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[Rickyiez]

As we are reaching the next dawn of RTX lineup soon , I kept thinking about how nostalgic it was back then on my experiences with GPU upgrades . Hope it's cool to discuss with fellow GAF here and share some of our experiences .

My first GPU that I really like was the Gigabyte ATi Radeon 9600 Pro I bought in 2003 :

It looks awesome in its time with the blue PCB , and coming from Geforce4 MX440 and Geforce FX5600 , this was the first proper gaming card that actually performed well in games It destroyed the Nvidia FX lineup in DirectX 9 and as I remembered it was because the Radeon 9 series card had full Pixel Shader 2.0 support while Nvidia FX series was only 1.4 . It was then ATi was truly revolutionary while Nvidia was playing catch-up .

My fondest memory of 9600 Pro was using it to play Wolfenstein : Enemy Territory with my homies back then , which was another great classic back then . This was also the time I'm very interested in OC and benchmarking , and was a member in 3dMark forum . As I became a massive ATi fans back then I had 2 Radeon upgrades in a year , namely the Powercolor 9800 Pro and Sapphire X800 Pro .

Although the X800pro was also a beast , Nvidia had apparently came back stronger with their Geforce 6 series lineup . The Geforce 6 series had better and newer Shader model 3.0 performance , and the 6800GT was touted as the new king of price/performance card . I was very tempted to make it switch at that time , but given the budget constraint , I had to sold my x800pro and bought the slowest 6800 instead . It was the Albatron 6800 non-ultra

It had a pretty box , but terrible looking card unlike the 6800GT counterpart However the performance was more than enough for my needs as without AA/AF , it was still quite decent for it's price . Also check out the same graph how much technology advanced forward with just a year of difference , the x800xt was more than twice as fast as the 9800xt

That was also the time where GPU can be modded for free performance . I've heard that the 6800 NU with 12 pipelines (ROPs in today term ? I'm not sure) can be modded to 16 pipelines that it's bigger brother had , or bring it closer to the 6800GT performance . I never bothered to tried mine in the fear of bricking it . It was not long after that the $299 x800 XL can be unlocked too .

As time goes on , I've since then upgraded and sidegraded from 6800nu > 6600GT > x1600xt > 7800GT and finally the legendary 8800GT .

Man , this was the first GPU I felt that I'm buying a top of the line card . It runs everything without a sweat except Crysis , and was only $250 from where I live (Asia). As a refresh card , it was faster than the older and way more expensive 8800GTX and 2900xt in most of the situation where bandwidth was not starved :

After the 8800GT , I haven't been upgrading much , it was AMD Radeon 5850 next then a free Radeon R9 R280x , GTX 1070 and finally the GTX 1080Ti now . All are solid and decent cards but nothing revolutionary about them , including the current RTX lineup which I didn't bother . So yeah lets hope the GPU market will be as exciting again but looking at the $1400 RTX3090 rumor I wouldn't sweat it

 

[MarkMe2525]

Cool op. People too busy console warring. I would contribute more but I've never really been a PC gamer.

 

[MastaKiiLA]

Diamond Stealth 64, baby! Before 3D acceleration was even much of a consideration. It was all about accelerating Windows 3.1 and DOS games.

 

[Nikana]

My 9800 pro was the shit man. Ran Doom 3 at above 30FPS and blew my God damn mind.

 

[xXRedxSlugXx]

What I can remember of my upgrade paths through life...
There were ones before the Radeon 9000, I just can't remember (some voodoo and older Nvidia stuff)
and I might have forgotten some. In case some younger kids read this PCI and AGP are older GPU slot buses.

