What Is Your Personal Favorite Video Card of All Time?

Another great one that I just thought of, not my #1 but close.

GeForce 256 DDR

IIRC the original GeForce 256 SDR came out and it was already a big improvement over TNT2 Ultra, then the DDR version came out and completely blew it out of the water.
 
III_Slyflyer_III said:
Sadly, my Ti4200 does not post anymore. 50% chance it at least gets to the BIOS, but then you get fun horizontal lines and then nothing... :(
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:(

Still have most of the setup from 2002 (EPoX 8K3A+, AXP 2000+, Leadtek Ti4400, Zalman CNPS6000-Cu)
Kind of special :
- they were all review samples from EPoX, AMD, Leadtek, and Zalman respectively
- 1st semester of college - played through Morrowind and GTA III on that setup in style
 
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Another Vote for Voodoo 2 in SLI with dual 56k modem... Playing Quake / HL / UT for my first build was just amazing...

Then upgraded my Intel / RDRam (I know, I know.. keep the tomato throwing to a minimum please) to a GeForce 256...

God I miss quality LAN parties..
 
The Ati 9800 Pro was such a big deal that Dell had a vender setup in the Mall to show case the card running on their PC's back then with demo's.. Dell use to be real people out and around you interacting with you, now it's just a web site.
 
crazycrave said:
The Ati 9800 Pro was such a big deal that Dell had a vender setup in the Mall to show case the card running on their PC's back then with demo's.. Dell use to be real people out and around you interacting with you, now it's just a web site.
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I think dell was the only mainstream vendor making gaming capable pcs at the time. I can't think of anyone else in the pentium 4 era that was shipping pcs with dedicated gpus unless you stepped up to a low volume builder like falcon northwest or Alienware in their chieftec dragon cases.
 
Personal favorite? I'm thinking my favorite was a Matrox Millennium. That's a pre-3D card. 0 hassles in days when getting vid cards to work in Linux was often a hassle. Also no compromises. It was one of the fastest 2D accelerators at the time.

As far as 3D era cards go, I'm thinking the pair of GTX 680 4GB cards I had. 2 680s in SLI felt seriously powerful. Only time I built an SLI rig. I didn't get that feeling from the 3090 I bought in December 2020. Just turn on RTX and it's bogging down. They may not be the best cards of the 3D era, but the pair of 680s is the setup I enjoyed the most. I wasn't a big fan of the Voodoo cards. Pass-through pissed me off. That's another thing I liked about Matrox -- really good image quality on CRTs compared to the competition. Nothing else stacked up until we switched to digital signals. The pass-through setup just made a blurry mess. I'd move cables around when I wanted to play a game on a 3DFX card.
 
mnewxcv said:
I think dell was the only mainstream vendor making gaming capable pcs at the time. I can't think of anyone else in the pentium 4 era that was shipping pcs with dedicated gpus unless you stepped up to a low volume builder like falcon northwest or Alienware in their chieftec dragon cases.
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I guess 2002 was my start in PC, my recent Ryzen AM5 build is in my 2005 era Thermaltake TT Soprano case and seeing Intel P4 sampled into the mother board tray bought back alot of memories!
 
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My first one, of course, the 8600gt.

The kind of card that gives a guy a lifetime upgrade bug!
 
1080 Ti

Had that thing for what felt like an eternity without the desire to upgrade. Ran everything I threw at it great, even VR games with the HTC Vive and Valve Index. Upgraded until the 3000 series came out... and that was only because I was able to grab a 3070 at MSRP close to launch.
 
Hands down the 1080Ti. That card lasted me through the 1080p and 1440p era. Pass it down to my son and he was using it for a year. It was only when 4K became mainstream that I needed to upgrade. Awesome card that was way powerful for it's time- kind of like what the current 4090 is.
 
RX 580 Red Devil is my fine wine, with me since 2016, it still handles fine most games at full HD and even at 1440p in medium settings. It supports 12bit pixel YCbCr over HDMI to my Sony TV, which makes it unmatched in terms of video quality for the living room. Certainly a card that I'll recall forever.
 
My 4080, beast of a card, came from voodoo and was with Nvidia ever since, card runs silent, performs great, behemoth in size, favorite card to date
 
Kerby1280 said:
Hands down the 1080Ti. That card lasted me through the 1080p and 1440p era. Pass it down to my son and he was using it for a year. It was only when 4K became mainstream that I needed to upgrade. Awesome card that was way powerful for it's time- kind of like what the current 4090 is.
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Powerful and reasonably priced. Hard to believe it wasn't really that long ago and was $699.
 
