GPU hall of fame

Page 3 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

amenx

Diamond Member
Dec 17, 2004
3,848
2,014
136
Agreed! Still sporting a crossfire of those cards and nuking BF3 on ultra! :D
I myself have very fond memories of my GeForce FX 5200, 8600 GT and MSI 9800 GTX+ (when I bought that card, I thought that that cooler was THE beast).
Then I made the leap to ATI (now AMD) 5870 and never looked back.
Those were probably the worst cards Nvidia ever made. I probably would have switched to ATI if I had owned those too. :D
 

Gordon Freemen

Golden Member
May 24, 2012
1,068
0
0
Those were probably the worst cards Nvidia ever made. I probably would have switched to ATI if I had owned those too. :D
Ya the fx 5200 and 8600GT were very horrible cards to my knowlage and due to my ownership of the 9800GTX+ which is a re branded and "slightly" OCed 8800GTX they sucked and were expensive hot and loud to boot.
 

tulx

Senior member
Jul 12, 2011
257
2
71
Those were probably the worst cards Nvidia ever made. I probably would have switched to ATI if I had owned those too. :D

I was blissfully ignorant of ATI's existance at that time. I remember actually playing Oblivion on the FX 5200 and I actually completed it. Yes, I am a patient person.
 

tulx

Senior member
Jul 12, 2011
257
2
71
GTX 460 1GB

Wasn't the 4 series generally Nvidias messed up attempt at striking back at AMD's 5 series? They came out much later, were marginally faster, much hotter, power inefficient and louder... The 560 would be a much "worthier"chouice, don't you think?
 

WT

Diamond Member
Sep 21, 2000
4,818
59
91
Voodoo 2
Radeon 9700 PRO
GTX 8800

I still think this is the best answer, and even in that order as well. I may actually take the 9700 out and replace it with the 9500 modded to 9700 levels. The easy route was the 9700, but certain 9500 cards had an extremely high rate (possibly 100% ?) of unlocking to a 9700.

I had high hopes for the Voodoo Banshee, as it combined the best elements of the Voodoo 2 and integrated it onto the 2D card as well (no longer taking up 2-3 slots), but it turned out to be quite a flop - not as much as the 5800 Ultra, but nevertheless a lot less than promised.

Edit: Reading the wiki on 3dFX, its very interesting to see just how powerful the Voodoo 5 6000 card was:
The Voodoo 5 6000 never made it to market, due to a severe bug resulting in data corruption on the AGP bus on certain boards, and was limited to AGP 2x. It was thus incompatible with the then-new Pentium 4 motherboards. Later tests proved that the Voodoo 5 6000 outperformed not only the GeForce 2 GTS and ATI Radeon 7200, but also the faster GeForce 2 Ultra and Radeon 7500. In some cases it was shown to compete well with the GeForce 3, trading performance places with the card on various tests.[12] However, the prohibitively high production cost of the card, particularly the 4 chip setup, external power supply and 128 MB of VRAM (a very large amount at the time), would have likely hampered its competitiveness.
 
Last edited:

Phynaz

Lifer
Mar 13, 2006
10,140
819
126
Buncha youngsters.

Hercules Graphics.
IBM EGA
IBM VGA
IBM 8414
S3 770
Voodoo Graphics
TNT 2
Geforce
ATI 9700
Nvidia 6800
Nvidia 8800
ATI 4000 Series
 

DeathReborn

Platinum Member
Oct 11, 2005
2,743
734
136
Riva TNT
GeForce 2 MX
9700 Pro
Voodoo 2 SLi
8800GT/X

GeForce 2 MX purely because they were cheap & everywhere. Honourable mention for the 9600GT, GTX 460, 5770 & 5870.
 

Gordon Freemen

Golden Member
May 24, 2012
1,068
0
0
The 9600GT was fast for its specs and cheap.
I guess if the price was right however I was never really blown away by even the 8800GT or the 8000GTX or the 9800GTX+ so anything less to me would have been not worth it specially cause I was gaming @ 1080P back in those days. I guess thats more or less my own personal experience and opinion more than anything but none of the cards back then have the staying power of the more modern cards such as the nvidia 4xx series and radeon 58xx series.
 

Ben90

Platinum Member
Jun 14, 2009
2,866
3
0
Buncha youngsters.

Hercules Graphics.
I heard those punch-cards have pretty good graphics :)
Wasn't the 4 series generally Nvidias messed up attempt at striking back at AMD's 5 series? They came out much later, were marginally faster, much hotter, power inefficient and louder... The 560 would be a much "worthier"chouice, don't you think?
The compute oriented GF100 cards (GTX 480, 470, 465) were power consuming beasts, but GF104 was actually a very sensible mid-range option.

