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Let's take a road trip down the memory lane of Graphic Cards
- Thread starter Rickyiez
- Start date
poodaddy
Member
I have no idea what was in my shitty eMachines desktop PC that my step dad was awesome enough to buy me back in 2000, but I'll bet it wasn't much to speak of. Loved that damn thing though. I remember putting an ungodly amount of metal albums on that hard drive, and goddamn was it the emulation station. Kind of miss it in a weird way.
The first PC I bought for myself was a shitty laptop back when I was in the Army. This was probably around 2009, and again, I have no idea what was in it but it was god awful. I eventually decided to take the plunge and actually learn about PC gaming rather than just buy stuff and have no idea if it's good or not lol. I started into PC gaming proper back in 2012 with a 570, and from there I went through the following upgrades: 680, 980, 980 ti, then finally the RTX 2080, which I currently have. Hoping to upgade here soon, but if the leaks are true regarding the pricing schemes of the 30 series, then I definitely will be skipping an upgrade this gen, as honestly my RTX 2080 is handling every game I throw at it with ease other than Microsoft Flight Simulator, so I honestly don't need an upgrade yet, I just think it'd be kind of nice lol.
The first PC I bought for myself was a shitty laptop back when I was in the Army. This was probably around 2009, and again, I have no idea what was in it but it was god awful. I eventually decided to take the plunge and actually learn about PC gaming rather than just buy stuff and have no idea if it's good or not lol. I started into PC gaming proper back in 2012 with a 570, and from there I went through the following upgrades: 680, 980, 980 ti, then finally the RTX 2080, which I currently have. Hoping to upgade here soon, but if the leaks are true regarding the pricing schemes of the 30 series, then I definitely will be skipping an upgrade this gen, as honestly my RTX 2080 is handling every game I throw at it with ease other than Microsoft Flight Simulator, so I honestly don't need an upgrade yet, I just think it'd be kind of nice lol.
tusharngf
Member
Started with mx4000 so i could play IGI2
Then i got fx5200 just to play POP SOT due to shader version
Sold it and got myself 6200LE for company of heroes
Later 7600GS because of Splintercell double agent was not running good on 6200LE
With crysis release got myself 8600GT but was never happy how crappy it ran the game.
I chose to go for ATI 4850HD and later HD6850.. both cards were dead within an year of purchase
in 2014 I purchased gtx 970 on its launch week .. i was super happy.
Used it till 2018 and switched it with gtx 1070 because buying turing card doesnt make any sense at that time.
Now i am waiting for another VFM card.
Then i got fx5200 just to play POP SOT due to shader version
Sold it and got myself 6200LE for company of heroes
Later 7600GS because of Splintercell double agent was not running good on 6200LE
With crysis release got myself 8600GT but was never happy how crappy it ran the game.
I chose to go for ATI 4850HD and later HD6850.. both cards were dead within an year of purchase
in 2014 I purchased gtx 970 on its launch week .. i was super happy.
Used it till 2018 and switched it with gtx 1070 because buying turing card doesnt make any sense at that time.
Now i am waiting for another VFM card.
Rickyiez
Member
Would have bought myself a Voodoo 3 back then if I'm not a 11 years old kid , seems like a super cool piece of tech . But I only played Starcraft and Red Alert 2 at that time , so it doesn't really matter .
Seems like there is alot of us flexing the 1080Ti still , truly a remarkable card that they made 3 of it (2070 super , 2080 , 5700XT )
Seems like there is alot of us flexing the 1080Ti still , truly a remarkable card that they made 3 of it (2070 super , 2080 , 5700XT )
MiyazakiHatesKojima
Banned
Yeah, I remember the good ol' days when a solid Alienware PC Rig with a RX570 graphics cards costed around $1360
Shadowstar39
Member
Man, I am old, my first graphics card: Color Graphics Array with a whopping 2 modes for graphics at 4 set colors (white, cyan, magenta, black / Red, Yellow, Brown, Black) something like that.
on a 8088 pc:
Next i386sx 16mhz circa 1989/90 - had VGA 256 color awe yeah!!!
