what video card was your favorite? (that you own/owned)

[jiffylube1024]

My favourites I owned in order:

-3dfx Voodoo 3 2000: great value card with awesomely fast performance at the time (about equal to Voodoo 2 SLI).
-ATI Radeon LE: the first of the value "SE/LE/etc" cards to offer great bang/buck
-GeForce 3 Ti200: another super fast card at a solid price (o/ced to near Ti500 speeds, a bit short on the core)
-ATI Radeon 8500LE 128MB: Yet another super performer at a great price and good o/cer too (300/300)
-GeForce 4 Ti4200: One of the first cards I was actually able to use a bit of AA with playably. Another great overclocker
-ATI Radeon 9800np @ beyond Pro speeds: made AA/AF a reality; DirectX 9 support made it a stellar performer into the Halo/Half Life 2 era. Probably my all-time favourite.
-GeForce 7800GT: made FEAR playable at my monitor's native resolution (1680X1050). Sick card.

I've owned several others but none stacked up to those in terms of price/performance. I'd say of those the 9800 was probably my favourite, and provided the biggest leap and noticeable improvement.

 

[Wreckage]

Diamond Monster Fusion

2D & 3D on the same card. Crazy!

 

[dug777]

Voodoo 2...i could run the winamp visualisation 'monkey' at last, and play CS

Although my favourite probably is my many 9800 pros...

 

[sodcha0s]

My first 3d card.... original Voodoo! I went from playing quake in software mode at some crappy resolution like 200x320 to GLQuake running at 640x480, an amazing difference for sure.

 

[Yreka]

My first "3" card. I had that Voodoo + 2d combined card, what was it called.. The Rage I think ? I remember it wasnt as good as the stand alone voodoo, but it was pretty kickass to me.

 

[pibrahim]

Yreka - wasn't the combined Voodoo card the Banshee?

Anyway, my fave card was, undoubtably, the Orchid Righteous 3D (Voodoo 1).

I remember saving up for it, having an Excel spreadsheet with a bar chart showing how close I was to getting the cash for it. I've never been so excited about getting a video card and I never will again, because I don't think we'll ever see such a huge leap like that. I remember looking at the screenshots of OpenGL Tomb Raider, GLQuake, Mechwarrior 2 3DFX v regular Mechwarrior 2, etc... (also, at the same time, Ultim@te Race on the PowerVR also looked very cool).

They were good times...

 

[Creig]

Easily my soft-modded 9500 non-pro. It's still in action in my backup/rendering rig.

 

[mooncancook]

Originally posted by: pibrahim
Yreka - wasn't the combined Voodoo card the Banshee?

Anyway, my fave card was, undoubtably, the Orchid Righteous 3D (Voodoo 1).

I remember saving up for it, having an Excel spreadsheet with a bar chart showing how close I was to getting the cash for it. I've never been so excited about getting a video card and I never will again, because I don't think we'll ever see such a huge leap like that. I remember looking at the screenshots of OpenGL Tomb Raider, GLQuake, Mechwarrior 2 3DFX v regular Mechwarrior 2, etc... (also, at the same time, Ultim@te Race on the PowerVR also looked very cool).

They were good times...

yes nothing compares to the leap from a Virge/Mystique to a real Voodoo 3D accelerator. It's hard to imagine seeing this kind of jump again, maybe until someone got a board that can do real-time ray-tracing or something...

 

[pibrahim]

Heh, I'm getting all nostalgic thinking about it.

I remember first getting the Diamond Stealth 3D 2000, an S3 Virge card, as they were claiming it was a proper 3D card... soon found out that wasn't quite true, although it did run Virtua Fighter 1 which came out later.

But as soon as I saw 3DFX screenshots in a PC magazine, my jaw dropped. It's kinda disappointing knowing that we might not see such a huge leap again...

 

[Powermoloch]

5200
6600
x850xt

 

[necro007]

Mine would be the X1800XL in my sig.

 

[SketchMaster]

Voodoo 2 SLI. My first real 3Dcard.

2nd is the Voodoo 3 3000. I Saved for weeks to buy the card when I was about 13-14.

 

[nib95]

Hercules 9700 Pro, that was THE bonofide daddy of all GPU's!

