3 or 4 graphics processors after the Voodoo 1 you think were "high water marks"?

[Anarchist420]

I am going to say the G400 (the best best board/circuitry quality and the best graphics processing quality), Napalm (good signal quality, excellent processing quality, and the first consumer graphics product to introduce the best AA ever), and G80 (excellent DX10 implementation, unified shader architecture with performance maintained, and fixed every single issue with its predecessor including but not limited to AF quality, z-buffer precision, and AA+FP format).

Runner up would be the Geforce 3 even though it didnt have decent AA.

Most overrated architecture ever is the R300 followed by the GeForce 256. Maxwell wont be a new high-water mark because not all of them will have ARM processors.

Finally, I dont want anyone to take drivers into account as I am just talking about the feature set.

 

[Stuka87]

Well, the Voodoo2 blew the Voodoo1 out of the water. While the Voodoo1 was the first of its kind really, I would set the Voodoo2 benchmark.

When you say G400, you mean the Matrox card? I owned a G400+, it was a decent card. Good image quality, but gaming was not great. The GF3 Ti200 I replaced it with blew it out of the water.

The first Radeon was a big step forward. I can recall getting one when they first came out, and being so happy.

I don't feel the R300 was over rated. I LOVED my 9800 Pro, I had zero issues with that card. Yes technically it was an R350, but very few technical differences.

 

[mojothehut]

My three personal favorite cards.
Voodoo 3 3500 (LOVED GL Quake)

Geforce 4 Ti 4600. Bought this over the Ti 4200 because at the time
I was under the impression that 128mb ram was a huge performance increase over 64mb.

ATi 9700 pro. Bought this exclusively for Doom 3 release (oh baby)

However the joy of the 9700 pro was almost tied with my love of the 6800 Ultra which I used for years...

 

[DigDog]

1900xt .. .8800gts ... gt460.

i'm too young* to have known earlier models.

(im not young; but nobody 'round here had the money to buy a vodoo2 video card)

 

[BFG10K]

GeForce 3, Radeon 9700 Pro, 8800GTX.

The 9700 Pro was awesomely ground-breaking. It allowed 1600x1200 with 16xAF to be viable in almost every game of the time. It took two years for it to be truly knocked off its perch.

 

[exar333]

GeForce 3, Radeon 9700 Pro, 8800GTX.

The 9700 Pro was awesomely ground-breaking. It allowed 1600x1200 with 16xAF to be viable in almost every game of the time. It took two years for it to be truly knocked off its perch.

This.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

9700 pro, 8800gtx, and hd5870

The 5870 would still be a great mid range GPU if it had more vram almost 5 years later.

 

[Mand]

Just feature set, or does price, noise, thermals fall into consideration?

And yeah, gotta give a nod to the HD5870. Never thought I'd still be using it five years in. It's showing its age for sure, but it managed Crysis 2 on decent settings. I'm not sure many cards can claim that kind of longevity. But beyond longevity, it was an awesome combination of performance and price when it launched.

 

[SirPauly]

Voodoo 5500: Created awareness for tools to improve aliasing and its quality was amazing for its timeline! Sadly, the market didn't react favorably!

GeForce 256 DDR: The first product that really delivered 32-bit color gaming with performance and a nice balanced product! Hardware T&L was welcomed and really enjoyed Dagoth Moor Zoological Garden! The chip that started the GeForce name-brand!

Radeon 64: A very feature rich and balanced product from AA/AF to EVBM and Dot 3. The chip that started the Radeon Brand name!

GeForce 3: Programmable shading and multi-sampling!

Radeon 9700: Arguably the most balanced chip ever created! Did bring performance for AA/AF gaming with impressive sparse grid quality!

Radeon X1900: HDR+AA and angle invariant filtering

GeForce 8800: Arguably the most balanced chip ever created!

 

[Anarchist420]

Just feature set, or does price, noise, thermals fall into consideration?

not price because of binning while noise and thermals should count only for processors that werent on different PCBs

 

[CakeMonster]

What felt the best value to me was the AMD 9700 (R300) and then 8800 640Mb. I had that for a good while until AMD released 4870, which I loved because of the price and kept upgrading with 5870 and 6970. Great value and I was ecstatic about the affordable yearly speed increase.

I did buy the 7970 afterwards, and while it was expensive as hell it has had an amazing speed increase from driver since that. If you benchmark it today and compare with the scores at release... Wow. But the price was a bit on the high side so I can't put it in the #1 spot.