Then got a CD rom drive, soundblaster pro-16 and a OAK graphics SVGA 1mb graphics card that would display 800x600 and millions of colors: (wing commander 2 and ultima underworld on 1 disc with voice):
Had a packard bell (crapy cyrix m2 processor oc'd to 266mhz) and a voodoo3.
Was so pissed having the crap cpu, which a sound blaster live actually made the fps raise 10-20 fps due to cpu not doing the work, that I
built my first pc, a Pentium 3 650mhz coppermine with Voodoo 5 5500:
Dual GPU madness, and the first true Anti Aliasing. Which did it differently than any other even to this day, imo. One touch on the keyboard and instant AA with no performance hit as it was baked into the card.
Then Got a Geforce 3 as 3dfx went out of business:
Then got suckered into a geforce 5700fx (which was luckily the 2nd round of fx cards so it wasn't so bad ):
Then a geforce 6800 vanilla: which this card you could unlock the locked pixel and texture units and make it a full ultra card in spec by a software mod, think nvidia learned their lesson there.
It played TES 4 like a champ:
Next 8800gts this card lasted me for years and i replaced it with its upgrade 9800gt when it died:
This was the start of big coolers:
Switched to team red for the first time in a 6 years with the 7870 ghz ed:
That lasted me til last year.
Got a 1060GTX in my bedroom pc and a 1650 super in my living room low power pc.
on a 8088 pc:
Next i386sx 16mhz circa 1989/90 - had VGA 256 color awe yeah!!!
Then got a CD rom drive, soundblaster pro-16 and a OAK graphics SVGA 1mb graphics card that would display 800x600 and millions of colors: (wing commander 2 and ultima underworld on 1 disc with voice):
Had a packard bell (crapy cyrix m2 processor oc'd to 266mhz) and a voodoo3.
Was so pissed having the crap cpu, which a sound blaster live actually made the fps raise 10-20 fps due to cpu not doing the work, that I
built my first pc, a Pentium 3 650mhz coppermine with Voodoo 5 5500:
Dual GPU madness, and the first true Anti Aliasing. Which did it differently than any other even to this day, imo. One touch on the keyboard and instant AA with no performance hit as it was baked into the card.
Then Got a Geforce 3 as 3dfx went out of business:
Then got suckered into a geforce 5700fx (which was luckily the 2nd round of fx cards so it wasn't so bad ):
Then a geforce 6800 vanilla: which this card you could unlock the locked pixel and texture units and make it a full ultra card in spec by a software mod, think nvidia learned their lesson there.
It played TES 4 like a champ:
Next 8800gts this card lasted me for years and i replaced it with its upgrade 9800gt when it died:
This was the start of big coolers:
Switched to team red for the first time in a 6 years with the 7870 ghz ed:
That lasted me til last year.
Got a 1060GTX in my bedroom pc and a 1650 super in my living room low power pc.
Redefine07
Member
I had from what I remember , Nvidia FX5200 , GT 7300 , ATi x1950PRO , HD4850 , GTX 560 Ti Hawk , R9 290 Vapor-X and now I have a crappy but still good for Dotka 2 RX570 xD ( I wait for the next line of GPU's)
yurqqa
Member
I also fondly remember buying Radeon 9600 Pro. It was a revelation after all Geforce MX cards I owned.
I've bought it to be prepared for Half-Life 2.
And although I had to wait 1,5 more years for HL2 to be released, it played great on that card !
P.S. I also remember trying 3D acceleration on S3 Virge. It's still one of the most painful memory I have.
I've bought it to be prepared for Half-Life 2.
And although I had to wait 1,5 more years for HL2 to be released, it played great on that card !
P.S. I also remember trying 3D acceleration on S3 Virge. It's still one of the most painful memory I have.
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SkylineRKR
Member
My first card was a Monster 3D, in 1998. This was on a Pentium II. This was a good card by 3DFX.
Then, we moved to Athlon, which eclipsed Intel. And we first got a Stealth III (S3 Metal?), which was a piece of trash. Then we replaced it with a VooDoo 3. This is was a good card but I think 3DFX was on the way out around this time?
Then we moved on to Geforce 2. Geforce 4 Ti4200, which was great value for money as you could OC it to decent levels.
