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What was your first GPU ever?

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My first discrete video card was an ATI 9600XT.

First GPU was whatever passed for onboard graphics in 1994.
 
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Rendition Verite 1000 just to run Quake with 3D acceleration. (specifically the Sierra Screamin' 3D GPU)
Man I'm old....LMAO
 
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ATI Radeon VIVO 64. Still have that card somewhere in a box. It's dead, but somehow I can't let it go. It was my first. :awe:

radeon-card-front.jpg
 
HurleyBird said:
I'm going to rephrase this as my first video card with 3D acceleration which was an S3 ViRGE.
Click to expand...

Me too, though I never played any Virge-enhanced games with it, so it was essentially just a plain, half-decent 2D card. This was back when each 3D accelerator had to have games specifically programmed for it - no useful Direct3D for some time. Glide was simply the best of the bunch and I loved each of the variants I played with, including the affordable 3dfx Banshee. 😉

I still have some of the promo material for the first card that Intel would purchase to eventually become its IGP series... dang... what was it called... spitfire? Ah yes! The Real3D Starfighter. Given to me free of charge for my first (and last) hardware review. 😉
 
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My memory is rather hazy, as I didn't really have much control over computer purchases until I was in high school, and until that point, my father was actually rather up-to-date on computer technology (still doesn't do too bad for a man in his 60s now).

I feel like we had an original ATI Rage that kept the PC in working order until it was replaced in the late 90s with a Pentium-class desktop (Acer brand, I believe). Just before college, I think I upgraded it with a Voodoo Banshee so I could play Diablo and Diablo 2 and some other games I'm sure I'm forgetting.

But the first GPU that I bought for my own home-built system was a Hercules 3D Prophet 4500, based on the Kyro II GPU. I kept that GPU for quite a while, actually.
 
Nvidia Geforce 2 MX 400 32MB

Iwas happy playing Half Life 1 "smooth" ^_^
 
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6200le agp, thing sucked beyond belief but coming from the Ragepro 128 that came with the hp vectra vl420 which was my first computer back in 2006 i swear even browsing felt smoother.:awe: My first built gamer pc eventually got this card and BF2 played ok at 800x600 low lol.

First gaming card was a 6800 ultra agp but when i saw the 7800gs in stock at Frys i did a quick exchange and gladly paid the difference. 😀
 
blake0812 said:
D: Wasn't really aware that there was a difference between the 2 terms
Click to expand...

The clue is in the acronym: Graphics Processing Unit. Whether it's the OCS graphics chip in the Amiga 500 or a GeForce GTX whatever, they both graphics processors.

As far as "3D accelerators" go, I think that term came along in the days of the Voodoo hardware, when two things were occurring IIRC:

1 - 3D graphics protocols were being designed so that games could talk to the graphics hardware as directly as possible (PowerVR, 3Dfx, Direct3D, some of which only worked with certain hardware, described in point 2).

2 - New hardware began being made that would piggy-back the graphics hardware to handle the protocols described in point 1. The voodoo hardware was probably the most famous of these. Such hardware would be a separate PCI card to the main graphics card.

At some point the idea of a dedicated card purely for 3D work went out the window and graphics cards that could handle DirectX and Direct3D and all the normal 2D stuff, as well as a bit of video decoding came onto the market.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_processing_unit
 
A Creative Labs Blaster Banshee, in a system featuring a 450 MHz AMD K6-2, 128 MB of RAM and a SoundBlaster Live! Value card... back in 1998.
 
STB Velocity 4400

"Bateluer" Edit:

I guess my first real gpu was an original Radeon. Someone up north of the border sold me an engineering sample. I didn't know at that time that it was a no-no to buy it or sell it.
 
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17 years ago, Diamond Stealth II S220 with Rendition Verite V2100 chip.

Excellent 3D performance, mediocre 2D performance for its money.
 
ATI Mach 32 that I got with a Gateway P5-60. I remember later on with that machine when my friend brought over his OG Voodoo Card and we hooked it up and played Descent. It was a whole new ball game.
 
my first video card/gpu was an ATI 3D Rage PRO Turbo PCI 4MB. It cost me just over $200 back in 1997.
 
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