1080 Ti was my favorite back then and didn't bother to upgrade to 2000 series. I've two for DC but have to admit that its computational power efficiency is no match to the current 3000 and 4000 (overpriced) series when running 24/7.

Fortunately or unfortunately have to sell these two 1080 Tis during the last mining boom to fund the 3000 card purchases from evga queue.
 
Sapphire X1950XT. I think it was my second?? GPU I bought but it lived a good long life. At one point it died so I took off the HSF and baked it in the oven. Surprisingly it worked and was given to a friend. Thought the design was cool too showing the VRM area. My first and last GPU with Cyber Boobs.

1694049101072.png
 
I have a couple.... The Geforce 2 and NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200 were great and held up for quite some time. I feel like my RX 6750 XT might hit that third spot..

I switched to AMD in the winter and I'm really happy. My previous AMD cards were kinda meh but the driver UI/software makes you feel like your didn't just give Nvidia's marketing department hundreds of dollars for an upscaling machine with software designed in 2005. We'll see how my RX 6750 XT will hold up but thus far it's been beating my expectations for the price I paid over and over. Each new release as of late from the 4060 to the RX 7700 I dunno... It keeps giving me pats on the back.
 
SpongeBob said:
I have a couple.... The Geforce 2 and NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200 were great and held up for quite some time. I feel like my RX 6750 XT might hit that third spot..

I switched to AMD in the winter and I'm really happy. My previous AMD cards were kinda meh but the driver UI/software makes you feel like your didn't just give Nvidia's marketing department hundreds of dollars for an upscaling machine with software designed in 2005. We'll see how my RX 6750 XT will hold up but thus far it's been beating my expectations for the price I paid over and over. Each new release as of late from the 4060 to the RX 7700 I dunno... It keeps giving me pats on the back.
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The Geforce 4 Ti 4200 was a beast.
 
Voodoo 3 3500; first GPU I ever bought, and that thing had legs. Used it for years, kept it in a box for the longest time, lost in a move. It was so much better than what any of my friends had at the time that I'd bring it to sleepovers in a backpack and put it in their family PCs and play games on the weekends... One of my friend's dad called me the "digital crack dealer" 😂

The GeForce 8800 GTX (tri-SLI - bought the second card when they were like half price used and the third for $50 just to see what it would do) is a close runner up - also stayed relevant for a really long time, and it's easily the silliest setup I ever had. The 680/780i was a piece of junk chipset, every motherboard I had with it (there were at least 3) developed all kinds of weird issues, but I had an inexplicable masochistic attachment to it. They did look cool, especially for the time.

Honorable mentions to the Radeon HD 4890 (x2), HD 6950 (x2), GeForce 980ti (x2)... I definitely had a thing for multi-GPU, have been sad to see it die. The up side? Between the shift back to single cards on the high end and multiple TB of storage on things the size of gum sticks, my last couple builds have been much smaller!
 
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Dopamin3 said:
Sapphire X1950XT. I think it was my second?? GPU I bought but it lived a good long life. At one point it died so I took off the HSF and baked it in the oven. Surprisingly it worked and was given to a friend. Thought the design was cool too showing the VRM area. My first and last GPU with Cyber Boobs.

View attachment 596712
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I have that exact same arms up boobs out droid model! Been debating to sell as it is such a classic. The one and only true BOOB card and on a great card in the day. What do these go for?
 
Matrox Parhelia 512. It fell short ultimately but it was pure multi-screen goodness when everything else stuggled and the first to offer Triple screen surround gaming. If you stayed within tested titles it was such a leap in gaming. Blew my mind like nothing until I played VR.
An under ratted classic!
 
funkydmunky said:
Matrox Parhelia 512. It fell short ultimately but it was pure multi-screen goodness when everything else stuggled and the first to offer Triple screen surround gaming. If you stayed within tested titles it was such a leap in gaming. Blew my mind like nothing until I played VR.
An under ratted classic!
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I remember the hype around this card. I feel old now.
 
Another vote for Ti4200. The perfect card with a great price and amazing ability to overclock. Was also during a golden era of PC games like Jedi outcast, RTCW, 1942, etc.

I remember overclocking mine to basically 4600 speeds.
 
