Question Show and tell: Your all time favorite gpu?

[mopardude87]

I thought this may be fun to do, usually people post about what they have used but never which one has been their favorite. Maybe share the reason you got the gpu, did it max out a particular game or did it go beyond all your wildest expectations? Share a picture perhaps of your favorite? I think most of the older cards are just amazing, they have their own unique style which we may never see again.

For me it was this pretty much except i had a Evga model, i pulled this one out of a build i found last year which had like 20 odd hours on the disk . Back in the day this thing did 100 fps easy at 1920x1200 in BF2 and destroyed UT3/Bioshock. Took a 7700k/1080 ti/1080p setup to finally find a spiritual successor in a setup that just destroyed everything as equally good for its time period if not better then the Q6600/GTX285/1200p setup.

https://imgur.com/a/i48TdVN

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Tough call, I have had a lot of vid cards over the decades. But I am going with the PowerColor Red Devil Vega 56 that powers my 1080p HTPC/recliner gamer at the moment. Powercolor Pr0n page for the card This thing is an absolute unit. Most overbuilt card I think I have ever owned. 3 bios, so you can mess around with modded ones, basically consequence free. HBM2 memory which is just neat IMO. Looks cool and the red and black matches the theme of the entire build it is in; All AMD build w/all red LED effects, even the ram. And it is a quintessential example of AMD fine wine technology -

While my poor GTX 1070 gets the usual unwanted stepchild treatment older gen cards get from Nvidia.

 

[mopardude87]

Tough call, I have had a lot of vid cards over the decades. But I am going with the PowerColor Red Devil Vega 56 that powers my 1080p HTPC/recliner gamer at the moment. Powercolor Pr0n page for the card This thing is an absolute unit. Most overbuilt card I think I have ever owned.

Yeah my buddies 1080ti is like that thing, he has a Zotac Amp! version. I got this tiny little htpc sorta 1080ti. It does the job but was quite a bit cheaper then any other model used. Guarantee to fit into about any build too lol. Comes nearly a inch shorter then the width of my atx motherboard so its small. Hits closer to 80 cel in a Antec 900 so not the most efficient but just works.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

My current 980ti. Prior to that, it was my HD7950.

Both cards came with so much untapped potential out of the box that they practically moved up a tier (the 980Ti didn't even really require any tweaking thanks to how boost works).

I know it's a combination of a lot of different factors, but my 980Ti is my longest running card by a mile and I don't see myself upgrading for anything less than 1080ti performance @ $300 because right now I don't really have to.

 

[Stuka87]

I have been enjoying my RX 5700 XT.

But my all time favorite is probably the Voodoo 2. It was game changing. At the time most games had software render modes. Switching them to Glide was like starting up a whole new game.

My second choice would be tied between the original Radeon, and the Radeon 9800 Pro. The OG Radeon was a pretty major breakthrough in performance and features. The 9800 Pro was just FAST.

My most hated card, is probably going to be a Matrox G400 that I had. And I didn't know how bad it was until I replaced it with a GeForce 3 Ti200. I then found out the Matrox was literally rendering games wrong. Colors, lighting, textures, everything changed with the GeForce.

 

[mopardude87]

I

My second choice would be tied between the original Radeon, and the Radeon 9800 Pro. The OG Radeon was a pretty major breakthrough in performance and features. The 9800 Pro was just FAST.

My most hated card, is probably going to be a Matrox G400 that I had. And I didn't know how bad it was until I replaced it with a GeForce 3 Ti200. I then found out the Matrox was literally rendering games wrong. Colors, lighting, textures, everything changed with the GeForce.

Yeah my friend had a 9700 pro and she used it for CS 1:6 and source for ages. She got one heck of a upgrade when she got my 8800gts 512mb.

As far as hated, that would be a 6200 agp that i got so i had some hope of just running BF2 on this Hp Vectra VL420 tower. Was a pretty pitiful card and my god the thing like the 8400gs was EVERYWHERE. I think i saw the 6200 LE on the shelf at Frys STILL when i swapped a problematic 7970 for a gtx670 . That is just insane if you ask me.

 

[Ichinisan]

G92!

(8800GT and successors)

 

[DAPUNISHER]

If we add most hated, definitely the FX5800 Ultra. Traded mine to Rollo for a ATI 9800pro, best trade I ever made.

 

[NTMBK]

HD7770. When I was in my first job out of uni, it let me turn a second hand desktop into something that would actually run games, and got me properly into PC gaming again.

