3D Card Retrospective

kupocake

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Maximum PC have a 10 page retrospective of 3D Accelerator cards, which I thought was interesting, especially seeing them swell in size and complexity. Also, begs the question on a PC-using forum: Which of cards have you owned in your time

For me: the 3DFX Voodoo Banshee (oh for a time when 1024x768 was a madman's dream), an Nvidia GeForce 2 MX, an ATi Radeon 9800 Pro, eventually subbed for a weedy ATi Radeon 9250 (it was free though :D) and currently, my Radeon HD 4850.


And yes, I know we have a Hardware & Software forum, but that's for tech stuff!
 
I owed a Voodoo card, but not sure which one. From there I believe I went to a geforce 3, geforce 4 ti4200, radeon 9600gt, geforce 7800, and then to my current radeon 4850.
 
3dfx Voodoo1 for Quake 2 - still remember playing that game in the days before hardware acceleration, and being amazed at how this new fangled '3D' card smoothed off the blocks. After that the market was a 3D card maelstrom that made me get through:
Matrox Mystique Ah, Mechwarrior 2 never looked so good...
3dfx Voodoo2 my longest serving card so far (4 years), back in the golden age of games.
GeForce 4 Ti4600 Most stable and problem free card to date, man was this a jump from the voodoo2 - my eyeballs came.
Radeon 9800pro Big mistake, this cow was slower than the Ti in a lot of games and died within a year. Never done ATi again.
GeForce 6800ultra Golden Sample second longest running card to date and handled Morrowind, HL2, BF2, Oblivion, and all my other fave games quite nicely up until 2008.
EVGA GeForce 9800GX2 SSC Went from the 6's straight to the 9's without passing GO or collecting 200 bucks. Massive, massive jump in speed, but is a problem child.
...and in 2 months time...2x GeForce GTX 285 :cool:
 
I used to have an onboard card in my computer, and then I got an AGP card.
Then we bought a computer with a GeForce 7900GTX, then I got my own computer with an 8800GT.
 
8mb Nvidia Vanta LT
32mb Nvidia TNT2
256mb Nvidia Geforce 7600gs
256mb Nvidia Geforce 7900gs
512mb Nvidia Geforce 9600gt
 
Voodoo 1 and 2
GF4MX
Radeon 9600SE
Nvidia 7600GT
Nvidia 8800GT
 
MS DOS 5.0 era
Onboard CGA for my '386. - So many early gaming memories.
Onboard EGA for my '386. - So much better than CGA.
Onboard SVGA for my '486. - So much better than EGA.

MS Windows era.
4mb Diamond Stealth 2. - Played original Unreal on this.
16mb 3DFx Voodoo 3. - Fantastic video card.
32mb nVidia TNT2 N64. - Sucked Hardcore except for playing DFLW online.
64mb Radeon 7000. - Craptastic video card. - Got for Free.
64mb Radeon 7500. - Pretty good video card. Got for BF42 & OFP.
128mb Radeon 9800. Softmodded with a "Pro" Bios. - Excellent video card.
256mb BFG 6800 Ultra. - Great card. Primary gaming card until last year.
512mb Sapphire HD4850. - Simply Fantastic video card. - Currently installed.

-MRG
 
Something I don't recall
16MB S3 Virge (man, I used this for years)
64MB GeForce 4 MX 440 (played GTA3 on this)
256MB GeForce FX5500 (and, played EP2 on this)
512MB ATI Radeon HD 3870
 
My computer's had quite a history, in my opinion, with possibly the longest used card ever.


long ago: nVIDEA 5600 (crap, but got me through the ages: pre-2000 to past The Orange Box [At 800x600 resolution with everything set to lowest on a 17 inch screen] !)

soon after that camputer died a hideous death :( : nVIDEA GeForce 8400 GT (not good, but WAY better then what i had before, and allowed me to play my games at medium-low to medium specs at my monitor's native resolution).

last year- christmas: nVIDEA 9800 GT: I could finally play ANY of my games, maxed EVERYTHING with my native resolution of 1280x1024. hooray!


My dad had an old computer back at our other house, but I don't know what was in it. It was Windows 3.1 though. So it's awesome.
 
MS DOS 5.0 era
Onboard CGA for my '386. - So many early gaming memories.

The first PC game I ever saw on a 386 in stunning 4 colour, high resolution (14") with twitchy animated pictures was The Bards Tale - it was AWESOME.
 
Voodoo 3
Geforce 2 MX400
Geforce 4 Ti4200
Geforce FX 5950 Ultra
Radeon X800XL
Geforce 8800GTS 320mb
Geforce GTX 260
 
I don't recall what my dad had on the family PCs all those years until the last one which was Diamond Stealth.

On the PCs I've bought/built they had:
ATI 3D Rage ISA
ATI Rage 128 All-In-Wonder 16 MB PCI
Nvidia GeForce 2 Ti 64 MB AGP
...skipped some generations. Had that GF2 forever...
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB AGP
Nvidia 6800 GT 256 MB PCI-Express
ATI x1900GT 256 MB PCI-Express
Nvidia 8800 GTS 512MB PCI-Express - in 2nd PC
Nvidia 8800 GT 256MB PCI-Express (2) - in 3rd PC (folding!)
ATI 4850 512MB PCI-Express (main)

ATI: 4
Nvidia: 5
And yet I prefer ATI cards because of video-in capture.

Still have the rage, aiw, gf2, x1900 in anti-static bags. 9800 and 6800 were sold.
 
Ati PCI 1900 128 MB (swap upgrade)
Ati PCI 1950 256 MB (sold to friend)
Ati PCIe x1900GT 256 MB (died)
Ati [onboard] 200 Xpress (current)

Don't plan on buying ATi again, though it will probably just be different problems with Nvidia.
 
Nvidia TNT2 8MB
ATI Radeon 8500LE 128MB (for the BF1942 demo)
ATI Radeon x1900XT 512MB (for my non-family computer, also BF2 and HL2)

That's about it.
 
Riva TNT 2
GeForce MX200
GeForce 2 GTS
GeForce 4 ti 4200
Radeon 9800 XT (Shoulda got the plain 9800)
GeForce 6800 Ultra
GeForce 7900 GT
GeForce 8800 GTS
Radeon 4850
 
S3 Virge
Intel integrated graphics
Riva TNT2
Geforce FX 5900XT
Radeon X1650XT

Well, the first 3 ones were just some old garbage PC's I got for free. When I was finally allowed to buy a 'new' PC 2 years ago I bought a 2nd hand one with the 5900.
 
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