Worst video card ever...then best

I loved my Righteous 3D Orchid 4mb Voodoo 1 card, that along with an S3 Virge DX made up my first gaming computer. Then right after the Geforce SDR's came out I picked up a Diamond Viper V770 Ultra (TNT2 Ultra) one hell of an upgrade. crazily enough I never really gamed very much after that system. I held on to that card for quite a while. I then went with a Radeon 7500 and was quite impressed.

In terms of best card I would say the X800XL AGP which replaced my aging 7500 was a big step up and never had any problems with it.
 
I've actually never had a really shitty videocard. All have been pretty good to me.
 
I really loved my ol' nvidia 6800GS. This was back when you could unlock everything up to the 6800GT. I also volt modded the card and had it to GT speeds. Very fun stuff! Now I'm to lazy and would rather just throw money instead of time :)

My worst was this old knock off integrated crap I had in a laptop I bought back in 2001. I forget the brand name but it was not ATI or nVidia. I remember playing Morrowind on it at around 6 FPS. Yuck.
 
My worst, if we're counting IGPs, had to be Intel Extreme... about as unextreme as they come.

My best is my trusty old Ti4600 which has been running on a passive cooler since day one and has never missed a beat for about 6 years now. Best part is, it can still run HL2 at medium settings at medium resolutions. <3 Ti4600.
 
best mx440se still going strong

worst difficult really as both a 3850 and a 6800gt have overheated on me but both great cards whilst they lasted (should really have gotten a aftermarket cooler for the 3850)
 
worst card was my 8800gts 320mb. Such a terrible buy, i jumped at the chance to own the newest hardware. Such bad value for money, cost me $540 NZ, and i just sold it for $120 NZ

best = sapphire dual slot 4850. cost me $285 NZ (which really was only $165 NZ from the money i made selling my gts) Such as amazing card for the price. runs cool @ 80% fanspeed and allows me to crank AA and get HDR in oblivion :D :D :D
 
Playing Serious Sam on a Geforce 2 Pro and a 1333mhz thunderbird cpu.

That game has the the most efficent engine ever. It never ceases to amaze me it could run with max settings at a smooth framerate looking so incredibly good.
 
My worst was my ATI x1600Pro that replaced my 9700Pro. I think the 9700Pro was faster, and it's lived longer. Got it at the end of 2003 and it's still being used. The 1600 didn't last 1.5 years.

My best would have to be the x1950Pro I had, or the 8800GT I have now. Both of them are just good cards.
 
Wow I am going sound old talking about these cards.

There were two video cards that I used back in the day that were the worst video cards ever produced.

a) S3 ViRGE: This card had absolutely the worst performing 3D accelerator I have ever used. Playing Half Life in software mode played and looked better, than playing with this pos in Direct 3D mode. The drivers were horrible and never really work just right. I can't bevlieve that more people in this thread are not talking about this card. I always called it the 3D decelerator. It was just horrible.

b) ATI Rage LT Pro: This card when it worked performed much better than the S3 ViRGE but the drivers were even worse. Playing in any Half Life game if you went underwater it would show just a green blanket and you couldn't see anything. It took me hours to get through the very first screen in They Hunger because I couldn't see the underwater tunnel. I e-mailed ATI for a driver to fix this and they gave me one that proceeded to fubar my Windows installation and I had to reformat. :(

The best card card I have ever used was.

c) Nvidia TNT2 Ultra: This card released me from the nightmare that was the Rage LT Pro and I was able to play games on it for about 3-4 years before I could afford to build my own rig. This card was the savor to my PC gaming hobby. The drivers worked wonderfully and I loved it, and it is still being used in an old Linux machine today.

d) *special mention to the ATI x1900XTX. I loved that card too.
 
Worst card - Geforce MX400..... The fan would give out on that sucker at least once a month. Then when I upgraded my mobo and cpu, it shorted out on startup and fried it and the mobo. At least I got my revenge with a blowtorch.

Best card - Well, since I haven't really done much on my 8800Ultra, I can't say it was the best. I'd have to say my best was Geforce Ti200 - man, I threw everything at that card and it kept chugging. Overclocked it like crazy and used it as my main card for 3-4 years until I finally upgraded to PCI-E, and the card died a while after I gave it to a friend to use.
 
Best: 7950GT - never had a BSOD/driver issue/lagginess,

Worst: 6600GT - died after 6 months, HD3870 - driver updates was like playing craps and hope for no GREEN squares of death or BSOD.
 
s_s256 said:
Wow I am going sound old talking about these cards.

There were two video cards that I used back in the day that were the worst video cards ever produced.

a) S3 ViRGE: This card had absolutely the worst performing 3D accelerator I have ever used. Playing Half Life in software mode played and looked better, than playing with this pos in Direct 3D mode. The drivers were horrible and never really work just right. I can't bevlieve that more people in this thread are not talking about this card. I always called it the 3D decelerator. It was just horrible.

:(
Click to expand...

I think you will find the majority of people on here didnt get in to PC Gaming until quite some time after the S3 ViRGE..

