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What's your most memorable video card era?

Tummi Gummi said:
Well the Geforce 4 MX was my first purchase, and taught me to research the fecking things before buying them. The Radeon 9800 and Geforce 8800s were pretty amazing cards.
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Ah, memorable for all the wrong reasons. I remember reading the reviews of the "Geforce 4 MX" series, which were rejigged Geforce 2s with Vertex shaders. The weird thing was that because the MX460 was highly clocked it was quick in older games. The problem arose as Pixel shaders began to be used in games and suddenly the card wasn't able to be used.

Since then I've always made sure to research my tech purchases before laying down any cash, as that almost caught me out too.
Hellcrow said:
I remember my first computer with a 6800. The fan was kinda broken, since I had to manually start it by pushing it.
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Push start GPU, love it, heh.
 
Voodoo 2 and 3

That was the time when PC games really surged ahead of what was possible on consoles. Also some really memorable games that came out in that era are still talked about today. Its when PC gaming became "cool" and previously only console gamers would notice the PC as it was doing things their consoles could not do.

GeForce 2 is also very memorable, basically put nVidia on the map for most people
 
Hercules Graphics Card. Its glorious 3 color high resolution 720×348 mode followed me through my childhood and well into my teens, when I finally got the money to upgrade to a 486 with a Tseng SVGA card.
 
I can't remember the card but it was back in 2003 I bought it, it allowed me to go from 33fps in RtCW to 125fps and trick jumping around like a mad man. Was fucking awesomely mind blowing.
 
Tummi Gummi said:
Well the Geforce 4 MX was my first purchase, and taught me to research the fecking things before buying them. The Radeon 9800 and Geforce 8800s were pretty amazing cards.
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Ouch lol
I knew a few people who 'upgraded' to that from their geforce 2-3s, were they ever in for a surprise
 
the voodoo era of course. It also helps that some great games came out at that time as well.
I remember play MGS on a voodoo 4 in 32bit color.
 
8800GT; it made me primarily a PC gamer for the first time. Incredible performance for the price. Mine is still going strong in my brother's PC.
 
This badass should be my most memorable
IMG_2462.jpg
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Rock Solid Heart Touching indeed . Was able to run Crysis , and having a trip to Rapture (Bioshock1) with it .
 
The first foray into 3D was pretty memorable and I think my Voodoo 3 2000 and Radeon 9800 Pro upgrades really stood out as huge leaps in performance. I can't believe how long that 9800 dominated just about everything that came out.

I'm probably a little too nostalgic because I'm still actually loving my pair of Radeon 5850s. I've had at least one of them since November 2009 and I'm still quite happy with the performance.
 
My Radeon 9800 SE Ultra unlocked into a 9800 Pro. After a string of low-mid-range cards (S3Trio, TNT2M64, Geforce4MX) I finally had a genuinely strong GPU.
 
My first one was a GeForce 4 MX440 (with a plain heat sink), then upgraded to FX5700LE to compete with my brother's Radeon 9800 Pro. No competition, unfortunately...

Although historically the Voodoo period wins.
 
gollumsluvslave said:
glquake.jpg
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This image is probably the best example to show that if we are talking "most memorable", for me nothing can't compare to the fist Voodoo (can't remember if my first one was a Diamond Monster or not).

The first game I saw running, on place of the guy that sold me my card was the first Tomb Raider, while he was "testing" it. The gap between the software render and the 3dfx one was just so huge... the image quality, the smooth frame rate...

Couldn't find a video for that game. Best I could do is a comparison using Voodoo 1 running Tomb Raider 2, to try to give an idea.

And since I got to take the card home after seeing that for the first time... well that makes it most memorable era for me. That, and the fact that the Voodoo 2 was a really "Monster" (pun intended, that one was from Diamond) upgrade.
 
The 3dfx era. When I finally removed the Voodoo 5500 from my PC, it really felt like the end of an era. The AA on that card looked so good... Unreal engine games on Glide ran so smooth...
 
my current one since its my very own 7950, then the family comp had a voodoo i think, for Call of Duty 1 helluva game.
 
My 9800 Pro.

