What is the best video card ever made?

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magomago

Lifer
Sep 28, 2002
10,973
14
76
Geforce256 DDR


Hehe...I'm from a much later generation than you verts tho- Savage4(so in between TNT and TTN2) to be precise. And MENTIONING The savage is blasphemy itself within a thread like this.
 
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touchmyichi

Golden Member
May 26, 2002
1,774
0
76
No one is picking Geforce 3? I think Geforce 3 was at least one of the top 3 most revolutionary graphic cards ever released. It was the first direct x 8 compliant card and introduced the features that are starting to be used right now. Remember seeing the chamelion demo for the first time? How about aquanox? Geforce 3 was the first card to truely amaze me. That was truely the start of 'cinematic' graphics. The card is almost 2 years old and still hauls ass in most games out right now. Great card.
 
D

DClark

Senior member
Apr 16, 2001
430
0
0
The Voodoo2. The GeForce3 was was buggy at release, very expensive, and didn't perform head and shoulders above the GeForce2 Ultra.

I think the only reason I'm not picking the Radeon 9700 Pro is because it's too new. But when you think about it, Dx9 before Dx9 was released, FSAA performance that doubled and tripled the previous speed king, and a core that spread through most of ATi's product line. So here's what I'm going to do: The best card ever made was the Voodoo2. The best core ever made is the R300.
 
BFG10K

BFG10K

Lifer
Aug 14, 2000
22,709
3,002
126
My vote goes to the Radeon 9700 Pro. Any card that delivers playable framerates in almost every game out there at 1600 x 1200 combined with 16x anisotropic filtering has pretty much reached the holy grail of gaming. Plus the extra features like full DirectX 9.0 compliance, superb 2D, 3D and DVD image quality makes it the finest card ever made (9800 excluded since it's not available yet).

Second best was probably the Voodoo3 since it offered better than Voodoo2 SLI performance in one card, superb 2D (no pass through cable) and full Glide, OpenGL and Direct3D support which was revolutionary in terms of compatibility for a card at that time, especially at a time when most other vendors had extremely flaky drivers.
 
J

jiffylube1024

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2002
7,430
0
71
Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
3dfx Rampage, so far ahead of its time, it was never released. final testing had begun on it right when 3dfx shut down. it probably would have competed very well with a TI4200, except it would have been out a long time before it.
Click to expand...

Buying into the hype a bit, are we? I heard the performance was way lower.
 
Mem

Mem

Lifer
Apr 23, 2000
21,476
13
81
voodoo1 for the first time 3D card.... then TNT for a real 2D/3D combo
Click to expand...


I would also agree with that statement,it`s normally the cards that start off the 3D boom that `re most remembered,I wouldn`t say the ATi 9700 is the best card ,sure it`s one of the fastest but like all things it will be slow one day and as I already have stated the cards that start the 3D boom are most remembered.

I still have yet to see a 3D card like when I first saw Hexen 2 on my very first 3D card( Voodoo 1) yes I was blown away by the graphics ,at the moment with newer cards we just have higher res,better AF,FSAA etc but never really special IMHO,games are still and will always be behind the latest 3D technology.

:)
 
rbV5

rbV5

Lifer
Dec 10, 2000
12,632
0
0
AIW Radeon 9700 pro. If you don't need dual head, nothing touches it for features/performance.
 
Cerb

Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
17,484
33
86
Voodoo2. I'd seen a Voodoo Rush before that, which looked OK, but was slow as death.
K6-2 + Voodoo2 + Quake2 + Tribes = bliss.
 
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nadrrkhan

Junior Member
Mar 2, 2002
19
0
0
I'd say, it was my Diamond Viper V550 with 8MB and a heatsink stuck with a chewing gum on to the core :) Glue used to melt from heat and heatsink would slide to the botom of my desktop (eventualy) :) But still I love it, in those days it was a monster among my friends.
 
F

FFactory0x

Diamond Member
Aug 8, 2001
6,991
0
0
VOODOO3 3000 is al i have to say. Have had it our old p3 600mhz family computer for 4 years now. Truly awsome card. I remember booting up and playing unreal tournament for the first time. I sat many days at a time on it. The card still plays well. I mean hell i was home one weekend and decided to try max payne. Guess what. It ran fine. I swear to god that thing has been on 4 yrs straight and is used at least 13 hrs a day. When i didnt have my own comp and before college i would say 18hrs. I mean the things still runnin

Good games handled fine by card
MAX PAYNE
Red Alert 2
Ground Control
UT
No one lives forever 1
 
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bunnyfubbles

Lifer
Sep 3, 2001
12,248
3
0
Early Voodoos (1&2), then the GeForce 256, then the GeForce 3, then the Radeon 9700... everything else in between is/was filler, that's pretty much the evolutionary ladder and those are the hard defined rungs there, imo...
 
