What was your least favorite graphics card?

[n370zed]

I had 2 MSI 7950s I absolutely hated due to their vapor chamber cooler that made them run extremely hot. Thank god for the mining craze I was able to sell them no problem. Bought a 780Ti instead.

 

[Rockenrooster]

I had 2 MSI 7950s I absolutely hated due to their vapor chamber cooler that made them run extremely hot. Thank god for the mining craze I was able to sell them no problem. Bought a 780Ti instead.

wow you waited a while to buy 7970s if you coul buy a 780ti

7950m gtx was my least favorite, anyone want to guess why?

 

[cyklondx]

wow you waited a while to buy 7970s if you coul buy a 780ti

7950m gtx was my least favorite, anyone want to guess why?

mobile?

go ahead why, never used that one (from 7000 series i only used 7600GS which was oc dream)
Note: 7950's came out around the time of gtx580

(today it might be better than 780ti - but its mainly due to continues support and rebrands on amd side lul; 7970 been golden in my memories, noting i had asus matrix models which had one of the best non-ref coolings around)


I should add Gigabyte 290x Windforce 3
Running hot, elphida memory chips that were dying because of bad heatsink design and thermal compound not touching whole mem chips.

 

[Rockenrooster]

mobile?

go ahead why, never used that one (from 7000 series i only used 7600GS which was oc dream)
Note: 7950's came out around the time of gtx580

(today it might be better than 780ti - but its mainly due to continues support and rebrands on amd side lul; 7970 been golden in my memories, noting i had asus matrix models which had one of the best non-ref coolings around)


I should add Gigabyte 290x Windforce 3
Running hot, elphida memory chips that were dying because of bad heatsink design and thermal compound not touching whole mem chips.

Solder joints.................
Had baked that sucker 3 or 4 different times until one day baking it didn't fix it anymore

 

[mvmiller12]

mobile?

go ahead why, never used that one (from 7000 series i only used 7600GS which was oc dream)
Note: 7950's came out around the time of gtx580

(today it might be better than 780ti - but its mainly due to continues support and rebrands on amd side lul; 7970 been golden in my memories, noting i had asus matrix models which had one of the best non-ref coolings around)


I should add Gigabyte 290x Windforce 3
Running hot, elphida memory chips that were dying because of bad heatsink design and thermal compound not touching whole mem chips.

I still have the non-X R9 290 Windforce 3. I bought it brand new in anticipation of Dragon Age: Inquisition because it was $60 cheaper than the next cheapest reference card design at the time. It has spent it's entire operational life under water using a Koolance full-coverage block. This card was used by my children in their PC until 2 weeks ago.

 

[cyklondx]

I still have the non-X R9 290 Windforce 3. I bought it brand new in anticipation of Dragon Age: Inquisition because it was $60 cheaper than the next cheapest reference card design at the time. It has spent it's entire operational life under water using a Koolance full-coverage block. This card was used by my children in their PC until 2 weeks ago.

Underwater almost all cards done quite well, the only issue was the non-ref cooling as mentioned it didn't cover whole memory chips

(really old screenshot)
ref to this one:

 

[mvmiller12]

Underwater almost all cards done quite well, the only issue was the non-ref cooling as mentioned it didn't cover whole memory chips

(really old screenshot)
ref to this one:

Oh, 100% agree. My point was more that this card was a bargain if you were seeking to water cool from the get go, which I was. Because it used the reference board design AND because the stock cooler was shit, I got a great deal (at the time) on this card. This allowed me to get this card and the water block for it for a cost equal to getting a different 290 with better stock air cooler.

 

[LOCO LAPTOP]

ATI Radeon X700 Pro 256 MB PCIe

Hated that thing since day one. Was the first PCIe card for a new build on a AMD 3200.

 

[hititnquitit]

without question nvidia fx5700 was the biggest pos ive had the misfortune of using. https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-fx-5700.c69
it was a replacement card for my PNY GeForce4 Ti 4400 that had bad memory and was artifacting horribly. boxes boxes everywhere. i was expecting the same ti 4400 in return which was a bad little mfer and played everything i threw at it like a champ. the 4400 was oos and wasnt expected to be produced again so they called themselves upgrading me to the 5700. it was laggy af and had the worst graphics of anything id ever seen. tried everything to make that pos work like my ti 4400 did with no luck. called pny up and told them what i thought of their upgrade. they refused to replace the card with something better. so i took it out back and fired 30 .45 apc rounds into it until there was nothing left of it...and it felt guuud hahaha. wouldve fired more but thats all the ammo i had left. i black balled pny and havent touched another of their products since. i dont give companies any slack if they refuse to make shit right.

