Your first dedicated GPU?

[NTMBK]

Riva TNT2.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

ATI Rage Pro Turbo 4MB.

 

[ZipSpeed]

3dfx Banshee. God, I miss the old days.

 

[Chaotic42]

Diamond Viper V330 - Riva 128
http://www.anandtech.com/show/11

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

Pic related is my old Radeon HD 3650 from around 2008. Absolutely useless today, but was a huge upgrade from the family computer with integrated graphics.

So what was your first real experience with PC gaming?

if you dont count cga/ega/vga (doom/wing commander 2) it was my voodoo2 on glquake.

 

[Wall Street]

Voodoo 2 here as well. I guess the old timers can only date themselves so much, because 1998 was really the first big year that 3D acceleration hit mainstream for home PCs.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

First real 3D accelerator? Canopus Pure3D (Voodoo 1 w/ 6MB instead of the usual 4MB)
Had plenty before that (ATi Mach64 GT, S3 Virge, Trio, etc.)

 

[crashtech]

Voodoo 2 here as well. I guess the old timers can only date themselves so much, because 1998 was really the first big year that 3D acceleration hit mainstream for home PCs.

The original 3DFX Voodoo came out in 1996. I had one of those...

 

[john3850]

Diamond 3dfx Voodoo with a Pentium overdrive cpu 198-mhz.

 

[siriuus]

fx 5200, so slow

 

[SimianR]

Voodoo3 2000 PCI 🙂

 

[frowertr]

Yeah, i remember the good ole days playing Q2 CTF with my clan on my Monster 3D. I actually had an ISDN line in 1996 -1998 so my ping times were pretty damn good compared to everyone else with POTS.

 

[Oyeve]

3dfx Voodoo 1. Ran alongside a Matrox Mystique.

Same for me except I had a Matrox millennium.

 

[guachi]

First dedicated video card was a Trident 1MB card, probably an 8900 or 9000 series, purchased in 1992. Though my first experience with PC gaming was with the MCGA graphics in a PS/2.

The Trident card, despite being bottom-end, was a huge upgrade and allowed me to play basically any game for several years.

 

[gbeirn]

Diamond Stealth II S220. Remember buying it on Boxing Day 1997 and then playing Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight on it.

Yep same here had the exact same one. I actually found the card recently.

 

[Borealis7]

went from an S3 Virge 4MB to ATI Rage Pro 8MB + Creative VooDoo2 8MB. from then it was a huge leap to an ELSA Gladiac GeForce 2 GTS 32MB.

 

[Ketchup]

Riva TNT was my first 3D card. Had various video cards before that which don't come to mind.

 

[Head1985]

TNT2 Ultra.Pretty good card.Geforce256 was not out yet in that time and half life1 runs good in 1024x768 😀

 

[john3850]

I also tried to buy a Geforce256 but the early ones only were all SDR.
So I wasted my money on a Voodoo 5 5500 which went out of business a few months later.

 

[blotto]

3Dfx Voodoo 1 4MB. I remember slapping an 40mm fan on it to try and get over 57mhz stable.

I loved the CRT click when 3D would kick in. Such good times, Forsaken, GLQuake, Incoming, going to 3dfiles.net to download whatever new demo had just come out.... I miss the 90s.

 

[sonoma1993]

voodoo 3 2000 pci bios hacked to a voodoo3 3000

 

[ozzy702]

 

[lightmanek]

I started from S3 Virge 3D AGP 4MB but quickly replaced it with Matrox Mystique 220 to be quite disappointed with 3D acceleration slower than software renderer. So my first true 3D accelerator was Riva 128 4MB SGRAM 😉

 

[John Connor]

The GT6600 after that I upgraded to the GT8800.

 

[linaaslt]

I had some s3 in my 66 pentium 1, bought 3dfx 12mb accelerator, what a beast it was.