But the one that I remember the most is likely the X800XT PE launch and subsequent eBay disaster on the IGN PC General board.
 
The Voodoo2 8mb card. The real deal was ofcourse the 12mb version which my poor 12 year old self couldn't afford but hey, I got to see those smooth Quake textures.

Good times.
 
gtx-card.jpg


Got a GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB OC (almost at 8800 Ultra level clocks) back in autumn 2006, upgraded from 7600 GT 256MB. That was a sick upgrade, probably the biggest jump in power I ever had until then.

I had a theory that once I bought that card, I would be set for the whole PS360 era. Nobody believed me at the HW forum I regularly visit, you know the arguments ("It'll be obsolete in 2-3 years, you have to upgrade, consoles don't have OS/driver/whatever overheads and are games are better optimized etc."). But me and my 8800 GTX showed them. Right up until 2011 I could play almost any console port at 1920x1440 30-60 fps. Then I had to downgrade to 1920x1080, but the 8800 GTX even handled Crysis 2 beautifully at Full HD.

The card is still in service in a friend's computer.

Now my rig is a home to GTX Titan 6GB. It's a very special graphics card and I'm set on repeating my "one card per console generation" thing, but I somehow feel that even the Titan will not replicate the true feeling of wonder as I threw countless games at unheard of resolutions at my 8800 GTX over a period of 5 years, all the while causing mad flame wars with my screenshots and benchmarks. It was a true workhorse and I've never been so emotionally attached to any piece of hardware before or since :')
 
It's got to be the Voodoo 2 and 3 era. I didn't have a gaming PC at the time, but my envy knew no bounds when my wealthier friend got his hands on both of these. Half Life and Counter-Strike looked SO good on his computer.
 
Indeed.

4MB Matrox Millenium plus a 4MB Diamond Monster Voodoo 1. glqwcl 4 lyfe. I was stunned that I had EIGHT MEGS of combined video memory when my old systems had 1M of total physical memory...

I was doing development on Linux games at the time and it was actually handy that the 3dfx had the pass-through cable because when the Voodoo would die you flip back to the regular monitor output and see what was going on in gdb...
 
Clockwork said:
xOu1Yoa.jpg


Most excited I have ever been about a video card purchase.
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Yup, fantastic value for the time, I got the same one.

CambriaRising said:
I remember getting a 6800 for Half life and Doom 3.

The 2003-2006 era in PC gaming was most exciting for me.

9Up4c7Rl.jpg
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Also yup, remember Nalu? I want them to re-create her demo on modern hardware, like they did for Dawn.

In fact, where did all the demo characters go? AMD dropped Ruby completely.



Feep said:
Sidenote: is there a reason why current graphics cards names are so fucking boring? "Company name letter number". "Titan" is a good step forward. Come on, people, hire some marketing firms or some shit!
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The numbers are fine. I don't want to have to check a reference every time I want to find out if an Obliterator is ranked higher than a Titan or a Kickpuncher. With the numbers, at least within one generation of the same companies line I can know a 7890 is above a 7850 is above a 7770 etc.




The above two graphics cards were very exciting for me, but this was the first really high end card I got with my own earned money.

cards2.jpg


x1950xtx



The first video card I remember knowing the specs of in a computer my family owned was the ATI Rage Pro Turbo in our Bondi Blue iMac G3, lol. Then was a PC with a Geforce 2 MX 400.
 
My first Graphics card was a Geforce 4 (4000 fx or something), that my mom bought me for my birthday. It was $40 at a walmart. But the one I remember most fondly would be my Geforce GT 9800 512MB. Ran Crysis like a damned pro. Loved that card, still have it in it's box in my closet.
 
ATI X800 Pro
The only time I ever made a gaming PC...back in 2004 i think it was...around the time of hl2/steam was glorious :)
 
Damn what a thread! VG design is so boring looking now, I liked the days of opening up a gaming PC to an explosion of colors with screenshot and photos printed on the cooler... kinda silly looking but it made the unboxing kinda fun. Long live the red silicon!
 
I got my first 3dfx card and it came with a racing game made by Virgin games. I can't remember the name though. I also remember playing descent 2 on it with the 3dfx patch. Long time ago.
 
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