 

[Elfear]

Man that is a tough choice. I'm going to cheat and give you my top three cards (in no particular order) because it's too hard to pick a favorite.

X800XT PE - Somewhat rare card and I got it soon after getting into computers so I was in awe.
Radeon 7970 - Didn't get quite the same fame as the 7950 for being able to overclock an absurd amount (50% ) but my card hit 1390Mhz in benchmarks which lit an overclocking bug in me at the time.
780 Lightning - This was probably the most overbuilt card I've ever owned and a dream to overclock.

 

[Campy]

MSI Twin Frozr Radeon 5850 probably. Or Sapphire? X850 XT PE.

 

[mopardude87]

If we add most hated, definitely the FX5800 Ultra. Traded mine to Rollo for a ATI 9800pro, best trade I ever made.

Assuming these benchmarks are accurate, ut2003 at least ran better on the 9800 pro till 1280x1024 where the 5800 ultra takes the lead. I guess you was a 1024x768 gamer? I could prob assume the noise was so bad you warranted a few less frames given these benches are showing insane numbers already. Yeah i saw some videos to see how loud it is and yeah dust buster about sums it up. My 7970 reference would like to have a chat about that noise though.

3D Prophet Radeon 9800 Pro review

Once again it's Hercules who did an amazing thing with it's new Radeon 9800 Pro. Lovely blue PCB, copper ramsinks, GPU front and backside cooled with copper plated cooling and even some capacitors have little copper ramsinks. Performance - Unreal 2003

www.guru3d.com

 

[BFG10K]

Any card that works without problems is my favorite. So I'll just list the bad ones:

6800 Ultra: the worst card I've ever used. Overpriced, hot & loud, plus it was never stable on nForce 4.
8800 Ultra/GT: absolutely terrible drivers at launch, literally half of my games wouldn't work properly until 6-9 months after launch.
480: extremely hot & sounded like a jet engine.
470: still too loud & too hot despite its reduced ranking. Also ran most of my games slower than my previous 285.
2070 mini: this cooler can't handle a hot Turing so it sounds like a jet engine.

If we add most hated, definitely the FX5800 Ultra. Traded mine to Rollo for a ATI 9800pro, best trade I ever made.

Unfortunately we didn't have youtube back then to tell us just how bad the 5800 Ultra really was. Instead we had lies from AEG viral marketeers like Trollo:

And LOL@ DX9 performance:

HL2 actually forced it to run under DX8.1 because it simply couldn't manage DX9. 5800 was a complete & utter failure for DX9, thermals and noise.

It's no surprise at the time nVidia sock-puppet-shills like Trollo were fully dancing with nVidia's hand up their orifice.

Games were "cowering" at 1024x768 4x/4x with a "tiny hairdryer noise". LMAO.

 

[Stuka87]

Assuming these benchmarks are accurate, ut2003 at least ran better on the 9800 pro till 1280x1024 where the 5800 ultra takes the lead. I guess you was a 1024x768 gamer? I could prob assume the noise was so bad you warranted a few less frames given these benches are showing insane numbers already. Yeah i saw some videos to see how loud it is and yeah dust buster about sums it up. My 7970 reference would like to have a chat about that noise though.

3D Prophet Radeon 9800 Pro review

Once again it's Hercules who did an amazing thing with it's new Radeon 9800 Pro. Lovely blue PCB, copper ramsinks, GPU front and backside cooled with copper plated cooling and even some capacitors have little copper ramsinks. Performance - Unreal 2003

www.guru3d.com

The FX cards were absolutely terrible.

I owned a 5700 Ultra, and I literally ripped the stock fan off of it and came up with a way to mount a 95mm Panasonic fan I had to it. That at least made it quiet. But there were so many driver issues with it. The Radeons of the era were hands down better cards.

 

[mopardude87]

The FX cards were absolutely terrible.

I owned a 5700 Ultra, and I literally ripped the stock fan off of it and came up with a way to mount a 95mm Panasonic fan I had to it. That at least made it quiet. But there were so many driver issues with it. The Radeons of the era were hands down better cards.

