What Is Your Personal Favorite Video Card of All Time?

Radeon HD 5870.

There was something magical about that card. AMD/ATI had just found their footing again with the HD 4870, and then they decided to clobber Nvidia on the performance front with the HD 5870. It took Nvidia 6 months to answer with Fermi "Jensen Grillin" GTX 480. Seriously, that HD 5870 was an amazing card, especially priced under $400.

I went for the magic approach at the same time as trialling Crossfire with 2x 5770 to give approximately the same performance as the 5870 for 2/3 the price.
How wrong was I !
Dirt 2 worked well in crossfire, it was absolutely wonderful, exactly what I wanted.
But absolutely nothing else was good enough, either didnt work with 2 cards, gave very little gain and/or was very jittery.
And the drivers were disgraceful, so bad I used modded drivers from a Guru3D member who was equally appalled, without which, even single card was a bad experience.
And single card wasnt quick, Xfire was quite a waste of money for 1 game.
/rant, I learned my lesson and can smile now :)
 
I'm a big fan of my Radeon HD7870. I bought it in 2012 and used it until last summer. Definitely long in the tooth the past couple of years. But it was absolutely fine until about 2017. Only around then, did games start really hammering it. Even still, Soulcalibur 6 played great on it, last year.

I had cards all the way back to the Radeon 9000pro, which was my first card. Lots of stuff in between. Including some Nvidia cards, such as Ti4200 and 6800 non ultra. Other stuff too. I had 3870 for quite awhile, which I liked pretty well and got a lot of mileage from. But the 7870 has been the best experience and quite a long term companion.
I have ti share the 7870 love, paired with a 2600K it lasted 7 years, it was really only my desire to mover from 1080p to 4K that obsoleted it for me.
On the other hand neither it nor even to 2080 I have now have ever touched the thrill of breaking 20K 3DMarke with my 9800 Pro back in the day. despite the fact that it went up in flames taking my MB with it moments later o_O
 
I have ti share the 7870 love, paired with a 2600K it lasted 7 years, it was really only my desire to mover from 1080p to 4K that obsoleted it for me.
On the other hand neither it nor even to 2080 I have now have ever touched the thrill of breaking 20K 3DMarke with my 9800 Pro back in the day. despite the fact that it went up in flames taking my MB with it moments later o_O

I still have my hd7870, still plays a lot of games surprisingly well with an overclock. Crazy a mid range card had such a long life.
 
It's been said before but, just ask anyone that's been gaming since wolfenstein games on pc: Where were you when the 9700 pro dropped?

I got mine from a bestbuy, and for the first time in my life, could turn on 4x/8x aa and the fps didn't tank. It was the future, and the future was fast and clean. Back then people didn't riot on the internet when radeon released a fast card, they just bought it if they had the money.

Where were you when the world changed forever?
 
It's been said before but, just ask anyone that's been gaming since wolfenstein games on pc: Where were you when the 9700 pro dropped?

I got mine from a bestbuy, and for the first time in my life, could turn on 4x/8x aa and the fps didn't tank. It was the future, and the future was fast and clean. Back then people didn't riot on the internet when radeon released a fast card, they just bought it if they had the money.

Where were you when the world changed forever?

9700pro got me into PC gaming. I remember being in the grocery store looking at magazines while my parents shopped and I remember seeing the 9700pro on the front cover of maximum PC. Bought that magazine and have been obsessed ever since.
 
Heres a couple I found while cleaning my closet!
 

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480 GTX was the first high-end video card I ever bought (I ran SLI even though I bought three of them for 3 way SLI but never got it working correctly) they felt like you just finished installing a tank inside your computer not to mention they sounded like jet engines taking off !
 
I'd have to say the GTX 670. The card was a beast, and I paired it with the release of BF(3?) and got a Korean 27" 1440p monitor that could OC to 120hz. Those were good times.
 
