What is Your Favorite GPU You Ever Owned? Your Least Favorite?

[poofyhairguy]

My favorite GPU of all time is easily my 12mb Voodoo 2. That card I still have to this day, and I remember spending hours back when I had that kind of time playing Counter Strike pre-1.6 on it. That was the first GPU that made my understand how cool they could be. Oh and Glide, Glide was amazing. I will never forget playing N64 games at a higher resolution back when it was still a relevant console thanks to a Glide wrapper.

Honorable mention probably goes to my AMD 480 reference. I got it for $200 on launch day, it has twice the VRAM I thought it did when I bought it, it has increased its performance relative to competitors since launch, and it has already more than paid for itself crypto mining (in fact it has almost paid for my AMD 460 too). Hard to beat that, thought my Doom labeled GeForce 6600 GT comes close in my heart.

My least favorite GPU is my 1GB 7850. I hate that card. It can barely play 2013 game at acceptable speeds, it can't be used for crypto mining, it almost burned me on XFX cards forever until I got a 390X for cheap (and now I am crazy about only buying XFX/EVGA if I can). It was a waste of money and I plan to just give it away soon to a friend for use in a Core2Duo box.

Dishonorable mention was probably my Nvidia GTX 460 V2. I didn't realize that the V2 version existed, or that it had a slower memory bus. I thought I was getting a deal on a 460. It is so evil they kept the name the same. I would probably feel the same way about the 970 but I sold it at the PERFECT time- right before the AMD 480 launch.

 

[Headfoot]

Loved my 9700 Radeon All in Wonder. Watched TV on it and it was super fast. Awesome card. Doom 3 on it was the best thing ever. Didnt like my 8800 GTS 320 SLI very much. I've never bought the half-ram SKU ever again, learned my lesson

 

[DooKey]

My favorite was my Voodoo 2 in SLI. Honorable mention to 9700 Pro.

Least favorite is 9800GX2. Disonorable mention to GTX 480.

 

[Miklebud]

Oh man, back in the day when I got an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, I could finally play Half Life 2 with decent frame rates. I've got fond memories of that card!

 

[DisarmedDespot]

Favorite? Crappy Geforce 440 MX. It wasn't a good card, but hey, it was my first. I have fond memories of Morrowind at 800x600 on it.

While it wasn't a bad card, my Zotac GTX 770 2G was a disappointment. IIRC I was going to get a 290 or 280X, but then the mining craze hit and drove prices sky-high so I settled for the 770. I must've gotten a dud, because it did not want to overclock at all. It wouldn't artifact first, it would just crash. I don't think it was stable with even a 50 Mhz overclock.

 

[n0x1ous]

Favorite - GTX 980ti
Honorable Mention: 7970
Least Favorite: ATI X700

 

[zinfamous]

either the X800 XT or the 5850 1GB--that one lasted me a good 5 years!

I would have to say the 5850. DA:I finally brought it to its knees, though.

 

[Bacon1]

I'd have to say I've liked all my cards, from the 4400 Ti, 8800 gts 640, 4?? that finally replaced it, 6950, 290, Fury. The only GPU I didn't keep long was the 400 series that replaced my 8800 gts on warranty as I got a 6950 (70 unlocked) at a steal. I bought a 280x for a little while and returned it for a 290. So that 400 and 280x were the ones I'd put as my least fav, but they were very short lived and replaced with newer cards.

 

[DamZe]

That had to be my Sapphire ATi Radeon HD5770 1GB Vapor X. That card was so good for it's price point. I was gaming in 1280x1024 back then, and it was just perfect.

EDIT!

Least favorite: GTX 980, simply due to the fact that it was not a good value. I jumped the gun on it in late 2014, but I never really felt that I got my money's worth, the 970 was gimped no doubt with the vRAM fiasco, but it was still very close to the 980 most of the time, and the 980Ti for just 100$ more half a year later didn't help either. Last time I buy a x80 nVIDIA card, they are no longer the top dogs they used to be thanks to nVIDIA double dipping each gen.

 

[Mercennarius]

Haven't bought a ton of video cards but my two favorites are my RX 480 and 390X....the 390X because its just a beast considering its GPU is from 2013 yet it still performs great in new games. Also being maybe the first card to have 8GB (290X technically..but same gpu) of VRAM was pretty cool. My RX 480 because it performs almost as well as my 390X but cost a lot less, uses a lot less power, and is probably the best bang for buck card i've bought (Got it new for $164.99 shipped).

 

[tg2708]

290, I loved it for the price I got it for plus the performance it had at the time. I gave it to my cousin though.

 

[Thinker_145]

Least favourite is definitely the GTS 250 1GB. Nothing particularly exciting about the price/performance, looked dull and died in its 3rd year.

The 8800GTS 640MB certainly wins in the ground breaking wow factor. The 1070 doesn't stand a chance either. However it also died in its 3rd year which was disappointing.