Then we made a mistake, we bought an FX 5200 or 5700. Forgot but I hated Geforce FX. We returned it for a Radeon 9800PRO which is my fave card ever probably. We used that pretty much until I called it quits with PC gaming. Well, I remember getting a 6800GT when the Radeon died. Used that briefly before I moved out.
Then, we moved to Athlon, which eclipsed Intel. And we first got a Stealth III (S3 Metal?), which was a piece of trash. Then we replaced it with a VooDoo 3. This is was a good card but I think 3DFX was on the way out around this time?
Then we moved on to Geforce 2. Geforce 4 Ti4200, which was great value for money as you could OC it to decent levels.
Then we made a mistake, we bought an FX 5200 or 5700. Forgot but I hated Geforce FX. We returned it for a Radeon 9800PRO which is my fave card ever probably. We used that pretty much until I called it quits with PC gaming. Well, I remember getting a 6800GT when the Radeon died. Used that briefly before I moved out.
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Pegasus Actual
Member
I believe my first dedicated video hardware in a PC I built was a Hercules Dynamite 128:
paired with a Diamond Monster 3D (3dfx Voodoo 1):
I think the next build was a 3dfx Voodoo 3 (2000? 3000? Whatever was considered the bang for the buck buy back then).
Next thing I new 3dfx was out of the game that they had pretty much founded! Hit harder than Sega bowing out of the console wars tbh.
paired with a Diamond Monster 3D (3dfx Voodoo 1):
I think the next build was a 3dfx Voodoo 3 (2000? 3000? Whatever was considered the bang for the buck buy back then).
Next thing I new 3dfx was out of the game that they had pretty much founded! Hit harder than Sega bowing out of the console wars tbh.
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SkylineRKR
Member
The first FEAR is pretty much the only good one.
And it was rather demanding. The minimum was something like 9600 or FX, but the 9800 struggled with it. I think the 6800GT ran it decently. But it was probably best to have a GF7 or something similar at the time, which were new.
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Warnen
Don't pass gaas, it is your Destiny!
Took my 1st paycheck from my 1st job at a Walmart and bought a voodoo 3 FX card for EverQuest.
if I recall correctly it replaced a voodoo 1 or 2 card my mom bought me when she sold her house.
The card I replaced was the 1st item I ever sold on EBay as well.
if I recall correctly it replaced a voodoo 1 or 2 card my mom bought me when she sold her house.
The card I replaced was the 1st item I ever sold on EBay as well.
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LordOfChaos
Member
An independent Canadian GPU company that didn't Blackberry it and was super competitive...Would have liked to see that universe. It's funny because ATI was the first to a unified shader architecture in the Xbox 360 a year ahead of the 8800 line, but after the buyout messed with schedules they lost iirc half a year to Nvidias first unified shader parts and came in underwhelming in comparison, that buyout really messed with them for years, if not forever. Imagine if ATI launched that unified shader architecture 1.5 years ahead of Nvidia. The momentum. Momentum matters, that's why Intels settlement with AMD is nowhere near enough.
That said, APUs very much did float AMD for some years there, so pick your evil.
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StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
The first 3D video card I experienced was my bro getting a Voodoo 3 2000 (I think). This was the late 90s if I remember. Or maybe 2000. I remember him getting it around Diablo 2 timing.
Bogroll
Likes moldy games
Voodoo 3 3000 Agp
Geforce 2 Ti
Ati 800 xt.
Didn't really know what i was buying when i bought the Voodoo but it had just came out the week i decided to buy a card. I was well impressed when i loaded up Unreal (came with card) on the title screen as the camera moves all around the castle in real time. I remember thinking home systems have a last overtaken the arcades. I don't know what i have done with any of those cards as i can't remember selling them.
Geforce 2 Ti
Ati 800 xt.
Didn't really know what i was buying when i bought the Voodoo but it had just came out the week i decided to buy a card. I was well impressed when i loaded up Unreal (came with card) on the title screen as the camera moves all around the castle in real time. I remember thinking home systems have a last overtaken the arcades. I don't know what i have done with any of those cards as i can't remember selling them.
nkarafo
Member
Damn OP, those are too many small step upgrades.