 

[gbeirn]

R300 and it's derivatives were great chips. As someone else mentioned it pretty much enable free AF and was the first time AA could be actually be used.

Edit: Also GeForce 2MX enabled cheap PC gaming. Huge at the time when computers were still expensive.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Generationally:

Pre-DX7; Voodoo2 12MB. Has there ever been a more iconic graphics card? It even ran modified Doom3...
DX7; Geforce256 DDR. A revolution in its own right, first chip with hardware T&L. Honourable mention to the Geforce2 MX. Might not be the greatest card ever, but it did introduce a lot of people to PC gaming.
DX8; Geforce4 TI4200. Amazing card for the time.
DX9; Radeon 9700Pro (R300). This chip practically invented DX9 gaming, and DX9 for that matter since DX9 was practically written around the R300 chip. Think about how important DX9 has been since, everything from smartphones to highest-end GTX TitanZ all support DX9 as a base-line...
DX10; Geforce 8800. Arguably one of the longest lived newer cards out there. Just shows how sound its architecture has been.
DX11; Radeon HD5800-series. First DX11 chip. Launced in 2009, and still a perfectly viable gaming card today, 5 years later.

 

[ocre]

Generationally:

Pre-DX7; Voodoo2 12MB. Has there ever been a more iconic graphics card? It even ran modified Doom3...
DX7; Geforce256 DDR. A revolution in its own right, first chip with hardware T&L. Honourable mention to the Geforce2 MX. Might not be the greatest card ever, but it did introduce a lot of people to PC gaming.
DX8; Geforce4 TI4200. Amazing card for the time.
DX9; Radeon 9700Pro (R300). This chip practically invented DX9 gaming, and DX9 for that matter since DX9 was practically written around the R300 chip. Think about how important DX9 has been since, everything from smartphones to highest-end GTX TitanZ all support DX9 as a base-line...
DX10; Geforce 8800. Arguably one of the longest lived newer cards out there. Just shows how sound its architecture has been.
DX11; Radeon HD5800-series. First DX11 chip. Launced in 2009, and still a perfectly viable gaming card today, 5 years later.

I do think the HD5800 was one of my all time favorite design from AMD, I would say it was extremely surprising. So for me it goes
ATI- 9700 (r300) to HD 5800 as two monumental designs which stood out from everything in between.

But i am not sure the HD5800 is the defining chip of DX11. It was the first DX11 chip and that is part of why i think it is so relevant. But the 5800series was very impressive on so many fronts. To me it is more like Nvidia's 8800GT because it was really good everywhere including price. The whole package, very impressive

But AMD couldnt use the HD5800 architecture for as long as Nvidia used their DX10 king. This is because if AMD wanted to get real serious with DX11, they would have to dramatically change the architecture.

So while i love the HD5800 for all that it was, I wouldnt say it was the king of DX11.

For nvidia, i would have to say from 8800 and.........
idk, its hard to say.
Fermi wasnt without some major problems but it set them in the right direction. It rolled out the carpet for kepler which was a fine architecture but nvidia took so long rolling the full kepler line out that it never had a grand slam. Had the 780ti come out when the gtx680 come out, then that would have been for sure the next 8800 but it didnt. Nvidia dragged their feet so long with coming out with a real gaming gk110 in all its glory. So long that AMD was able to pretty much catch up with hawaii.

So while Nvidia has been keeping the bases loaded and playing real well, they havent hit a grand-slam like the 8800 every since.

Had Nvidia gave us a 780ti at the time they gave us the 680, it would be a different story. And titan........it doesnt deserve to be on this list

 

[sxr7171]

R300 was amazing. Never had there been a time that you could get that kind of performance at that price point and never has there been since. I had amazing experiences with my 9700pro.

 

[ViRGE]

GeForce 256 (1) DDR (oh man was that fast)
GeForce Ti 4200 (it's the same GPU as NVIDIA's flagship, at $200?!)
Radeon 9700 Pro (fast & SM2.0 pixel shaders)
GeForce 8800GT ("the only card that matters")

 

[SPBHM]

R300, I didn't expect ATI to be that much better than anything else.

also 9500 non pro + pipelines mod + OC was the best.