 

[IdiotInCharge]

Absolutely the 3Dfx Voodoo 5 5500. Two ASIC version, and I'd been using 3Dfx since the Orchid Righteous 3D I started with. First graphics card I returned, because the output was simply awful -- not at all what I was expecting for the price.

I picked up a Geforce 2 GTS, my first Nvidia card, which performed much better, and realized that I should just admit to myself that at that time 3Dfx was done.

Honorable mention: the HD6950. Traded a 1.25GB GTX570 for a 2GB HD6950 after upgrading to a 2560x1600 monitor, simply because AMD was shipping more VRAM, and overall the HD6950 was close enough on paper. Single-GPU was mostly a good experience where drivers were adequate, but Crossfire with a second card was nothing short of ass. I knew it, and thought it was just something I was doing wrong; turns out I wasn't crazy and AMD had simply been ignoring frame pacing completely.

These were replaced with one GTX670, which was absolutely faster given AMDs frame-pacing issues (despite the HD6950 pair providing higher framerates), and eventually a second GTX670.

Only the second GPU I'd bought right at release, after the Voodoo II.

 

[sethk]

• ATI 3d rage - 3d decelerator and very poor IQ, went back to voodoo based graphics
• S3 virge - really bad performance again, disappointed me at the time because I thought I got a 3d accelerator
• FX 5800u - dust buster that actually got clogged with dust
• A lot of overheatin, loud , stock overclocked / overvolted also ran cards that try very hard to justify their price when they should have been sold as a lower tier card

 

[Morphes]

Worst:
radeon 280x - My friend had these and they were nothing but issues. Crossfire was borked and he wanted to do surround gaming (3 monitors) and could only manage 30-45fps, they didn't retain their value or keep up with performance in modern titles
Galax HOF 780ti - Had to RMA one, my friend had one with the same issues. You couldn't turn off the light on the card, when i asked the company about it their offical response was "put some electrical tape over it".... thats their top of the end card at the time, I'm not putting tape on it. Also it didn't scale well with modern titles, my guess is they stopped working on the code for this card when the 9 series launched.
7900 gx2 - My buddy bought this, its basically 2 cards sandwiched together. Worked great when it all worked but eventually over heating became an issue. Dual GPU support has always been iffy, and this was worse than that it seemed. Would get less FPS than most of us only because one of the video cards would be active then over heat. Had to ghetto mod it with some 80mm fans blowing directly at the cards lol

Favorites:
560ti - Great card, kept up for longer than it should have
gtx 970 - amazing for the time, only upgraded for 980ti which was also great
1080ti - Great card, still using, no issues
Gefore 2 - leaps and bounds better than ATI/voodoo at the time, good drivers from what I remember

 

[Armenius]

Absolutely the 3Dfx Voodoo 5 5500. Two ASIC version, and I'd been using 3Dfx since the Orchid Righteous 3D I started with. First graphics card I returned, because the output was simply awful -- not at all what I was expecting for the price.

I picked up a Geforce 2 GTS, my first Nvidia card, which performed much better, and realized that I should just admit to myself that at that time 3Dfx was done.

Honorable mention: the HD6950. Traded a 1.25GB GTX570 for a 2GB HD6950 after upgrading to a 2560x1600 monitor, simply because AMD was shipping more VRAM, and overall the HD6950 was close enough on paper. Single-GPU was mostly a good experience where drivers were adequate, but Crossfire with a second card was nothing short of ass. I knew it, and thought it was just something I was doing wrong; turns out I wasn't crazy and AMD had simply been ignoring frame pacing completely.

These were replaced with one GTX670, which was absolutely faster given AMDs frame-pacing issues (despite the HD6950 pair providing higher framerates), and eventually a second GTX670.

Only the second GPU I'd bought right at release, after the Voodoo II.

Should have gone with the 2.5GB GTX 570 from EVGA. That version served me well after my 8800 GTX pair kicked the bucket.

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/evga-gtx-570-hd-2-5-gb.b5716

 

[luisxd]

PowerColor R9 280X, when I bought it I had to return it because it had artifacts, and then do it again, and then do it again. 3 times came broken, smh.

 

[mvmiller12]

PowerColor R9 280X, when I bought it I had to return it because it had artifacts, and then do it again, and then do it again. 3 times came broken, smh.