Despite how cutthroat the GPU industry is, most of the details are locked in quite a while in advanced. Clockspeeds and TDPs are subject to change last minute, but I wouldn't be surprised if Fermi was on the drawing board before G80 was released. IMO GCN is the spiritual competitor to Fermi.
 

Rubycon

Madame President
Aug 10, 2005
17,768
485
126
Buncha youngsters.

Hercules Graphics.
IBM EGA
IBM VGA
IBM 8414
S3 770
Voodoo Graphics
TNT 2
Geforce
ATI 9700
Nvidia 6800
Nvidia 8800
ATI 4000 Series

The first four weren't 3D...

And how could one not mention Matrox Millennium?! Best 2D on the desktop for 21" users. ;)

Tseng was also quite good in the 90s. VESA Local Bus, baby! :D
 

Phynaz

Lifer
Mar 13, 2006
10,140
819
126
Oh, yeah, I forgot Tseng. I actually bought third party accelerated drivers for the 4000. Can't remember the name of the company.
 

2is

Diamond Member
Apr 8, 2012
4,281
131
106
The first four weren't 3D...

And how could one not mention Matrox Millennium?! Best 2D on the desktop for 21" users. ;)

Tseng was also quite good in the 90s. VESA Local Bus, baby! :D

How about the Matrox Parhelia? It never really got much traction but the concept was good, (3 monitors on a single card) and wasn't until recent years that it was revisited and implemented on a wider, more successful scale.
 

Axon

Platinum Member
Sep 25, 2003
2,541
1
76
Wasn't the 4 series generally Nvidias messed up attempt at striking back at AMD's 5 series? They came out much later, were marginally faster, much hotter, power inefficient and louder... The 560 would be a much "worthier"chouice, don't you think?

Nah, the gtx 460 (GF104) was the refresh of Fermi and really took things to another level. The GTX 470/480 were a laughing stock in terms of their heat and noise ratio, but with the 460, nvidia brought the heat and noise levels under control and produced out a fantastic card. You can point to the 460 as the beginning of nvidia's recent streak of excellent cards. Plus most 460s overclocked by 150 mhz or more.
 
Last edited:

jiffylube1024

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2002
7,430
0
71
In recent memory, I'd put these guys up there:

Nvidia 8800GT (one of the best "value" GPU's that stayed fast for a super long time)
ATI 3850/3870 (AMD's first "small die" GPU's, a huge recovery from the titanic failure of the 2900XT)
ATI 4870 (first GPU with GDDR5)
ATI 5850/5870 (another long-lived GPU series)
Nvidia 460 series (just a massive improvement in performance per watt; great pricing, super cool and quiet running GPU's)
early nomination: AMD 7850 . If AMD can keep cutting prices on this card, it's poised to be another gem. It's a throwback with 1 6-pin PCIe plug and super low power consumption.
 

blackened23

Diamond Member
Jul 26, 2011
8,548
2
0
I also have to go with:

9700 pro
8800GT
Voodoo1 / Voodoo 2

All of these cards decimated the competition on release.
 

Rubycon

Madame President
Aug 10, 2005
17,768
485
126
How about the Matrox Parhelia? It never really got much traction but the concept was good, (3 monitors on a single card) and wasn't until recent years that it was revisited and implemented on a wider, more successful scale.

They missed their mark to cover both grounds - professional 2D with 3D. The Ti 4600 annihilated it in 3D.

It was an interesting card for sure but expensive and everyone just forgot about it and last time I checked, Matrox as well. :'(
 

2is

Diamond Member
Apr 8, 2012
4,281
131
106
They missed their mark to cover both grounds - professional 2D with 3D. The Ti 4600 annihilated it in 3D.

It was an interesting card for sure but expensive and everyone just forgot about it and last time I checked, Matrox as well. :'(

Yeah, I know. It was Matrox's half hearted attempt into getting into the gaming segment and while it was somewhat competitive with ATI/nVidia when it first came out, which I believe was in the GeForce 3 era, it wasn't long before the GF 4's came out and completely destroyed it and Matrox never bothered to pursue that segment again.
 

Gordon Freemen

Golden Member
May 24, 2012
1,068
0
0
Yeah, I know. It was Matrox's half hearted attempt into getting into the gaming segment and while it was somewhat competitive with ATI/nVidia when it first came out, which I believe was in the GeForce 3 era, it wasn't long before the GF 4's came out and completely destroyed it and Matrox never bothered to pursue that segment again.
AMD and nvidia have a lock on the market and we will never see any other real competition unless that competition is in part owned by AMD or nvidia which is a real dam shame IMHO.