Now.. I had that exact card too. I remember there was very little that used it at the time.. There was a patched version of Descent 2 that added some eye candy.. past that.. not a lot.

It was an inexpensive card though, I figure that most people, like me, transitioned to something better fairly quickly and didnt get stuck with one too long.. By the time HL came out, there were much better options out there.. it just outdated itself too quick.
 
Worst video card -- Intel i740. Don't know how I ended up with that one, but it sure wasn't for long.

Best video card -- 8800 GTX by a long shot. Only card I've ever SLI'd (and I did so when I bought them new over a year and a half ago.) If there was ever a card where spending a grand for two of them didn't lead to buyers remorse down the road, this was it.
 
Don't really have a worst, unless onboard counts, which would be the intel gma 900 which is awful.

Best would have to be my current x1900gt followed by my 6600gt. Although the stock single slot fan on my x1900gt was complete garbage so loud and still got over 90c but after replacing that it has been great, never over 56c now also with no noise.
 
Best Card: Hands DOWN TNT2Ultra closely followed by ATI 9700.
These cards (performance wise) lasted for what seemed like forever!!! :D

Worst Card: Voodoo Rush
This was 3dfx's first foray into 2D/3D integration on one card instead of a daughter board. This thing was complete and utter crap, I was seriously pissed of after purchasing this thing.:mad:
 
7600gt and 9600gt both tie for me for best card both of them broght the heat at a low cost.

8600gt worst it wasn't really much of an upgrade from a 7600gt

I rocked a ti200 for like 5 years and it handled Warcraft 3 like a champ.
 
I've never hated any of my video cards, but the worst would be a tie between my Rage Fury MAXX and my 8500...horrible driver issues even tho I did enjoy both cards a good deal. Especially the 8500 later in its life cycle. Honorable mention goes to my hated 7800gt SLI setup but that was completely due to SLI not the cards.

My favorite card is a tie between the voodoo3 3000 and the 9700pro. I'm sure this is a case of looking back seeming better than it really was, but I remember glide games looking amazing. I loved my Everquest in glide...killed it for me when they moved to direct3d. The 9700pro was just an amazing card for a very long time.
 
The worst card I had was a Trident 512kB video card. The I upgraded to a VESA local bus video card and was amazed how fast the the text scrolled when I typed in "dir".
 
So far I'd have to say that the worst video card experience I've had in quite some time is with the ATI Radeon 4870 X2. The drivers are just atrocious for me at least. I've documented this in a couple of threads, but I just can't get a handle on the drivers. I've had performance all over the place. In some games the performance was excellent and in other games the performance was terrible.

Also I'm not exactly one to normally complain about noise but the noise put out by the 4870 X2 is beyond reasonable. At 50% it's about as noisy as my Geforce GTX 280 is at 100%. Not cool. I got fed up and put the Geforce GTX 280 cards back in. I'll certainly give the card another shot whenever the next driver release comes out but until then I'll stick with NVIDIA. It really sucks because I know the hardware is outstanding and I've seen what these cards can do in other machines. They are the fastest thing you can put in your box today when they work right.
 
Worst card: ATI Rage Pro VLB 16 MB (drivers, drivers, drivers. I've only bought one ATI since because of that....)
Worst card (runner up): My old POS EGA card, 1988... because VGA had just come out.
Best card: Close, but I've got to give it to my old black beauty, a Solteck GeForce 4 Ti4200 128MB ViVo card... came recommended here way back when, and it was a VERY good recommendation.... still is, as I'm about to put it back in service on a WHS box.
Best card (runner up): My old Pheonix SVGA card (with 1 MB of RAM)... because it was the first time I was ever way better than mainstream cards, and I used it day in day out from 1990-1996... including when I met my wife online in 1995. :)
 
Another vote for the 9700 Pro for best card. I went from a Voodoo 5 5500 to this card and I was completely blown away by it. My 9700 Pro is still going strong in my secondary system and can still strut its stuff in a few of the newer games. The only thing that really killed it was the move to Shader Model 3 in almost everything. It still plays source engine games like a champ though. :D


Worst card? Well that would probably have to go to the Voodoo Banshee. Crippled Voodoo 2 with a 2d chip tacked on...underperformed in everything...


Honorable mention goes to the Voodoo 5 5500. Half the fun of using this card was the numerous tweaking required to run games that came out after 3dfx went belly up. I can remember having to install a different 3rd party driver for each game I played when I wanted to play it. I remember getting GTA3 to run on it and marveling that I had actually gotten it to run. Definitely good times with that card. :D I still own this card as well. Two of them in fact, both in systems that I regularly use.
 
my favorite card was the Hercules kyro 2, had a under dog that performed to par with the ati and nvidia of the day was quite a feat

worst card was voodoo 5500, broke 2 weeks after i got it
 
worst- leadtek geforce ddr

best- bitboys glaze 3d. can play crysis at very high 19x12, 16x aa, 16x af. oy!








real best - canopus tnt (2700?) and tnt2 ultra (3500?). last and possibly only nvidia cards that were totally non-reference, ie, only used the gpu chip, rest of card and components designed by canopus.
 
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