I have to give it to the 7850 2GB. What a fantastic price/performance, provided consistent and respectable performance for such a long time and I used it for well over 3 years with a substantial overclock. It is still going strong with a second owner.

 

[krumme]

Tseng et2000 or something like that because it accelerated 2d 3200% vs my prior non accelerated card. Without it i would still be stuck at University waiting for word to update a screenpage of txt.

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

voodoo 2 here too. best thing ever as far as a single generation advance in gaming.

mine was the 8 mb.

 

[Erithan13]

I had a GTX260 (original, not the C216 version) last me from 2008 to 2015. Much longer than I planned but it still put up a good performance late in the game. So many memories on that card - Bioshock 2 & Infinite, Mass Effect, Far Cry 2/3, UT3, Crysis, Borderlands, TF2, Mirror's Edge, Just Cause 2, Arkham......pretty much the foundation of my modern gaming taste all on one card. Honorable mention to the Radeon 9000 rig I had in the early 2000s that got me into PC gaming to begin with.

My current 290 is great outside of gaming as a combined cryptominer and fan heater for the winter. Still have my seat on the Vega train though.

Worst experience with a card was a mobile Geforce 7900GS in a Dell laptop. The raw performance was actually quite respectable for the time, but all the driver shenanigans soured me on it. Seemingly at random the performance would tank and I couldn't track it down to overheating or anything obvious. There were graphics glitches and crashes on certain games that were addressed on the desktop GPUs pretty fast and either never or very late for the mobile ones.

 

[Mopetar]

8800 all the way. It was a monster when it came out and I got years of good mileage from it. It's even still running in an old box that gets used from time to time. It'll probably get decommissioned when I build a new box sometime next year, but I could probably find someone who could still make good use of it if they play mostly old games.

 

[bystander36]

It's hard to say, but the ATI 9800 Pro may have impressed me the most. I'd guess my GTX 470's due to noise, and 5870's due to glitches (but was really powerful at first).

 

[happy medium]

My favorite? gtx 460 Hawk model @ 1ghz. (I think mine was rock stable at 950 or so but could hit 1ghz for a few minutes.

least favorite?
Nvidia MX 420, 64 mb in a Dell, what a piece of crap!

 

[nurturedhate]

Either my voodoo 3 or 9800 pro for favorite. Worst card hands down was my 780ti.

 

[f2bnp]

I don't think I can pick a single favorite. I'd have to say these:

-Voodoo 1
-GeForce 6600GT
-Radeon 4850

The 4850 is probably the one I love the most. Got it brand new back in early July 2008, paid 150E for it and used it for 4 years. It was simply amazing value, I simply could not believe that I was playing all the games I wanted maxed out.

As far as the worst ones go, if I was to exclude some on-board crap I used to have on my good ol' Celeron 900:

-GeForce 5600 XT

Terrible card, XT was actually a cut down version, unlike ATi cards at the time. Friend of mine had the Ti4200 and was running circles around my card. The FX series was Nvidia's greatest blow.

-GeForce 7800 GTX

Kind of meh when it launched, but buying it about 2+ years later was a pretty stupid move on my part. I was expecting way more from it to be honest and 256MB certainly limited its potential.

 

[UsandThem]

Favorites:

-Diamond Monster 3D (Voodoo 1)
-Geforce 2 GTS

Worst:

-Voodoo Banshee (last card I ever bought based on hype instead of waiting for reviews)

 

[ddogg]

Favorite is ATI 9800 PRO. Was my first high end card and allowed me to play everything at max settings.

Least favorite is GTX 590

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

 

[SimianR]

Voodoo3 2000 - my first real video card and playing Tribes for the first in Glide was awesome

Second favorite would be my 9500 Pro, the 9700 Pro's little brother I remember how impressed I was using FSAA for the first time. Was damn fast for me at the time, and that was the most I had ever spent on a GPU up to that point.

Least favorite would probably be.. the Geforce 2 MX400. It wasn't particularly bad.. but I think it was probably the most mediocre out of all the cards I had.

 

[Ancalagon44]

Favourite: 8800 GTS 640MB. It was a beast for its time
Least favourite: Nvidia Riva TNT. It just never performed anywhere near where I thought it would. I suppose this was in the early days of graphics cards, but still. It never lived up to my expectations.

 

[Head1985]

favourite:GF4 TI4200 agp8x 128MB,GF8800GTS 640MB(awesome in every way huge OC headroom),Radeon 9800pro(awesome in every way),Radeon 5850(after oc to 1000Mhz it was 40-50% faster than any other single GPU of that time)
Least favourite:GF4 MX440(that was just GF2 on steroids only dx7 support),GF7800GTX(crap in every way vs x1800XT),GTX970(3.5GB 224bit),GTX1070(its already too slow for 1440/60 after few months, very bad OC headroom, cutdown too much..)