Not taking the side of Power Color here, certainly, but if the artifacts were only in a particular game, the issue might have been driver and/or game related. For several months after I got my R9 290, Smite had this weird pixely-glitchy effect with several special effects. The problem appeared after a specific game patch, and it took HiRez and AMD a few months (!) to get it sorted.

 

[Factum]

S3 trio (VESA 2.0 issues)...

 

[luisxd]

Not taking the side of Power Color here, certainly, but if the artifacts were only in a particular game, the issue might have been driver and/or game related. For several months after I got my R9 290, Smite had this weird pixely-glitchy effect with several special effects. The problem appeared after a specific game patch, and it took HiRez and AMD a few months (!) to get it sorted.

They were everywhere, even in desktop. I still have the last 280X I got from them and it developed artifacts after 2 years of use, now it's just sitting in it's box.

 

[IdiotInCharge]

Should have gone with the 2.5GB GTX 570 from EVGA. That version served me well after my 8800 GTX pair kicked the bucket.

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/evga-gtx-570-hd-2-5-gb.b5716

Agreed, however, I'd already swapped out before those became available, and had a 1.25GB part already.

If I'd known what a dump Crossfire was at the time, I'd probably have just waited.

 

[Susquehannock]

Cannot really say that I have a least favorite. Did receive three DOA 7800gs cards in a row. Least favorite part of that was I had to eat over $100 worth of return shipping and required insured mail fees before finally getting a good one. Fourth time's the Charm.

 

[grambo]

Sapphire Radeon 9700 (non-pro) AGP, was my last AMD/ATI card and the build quality on that particular card was just poopy, drivers at the time were not mature, lots of crashes and just generally unplesantness to deal with. I believe I was also trying to do some kind of non-pro to pro bios flash which wouldn't have helped matters. I believe I upgraded to a 6800 GT or GTS AGP which was the fastest AGP card I could get at the time and the last card before moving to an E6600 rig with an 8800GT.

 

[OliverQueen]

S3 Savage!!! Biggest piece of tat ever manufactured! Even the AGP Intel i740 discrete cards were better in applications & games not patched for the Savage.

 

[Omegas]

I'm part of the MX400 group. Taught me so much about not just grabbing what my friends suggested and actually researching myself. After that I saved up till I could afford a used 9800pro. OMG the difference, the Difference!

 

[Eshelmen]

My XFX Raw ii 5700XT I had for maybe two weeks.

Black screen flickering, game freezes, dual monitor issues, fan not kicking in until 100c, etc.

Spent more time going through forums, and fixes, driver update and rollbacks than actually getting to use the damn thing.

/Returned

 

[KickAssCop]

Intel Extreme Graphics.

 

[DooLocsta]

Had some form of an Intel i740 that was awful, I can't even remember what I replaced it with. :|

 

[BHenry]

The only GPU purchase that I've made that disappointed me was my Radeon VII. Totally self induced, though; I read the reviews, saw the complaints (loud, hot, buggy, spotty performance) but plopped the money down for one to replace my 1080 (hybrid unit too) - total AMD fanboy move, I know. Sold that GPU only a few months later (picked up a 2080 Super).

Still, every other GPU purchase of mine has been well thought out and planned - so I'm rarely disappointed.

I know how you feel. I had a GeForce GTX 1070 and I got the itch to get a new card early last year and wasn’t happy with Nvidia bumping everything up by one price tier. So I went with a Radeon VII in March 2019 and those drivers hated me from day one. I got tired of the random crashes while sitting on my desktop and even though it got better over the half a year I had the card, I never got over the initial issues. It is the only card I haven’t kept for a year or two.

Sadly, my friend decided to pick up a 5800 XT even after all my problems and he’s been encountering the same issues and worse. I really wish they could get those drivers more stable right out of the gate.

 

[killroy67]

Diamond Speedstar and the ATI 1900XTX, that thing was like a hair dryer!

 

[euchrestalin]

XFX HD 6870 Black Edition
The card constantly had driver issues. This card is the single reason I haven't bought an AMD card since.

 

[grumperfish]

3850 AGP. Got this in a trade to try and keep my brother's AGP-only desktop going a little longer. Complete waste of a card. With AGP bandwidth and the weak CPU performance wasn't any better than the x1950pro it replaced. It broke in shipping when I sold it so it ended up costing me money and time there too.

Second would probably be a Diamond 4870. The card's performance was fine but the stock blower was atrocious. The loud stock blower on my unlocked 6950 was likely quieter, and I replaced that thing day-one with an Accelero cooler.