I don't see how R300 is overrated,

 

[Topweasel]

Lots of defining cards out there if I had to pick a couple it would be
1. Voodoo2, glide itself was more important than the voodoo 1. But V2 was a wrecking ball that staved off pressure for multiple generations from other companies.
2. Geforce 256, basically killed 3dfx, kicked Matrox and powervr out of gaming adapters and if it wasn't for the first Radeon, they would have been the only one left.
3. Radeon 9700pro and the rest of the series. Gave Nvidia a much needed kick in the behind.
4. Geforce FX 5800, was not the great card our chocolate and caramel candy friend wanted us to believe it was. But the basis for GPU design that started here probably impacts current GPU's more than any other cards.
5. Radeon 4870, cost effect 90% gaming. The sole reason we can get $400-$500 cards that can hit 90% of the performance of the highest card for 2/3 price. Basically established a new price bracket.
6. Geforce Titan GTX, a ridiculously expensive card, but the first consumer priced card that could be used effectively for professional use. It also helps that its such fast card that almost 3 years since its release, its still the fastest single GPU. Buyers ridiculed for spend 1k years ago on it got amazing value in performance, its also retained its value through its long reign.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I don't get why these threads never have more love for midrange cards.

Like, the 8500LE didn't win any speed records, but it definitely broke some price/performance ground.

 

[Madpacket]

Generationally:

Pre-DX7; Voodoo2 12MB. Has there ever been a more iconic graphics card? It even ran modified Doom3...
DX7; Geforce256 DDR. A revolution in its own right, first chip with hardware T&L. Honourable mention to the Geforce2 MX. Might not be the greatest card ever, but it did introduce a lot of people to PC gaming.
DX8; Geforce4 TI4200. Amazing card for the time.
DX9; Radeon 9700Pro (R300). This chip practically invented DX9 gaming, and DX9 for that matter since DX9 was practically written around the R300 chip. Think about how important DX9 has been since, everything from smartphones to highest-end GTX TitanZ all support DX9 as a base-line...
DX10; Geforce 8800. Arguably one of the longest lived newer cards out there. Just shows how sound its architecture has been.
DX11; Radeon HD5800-series. First DX11 chip. Launced in 2009, and still a perfectly viable gaming card today, 5 years later.

Nailed it.

 

[HurleyBird]

Pre-DX7; Voodoo2 12MB. Has there ever been a more iconic graphics card? It even ran modified Doom3...
DX7; Geforce256 DDR. A revolution in its own right, first chip with hardware T&L. Honourable mention to the Geforce2 MX. Might not be the greatest card ever, but it did introduce a lot of people to PC gaming.
DX8; Geforce4 TI4200. Amazing card for the time.
DX9; Radeon 9700Pro (R300). This chip practically invented DX9 gaming, and DX9 for that matter since DX9 was practically written around the R300 chip. Think about how important DX9 has been since, everything from smartphones to highest-end GTX TitanZ all support DX9 as a base-line...
DX10; Geforce 8800. Arguably one of the longest lived newer cards out there. Just shows how sound its architecture has been.
DX11; Radeon HD5800-series. First DX11 chip. Launced in 2009, and still a perfectly viable gaming card today, 5 years later.

Exactly this.

 

[Termie]

Good, good stuff in this thread. And lots of agreement, which is rare!

9700 Pro for completely changing the performance goalposts.

8800GT for completely changing the price/performance equation.

And just a plug for a midrange card that could be a sign of things to come: the 750 Ti, for completely changing the performance/Watt equation. Why is this important? Consider the increase in overall board size from the Voodoo2 to the HD5800 to today's R9/780. That's the next frontier.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

And just a plug for a midrange card that could be a sign of things to come: the 750 Ti, for completely changing the performance/Watt equation. Why is this important? Consider the increase in overall board size from the Voodoo2 to the HD5800 to today's R9/780. That's the next frontier.

I was actually thinking of including the 750TI, it is a really amazing performance-per-watt card.

----------------------

While we're at it, I'll just mention my old CreativeLabs Voodoo Banshee (the combined 2D/3D card of the Voodoo line). Superb 2D quality, full hardware support for both GDI and DirectDraw and with a 100MHz clock it could be faster then the Voodoo2. So long as it didn't have to do multi-texturing... :whiste:

I still think that card was my best graphics card investment ever... :biggrin:

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

My favorite cards would probably be the Tseng Labs ET6000, Canopus Voodoo 1, Canopus Voodoo 2 and Canopus RivaTNT.

 

[SirPauly]

So while Nvidia has been keeping the bases loaded and playing real well, they havent hit a grand-slam like the 8800 every since.

Grand Slams are rare and probably two: R-300 and G-80! Balanced architectures that delivered and raised the bar on performance, features and image quality!

It's always exciting to see what the engineering minds design every generation but, man, it's a hoot when they hit Grand Slams!