ATI Radeon 9000 64 MB (PCI - NOT PCI EXPRESS, ouch)
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 256 MB (AGP - That ATI 9000 wasn't cutting it at all)
ATI Radeon 1650XT 256 MB (AGP - Orange Box was on the way)
ATI Radeon 3850 512 MB (AGP - As you can imagine my PC was insanely outdated at this point, EVERYONE was using PCI Express)
ATI Radeon 4870 1 GB (PCI-E - I joined the modern world with a new PC)
AMD 6950 2 GB (PCI-E - I did the bios swap so I effectively turned it into a 6970, needed a new GPU for Battlefield 3)

BETRAYAL!
Nvidia GTX 780 Classified 3GB (PCI-E Finally went team green, Not cheap at the time because of the start of the mining craze but it was a good GPU for me for a long time and I'm still using it in my daughters PC)

Current GPU:
Nvidia GTX 1660ti 6GB (PCI-E)
Honestly a great GPU for the price, but I only got this to get me through a couple years before I upgrade to most likely the new Nvidia 3000 series, probably an RTX 3080.

This was fun, I'd love to see some more walks down memory lane.

 

[ShirAhava]

First GPU was some nondescript AGP card my older brother gave me that I kept for years and years until my Q6600 build then I got a

9500 GT the last time I was truly impressed by a jump in graphics made PS3/X360 seem like old hat awesome for COD4 and UT3

Held on to that until 2016 when I finally moved to Sandy Bridge from CORE2QUAD and got this epic little performer

Few years later upgraded to an RX 580 had issues installing the sapphire pulse on windows had to dual boot Linux just to get it to work I forgot why also great for my Hackintosh build

Now I have a RTX 2060 Super best look card I've ever owned since the RTX 3000 series is hot and pricy think I'll be sticking with this for a while

 

[zeorhymer]

I think this was my first dedicated video card.

 

[MisterBrimstone]

I think this was my first dedicated video card.

The Voodoo! It was awesome.

 

[Nikana]

Upgrade paths is a fun topic.

I got swindled as a kid by a RAM over everything. I got a FX5200 with I think was 256 MB of RAM and I thought I was the shit until Doom 3 came out. Until that point tho I was more than happy with the performance I was getting in stuff like GTA Vice City and Max Payne 2.

Got a 9800 that I used for a very long time as I played mostly console games minus UT2K4.

When Crysis came out I built a athlon X6400 x2 BE with a 4870. I honestly never did much with it though.

I upgraded to a 7870 at some point to play current games at the time. The one that stuck out to me was D3 and Max Payne 3. Went with the ICEQ model because I had the room. Thing was friggin huge.

Eventually moved to 1060 3GB to play Doom 2016 on PC plus I was tired of the huge case and went with a mini itx build.

Recently did a rebuild with a 2600X and a 2060. One of the best builds I've ever done in terms of price to performance.

 

[Rickyiez]

Cool op. People too busy console warring. I would contribute more but I've never really been a PC gamer.

Yeah I guess so while us PC gamers just enjoying the ride.

My first dedicated GPU was the Riva TNT2 though, the one I had for playing Starcraft.

 

[Nikana]

Yeah I guess so while us PC gamers just enjoying the ride.

My first dedicated GPU was the Riva TNT2 though, the one I had for playing Starcraft.

Before I knew what GPUs were my father was in the computer business so we always had a nice machine. I wonder what he had in it because I was playing Star Craft and D2 LOD and such max settings.

 

[Rickyiez]

When Crysis came out I built a athlon X6400 x2 BE with a 4870. I honestly never did much with it though.

I actually digged the semi transparent look on the cooler design, this and the HIS IceQ

The Arctic Cooling series aftermarket cooler was very similar in this regard

 

[bargeparty]

I believe my first real video card was a Voodoo Banshee 16MB, bought for Medal of Honor Allied Assault. I played a lot of that MP.

 

[Rickyiez]

Before I knew what GPUs were my father was in the computer business so we always had a nice machine. I wonder what he had in it because I was playing Star Craft and D2 LOD and such max settings.

Could be at least a Pentium 3 or Athlon machine. Diablo 2 was more of a CPU hog than GPU.

 

[Nikana]

I actually digged the semi transparent look on the cooler design, this and the HIS IceQ

The Arctic Cooling series aftermarket cooler was very similar in this regard

I'm not gonna lie, idk much about that cooler in terms of why it was better. Was the idea that it was a blower without the noise?

