What was the very first video card you ever bought?

Discounting various 2D video cards in the 808x, 286, 386, and 486 age I would say that the Diamond EDGE 3D was the first '3D accelerated' card I ever purchased.
What a turd it was too... used the very first consumer marketed 3D chip from Nvidia called the NV1. It relied heavily on rendering methods that would be considered non conventional in short order and as such only ran a few games. Had pack in games from SEGA like Virtua Fighter and even came with a SEGA Saturn controller and a daughterboard you could plug them into if memory serves.
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Then after that would be the STB Velocity 128, which was based on the Nvidia Riva 128. You'd think a 3DFX Voodoo would have been in there somewhere, but no... I never owned a Voodoo card until near the end of it's life cycle when 3DFX bought STB and started pumping out their own branded cards.
 
In order as best as my old mind can recall.

Matrox G200
Voodoo 3 3000
Geforce 256
Geforce 2 ti
Geforce 4 ti 4400
Geforce 6800gt
Geforce 8800 GT - 512
Radeon 7850
Gtx 1080sc
 
GotNoRice said:
Eh... I had a 386 that I first upgraded from monochrome to CGA, and then from CGA to VGA via cheap ISA videocards found at the local used computer store. My first PCI videocard was a 3DFX Voodoo banshee. My first AGP videocard was an S3 Savage 4, which I got because I got a Voodoo2 and needed something to use for 2D.
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Pretty much the same thing. The Voodoo banshee is what I'll consider my first video card, as it was essentially the first standalone card that I bought and installed. Funny to think that we had to have 1 card for 3d and one for 2d (it made a ton of sense back then though)
 
GeForce 2 64MB card. It was for a p3 and it allowed ut2004 to play nicer. Once I built, I got. FX5900 which was replaced with the card of the decade: the 9800pro 128mb
 
I am with a couple of forum readers on being 'old'. My first graphic card I bought was an ATI VGA Wonder with all of 256kb of goodness memory. It replaced the awful ega card that came with the swan 286 computer system I had bought for work, college, and play. It was awesome for the games and working with wordperfect and antenna calculation programs. Of course, the first computer I ever used was a Radio Shack Model II/Level II in high school back in 1981. Awesome green screen graphics, that. Upgraded from 4k to 16k of memory.. wow, lots of programming headroom. :)

Anyways, first bought personal system (Yes, $4k, they were expensive back in the day) Swan 286, AMD chip, 12 Mhz overclocked to 16 MHz, AMD 287 Co Processor, overclocked to 16 MHz, Isa bus set to 16 Mhz, PC rocked. But, never got to play one space game as the beginning of the game you have to fly through asteroids to get to the space dock to show you can handle the controls. Real Time Clock based my patootie, it based itself on co-processor and ISA buss. Get ready, fly, and smashed into asteroids before your eyelid twitches. LOL I think it was privateer. Good times.
 
Voodoo 3 3000 to replace the S3 Virge that came in my first POS beige box. I still have that voodoo collecting dust around here somewhere...
 
A Radeon 9000pro with 64Mb of VRAM. Its an DX 8.1 card. Basically slightly cut down 8500. Although the 9000 pro was still a pretty potent card for the money. The first game I played on it was Dungeon Siege. That must have been 2002-ish. I was in highschool, at the time. Morrowind also ran like a champ, complete with shiny water. and Max Payne 2 had the extra shader effects on character models, via DX 8.1 specific programming. I later moved to a Geforce Ti 4200, which was DX 8.0. So Max Payne 2 did not have those extra effects. Even though that card was noticeably more powerful than the 9000 pro.
 
Voodoo 2. And then got another one. SLI for Jedi Knight at the time was amazing.

Funny how now I'd laugh at graphics like that.
 
Voodoo 3 3000 (bought 2000)
ATi 9500 Pro (bought 2003)
ATi X800 XT (bought 2005)
GeForce 8600M GT (bought 2007)
GeForce 8800 GT (given 2011)
GeForce GT 750M (bought 2013)
 
I think what's amazing is at that time, it seemed with every new generation of games and graphics cards, you saw noticeable improvements.