Can I claim a favorite AiB instead? I've always been a fan of Sapphire due to build quality and customer support; they've been close to bar-none for the past couple decades I've been building.
 
My favorite was the original ATI all in wonder that I got back in the late 90s. I didn't need a tv in my dorm room because I had the all in wonder. I used the heck out of that thing.

I have a 1080ti now that I'm partial to. I just took the 1080ti out and put a 3090 in, but I'm more attached to the 1080ti. I got it for FS2020, and researched it and figured out what card would do frame rates on that thing, then which 1080ti to get. Stayed up nights bidding on ebay until I got one for like $400.
 
Geforce Fermi EVGA 580 HydroCopper for sure!

It was the last generation to have the 'full fat at the high end' GPU released first. The 680 was an insult, doubly so because under water, volt modded and overclocked, a 580 would beat a stock 680 quite easily. Nvidia then capped the overclock on 580's to 1000mhz shortly after 680 launched. There was no 680ti, that became the 780ti because the 600 series was marred for being so weak against Fermi.

Loved that damn card, and had a really nice waterblock pre-installed at a fair price, unlike the ludicrous markup waterblock editions get these days. :rolleyes:

Long live Fermi!
 
8800 GTS that was in my first build, but I also greatly enjoyed the Radeon 4870 that replaced it later. Both cards saw a lot of use between my setup and my family's.
 
Canopus Spectra 2500 with voodoo1/2 passthru. It let me have a 2d card that was decent and a 3d accelerator. It "felt" like what a modern setup would eventually be, 2d/3d seamlessly integrated.
 
Geforce Fermi EVGA 580 HydroCopper for sure!

It was the last generation to have the 'full fat at the high end' GPU released first. The 680 was an insult, doubly so because under water, volt modded and overclocked, a 580 would beat a stock 680 quite easily. Nvidia then capped the overclock on 580's to 1000mhz shortly after 680 launched. There was no 680ti, that became the 780ti because the 600 series was marred for being so weak against Fermi.

Loved that damn card, and had a really nice waterblock pre-installed at a fair price, unlike the ludicrous markup waterblock editions get these days. :rolleyes:

Long live Fermi!
Ah yes, the good old days when you bought an nVidia flagship card you got a flagship i.e. non-gimped, full-fat chip. Not a chopped down version so nV can release another more expensive SKU 6 months later. I do respectfully disagree, however, that even a volt-modded, water-cooled 580 could beat a stock 680.

I also fondly recall my dual Powercolor 5870 LCSs (factory-blocked) that didn't cost an arm and a leg. Cypress wasn't a revolutionary chip, but they looked super classy as well with simple black anodized blocks and black PCB. An elegant weapon for a more civilized time.
 
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My fondness for the GTX 460 in SLI back in the day got me into overclocking graphics cards. It beat the GTX 480 quite easily, and even gave the GTX 580 a run for its money. Now that SLI is a thing of the past, my GTX 1080 Ti has really held up really well for almost four years.
 
My fondness for the GTX 460 in SLI back in the day got me into overclocking graphics cards. It beat the GTX 480 quite easily, and even gave the GTX 580 a run for its money. Now that SLI is a thing of the past, my GTX 1080 Ti has really held up really well for almost four years.
The time around the 400-series/6000-series was what I'd consider the golden age of mGPU. There was nary a mainstream game to be released around then that didn't support it, and updates in drivers were frequent (remember everyone losing their heads and talking boycott because Arkham Asylum didn't have SLI support?).

I had dual unlocked 465 SLI's for a while, as well as tri-SLI 480s. They were barn-burners, but had great performance.
 
Yeah, I had GTX 470 SLI, my first SLI system, it was great. Had one card for a few months, and really wanted to try PhysX in Alice Madness Returns. Got the second and my FPS doubled and I could enable PhysX and it looked great.

