Discussion Community Questions: What's Your All-Time Favorite GPU?

[DSzymborski]

Oh god. This, so much this. Though in my case it was VGA, I went from an office surplus 286 with a CGA to a 386DX with VGA, having saved a whole year to make the purchase. Totally worth it.

I had already gotten a Super Nintendo for Christmas, so I wasn't able to sell my parents on upgrading to EGA graphics until my birthday!

I had been more into console gaming (NES, Genesis, and then SNES), so it was a harder argument to my parents given how much more expensive PCs were at the time (I turned 13 in 1991, so my income was very parent-dependent at this point). I was a MicroProse fanboy at that point -- which worked out fine because MicroProse games really were quite awesome -- and I got to tour their original headquarters as a kid. I was super-stoked when they moved into the big Hunt Valley buildings as my mom worked there too, for a car dealership software company.

 

[MrN1ce9uy]

I'd like to mention my budget friendly Sapphire HD 2600 Pro 256MB that enabled countless hours of gaming. I used it until the fan died many years later. It still works without the fan, but does run quite warm. It can still play League of Legends.

 

[SkyBill40]

Probably the best GPU I ever had was an MSI 8800GTS. A truly outstanding card that I still have. Once that wasn't enough, I replaced it with an MSI 660Ti OC Power Edition 2GB. It was a great GPU for its time and it did great for me across two different builds. I replaced it with an MSI 1080 Duke OC 8Gb that's been outstanding and I expect it to last me through my next build and who knows how much longer beyond that.

 

[emeralds1000000]

Oh god. This, so much this. Though in my case it was VGA, I went from an office surplus 286 with a CGA to a 386DX with VGA, having saved a whole year to make the purchase. Totally worth it.

at that time AMIGA was Around and outperformed PC in both Visuals and Sound ..

 

[Olle P]

My very first GPU was a Trident something around '95. Was okay at 640x480 but when I tried to make it display 1024x768 the image was frozen and I had to re-boot the computer.

Then I got my first "3D"-capable computer in '98. The sales pitch was about the great graphics it had. A closer examination, later on, showed that it had an on-board Rage LT Pro which really wasn't that good and I got fed up with it in less than two of its three years lease period...

So I went on to get a new computer with most parts picked by me. This time I went for an Asus GeForce 256 de Luxe, bundled with 3D-glasses. That's how I learned the hard way that buying by brand isn't everything. The GeForce 256 was already ageing and not powerful enough to run the glasses unless you did it interlaced at low resolution, and it only worked at all with a few titles.

My upgrade was a GeForce 3 Ti200, which was a very good buy! That card served me well for quite a while.

With a couple of other cards in-between I later on got myself a GeForce 750Ti. High performance at low power, what else can you want? That card is still in use by my daughter.

 

[Lord_Logan]

We recently updated our GPU Performance Hierarchy to include a few brand-new cards, which got us thinking: What’s our favorite graphics card of all time? Everyone has their own personal golden age of gaming. If you were born in the late 1970s, perhaps it was the DOS era of PC Gaming known for its innovative 2D RPGs, adventure Ggames and shooters. Or if you’re like me, gaming utopia began in 2011. Behind each of our gaming golden years lies a graphics card powering our screens and pushing out the pixels that make up some of our favorite games.

Do you have a favorite all time GPU? What piece of silicon do you owe most of your gaming to?

READ MORE HERE

Joshua Simenhoff @Johnny5

3DFX Voodoo has to be my favourite as it was the first GPU ever purchased. I still have it in a box of old kit. I remember the card but I don't recall all the games I first played on it. Doom probably, a great 3D dungeon crawler and more.

Yes it was a pass-through and yes the graphics, compared to current generation, were very lslow and low res BUT playing those first 3D games was a life changing revelation.

 

[Onus]

Actually, the first card that allowed me to play most any game I wanted at the time was an ATI EGA Wonder. It simulated a VGA display on any monitor type, in my case an Amdek 310A, then later a color TV with VGA input. My brother and I played countless hours of Empire Deluxe on my 286.

 

[xxxlun4icexxx]

By far the 780. Was my first high-end graphics card I ever bought. SLIed those bad boys and got my first 1080p all ultra settings experience.

Still awesome cards even today.

 

[80-watt Hamster]

My first true GPU was the 3DFX Banshee back in 1998. I remember it was the first pc that I built myself. It was powered by an AMD K6-2 350mhz CPU and the Diamond 3DFX Voodoo Banshee. Half-life, Quake, Tomb Raider, C&C Red Alert, Warcraft 2 were among my favorite games at the time. The glide rendering on the 3DFX just blew me away. I could not believe the difference it made compared to the old software based rendering. Fun times indeed!!! Since then, I've had the following GPU's: Geforce 4400 Ti, Radeon 1950 Pro, Radeon 5770, Radeon 270, and now a Geforce 1060 6GB. It's amazing how far technology has come since those days.

Ah, synchronicity. My first build was a K6-2/400 paired with a Voodoo Banshee, Diamond Monster Fusion specifically. Fantastic card, as long as you could use Glide. Otherwise it was ... pretty good. But I think it stayed in service until the demise of AGP.