Yet now it feels like we've hit a plateau, and rather than leaps in visual fidelity, its all about framerate at a certain level of fidelity.

Certainly a lot less fun and sexy than the good old days, but then again, it seems to be par for the course with regards to modern PCs now.
 
First video card i have ever owned was a 128mb Geforce FX5200 but the first card I have evert purchased was a ATI X700 pro so i could actually play oblivion. Those were the days.. This is all the cards i have every owned. I dont upgrade much.
Geforce FX5200
Ati X700 pro
Geforce 7900 GTO
ATI HD 5770
Geforce GTX 560
Geforce GTX 680
Geforce GTX 980
 
Zion Halcyon said:
I think what's amazing is at that time, it seemed with every new generation of games and graphics cards, you saw noticeable improvements.

Yet now it feels like we've hit a plateau, and rather than leaps in visual fidelity, its all about framerate at a certain level of fidelity.

Certainly a lot less fun and sexy than the good old days, but then again, it seems to be par for the course with regards to modern PCs now.
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And now it's all about VEEEEE ARRRRRRR.... VR this, VR that! When as far as I know it's still a completely fucking niche thing...
 
NoxTek said:
And now it's all about VEEEEE ARRRRRRR.... VR this, VR that! When as far as I know it's still a completely fucking niche thing...
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I think technology is finally at a point where they are can be a legitimate thing, and certain areas are looking to drive it. Frankly, I think VR is mainly being driven by Microsoft, AMD, and steam.

However, I think this time it's going to work, mostly because of the transition from that to augmented reality, which will have in my opinion a deeper technological integration into our everyday lives.
 
Voodoo banshee to replace the TNT I had. But my first ever was a Hercules monochrome on my 8088!!!
 
Probably a Ti4200 128mb card. I quickly saw that it was not as powerful as the 9800 Pro and bought one of those instead. It wasn't easy dropping $300 for a video card back then.
 
You guys make me feel old:

Diamond Monster 3D Voodoo 1 3DFX

Real gamers had RGB cables sticking out their computers back then ;) The first dual card setup LOL
 
The first standalone card that I bought was a Gefore FX 5700 ultra. First GPU I ever owned came in an IBM PC and was an ATI 3d RAGE GPU.
 
Very first was a Hercules Prophet Kyro II PCI card for my junky little Celeron box back in 2002. Let me play Diablo II.
 
Riva128 if we exclude all the 2D cards. But the envy was in the eyes when looking at friends with Voodoo cards.
 
first pc i built myself had a 9800 radeon that u could "flash" and get a legit 9800 pro :) pre that im not sure really.
 
Tnt2 m64 32mb
Played counterstrike beta on my celeron 300a like a boss
 
A Voodoo 3 2000. I saved up for months to buy that.

It replaced the absolute piece of garbage SiS 6326 video card that came with my PC.
 
I think my first card was a Voodoo 2. Prior to that everything I used was onboard. After the Voodoo 2 I had a TNT, a TNT 2 Ultra, then a GeForce 2 and so on. The TNT was in my system when I was rocking the Celeron 300A. Fantastic chip. Those were good days. :D
 
For the last 5 or 6 years Ive been skipping multple gens.
You can tell im under 30 by my past gpu's.
My first gpu was ati all in wonder 7500
geforce 5200
5600 gt
5950 Ultra $200 or so
6800 GT for $380 when It just came out & I was working alot.
Won a 7950GX2 at a showdownlan. put on by pdxlan people in 06 to 08 iirc.
Gtx 260 for only $160... nice improvement.
gtx 460 for $40 lawl, helps my average gpu cost.
Hellstoaster said:
I think my first card was a Voodoo 2. Prior to that everything I used was onboard. After the Voodoo 2 I had a TNT, a TNT 2 Ultra, then a GeForce 2 and so on. The TNT was in my system when I was rocking the Celeron 300A. Fantastic chip. Those were good days. :D
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Foxhack said:
A Voodoo 3 2000. I saved up for months to buy that.

It replaced the absolute piece of garbage SiS 6326 video card that came with my PC.
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Syran said:
Original TNT IIRC.
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Old, older, and oldest. Not necessarily in the correct order. lol.
 
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