I don't upgrade a card until the one i'm getting is at least twice as fast as my current one.
My path:
Voodoo 3 3000
.......
Geforce 4 ti 4400
Radeon x1950 pro
.......
.......
.......
GTX 960
GTX 1060
You can see a couple of periods where i didn't upgrade for years. The first gap was because i had to serve for a year and a half so i didn't get a new PC until i finished my service. And even then i got a brand new PS2 so i waited a bit longer until i got my next PC build.
The second gap was huge. I had my Pentium 4 3.0Ghz + x1950 pro for nearly 10 years before i made a new build with the GTX 960. That's because i could only afford a Nintendo Wii and later on an XBOX 360.
The GTX 1060 6GB was a pretty big upgrade over the 960. Almost twice the power and 3x the VRAM. But the RTX 2060 was not since it has the same amount of VRAM. I hope the 3060 will be the big upgrade over the 1060 i'm hoping for.
I don't upgrade a card until the one i'm getting is at least twice as fast as my current one.
My path:
Voodoo 3 3000
.......
Geforce 4 ti 4400
Radeon x1950 pro
.......
.......
.......
GTX 960
GTX 1060
You can see a couple of periods where i didn't upgrade for years. The first gap was because i had to serve for a year and a half so i didn't get a new PC until i finished my service. And even then i got a brand new PS2 so i waited a bit longer until i got my next PC build.
The second gap was huge. I had my Pentium 4 3.0Ghz + x1950 pro for nearly 10 years before i made a new build with the GTX 960. That's because i could only afford a Nintendo Wii and later on an XBOX 360.
The GTX 1060 6GB was a pretty big upgrade over the 960. Almost twice the power and 3x the VRAM. But the RTX 2060 was not since it has the same amount of VRAM. I hope the 3060 will be the big upgrade over the 1060 i'm hoping for.
Codswallop_
Neophyte
Some kind of ATI Rage variant was the first card I remember.
Went from that to the Voodoo, which felt like a game changer back then. Half Life in openGL, wow.
Then to a Riva TNT2 for a while.
Took a school trip to the ATI factory in Toronto and became a fanboy after that. This was around the time they were still developing the "flipper" chip for the Gamecube and the hype back then was massive. Pretty sure around then we upgraded to a Radeon 8500, but I can't remember the exact model.
After that l moved out and just used laptops for a number of years due to work/school. Made the mistake of buying an overpriced gamer laptop, the Toshiba Qosmio with SLI 9800M. Worked great until you tried gaming for longer than ten minutes and everything started to overheat. Tried a variety of different ways to keep that thing cool but nothing ever really worked.
After that returned to the world of PC building with the GTX 590. Great card, no complaints until it died a quiet death a few years later.
Then to the final card I am still using, the GeForce 960. Definitely showing its age now, but I don't do as much PC gaming as I used to. One of these days it'll be time to build a new machine...
Went from that to the Voodoo, which felt like a game changer back then. Half Life in openGL, wow.
Then to a Riva TNT2 for a while.
Took a school trip to the ATI factory in Toronto and became a fanboy after that. This was around the time they were still developing the "flipper" chip for the Gamecube and the hype back then was massive. Pretty sure around then we upgraded to a Radeon 8500, but I can't remember the exact model.
After that l moved out and just used laptops for a number of years due to work/school. Made the mistake of buying an overpriced gamer laptop, the Toshiba Qosmio with SLI 9800M. Worked great until you tried gaming for longer than ten minutes and everything started to overheat. Tried a variety of different ways to keep that thing cool but nothing ever really worked.
After that returned to the world of PC building with the GTX 590. Great card, no complaints until it died a quiet death a few years later.
Then to the final card I am still using, the GeForce 960. Definitely showing its age now, but I don't do as much PC gaming as I used to. One of these days it'll be time to build a new machine...
EverydayBeast
thinks Halo Infinite is a new graphical benchmark
Graphic cards are something to keep an eye on and they’ll always be a threat to consoles
bArTl3bY
Member
I love these threads. My grandfather pushed for me to 'learn more about computers' at an early age but I wasn't too interested. Then I played Wolfenstein 3D for the first time. I was aware of DOOM from magazines but not much beyond that. Since I was now interested, my grandfather made a deal with me - he would buy the parts but I had to build it from the ground up. Keep in mind this was 1994 and I was nine. Haha.