Back then almost every game worked with SLI. Sometimes here and there you would find issues, but, for the most part, it just worked. This was also before reviewers and people were concerned with microstutter, frame variance, and latency, so I never noticed any problems (but I'm sure they were there).

It's sad the concept was dropped, but it does make sense given the situation today. Even mid-range cheaper cards can do 1080p high refresh ultra settings, and if you need more power, there are more expensive cards to fit your use case.

When even Nvidia lowest end card, the RTX 3060, can do 4K well, there is not a need for SLI anymore. Yes, I have the 3060 on my second rig. On older games I can get 4K144 max settings, and even new games I can get 4K60 with tweaked settings. And if you need more performance, buy a better card.
 
Yeah, I had GTX 470 SLI, my first SLI system, it was great. Had one card for a few months, and really wanted to try PhysX in Alice Madness Returns. Got the second and my FPS doubled and I could enable PhysX and it looked great.

Back then almost every game worked with SLI. Sometimes here and there you would find issues, but, for the most part, it just worked. This was also before reviewers and people were concerned with microstutter, frame variance, and latency, so I never noticed any problems (but I'm sure they were there).

It's sad the concept was dropped, but it does make sense given the situation today. Even mid-range cheaper cards can do 1080p high refresh ultra settings, and if you need more power, there are more expensive cards to fit your use case.

When even Nvidia lowest end card, the RTX 3060, can do 4K well, there is not a need for SLI anymore. Yes, I have the 3060 on my second rig. On older games I can get 4K144 max settings, and even new games I can get 4K60 with tweaked settings. And if you need more performance, buy a better card.
I think most of all, I just miss the look of 2 video cards in my case... lol
 
I'm certain I've already posted in this thread but shout-out once again to the Geforce 4 Ti 4200 128mb.

That carried me from 2002 till HL2/Doom 3 came out and I snagged an ATI 9800 Pro..

(Back in the days when you were lucky to get 18 GOOD months out of hardware)
 
Wish I still had my Geforce 2, but I do have my retail box and VooDoo 2. Good cards. Sadly the 4MB expansion I sold :(
 
I have owned Sli eVGA 7900GTO/ 6800GS Started Crossfiring on Evga x58 HD 5850/7950 and same board 10 years later RX 570's with no ribbon on x58 wOW.. started the sickening with MOHAA MX 420 before it became a 4200Ti 64Mb /FX 5900 XT/ 6800 Ultra (Clan Wars era before COD) My Clan played COD also and that was my SLi encounter ..

I was just starting to learn this game as why level 6 before my Hospital visit .. So I really just like the IQ that Polaris offers and I have a RX 5700 / Had a 5500 XT .. but that RX 570 is my Pick and don't mind the kid talking as I block that out of my mind ..from as Match play is always ran by one XO and only if I had knew how to heal myself at that time lol..

 
Ati 9800 pro and gtx 670. They were so much faster than what I hard right before.
 
Ati 9800 pro and gtx 670. They were so much faster than what I hard right before.
That's kind of my thinking, though there's also a "didn't piss me off" element involved. My favorite is probably the Matrox Millennium G400 32MB card I bought a couple decades ago. So much faster, and it didn't need that stinking pass-through the Voodoo 2 card I had needed. I really didn't like that Voodoo 2 card, and it was all because of the pass-through. The pass-through made my 1600x1200 desktop look like shit. So for me the G400 was hey I can do 3D and not be pissed off about swapping cables around and it was a nice step up. Everything since has just been a step up in performance. My runner up would be the GTX 680. I had a couple of those and they lasted a good long time. SLI setup for 3x2560x1440 surround, then later just running a single 1440p 27" screen. The 680s didn't wow me, they were just a good "value for money" for a high end vid card. I paid up and got good performance and it was good enough for longer than usual. Kinda like the GTX 10xx cards. Nothing "wow" there either, just a good long lasting buy.
 