S

Smilin

Diamond Member
Mar 4, 2002
7,357
0
0

The Voodoo 2.

Nothing has dropped as many jaws as that card. Everything since has been evolutionary but this card was revolutionary.
 
G

glugglug

Diamond Member
Jun 9, 2002
5,340
1
81
Why are there so many people saying Voodoo2?!?!??!

Voodoo 2 came out almost 3 YEARS AFTER THE VOODOO (original) and was only an INCREMENTAL improvement!!!!

When the original Voodoo came out it was by far the undisputed king, much more so than the Radeon 9700 Pro could ever hope to be, even if it cost $100. NVidia's Riva 128 and other slightly later competitors could not match the Voodoo's framerates and had really shotty image quality, until the TNT which totally leapfrogged Voodoo image quality and way, outdid the Direct3D peformance, and pretty much matched it in OpenGL (but no Glide).

TNT was out before Voodoo2 was out, and outperformed it in BOTH DirectX framerate and image quality and I think there was even a better IQ Matrox 3D card by then. The only place where Voodoo2 was ever a leader was OpenGL framerate (but 16-bit color sucks!). Really the biggest improvement between the Voodoo and the Voodoo2 3 YEARS LATER was memory capacity.

The original Voodoo was probably one of the most popular Arcade graphics chips also, used in San Francisco RUSH, Killer Instinct 2, and other cool games.
 
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TerryMathews

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
11,464
2
0
I think the true question here is are we looking for a revolutionary video card, or just the best card from it's time period?

Revolutionary, the only choice is the Voodoo Graphics. Everything else has been evolutionary, not revolutionary.

If we're looking at best in time, I'm going to have to go with the GeForce3. It's been out for what, two years now and still very capable of running the latest games at good resolutions and framerates. GF2 GTS would be a close runner-up for longevity as well. I'm still using mine. :)
 
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BoomAM

Diamond Member
Sep 25, 2001
4,546
0
0
Originally posted by: BFG10K
My vote goes to the Radeon 9700 Pro. Any card that delivers playable framerates in almost every game out there at 1600 x 1200 combined with 16x anisotropic filtering has pretty much reached the holy grail of gaming. Plus the extra features like full DirectX 9.0 compliance, superb 2D, 3D and DVD image quality makes it the finest card ever made (9800 excluded since it's not available yet).
Click to expand...
Same here.

I also think that the Savage2000 was a flawed gem. If they (S3/Sonic Blue)bothered enabling the T&L propely on the card, then it would have wiped the floor with the GeForce256.
 
Schadenfroh

Schadenfroh

Elite Member
Mar 8, 2003
38,416
4
0
the Rendition Verte was a solid card, very capable with competing with the voodoo1. i wonder what the world would have been like if rendition had not been bought out by micron.
 
L

Lonyo

Lifer
Aug 10, 2002
21,938
6
81
Originally posted by: FFactory0x
VOODOO3 3000 is al i have to say. Have had it our old p3 600mhz family computer for 4 years now. Truly awsome card. I remember booting up and playing unreal tournament for the first time. I sat many days at a time on it. The card still plays well. I mean hell i was home one weekend and decided to try max payne. Guess what. It ran fine. I swear to god that thing has been on 4 yrs straight and is used at least 13 hrs a day. When i didnt have my own comp and before college i would say 18hrs. I mean the things still runnin

Good games handled fine by card
MAX PAYNE
Red Alert 2
Ground Control
UT
No one lives forever 1
Click to expand...


I have a TNT2 Ultra in a P3 600, and it can play Max Payne and UT (only 2 of those I have) fine, the V3 3000 isn't really so wonderful, and my comp is still running as well, and ran for about 2 years on the original drivers I believe.
 
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glugglug

Diamond Member
Jun 9, 2002
5,340
1
81
My TNT (not even TNT2) can play most games of that era in higher resolution than Voodoo2, even in SLI, with a decent framerate, and 32 bit rather than 16 bit color.
 
4

4thman

Senior member
Dec 30, 2000
296
0
0
I'd have to say the Canopus V1 6 Megger,cuz at the time I already had a 2d card an ati rageIIc expression,with tv out and lame 3d which cost an arm and a leg.Could'nt play too many games in 3d,then I saw Need for speed on my pals voodoo,got a used V1( canopus pure 3d)6 megger,add in card.Wow.Halflife was great!And my buds V2 wasn't any better than that Canopus 6meg other than the sli option.
 
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