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

[pepone1234]

Best: Ati 4850. The reasons are mainly the same as some of you said earlier.

Worst: Nvidia riva TNT 64. It did not perform well at all.

 

[Valantar]

well i have only ever owned nvidia due to amd's naming scheme never making any sense to me ever but...

That one made me laugh. I have to ask: how has Nvidia's naming scheme made more sense throughout the years than AMD's? And isn't that a rather odd limit to put on yourself as long as you read a review or two?

Best: Ati 4850. The reasons are mainly the same as some of you said earlier.

Funny how this is many people's favorite, yet I very quickly started to loathe mine. Did yours have the stock cooler? I had two in CrossFire, and they were absolutely horrible in terms of noise. Also, the performance of the 512MB version in CF simply didn't hold up for 1200p gaming.

 

[Ajay]

Best - Voodoo2 - changed gaming for me for ever (Glide in UT99 and Starseige:Tribes). Worst - original ATI Radeon - took six months to get stable drivers.

 

[Elfear]

Tough to choose between so many awesome cards.

Favorites
X800XT PE - Somewhat rare card and it was one of my first high-end GPUs.
8800GTX - As others have mentioned it was a massive leap in performance over the previous generation.
7970 - Overclocked to 1390Mhz and was a great card to play with
780 Lightning - Card was built like an M1 Abrahms. Overclocked to 1450Mhz+ without skipping a beat. Probably the card with the highest quality materials I've ever owned.

Worst
Pair of 7800GTs - To be fair, it wasn't completely Nvidia's fault I didn't like these cards. I had Viper John add some voltage pots to the cards so their limits could be explored. Ended up being very expensive and somewhat temperamental. Made me start buying ATI cards after that since they offered software voltage control.

 

[will889]

Fav_
9700 Pro (still the best GPU of all time for overall impact at that time)

Not so good_
Pine Group NV TI 4400

Best overall experience_
Sapphire ATI X800XT AIW

 

[EXCellR8]

Favorite throwback card: BFGtech 6800GT OC... the goofy twin fan AGP model. This pretty much launched my personal obsession with graphics cards, and custom computing in general i suppose. I still have one on display in my computer room.

Favorite modern: GTX690. At the time, it just ran everything with very little trouble. No grief and no annoying noise or excessive heat output.

Least favorite: ref HD4870... great card for the time I realize, but I had a lot of compatibility issues and a few RMA's from that time. The reference models were also noisy as hell and threw a ton of heat.

 

[s44]

Fav: 8800GT 512
Least fav: X1900XT

Funny thing is that these had about the same TDP, but the stock cooler on the latter was so damned annoying.

 

[Teizo]

My favorite is actually my current card, the MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X. It is the most powerful and efficient card I have ever owned. It is followed closely with my old Radeon 9800 Pro (which used to be my favorite). My least favorite was probably my Radeon 9200 PCI card which I could hardly get a driver to install for...and wasn't even able to get 20 fps at 1024x768 res lol...., followed by the 6800 Ultra that while not as bad as the FX 5900 Ultra from what I understand...still sounded like a hair dryer in distress in my case. The only positive from it was that it was made by BFG who accepted an RMA on it after I killed it trying to install an Artic Cooling fan on it to quiet it down lol.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Favorite? The Radeon 4830 512mb. It was a great cost effective part that I was able to afford at the time. Playing DOD:S competitively and Starcraft 2 at high settings was fantastic.

Most awful/disappointing? Radeon x1550 pci-e 64mb. It mistakenly has a 32-bit video bus, and actually only had 32MB of DDR ram. It had the same GPU as the x1300, which was nothing to write home about.

 

[SPBHM]

I also had a x1550 32bit at some point, but I think it actually had 128mb (like it was a PCB built for 512MB 128bit with only 1 or 2 chips installed), it was pretty poor and I actually bought it by accident, but at least it worked stable, unlike the 8600s I had.

 

[Blitzvogel]

Favorite: Radeon 5850 - Used it for 5 years

Least favorite: Geforce Go 7200 - Dumb enough to think it was an upgrade over the Mobility Radeon x600 in the laptop I already had.

 

[lixlax]

Mine is Radeon 4850 512MB, got it cheap not long after the launch. I used it for almost 4 years. Second favorite is probably 7900GS that I owned prior to the 4850.

Least favoutite is the Club3D HD 6870 I bought after the 4850. It was twice as fast, but I just didn't like that card for some reason, constant driver crashes on desktop didn't help either.

Most meaningless buy was probably the ATI 9800pro. Used it for about a month before I replaced it with a cheaper 4200ti (because I didn't really need such a perfomance beast).

 

[EXCellR8]

I wasn't a huge fan of my 290X either, but once I threw the water block on there it was just peachy. I would probably still be using it if AMD hadn't forced me to buy a 480 8G for under $350

 

[xthetenth]

8800 GT as part of a full build with a C2D that replaced a P4 with a 6800 GTS. That computer absolutely screamed compared to what I had before.

Other than that, the Vapor-X 290 I replaced a 970 G1 Gaming with. Cost less by a good amount, and the drivers have been rock steady unlike the 970, and the 290 paired with a $600 refurb XR341CK has been phenomenal value at 3440x1440. It wasn't a performance beast by the time I got it, but it's a lot of performance and a really great experience for the price. Only downside is it is a bit of a room heater.

 

[el etro]

Favorite was the 7950. First time high-end Radeon.


Least favorite was the GTS450. I would say my former GT6200LE, but that card allowed me to play a lot of PS2 gen titles.

 

[Zanovar]

Damn lots of faves,fx 5200 has to be my most disliked though.it was sh1te.

 

[jimbob200521]

Not sure why but one of, if not my favorite, cards I owned was an X800XL 256mb card. It wasn't top of the line or anything but it was a good card for me that came early in my PC career. Another favorite includes my eVGA 7950gt; loved and still have (although don't use) that card. I currently have an r9 280x which is alright but I prefer nVidia, however; luck would have it that I get a lot of hardware second hand from a buddy with a frequent upgrade itch and he is an ATI fan.

 

[richaron]

Favourite = Geforce 2 Ti.

Big step up from tnt2 & my first gfx card on a ground-up decent budget build. It was "vivo" - "Video in, Video out". So when I took it to college I'd hook up a VHS player with tv tuner and felt like I was a boss. Even though GF3/4 were released around the same time I was happy with my card and it handled games for many a year.