In Pictures: The Best Graphics Card Values In History

[Guest]

proud owner of a 4870 here

 

[wolfram23]

My last PC had an 8600GT and it was a pretty great little card! Got my by with World of Warcraft, FEAR 2, DiRT, and Race Driver GRID before I fried it playing DiRT on a hot day.

 

[xcamas]

dunno if i remember well the history. I had this ATI x1650xt and it was gr8, why no reference on d timeline??
and also hd 5850, seems like no reference bout it is at least madness,

 

[chechak]

great graphic card i had own it most old games play with it

 

[chechak]

happy to see my GeForce 9800 GTX+ and still use it today (most games on ultra or rightist ) i play skyrim almost on ultra ...

 

[tomfreak]

Seriously that Aging G92 card is a Tough thing. I still can play Bf3 with it @ low detail, Dragon Age origin,Assasins Creed 1/2/Brotherhood all Maxed out @ 1680x1050 When this card actually start slowing down.

 

[gabriel_natanael]

No 560Ti???

Personally it is one of the best GPU in terms of price/performance
It is as fast as the 470, but a lot more efficient and overclocks a hell lot better too.

 

[KT_WASP]

Nice to see that 2 of my past cards made the list.

Had a Sapphire X1950 Pro 256MB for a while, nice card (even though I had to use ATI tool to control the fan settings to keep it cool, lol).

The I had a Visiontek HD4850 512MB (it was the single slot reference card, bought it first week out.. great card.. again a bit hot though.. but that time you could at least control fan settings in the ATI settings).

Currently on a Gigabyte HD6950 2GB (reference, another great card! Again bought it first couple of weeks after release).

We won't speak of the card I had before the X1950 Pro... what a PoS that thing was.... well, ok... I guess I can spaek of it... cruddy Nvidia XFX FX5600 128MB... blah, lol

 

[cleeve]

No 560Ti???

Personally it is one of the best GPU in terms of price/performance
It is as fast as the 470, but a lot more efficient and overclocks a hell lot better too.

Both the GeForce 560 Ti and Radeon HD 6950 are over $200... check the first page, mate.

 

[cleeve]

dunno if i remember well the history. I had this ATI x1650xt and it was gr8, why no reference on d timeline??
and also hd 5850, seems like no reference bout it is at least madness,

The 1650 XT is mentioned under the 7600 GT entry.

The Radeon HD 5850 never spent a significant amount of time below $200 before it was end-of-lifed.

 

[andywork78]

Love this review.

I was person who looking for this review.

Because of made in "last year" which mean is not stone age GPU.

If i or some one use does card and have no problems it's fine~

My point of comment is we don't have to purchase every new model that release every 1sec.

lol

 

[clonazepam]

My first introduction to pc gaming was my uncle's Tandy 1000. I don't know what was in that thing but I loved Chuck Yeager's flight sim and Star Control. My cousin had a C64 and I remember being wow'd by Spy Hunter. Again, no clue what was in there.

My first purchase was a PC with the Riva 128. I upgraded that system with the Riva TNT and threw in a voodoo 2 card as well. I can't remember which I bought first, or why I bought both. /shrug
Then I bought the Geforce 256 and had to hide it in the car until late at night so the wife wouldn't notice. I think from there I went to a Geforce 3 paired with the PIII 1GZ-based system. Then from 2005-2008 I gamed exclusively on a laptop sporting the mobility radeon x600. I was very pleased with its performance on the 1280x800 screen paired with the mobile amd 64 4000+. After that, it was time for a new desktop, and enter the D820 with a 7900 GT. Later, well after the 9800s were out, I added a second 7900 GT, and upgraded to the Q6600. Then I threw in the gtx 260 when it was priced around $200 w/ the 216 cores. Then I put in a 570... and so on...

I very much appreciated this article... memory lane...

[citation][nom]Achoo22[/nom]STFU... I was there, dude. I've been immersed in the culture for 30 years. I'm not making this crap up to bolster my ego, like you are....but you're not worth the effort... This freaking list doesn't even have any 2d boards. It's a filler article, and we are not amused.[/citation]

When someone takes the time out of their day to provide you with a free education, you should be more polite, and thankful. He was tactful, professional, and courteous in how he addressed your comments, so your attitude and claims contradict one another. Jus' saying. I'm an idiot and reserve the right to be one.

 

[elkein]

I've had three cards off the list, 7600 GT (still deployed in my wifes computers, she's been doing dragon age of late, it's getting the job done for her resolution.) I'm running two SLI 9800gtx+ they have done a adequit job on Skyrim bundled in my system. I think my system specs are in my profile.

 

[silverblue]

With the GeForce 2 MX, I'm going to presume you mean the original before NVIDIA introduced the 100 (worse), 200 (about equal) and 400 (better) variants. A friend owned one and it worked quite well, however when I got my Kyro II, it belted it all over the place and sometimes beat the GTS. It's a shame that we never got a successor with TnL outside of the arcades until the advent of the mobile GPUs we've come to love.

