Cards with staying power...

[MangoX]

Have to agree with 4870. More than double the predecessors speed for the same price in just 6 month. Now 3 years on the card with the closest launch price, the 6950 still cannot double its performance. Plus most current games still runs fine on the 4870 1gb

Gotta blame the fact that we are still on 40nm.

 

[donflamenco]

Have to agree with 4870. More than double the predecessors speed for the same price in just 6 month. Now 3 years on the card with the closest launch price, the 6950 still cannot double its performance. Plus most current games still runs fine on the 4870 1gb

Hmm, the reason I can't agree with the 4870 is because the GTX 260 Core 216 was a good competitor about the same price. Good card, but most decent cards of the 4870 generation still run great today. That probably says more about today's games though.

Don

 

[Subyman]

Softmodded 9500 into 9700. Best purchase ever.

 

[Silverforce11]

8800GT, best bang for buck and remained so for a very long time.

4870, best bang for buck at the time of its release. it took competitors a long time to catch up and even then it was even.

5850, best bang for buck and still is. that's amazing anyway you put it.

I'm a bit biased because thats my upgrade path. 🙂

 

[SonicIce]

6800gt

yes this is still my main card

 

[ultimatebob]

Come on guys, how could you forget the 3dfx Voodoo2? The competition at the time had nothing that could compare to a single Voodoo2 board, let alone two running in SLI.

I'd argue that NVidia didn't have anything as good as 2 Voodoo2 cards in SLI until their TNT2 Ultra line came out a year later. Hell... ATI didn't have anything as good until the Radeon 8000 series came out. The Rage Pro and 1st gen Radeon cards were garbage.

It also helped to spur the development of NVidia's GeForce and ATI Radeon lines over the following two years, which practically every other card in this topic is based off of.

 

[peonyu]

Softmodded 9500 into 9700. Best purchase ever.

This by a longshot.

I forget exactly how much $$$ someone saved by buying a NON pro 9500 and modding it, but it had to be atleast 200$ if not more. I was lame and bought a 9500 PRO for 200$ at the time...300$ for a 9700 vanilla was to much. 9700 Pro was even more than that.

Pure win. And a 9700 Pro was solid for around 3 years.

The 4800 series seems to be holding on thier own still and the 8800's are not to bad even today, so id say both of those series are in the running.

I just upgraded to a 6950 from a 4850, and its a great card, but it is "only" 2x faster [which means a single 4850 is competant for most anything still].

 

[crisium]

We can forget about the 9700 Pro running more recent games. That card doesn't even support DX9c.

Then this thread does indeed have an answer, and the answer is the 8800GTX. Of course this is only referring to staying power from original launch date, and doesn't take price into consideration. But so far it's the only 5 year old card that still runs well. And likely it will reach 6 and beyond.

 

[Rockinacoustic]

Bought a 6600GT ($140) in 2006 that lasted me 'til 2009 Playing Farcry and BF2. Replaced it with a HD4830 ($80) that I still use to this day for BFBC2/GTAIV/etc.

Both were awesome purchases for their time.

 

[Grooveriding]

9700pro, 6800gt, 8800gtx, 5870

 

[MangoX]

@pon: GTX260 216 prices were only reasonable after the 4870 landed with a bang. I can't remember exactly but I think that card dropped near $100, if not more. NV actually released the updated Core 216 to compete with the 4870. The 4870 bested the regular 192 shader version.

 

[Madcatatlas]

Its not really that the cards had staying power. rather it was bad engineering/economy/laziness or whatever that let these cards command a premium for too long.

With the 3 last generation of cards, there has been anything but laziness doing the talk.
With the 48xx series from AMD, the speed of increases went up that much. we are currently in a great time for gpus if you ask me. Both AMD and Nvidia have 3 series of cards that all can play todays games at respectable framespersecond.

I think the 4870 is THE card. It put AMD back into "business" so to speak and even today it can put out playable numbers.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

I would have to agree with this. The 5870 was $100 more for only 10-15% on average (plz don't kill me for pulling that # out of my ass). The 5870 is an amazing card, but the price/performance of the 5850 was not matched for a *long* time.

Also, the 8800 gtx has to be near the top of any list. I would consider it the Conroe of the gpu world.

agreed

I remember sooo many people saying they'd wait for the 5800s to drop in price as they expected 4800 level pricing once nVidia released Fermi, only that day never seemed to come as months went by with no competition, and of course the subsequent sellouts and even price increases on the 5800s, it actually paid off the be an early adopter on the 5800s!

nearly two years in and my 5850 is still able to hold its own, granted I've long since moved on as my thirst for power doesn't quench easily, but the 5850 is still being utilized in a backup rig

 

[Modular]

+1 for the 4850. It was as fast as (if not faster than) the 8800gtx for $199 at release with a free game. I ended up getting it a few days after release for $179 after rebate with a free copy of The Witcher.

Nothing has come close to that in performance per $ IMO since, or before.

 

[lavaheadache]

What was bad about the X1900 series? I thought it was competing quite well against NVIDIA's offering at that time.

I feel like he meant the x1800 series. IMO the X1900's were a step above the 7900 counterparts. They were the first card with shader "cores" clearly the wave of the future

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

5850 for sure. DX 11 and just raw horsepower are good combinations. I think the early DX 11 hardware will last for awhile. 5xxx series and 4xx series are all good cards. The GTX 460 I can also see lasting just as long due to so many people buying them.

 

[Ben90]

Wow, It really is coming up on two years since the 5850 came out. How time flies.

 

[AdamK47]

VooDoo 2. Had two of them in SLI for a couple of years.

 

[Will Robinson]

ATi 9700 Pro then 8800GTX,HD4870,8800GT and HD5850

 

[Smartazz]

It's hard to believe that the 9700 Pro is nine years old already. Definitely gets my vote as the #1 card in staying power. It was able to play games for a very long time and its performance was far better than Nvidia's offerings.

 

[RussianSensation]

9700Pro defeated both the GeForce 4 and GeForce 5 and was capable of playing modern DX9 games too.

Other notable cards have to be the 8800GTX, HD4870 and HD5850. 8800GTX can still play modern games fairly well despite being 5 years old! So I might have to call it a winner in terms of "staying power" although the 5850 may last just as long at the current rate of graphical progress.

But the best strategy imo is still to upgrade often rather than buy a $500 videocard and hold on to it. With upgrades you end up spending the same $500 over the course of 5 years but always have a modern card in your system.

 

[nemesismk2]

For me cards with staying power were my msi geforce4 ti4200, msi geforce 6600 gt and sapphire radeon x1950 pro. I used these these video cards for years.

 

[Alienwho]

I'm still packing my 4870 512MB which still runs modern games decently well. It can run witcher 2 and Shogun 2 just fine at 1080p with the eye candy turned down a bit. I'll upgrade when the next gen comes around hopefully at the end of this year, assuming the games coming out actually warrant the upgrade. The only reason I haven't upgraded is simply because no game has come out that I must absolutely play that my card can't handle. I'm hoping Diablo 3 and skyrim can change that (though I"m sure my 4870 would be able to run Diablo 3 flawlessly anyway)

 

[SlowSpyder]

Wow, It really is coming up on two years since the 5850 came out. How time flies.

The Radeon 4770 launched in April 09. Here we are two years and some months later still on the same process.

And yea, wow, in ~two months my 5870's will be two years old (well not my 5870's, but the 5870).

 

[Pandora's Box]

9700 pro easily wins this. the 8800 gtx is close in terms of how well it performs today but you have to remember for the most part pc games = console ports and we're talking 6 year old consoles at this point.