I had most of the Voodoo's. The original OG V1, then V2 were my favorite. The V3, V5 were fine but not as game changing as the first 2, just generational improvements. After they sold out I went to a Geforce 3 ti-200 I think, then a series of Geforce's. On my HTPC I had ATI cards (bc you kind of had to back then to get good HDTV output, Nvidia took forever to catch up in that regard.... who else remembers Powerstrip?) and they weren't great for games but could manage a decent desktop resolution on my big ass CRT rear projection Mitsubishi.

I've been using a 1080ti for the last 4 or 5 years.... it has held up very well. I do get the upgrade itch, but I refuse to spend over $500 on a card, and the 1080ti still cranks away 4k/60 on most games.
 
Diamond Monster Voodoo 2 is my favorite. Got me into PC gaming. 2nd favorite is always my current card. At the moment a 4090
 
Maybe Radeon HD 7970 (especially the 6GB version) and the Radeon 290/X, especially the 8GB version. Those cards are still able for gaming today, including basic DX12 acceleration, after more than 10 years.
They can play anything in HD (no RT and medium details). On the contrary you may have to change your CPU and motherboard if you want to keep your OS (Windows 10) updated. Those graphics cards even beat best graphics cards of today on FP64.
I don't think one can find some other graphics cards that could be usefull for so much time.
 
Jandor said:
Maybe Radeon HD 7970 (especially the 6GB version) and the Radeon 290/X, especially the 8GB version. Those cards are still able for gaming today, including basic DX12 acceleration, after more than 10 years.
They can play anything in HD (no RT and medium details). On the contrary you may have to change your CPU and motherboard if you want to keep your OS (Windows 10) updated. Those graphics cards even beat best graphics cards of today on FP64.
I don't think one can find some other graphics cards that could be usefull for so much time.
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The 8800 GTX had incredible longevity - I've had a lot of cards and I don't think I kept any longer.
 
funkydmunky said:
Isn't there truck stop bathrooms for expressing such? You all know the intentions of the thread so keep it clean please. Keep the e-peen in the pants yo!
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The way the 4090 performs hits me in the feels. What can I say? It’s legit my favorite card in the last 10 years.. from a sheer performance perspective .. finally a true 4k card !
 
revenant said:
The way the 4090 performs hits me in the feels. What can I say? It’s legit my favorite card in the last 10 years.. from a sheer performance perspective .. finally a true 4k card !
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Bro I've been doing 4k for years on 1080ti. Is ray tracing really all that? I can't tell from YT vids and screenshots if it's worth a $1k upgrade.
 
Diamond Stealth 32 PCI video card

This was probably the best card for DOS-based gaming, using the Tseng Labs ET4000 W32P chipset (a rarity). It also did exceptionally well in Windows, which is probably why Diamond pulled this card, since it was cannibalizing their Stealth 64 sales.

I remember using this card with an ordinary AMD 486 DX-40 CPU, and being able to play Tie Fighter and Pacific Strike using pretty aggressive graphics settings, and I'd swear that it produced just as good of Windows 3.11 performance as my next card did (ATi Winturbo with 2 MB of VRAM). Imagine hearing that Japanese pilot screaming "Yarareta!" without any FPS drop. When I was looking to upgrade to a Pentium system, I strongly considered one that used VESA local bus, just to keep this card.

At the same time, a lot of folks with Pentium systems and Diamond Viper cards (Witek GPU, fantastic for Windows, horrible for DOS) were having troubles playing those games at even low to moderate levels of detail. I remember some folks basically running the games without the sound card driver, just to get a few more FPS.
 
Unabomber said:
Diamond Stealth 32 PCI video card

This was probably the best card for DOS-based gaming, using the Tseng Labs ET4000 W32P chipset (a rarity). It also did exceptionally well in Windows, which is probably why Diamond pulled this card, since it was cannibalizing their Stealth 64 sales.

I remember using this card with an ordinary AMD 486 DX-40 CPU, and being able to play Tie Fighter and Pacific Strike using pretty aggressive graphics settings, and I'd swear that it produced just as good of Windows 3.11 performance as my next card did (ATi Winturbo with 2 MB of VRAM). Imagine hearing that Japanese pilot screaming "Yarareta!" without any FPS drop. When I was looking to upgrade to a Pentium system, I strongly considered one that used VESA local bus, just to keep this card.

At the same time, a lot of folks with Pentium systems and Diamond Viper cards (Witek GPU, fantastic for Windows, horrible for DOS) were having troubles playing those games at even low to moderate levels of detail. I remember some folks basically running the games without the sound card driver, just to get a few more FPS.
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How old are you?
 
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