Its funny to see people had trouble with nvidia cards, my only issue was with a 670 and relentless stutter in BF3. A 7850 was the fix. I may be slapping on a 120mm delta or something on my 1080ti soon enough, one of the fans somehow someway lost a blade and its now rattling. Works but on borrowed time.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

@BFG10K

Great video, thanks for posting that. Clearly shows there was no clean end to pick the FX 5800U up by. I bought without seeing a single review of it, because I had good experiences with nVidia cards, and it was almost as rare then, as it is now. Which makes that 9800 Pro my second favorite card I think. I used that thing for quite awhile if memory serves.

 

[EliteRetard]

Odd, I can't think of any single card standing out in my mind.
I've had good cards, still got PCs with a 9800 Pro, 4850/70, 6950/70.
I still play a ton of older games, 'course I can no longer afford to keep up (topped out in 2011)

I've been playing computer games since 1984 on a Kaypro 10.
First actual GPU I can recall was a TNT2.

Thinking about it, I'm not sure if I can think of anything as a favorite.
My memory is also quite fuzzy...I can only vaguely recall models/dates.

 

[sandorski]

Voodoo2 or Voodoo5 5500, both were excellent but for different reasons. Voodoo2 just for 3D Voodoo5 5500 for AA. 9800 Pro and the 5870 were also great cards. I still have the 5870 and have used it on occasion when a vidcard has died on me, but its' 1gb of memory really limits what it can do..

 

[psolord]

My first 3dfx voodoo.

When I saw tomb raider on it, I knew I was done for, lol.

 

[mopardude87]

Voodoo2 or Voodoo5 5500, both were excellent but for different reasons. Voodoo2 just for 3D Voodoo5 5500 for AA. 9800 Pro and the 5870 were also great cards. I still have the 5870 and have used it on occasion when a vidcard has died on me, but its' 1gb of memory really limits what it can do..

You had a 5500? I know little of the older stuff prior to 6000 series as i got into gaming with a trash 6200 le agp first thing back in 2006 but i know that 5500 was boss. If you really had the 5500 how was it? I find some older videos on the stuff sometimes and its interesting even if a bit before my time.

 

[sandorski]

You had a 5500? I know little of the older stuff prior to 6000 series as i got into gaming with a trash 6200 le agp first thing back in 2006 but i know that 5500 was boss. If you really had the 5500 how was it? I find some older videos on the stuff sometimes and its interesting even if a bit before my time.

The AA was superb, it took Nvidia and ATI years to match it. Performance traded blows with the other top cards of the day and 3dfx's Drivers were always bug free, unlike the Competitions'. Lacking T&L and 32bit Colour was its' main faults, but 3dfxs' decision to buy STB and change its' business model, more similar to ATI's all in-house Chip Design to Manufacturing, contributed to its' quick demise after releasing the 5500. Despite that, a strong Fanbase kept the Drivers updated for years and they also developed Utilities that allowed the 5500 to play games that required T&L, by offloading that to the CPU. I personally used it originally with Win98SE and continued using it with WinXP for a good chunk of time, but I eventually had to retire it as it was AGP2X and newer Motherboards had moved to an incompatible AGP4X/8X format.

 

[Golgatha]

Creative 8MB Voodoo II - Quake 2 and Need for Speed 2 with 3dfx Glide were just night and day difference in terms of resolution and graphics quality, which will probably never be surpased on a relative scale.

My current modded 1080 Ti is a close 2nd. With my aftermarket cooling it runs constantly at max boost clock speeds and has played every game I've thrown at it for the last 3 years like butter.

 

[mikeymikec]

In retrospect I have a love-hate relationship with my now-dead 750ti:

On one hand, it was a wonderful upgrade from my ATI HD 5770 (which would ramp its fan(s?) up to 5000RPM on load) as it ran virtually silent and performed better.

On the other hand, it was faulty, with intermittent hanging/BSODs/graphics corruptions. ASUS acknowledged that the issues qualified for a warranty replacement but insisted that I had to get Amazon to ship the card back to them, and Amazon insisted that they wouldn't do that.

One other 750ti I sold a customer (different brand) also went the same way, as well as a 710 that only seemed to work properly in AMD systems. Very odd.

I do like virtually silent graphics cards though. My current R9 380X is passively cooled in 2D mode which is nice.

 

[Muadib]

Best: Canopus Pure3D. It was like I was playing games with blinders on until I got the Pure3D.

Worst: ATI FireGL 8800. Driver problems galore! This card pushed me over to Nvidia, and I've never looked back.

 

[alcoholbob]

9700 Pro and 8800 GTX both lasted me longer than any other GPUs and also made the biggest, real difference in gaming performance of any upgrades.