If two cards are missing from the list, they'd be the ATi Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB (256-bit) and the HD 4830. I got the former (Sapphire) for £130 in mid-2004 which was less than $200, and it kept me going for four years. The 4830 (XFX) was a mere £90 in early 2009 and serves me well today.

Before I forget, there's a bit of AMD/ATi confusion going on throughout the article; just thought I'd add that. I suppose it doesn't really throw the reader, though.

 

[boletus]

I'm a bit surprised that the original Radeon DDR 32 MB (later dubbed the 7200) did not make this list. That was the card that put ATI back on the map after the Rage line fizzled out (when the Geforce line looked to utterly dominate) by offering price/perfomance value, and every ATI/AMD card since has touted its lineage.

Glad to see the Geforce 8800 gt make this list, it dragged me back into the vid card market, and I still have 2, one in my wife's PC, the other for spare/backup. At this point, my Radeon 5850 still powers everything I throw at it, so I consider it a good investment.

 

[megamanx00]

I still have my GF 3 ti 200 in my old Athlon XP rig (X1950 AGP too problematic to be reliable ). Good little card it is and was my primary gaming card till I got the X1950

 

[thiirm]

"Interesting tidbit: early versions of the 9500 Pro could, in fact, be modified into 256-bit cards by soldering a bridge onto the PCB, providing 9700-class performance when overclocked"

I bought one of these early versions of the 9500 Pro because of this: You could unlock the 256-bit with software and then overclock the card. No physical modification had to be made..they were identical to the 9700s except were classed as 9500s and the pipelines locked through software that was easily modified. The story I heard on why this happened? These 9500s were 9700s that had failed QC testing along the way, so there was a chance that you werent going to be able to unlock your 9500, and indeed there were many reports at the time of this. I got lucky, mine worked flawlessly for years as a 9700.

 

[TheZander]

One glaring omission, at least in my opinion, is the GTX 295. This card essentially gave you the performance of 2 GTX 275's in SLI, but cost significantly less, and offering better thermal performance and energy efficiency than having a pair of 275's. That's not to mention that with the 295 you didn't need an SLI compatible motherboard to make it work. The single PCB revision remedied all of the heat/reliability issues of the dual PCB initial model, and was an excellent value for a good amount of time, not to mention the most powerful single graphics card (though not single GPU) available upon its release. It was a much more successful, sensible, AND more cost effective dual GPU card than almost every other dual GPU card ever released .

 

[Inferno1217]

This is a great article and brings back so many very good memories.
1.Texas Instruments TI-99/4A (Still have it in near perfect condition inc box)
2.Geforce 2 Ti
3.Geforce 3 Ti 200
4.Geforce 4 Ti 4200
5.6800 GT in sli (315.00 each at the time)
6.8800GTS
7.9800GTX
8.GTX 260 (192core)
9.GTX 465 PNY Flashed to GTX 470 and overclocked (paid 99.99 newegg refurb) current

 

[Inferno1217]

[citation][nom]inferno1217[/nom]This is a great article and brings back so many very good memories.1.Texas Instruments TI-99/4A (Still have it in near perfect condition inc box)2.Geforce 2 Ti3.Geforce 3 Ti 2004.Geforce 4 Ti 42005.6800 GT in sli (315.00 each at the time)6.8800GTS7.9800GTX8.GTX 260 (192core)9.GTX 465 PNY Flashed to GTX 470 and overclocked (paid 99.99 newegg refurb) current[/citation]

Somehow I forgot the ATi 9800 Pro
and my 5870m

 

[assassin123]

good v.good nice article thanks toms hardware

 

[silverblue]

[citation][nom]TheZander[/nom]One glaring omission, at least in my opinion, is the GTX 295.[/citation]
Not for $200 or under.

 

[Masrawy1973]

c'mon how isnt the 5850 in this....Sapphire and and HIS reduced the price of their models to around the $120-$140 mark mid 2011 and they were an absolute steal! it crushed anything near its price range! i have even seen people claim its better than than its 6850 predecessor and @ a lower price! but still really good article nice job toms

 

[10tacle]

God I love these types of articles. However I never rushed out and bought the newest card. Take the 4870 for example. It came out in the summer of 2008 but I didn't upgrade to it until that winter when it dropped below $200. Ditto for the GTX 275 although it was still over $200 nine months after intro. I can't remember how much the Voodoo2's were, but I had two of them for my first ever SLI setup (with TNT2 running 2D), so they couldn't have been bank breakers.

Ah memory lane in just 13 short years of PC gaming....Quake II & Microsoft Flight Simulator 98 to Crysis2 & Flight Simulator X. Still have all these cards except the pair of Voodoos:

Riva128 -> Riva TNT -> Riva TNT2 + Voodoo2 SLI -> Ti4200 -> 6600GT -> 7800GS (last AGP card) -> 7900GS -> 4870 -> GTX 275 (SLI) -> GTX 570 (o/c) -> ??????

 

[Guest]

A really enjoyable tour.
Mobile chips next?,please!