Could be at least a Pentium 3 or Athlon machine. Diablo 2 was more of a CPU hog than GPU.

I feel like I remember a Pentium 2 Sticker on it but I could be making that up.

 

[LordOfChaos]

I miss cool card and box graphics.

 

[Goro Majima]

Voodoo 3 2000 PCI
Geforce 3 Ti200
Radeon 9500 Pro
Geforce 6800
Geforce 9800m (gaming laptop)
Radeon 5770
Radeon 6970
Geforce 970
Geforce 1080ti

The Geforce 6800 and Radeon 6970 really carried my rigs for years each. My 1080ti is doing that right now too.

Those early 00s definitely had some crazy upgrades. It helped that many of those cards were like $150 and certainly no more than $300.

 

[01011001]

jesus christ.. I forgot how absolutely ugly these were back then, especially those with cheap ass stickers on them

 

[diffusionx]

My first card was a Riva TNT that came with my Pentium 2 PC. It was a good card but back then you needed a 3Dfx if you were serious. So not long after I added SLI Voodoo2 which I bought used and they were monsters at the time. That might have been the first time I ever upgraded a PC and I was sweating the whole time. I then added a GeForce 256 to replace the TNT and that setup was capable of running everything.

After that I went to college and didn't game for a long time, but I built a PC with a 660TI and played games like Battlefield 2, TF2, FEAR, and Civ 4 with that card. Obviously that card wasn't super capable and Crysis made it look like a GeForce FX card but I played a lot of great games on it.

Then down the road I got a different PC and upgraded it with a 3.5GB GeForce 970 which despite Nvidia's rotten lies, it was a very good 1080P card. I played games like Far Cry 3, Battlefield 3, Alien Isolation, and stuff like that.

Now on my most recent PC I have a 1080TI and will probably get a 3080 type card, not the 3090 because I don't think it would fit through my front door and I haven't finished the nuclear reactor needed to power it.

 

[Nikana]

My first card was a Riva TNT that came with my Pentium 2 PC. Not long after I added SLI Voodoo2 which was a monster at the time. I then added a GeForce 256 to replace the TNT and that setup was capable of running everything.

After that I went to college and didn't game for a long time, but I built a PC with a 660TI and played games like Battlefield 2, TF2, FEAR, and Civ 4 with that card. Obviously that card wasn't super capable and Crysis made it look like a GeForce FX card but I played a lot of great games on it.

Then down the road I got a different PC and upgraded it with a 3.5GB GeForce 970 which despite Nvidia's rotten lies, it was a very good 1080P card. I played games like Far Cry 3, Battlefield 3, Alien Isolation, and stuff like that.

Now on my most recent PC I have a 1080TI and will probably get a 3080 type card, not the 3090 because I don't think it would fit through my front door and I haven't finished the nuclear reactor needed to power it.

Oh man how could I forget FEAR. I played that a lot but I got to it late. So I was about to max that shit. It was great.

 

[diffusionx]

Oh man how could I forget FEAR. I played that a lot but I got to it late. So I was about to max that shit. It was great.

Yea, FEAR is one of the best FPS games ever, and it looked incredible - still does.

That era of PC gaming is generally not looked upon too fondly, the mid-2000s, but man there were a lot of games. I also played Oblivion on it and laughed at how shitty Hellgate London was.

 

[Nikana]

Yea, FEAR is one of the best FPS games ever, and it looked incredible - still does.

That era of PC gaming is generally not looked upon too fondly, the mid-2000s, but man there were a lot of games. I also played Oblivion on it and laughed at how shitty Hellgate London was.

I somehow managed to steer clear if Hellgate even being a huge Diablo Fan. I do remember getting Project Origin at launch and having a better experience because the PC ports was leaps and bounds beyond the consoles. Even though they claimed they built it from the ground up on consoles.

 

[Ovek]

I've used a PC for gaming long before 3D accelerators were a thing.

One of the first gfx cards I can remember was the mighty Oak Technology OTI077.

