual card setup I ever owned. Still have the Voodoo 2.
 
Holy shit I don't even remember, but I do know that I had a rage card in the very beginning.
 
i forget the model number but it was a Diamond Multimedia card... for quake iii arena days...
 
Voodoo 2 then
pair of 6600GTs then
9800GT then
4870 (512...totally regret skimping on that memory) then
7870 then
390
 
I started building my own computers when I was 11 and figured out I could sell computers to make a ton of money to other people. Didn't grow up very priviledged and gave me the ability to buy stuff my mom couldn't afford to. (This also gave me the ability to give my mom money to help out with expenses, internet, etc.)
As such, I was buying, building, and selling a computer it seemed like every few weeks to a month for a few hundred in profit. I bought a lot of stuff from a local computer shop and since I did so much business, they usually did the RMA servicing for me to help out this poor kid.

I've owned many many more cards than the ones below (Kyro, more voodoo's, radeon 9500's flashed to 9700, 6870s in cfx, 970s Sli. etc.) but the ones below were my more memorable setups that I tended to keep longer and not sell off right away. I've switched from red to green and vice versa many times.

Rage Pro
TNT 1
Voodoo 3
TNT 2 Vanta
Creative Blaster 3D annihilator Pro DDR (can't believe I spent like $300 on a video card as like a 9th grader)
Geforce 2 Pro
Geforce 2 Ultra
Geforce 3
Geforce 3 TI 500
Geforce 4200
Geforce 4600
Geforce 5900
Radeon 9700 Pro
Radeon 9800 Pro
Radeon 9800 XT
Geforce 6800 Ultra
Radeon X850
Geforce 7800GTX
Radeon 1950 XT
Geforce 280
Radeon 4870
Geforce 470 --> flashed to 480
Radeon 5850
Radeon 6970
Geforce 580
Geforce 670
Radeon 7970 GHZ
Geforce 780
Geforce 780TI
Geforce 970
Radeon 390x
Geforce 1080 GTX
 
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