 

[CraptacularOne]

Hands down the FX 5950 Ultra, what a loud, hot piece of garbage that card was.

 

[Captain Newmackwa]

Sapphire ATI HD6950 - I had many driver issues with it off the bat and the fan noise was annoying even in idle. I almost immediately replaced it with a used GTX 580 and I’ve been with NV ever since.

MSI GTX 1080 gaming - it would have been a great card if it didn‘t fail right after the warranty lapsed.

 

[THRESHIN]

well when i was a kid i had a 4mb rage IIc. didn't mind that one so much because it was the early days. more of an 'it is what it is' perspective. it did some 3d acceleration, not a lot. later i got a 8mb rage pro turbo....now that thing was a piece of trash. by this time ATI had time to figure out 3d acceleration and it was much more commonplace. there was no excuse for this abomination. very slow, buggy drivers and the image quality was ASS! it was the first card i was able to play quake 2 on since the rage IIc couldn't handle it. this this really couldn't either. when you saw a particle on the screen (such as blood) you'd see a square in software mode as expected. you were supposed to see a circle with a 3d accelerator. the rage pro turbo couldn't handle drawing arcs....seriously. couldn't handle drawing a curve. it cut the corners off the squares and displayed +'s....piece of shit.

 

[blade52x]

HD 6850 for team red, and GTX 480 for team green.

 

[Wooshoo]

I had a XFX 7870 Black Edition that was wildly unstable in Skyrim for about 6-8 months after release(the card not the game. The game worked fine with my much older GTS 250). I never really fully trusted an AMD driver release since. I did have a great time with the 7670m+8650g though bummer they didn’t keep the dual GPU thing going. On a side note it was an engineering sample A10 that had the 8650g and I OC’d to like 3.1 GHZ all core with AMD overdrive. Good times

 

[harmattan]

I ran these in SLI and they eventually caused my 24pin connector and plug on the motherboard to melt. Probably the worst card I ever bought, and then bought again.

Similar experience. My tri-SLI 480 setup was the only one apart from my EVGA i680 motherboard where you could literally smell ozone after a boot up. Ozone if you were lucky, burnt capacitors of you were unlucky.

 

[Archaea]

AMD 380,
Was the same speed as my AMD 285, and lacked the ability to do PLP on three monitors (which the 285 could do)

 

[Archaea]

Diamond Stealth 3D 2000. My first discrete graphics card, and it sucked. There were like two games were you could get playable frame rates.

Not sure Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 should be included there. S3TC texture compression on this card was a gamechanger with the Unreal game at the time. That game alone made this card worthwhile!

When your textures looked like this circa 2000 or 2001 (With 2048x2048 textures) it was amazing compared to mainstream 3dfx’s lesser flat 256x256 texture capability.

S3TC

The negative was that S3TC wasn't more broadly adopted.

 

[oldmanbal]

Honestly the 5870 (history recap: It was faster than Nvidia at the time - W0w0w0w0w0w) - I was lucky enough to hit the lottery day 1 (being able to purchase it at launch it was a really low production number), apparently Radeon hadn't actually finished getting the card ironed out yet, and mine artifacted/blackscreened it's way back to RMA. After waiting 2 weeks with no response I started calling Sapphire (only vedor that had the card in stock day 1 for me) several times a day until I got their senior engineering manager of the 5870 on the phone. He essentially told me the cards aren't ready for prime time and they could send me another one but it will inevitably fail -his words- . This was the only flagship card in the last 20 years that I couldn't keep.

I ended up waiting till the 5970 came out, I think around Feb-March the next year, and decided to go for it. In the end I got another 5870 and threw some tri-fire at some of the games that benefited from it at the time. Back in the CRT days though, going from 90-130 fps didn't really make much of difference, but the BENCHMARKS OH THE BENCHMARKS. Definitely [H]. It may have also been the most power I've ever sucked out of a PSU purely for gpus.

 

[MacLeod]

Honestly it's hard for me for name one. I've been super lucky and all my GPU's to date have never had a problem. I guess I could say my old Sapphire 5870 could be as it wouldn't overclock at all. It ran fine at stock settings but I was really into overclocking at the time and was disappointed in how little headroom it had. Epscially when it was my upgrade from my old Powercolor 4850 that was a monster overclocker!

 

[RamonGTP]

GeForce 2 MX 400 64MB. It was the video card I used in my very first custom build. I thought I had scored a steel on a great video card. Was at a loss at how my friends GeForce 2 GTS with half the vram was outperforming me. Little did I know the MX line was a castrated version of the GeForce 2 lineup.