This staggering ISA bus beast had support for up to 1MB of ram and capable of 1024x768x in 256 colours.

 

[Krappadizzle]

I remember jumping into PC gaming and building my own rig right around the time of the 9800GTX. What a stellar card and it paired super well with the i7-920(legendary CPU) I think I got in at the exact perfect time and have stuck with PC gaming as my primary source of playing games ever since.

Crysis was the reason I got into PC gaming too. Crysis is STILL one of the best FPS of all time. Wish dev's went back to that old development cycle.

Cards I've owned:

9800 GTX
460's SLI'd
GTX 680
GTX 780(such a shit upgrade all things considered)
GTX 980Ti
GTX 1080ti(probably the best GPU purchase I've ever made, still 3+ years later it maxes out games and gives me great fps)

 

[Exede]

The first grafics card i bought seperatly from my prebuild pc back then was a Voodoo 3 3000

 

[01011001]

GTX 1080ti(probably the best GPU purchase I've ever made, still 3+ years later it maxes out games and gives me great fps)

yeah, you have the current super underpowered consoles to thank for that lol.

they are the target platforms and so any modern PC card can easily run these games at great framerates and settings

 

[DaleinCalgary]

My first computer I built around 1998 had a Banshee.

I worked well enough to play Rogue Spear around 45 fps.

 

[shaddam]

I saved this 2 beauty at my workplace (mx440 and radeon 9000) Funny to see the lack of cooling. I have P4 cpu-s, motherboards, plenty of ram.

I'd like to build a win98 or xp retro build, but mostly I have time and space problems.
However if I can find this case at cheap I have to pull the trigger and start the build

 

[M1chl]

Voodoo 2000:

+ Ati Rage Pro

Then Hercules 9000Pro 128MB:

Now mine HW, which I bought as a broke student with my own money nVidia 5700LE:

nVidia 6800GT:

Radeon 4870:

Radeon 5770:

nVidia 750TI:

nVidia 1050Ti:

nVidia RTX 2070 (bought by crypto):

nVidia 2080Ti :

and finally RTX TITAN (bought by crypto):
:

 

[loktaiextatus]

These are all too new. I still remember drooling over the Rendition Verite cards and playing on a Riva 128, then a TNT. Those were great
all-in-ones. of course for a couple years anyone who was anyone was rocking 3dfx..... God damn.

I loved Matrox as well at the time, I still have my G400 Max sitting somewhere with some crazy heatsink on it..... found it heres a pic., I know this looks bizarre.. but it works. God damn it.

 

[ZeroZeroQuatre]

Hmm... let's see if I remember them...

• GeForce 256 DDR
• GeForce 4 Ti 4200
• GeForce 6800 GT
• Radeon HD 5970
• GeForce GTX 970
• GeForce GTX 1080 Ti

Quite proud of my run.
The future worries me though, things move both too fast and too slowly and I don't want further graphic cards anxiety

 

[Goro Majima]

Oh man how could I forget FEAR. I played that a lot but I got to it late. So I was about to max that shit. It was great.

Fucking FEAR

Great game and I had a blast but it was basically “Jump Scare: The Game”

Yea, FEAR is one of the best FPS games ever, and it looked incredible - still does.

That era of PC gaming is generally not looked upon too fondly, the mid-2000s, but man there were a lot of games. I also played Oblivion on it and laughed at how shitty Hellgate London was.

I always kinda laugh when people say that were bad years for PC gaming. Like did I hallucinate the whole damn world playing World of Warcraft?

 

[Kokoloko85]

I remember buying a voodoo if anyone remembers those lol?

 

[UnNamed]

Where everything started: Cirrus Logic 1MB, 1995

 

[Melfice7]

First gpu i remember getting was a Matrox G200 and i could go from playing Quake 2 from software to opengl rendering

What a beauty

 

[JTCx]

voodoo 5 > your fav gfx card

 

[Laptop1991]

My first Graphic card i bought was a Matrox Millenium, then a Mystique and my first full 3d card was the almighty Voodoo 1 back in the day, i've bought a lot since then, although only 3 in the last 10 years due the price increases and also i haven't really needed to upgrade as much since then.