 

[Beef Taco]

Mine, would be my X800XL. It still playes everything out there with most high settings. I've had it for about 7 months.

 

[CKXP]

1. 6800nu unlocked 380/850mhz...$229 Mar 05(my favorite)
2. 6800gs 520/1180mhz...$195 Jan 06
3. 7800gt 470/1170mhz...$239 Feb 06

great price/performance

 

[413xram]

2- 12 meg black magic voodoo 2 in sli playing UNREAL totally took grfx to another level)

 

[JPB]

Voodoo 3 3000 agp...ran quake very very well

 

[LW07]

My favorite Video Cards in this order:
Nvidia Geforce 4 MX-440SE-1st because it got me away from my horrid Trident 9880 Blade 3d and allowed me 2 play games.

Nvidia Geforce 7800GT- Gives me 1600*1200 with 4xAA and 8xAF in fear with shadows off

Nvidia Geforce 6800 128mb AGP 12-pipe version(non-ultra)-First gave me high settings in games, 3rd because I wanted to get the 6800GT instead, but it was still a good card and probably still is.

Jaton Trident Video 107 Blade 3D 9880 8mb(not to be confused with the Radeon 9800.)(link 2 it here: http://db.jaton.com/VGAProductDetail.aspx?P_ID=82107-P08MBA0)
Crappiest card I have ever owned and have ever seen in my entire life. It shouldn't have even been created. Lots of reasons. Almost every game I ran were slideshows if they even ran(some games liked to crash to the desktop on me, like Rogue Squadron 3D. I blame this card.) I mean every game was a COMPLETE SLIDESHOW. Like 1 Frame every 5 seconds. A few were alright in software mode. Even light games like Star Wars: Force Commander and Red Ace Squadron ran like this, even at 640*480 and 800*600 with LOW SETTINGS! Man, I'm getting steamed even thinking about the dark ages of my gaming. I absolutely hate this card and will forever hate it. *Goes into 2010, Buys AGP 6600GT with CPU and RAM and 66.93 drivers, and Windows XP, goes back to 1995, and puts it together and takes the Blade 3D 9880 and goes to the edge of grand canyon and throws the 9880.*

 

[DimZiE]

Voodoo 2.. it made my Q2 days a LOT sweeter

 

[BassBomb]

my geforce 2 lasted me the longest , so i guess its the best

my 6600GT was the only one ever purchased outside of low end
worst card ever was FX5200, wasted money

ive owned (in this order)
Ati Mach64 ?mb
Voodoo3 3000 16mb
Diamond TNT2 32mb
Pine Geforce2 MX400 64mb
Chaintech FX5200 256mb
BFG 6600GT 128mb

 

[blckgrffn]

9500 Pro. The only card to last me more than 12 months. Battlefield 1942 ran so smooth at full textures, 1600*1200, 4xaa and 8xaf that my room mate would sneak over to my PC ot play it when I wasn't around!

Unless you count MY FREAKIN AWESOME 12 MEG VOODOO2!!!111!!!

I used that for 3 years with a 333 mhz celeron and 64 megs of ram. Quake 2, HL, Unreal, Battlezone, Deus Ex, how I loved you all! I only had enough HD to install one at a time though... (3 gigs).

It was a big step up with I got a Falcon NW with a 64 meg 8500

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Kyro 4000 64MB. Pretty fast, but really nice IQ and very cheap.

 

[evolucion8]

The Powercolor 9700 Non Pro flashed to PRO, it was for me the most revolutionary arquitecture of all times, reflected on the R4X0 based cards, a statement of a strong design. Coupled with my old rig (The one that my moms owns currently) P4 2.4BGHz I was able to run Doom 3 at 1024x768 @ high quality with no FSAA.

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: mooncancook
Voodoo 1 and Voodoo 2. It pwns everything at its time.

heh, i was like one of the only kids out of my friends who had a voodoo2 sli system. it seriously pwned everyone in games like the original UT, rainbow6 original. Sad to say, that was the last time i ever decided to buy top of the line video cards because voodoo2 only lasted for 2 years and then the gay voodoo3's came out with i feel were no way near as good as the original geforce, and riva tnt's.

 

[n7]

My 9800 Pro :heart: