Favorite graphics card of all time

[sandorski]

Toss up between Voodoo2 and Voodoo5 5500. Voodoo2 for just revolutionizing Gaming for me. Voodoo5 5500 for doing AA years before Nvidia/ATI could come close to matching it.

3DFX had its' faults, but it sure knew how to push things in ways others hadn't considered.

 

[Via]

I've really liked a lot of my cards, but the experience of seeing 3d accelerated graphics for the first time with my then-new Voodoo3 3000 will probably never be topped for me, no matter what the future holds.

I still remember the first game as well: NFS:Hot Pursuit on the country road track. Seeing the intro of Half Life in Hardware mode rather than software made my jaw drop, as did the outside of the spaceship in Unreal. I could go on and on with the great moments that card provided for me.

 

[DooKey]

8800GTX, I still own it and it was a release day purchase. I use it for a spare these days.

 

[nemesismk2]

my fav video card of all time is the videologic powervr kyro 2 which is the video card which I did loads of gaming on

 

[McWatt]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_80-Column_Text_Card

Best ever, though the Wikipedia article implies that the non-Apple versions cloned an Apple design when in fact Apple spent a year unsuccessfully trying to make their version work before they cloned a third party card (with permission, sort of) in order to get around a problem displaying certain characters.

 

[dennilfloss]

Radeon 9500 Pro with 9700 bios soft mod.

 

[SpeedTester]

3dfx's Voodoo1. It made all the difference in the world.

This!

 

[evilspoons]

Gonna have to vote for the original Voodoo card again. I had a Canopus Pure3D 6 MB. It wasn't my first 3D-capable card (the Matrox Mystique I had could do some games in accelerated 3d) but the performance difference in Glide games was mind-blowing.

I was also a big fan of the Voodoo 3 3000 AGP, it made Half-Life run nice and smooth.

 

[LoneNinja]

Radeon 4670. I've never been one to buy high end power hungry performance cards, and the 4670 was a price/performance king that Nvidia couldn't touch without drastically higher power consumption. Had 3 of them at one point, still have 1 the other 2 got replaced by newer cards.

 

[Lord XenoTeK]

Like many others, I have to say my 9800 Pro. The 9600 Pro I upgraded from comes in at a close second.

 

[lopri]

My memory is failing but was it 7900 GT that lets you pencil-mod vCore? I had fun toasting those.

My least favorite card is Radeon 9800 AIW. What a freaking nightmare the drivers were.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Voodoo 3, was my first true gaming card, going from software rendering to Glide in Tribes was orgasmic. Improvements from one video card to the next in the following years have understandably never been able to hold a candle to it.

Going from the Voodoo 3 to the Radeon 8500 was another significant jump, as was my 5850 (which I could easily clock to 1GHz after my cooling mods) from a 4850. Seeing 470s in SLI and moving to a single 580 and then seeing what 580s can do in SLI has also been awesome, but alas, nothing really can capture that first jump from relative slide show and butt fugly pixelated software rendering to butter smooth and gorgeous Glide in one of my all time favorite games.

 

[Golgatha]

Voodoo 3 3000

No more silly loopback cables and faster than Voodoo 2 in SLI. It was also fairly priced and lasted me for quite some time.

Honorary mentions are the 9800 vanilla (overclocked easily past 9800 XT speeds), GeForce 3 by Gainward (amazing 2D and a huge upgrade), 4850s in Crossfire (got them on release cheaply and sold my 3870s quickly for the upgrade with only $20 out of pocket), and my current 570 GTX SC (580 performance for around $200 less than the top dog, it has lasted me a year so far, and I don't feel a need to upgrade still).

 

[AdamantC]

An Asus 8800GTS 640MB. I loved that card so much. Tis a shame it had a seizure and died earlier this after a little over four years of faithful service. Along with my Opteron 175 it'd still play just about anything at med to high settings at 1280x960-1600x1200.

*Sniff*

 

[LiuKangBakinPie]

9800GT
They going for 50usd a pop. A steal for price vs performance.
Just run hotter and munches a bit more power

 

[ther00kie16]

AIW 9600 pro with monster 25% oc headroom
capable gaming card at the time, free dvr before tivo came out, radio and best of all the hl2 voucher all for $150.

but i have to admit the best cards were probably the 9500, x800gto and 7900gto, which all were on sale for $200 or less and unlockable to the most capable high-end cards of their days.

 

[stahlhart]

Matrox G400 (first 3D card owned), followed by the AIW 9800 Pro, which like others mentioned here stuck around the longest.

 

[happy medium]

9500pro ,nvidia 4400,8800gtx,8800gt,gtx460

 

[gevorg]

ATI 9700 Pro, served me well for years.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Probably my HD4850, lasted me a solid 2.5 years and never before was I able to game so comfortably for so long for so little money, and I only stopped using it cause it got killed be a bad PSU. Completely and utterly sold me on the $200 dollar price point, where before I had to scrounge around for used, prior gen cards to get any kind of respectable performance.

Rather like the GTX460 too, thanks to its OC headroom its going to have some legs of its own. Last Nvidia card I owned was a 7900GT and it was unadulterated trash, worst card I've ever had.

 

[Phynaz]

Voodoo 1

 

[Leyawiin]

8800GTX.
Uncommonly large jump in performance, superb image quality, fairly quiet cooler. Kept me company for almost 5 years.

Sounds like my experience. I still have mine (wrapped up in a box somewhere). Used it daily for four years up to that point.

 

[Rifter]

Voodoo 1, anyone saying anything else just doesnt remember that far back or didnt own one. Going from software to hardware rendering was bigger than any hardware to hardware jump in performance we have seen since then.

 

[tweakboy]

love my GTX570,great overclocking card i ever had.

2000Mhz on memory ? Look at mine. As long as you put the fan manually to 100 percent when you game, take up your memory ,, that makes the biggest frame rate difference compared to core OC..



Oh and that ASUS P2B 9GB cheetah scsi 256mb ram Matrox Millienium 2D / 3dfx Voodoo2 3d. I spent 2200 thousand dollars on this modurflaker. Machine lived until 2001 when I upgraded to Athlon XP and geforce 2 ... gl

 

[cmdrdredd]

Voodoo 1, anyone saying anything else just doesnt remember that far back or didnt own one. Going from software to hardware rendering was bigger than any hardware to hardware jump in performance we have seen since then.

That doesn't make it my favorite...You are allowed to like faster ones that maybe did something new or lasted you longer.