I went for the magic approach at the same time as trialling Crossfire with 2x 5770 to give approximately the same performance as the 5870 for 2/3 the price.
How wrong was I !
Dirt 2 worked well in crossfire, it was absolutely wonderful, exactly what I wanted.
But absolutely nothing else was good enough, either didnt work with 2 cards, gave very little gain and/or was very jittery.
And the drivers were disgraceful, so bad I used modded drivers from a Guru3D member who was equally appalled, without which, even single card was a bad experience.
And single card wasnt quick, Xfire was quite a waste of money for 1 game.
/rant, I learned my lesson and can smile now :)

That 5770 was a pretty awesome card in its own right (if I'm thinking of the right one that is). Was relatively cheap but still offered great performance and would give you solid frame rates with most of the graphic bells and whistles dialed up. Dollar for dollar it was one of the best in many years.
 
HD5870 with triple monitor setup, that shit was revolutionary to me, and frankly still miss it.

Other than that I had a 980ti that overclocked an insane amount (i do not recall exactly what but it was so good I liquid cooled it just to squeez an extra 100mhz out).
 
HD5870 with triple monitor setup, that shit was revolutionary to me, and frankly still miss it.
Yeah, I had triple mon with GTX 980 Tri-SLI and it was crazy. Still probably beats everything even today, 7680 x 1440 res, 144Hz and 3D. It was sick.
 
I have owned Sli eVGA 7900GTO/ 6800GS Started Crossfiring on Evga x58 HD 5850/7950 and same board 10 years later RX 570's with no ribbon on x58 wOW.. started the sickening with MOHAA MX 420 before it became a 4200Ti 64Mb /FX 5900 XT/ 6800 Ultra (Clan Wars era before COD) My Clan played COD also and that was my SLi encounter ..

I was just starting to learn this game as why level 6 before my Hospital visit .. So I really just like the IQ that Polaris offers and I have a RX 5700 / Had a 5500 XT .. but that RX 570 is my Pick and don't mind the kid talking as I block that out of my mind ..from as Match play is always ran by one XO and only if I had knew how to heal myself at that time lol..



i had the SLI 7900 GTO setup too. i had them both on water :) but i did learn one thing from it all - i'll never do an SLI setup again. it was super fast at the time, but it didn't last. things went great until L4D came out. the drawing of shadows performance went up massively with new gen hardware and well L4D had a lot of shadows. the 7900 GTO setup couldn't keep up, the more efficient architecture just wasn't there. i would have been better off to have saved my money and bought a newer card like the 8000 series. i had those cards clocked as high as i could but there was no software voltage control at the time. so i went a little nuts and soldered variable resistors to the board....and then a mollex connector as a way to measure voltage with a multimeter. it was a very difficult solder job as the contacts were so tiny. in the end one was successful and the other card was destroyed. i sold the one that worked and got a used HD4870.

still i did enjoy that setup even if it was short lived.

i think my favourite card was my voodoo 3 2000. bit of nostalgia there for me. it was the first hardware that i ever overclocked. stuck a little fan on it, went from 143Mhz -> 181Mhz (worked in 2Mhz increments). but that wasn't enough for me so i cut up some small scrap heatsinks into ram sinks and attached with some thermal epoxy. that got it up to 183Mhz which was the same speed as the top 3500 model. then i was happy. but i did discover that while it was under load if i touched the back of the card i would burn my finger. still, it never died.
 
Ah yes, the good old days when you bought an nVidia flagship card you got a flagship i.e. non-gimped, full-fat chip. Not a chopped down version so nV can release another more expensive SKU 6 months later. I do respectfully disagree, however, that even a volt-modded, water-cooled 580 could beat a stock 680.
I have to agree here, I do not remember the 580 even keeping up with the 670, I do remember the frustration that they released the mid tier chip on the flagship, but the performance was so good they were able to get away with it.
 
ATI 9700pro (I think that's what it was). I remember playing Acheron's Call with my buddies and just geeking out at all the cool VGA / color graphics.
 
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