 

[Ozzy Onya A2Z]

Old school Hercules graphics for IBM personal computer, installed it myself (with my older brother's help) on my dad's work PC when I was around 8-10 years old. The sweet high res crisp text it gave.

 

[TheSadRanger]

I miss cool card and box graphics.

I get legitimately fucking angry when I think about what happened to ATI. Goddamnit..........

 

[TheContact]

My first pc I built in around 2003ish was a complete amd build and the gpu fit into an agp slot

 

[captainraincoat]

I remember my first graphics card...3dfx voodo1 and it ran quake 2 like butter
sometime later i upgraded to this badboy which i had for years

i bought the voodoo 3 against everyones advice after this and then i switched to ATI from memory

Once thing i will say thats happened in the last 5 years is we no longer have horrible box art

Good article on it here

The very specific horror of old graphics card packaging art

Featuring a frog in a mech suit.

www.pcgamer.com

Some lol box art

 

[Bryank75]

Voodoo 2000:

+ Ati Rage Pro

Then Hercules 9000Pro 128MB:

Now mine HW, which I bought as a broke student with my own money nVidia 5700LE:

nVidia 6800GT:

Radeon 4870:

Radeon 5770:

nVidia 750TI:

nVidia 1050Ti:

nVidia RTX 2070 (bought by crypto):

nVidia 2080Ti :

and finally RTX TITAN (bought by crypto):
:

I had the ATI Rage Pro... memories.

 

[orfax]

My first PC was a pre-built one, that came with a Cirrus Logic video card. I can't remember the model, it was around 1993, and was only a 2d card. When the Voodoo released I got one straight away and put it into the PC and had some fantastic times with it.

All my PC's after this I assembled myself, with my next one I bought a Riva TNT2 Pro. Currently I'm sporting a reasonably old Geforce GTX 980, and I haven't upgraded in over 4 years. I know I need to but I just can't be fucked doing the research into what I should be getting next. Maybe next year.

 

[SF Kosmo]

My first PC with a video card was an EGA adapter. I'm fucking old.

But my first 3D card was a 3Dfx Voodoo 1, the add on that you had to wire through your existing video card. I got an integrated one not too much later, a Banshee, which I think was based on Voodoo 2.

That was one of the few points where I had no current consoles, and the Voodoo when it hit was some serious PC Master Race shit, bringing "arcade quality" graphics home when that was still the benchmark for bleeding edge.

I also had a GeForce 1, 2, and 3. The 3 even had 3D glasses years before that was a trend. I think after that the cards got more expensive and stratified into tiers and I stopped staying on the cutting edge so much, but I was definitely there in the beginning.

 

[supernova8]

I think I/we had (but possibly wrong, memory and performance fails me):

1999 - Voodoo3 2000 AGP
(think I played a lot of Playstation at the time so didn't follow PC building by my brothers)
2002 - GeForce4 Ti 4400
2003 - GeForce FX 5600
2004 - Geforce 6800 GT
2007 - Geforce 8800 GT
2010 - Geforce GTX 460
2014 - Geforce GTX 750 Ti
2016 - Geforce GTX 1060
(sold PC stopped PC gaming for a while.. built my own PC ... put cheap GPU until next-gen stuff comes)
2019 - Radeon RX 560
2020 - ?? (probably RTX 3060 or 3070)

Most memorable cards are probably 6800 GT with those breathtaking NVIDIA tech demos and the ability to finally play Far Cry at stable framerates. 8800 GT was just an absolute beast.

 

[SF Kosmo]

I think I/we had (but possibly wrong, memory and performance fails me):

1999 - Voodoo3 2000 AGP
(think I played a lot of Playstation at the time so didn't follow PC building by my brothers)
2002 - GeForce4 Ti 4400
2003 - GeForce FX 5600
2004 - Geforce 6800 GT
2007 - Geforce 8800 GT
2010 - Geforce GTX 460
2014 - Geforce GTX 750 Ti
2016 - Geforce GTX 1060
(sold PC stopped PC gaming for a while.. built my own PC ... put cheap GPU until next-gen stuff comes)
2019 - Radeon RX 560
2020 - ?? (probably RTX 3060 or 3070)

Most memorable cards are probably 6800 GT with those breathtaking NVIDIA tech demos and the ability to finally play Far Cry at stable framerates. 8800 GT was just an absolute beast.