Several days and many hours of reading later, I had a working PC with an i486DX2-66 and somewhere around 4MB of RAM. And yes, DOOM. Would later add Windows 3.1, then 95, and a CD drive. I believe the last game I was actually able to run decently on that PC was Half Life.
I wanted to build another and get a Voodoo2 but it was never meant to be. Ended up being wowed by the PSX as that purchase 'made more sense' and didn't experience the glory days of PC gaming. Fast forward to 2012 (the relevant part of this post) and I wanted to build again. My progression is below. I typically buy cards on sale, use them for a period of time and sell them to fund the upgrade. Imagine I'll do the same next year and get one of the new Nvidia cards.
[2012] GTX 660 Ti | GTX 970 | RX 480 8GB | RX Vega 64 | RX 5700 XT | 2080 Super [2020]
Several days and many hours of reading later, I had a working PC with an i486DX2-66 and somewhere around 4MB of RAM. And yes, DOOM. Would later add Windows 3.1, then 95, and a CD drive. I believe the last game I was actually able to run decently on that PC was Half Life.
I wanted to build another and get a Voodoo2 but it was never meant to be. Ended up being wowed by the PSX as that purchase 'made more sense' and didn't experience the glory days of PC gaming. Fast forward to 2012 (the relevant part of this post) and I wanted to build again. My progression is below. I typically buy cards on sale, use them for a period of time and sell them to fund the upgrade. Imagine I'll do the same next year and get one of the new Nvidia cards.
[2012] GTX 660 Ti | GTX 970 | RX 480 8GB | RX Vega 64 | RX 5700 XT | 2080 Super [2020]
Rickyiez
Member
Just sold my 1080 Ti and ironically bought a used Gigabyte Rx470 as a replacement for $70
I'm now ready for the RTX 3080 whenever it hit the shore of my country.
I was only 10 when I get my first 486 machine , totally had no idea on how PC work during that time . I'm still stuck with it for few years until 1 day I tried overclocking it successfully from 100Mhz to 133Mhz using jumpers . That was my first foray into PC world
I'm now ready for the RTX 3080 whenever it hit the shore of my country.
I was only 10 when I get my first 486 machine , totally had no idea on how PC work during that time . I'm still stuck with it for few years until 1 day I tried overclocking it successfully from 100Mhz to 133Mhz using jumpers . That was my first foray into PC world
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deriks
4-Time GIF/Meme God
I had a Voodoo 2 card in the early days. My PC broke for some reason and I was too young to know PC shit, so my father gave to someone that stole my GPU, and I only knew that because my games were looking poorly, then I look at the specs and looked at the paper to compare. Yeah, he stole... this was in 2000/2001
I only got a new GPU in 2004, with the FX 5200. My first game was Doom 3 and it was my jam. I played the hell of it. Also, Prince of Persia 1 and 2, Half Life 2, World of Warcraft, Ragnarok... I used a lot, maybe until 2009. Backlog was huge.
Then time passed and was more into consoles. Didn't care that much for PC gaming, so I got a GTX 9500 in 2012 more for the sake of my new backlog.
Then I kinda wanted to get back to it and bought in 2017 a R7 350X. I was using until this year, then I sold my PC and I have no idea when I'll go back to PC gaming.
ps: I'm a person who plays in any platform, but there's a big chance that I prefer a console.
I only got a new GPU in 2004, with the FX 5200. My first game was Doom 3 and it was my jam. I played the hell of it. Also, Prince of Persia 1 and 2, Half Life 2, World of Warcraft, Ragnarok... I used a lot, maybe until 2009. Backlog was huge.
Then time passed and was more into consoles. Didn't care that much for PC gaming, so I got a GTX 9500 in 2012 more for the sake of my new backlog.
Then I kinda wanted to get back to it and bought in 2017 a R7 350X. I was using until this year, then I sold my PC and I have no idea when I'll go back to PC gaming.
ps: I'm a person who plays in any platform, but there's a big chance that I prefer a console.