The 8800 was my Crysis card. I had that an overclocked Core 2 Duo e8400, and those things lasted me yeeeeears. I kind of fell on hard times financially for a few years but that rig made it through. I think I finally replaced it with an i5 2600k and a GeForce 770 like 5-6 years later.

 

[supernova8]

The 8800 was my Crysis card. I had that an overclocked Core 2 Duo e8400, and those things lasted me yeeeeears. I kind of fell on hard times financially for a few years but that rig made it through. I think I finally replaced it with an i5 2600k and a GeForce 770 like 5-6 years later.

Oh very nice I went for Core Quad Q6600 and that last me even longer. I refused to upgrade my base PC for ages and pretty much just upgraded the GPU. Can generally get a pretty good lifespan out of those CPUs though. Lots of people even now rocking that i5 2600k like yours.

I think after GTX 1060 is went the GPU prices started to get sort of silly and I took a break.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

Ha, for me, it started with disappointment - I wanted a Voodoo 1 (Canopus Pure3D, yo!), but it wouldn't work on the computer my parents had at the time. That sucked. Fortunately, I was able to get in on the Voodoo 2 a scant year and a half later. That was an experience.

1999 - Voodoo 2 (Diamond Monster3D II, SLI)
2001 - TNT2
2003 - 9800XT - Fuck this card. 9800 Pro/XT had so many problems, and wasn't useful for long.
2005 - GeForce 7800GTX - Now THIS was more like it. But I couldn't afford the better version. I think I got the 256mb version instead of the 512? Something like that.
2007 - GeForce 8800 Ultra - My Crysis card. Still wasn't nearly good enough for it.
2009 - Radeon 5870 - My last ATI card. Trash. Absolute trash. The drivers were awful, and there were a lot of compatibility issues.
2013 - GeForce 680 - This was the first video card that really felt like it lasted.
2016 - Geforce 1080 - Phew, definitely needed an upgrade by this point
2020 - ??? - It's time for some NEW SHIT.


Honestly, I don't think people just getting into PC gaming today will ever understand how exciting it was in the early days when progress was out of control. Fun times.

 

[SF Kosmo]

Oh very nice I went for Core Quad Q6600 and that last me even longer. I refused to upgrade my base PC for ages and pretty much just upgraded the GPU. Can generally get a pretty good lifespan out of those CPUs though. Lots of people even now rocking that i5 2600k like yours.

I think after GTX 1060 is went the GPU prices started to get sort of silly and I took a break.

Yeah it was VR that finally motivated me to rejoin the PC Master Race and actually start dumping money into a decent rig again. I got an Oculus Rift when I still had that 2600k and 770 (actually pretty sure it was a 780 now that I'm thinking on it) and it was just not quite cutting it anymore.

Now I have an i5 8600k@4.9Ghz and an RTX 2070, 32GB RAM, maybe not tippy top shelf but I have no complaints.

 

[Futurematic]

MechWarrior 2 3DFX version was pretty mind blowing on the ATI Rage card it came bundled with in ‘96.

After that, my quickly over clocked OEM only Radeon LE 32MB in 2000 was a huge step up lol. Deus Ex, Starfleet Command II, and MechWarrior 4 were a killer combo to start with.

But alas for this thread I went to Macs and eventually back to consoles (skipping from Dreamcast to 360 is a heck of a leap lol) so my graphics card become the GeForce FX Go5200 64 MB—still good enough for some awesome games like Hearts of Iron. Followed by the screaming performance of Intel HD Graphics 3000 which I mostly used to dual boot into Windows and play classics like Deus Ex again because damn that was a garbage GPU lol