The 23 Greatest Graphics Cards Of All Time

[cleeve]

Do you remember the first card that introduced you to 3D gaming? How about the best accelerator you ever owned? Take a trip with us down memory lane as we recount the 23 most powerful graphics boards of their respective eras.

The 23 Greatest Graphics Cards Of All Time : Read more

 

[JackMomma]

Never thought I'd be proud of my ol' 295GTX as I am now... Anyway, it's time to let her cool off again.

 

[dogman_1234]

Cool. Thanks for the history lesson.

 

[jimmysmitty]

One thing, you part with the 3870 X2 states it had a combined 160 Pixel Shaders but a single 3870 had 320 Stream processors, same as the HD2900, and a 3870 X2 had 640 Stream processing units.

If anything, the 3870 X2 had 128 SP units that acted as 5 SP units giving it 640.

Other than that, nice article. I remember my 9700 Pro. Too bad the memory died out on it. But it was ok. I got a 9800XT to replace it.

 

[Guest]

I was somewhat disappointed the first Matrox dual-head card didn't make the list.

 

[bin1127]

Cleaning out the closet at Tom's huh?

 

[buzznut]

Its amazing how many of these I've owned. Voodoo II, Voodoo III, GeForce 4ti, Riva TNT, Radeon 9800, TNT 2 Ultra..Course now that I'm married I can't spend money on things like the latest video card.

 

[chillin15]

proud former owner of the g4 4600 ti

 

[utengineer]

Still running GTX 280's in SLI. I don't get DX11, but I still play every game out there with no problem. 3 years and still going strong. Great investment.

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]jimmysmitty[/nom]One thing, you part with the 3870 X2 states it had a combined 160 Pixel Shaders but a single 3870 had 320 Stream processors, same as the HD2900, and a 3870 X2 had 640 Stream processing units.If anything, the 3870 X2 had 128 SP units that acted as 5 SP units giving it 640.Other than that, nice article. I remember my 9700 Pro. Too bad the memory died out on it. But it was ok. I got a 9800XT to replace it.[/citation]

Absolutely right. Don must have owned a "special" 3870 X2. I've updated the story to reflect the X2s everyone else owned

 

[toxxel]

Still have my MSI Geforce 4 TI 4200 128mb DDR card, no real use for it now a days so it just lays in a box with the rest of my outdated stuff.

 

[mute20]

Love this article

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]jimmysmitty[/nom]One thing, you part with the 3870 X2 states it had a combined 160 Pixel Shaders but a single 3870 had 320 Stream processors, same as the HD2900, and a 3870 X2 had 640 Stream processing units.If anything, the 3870 X2 had 128 SP units that acted as 5 SP units giving it 640.Other than that, nice article. I remember my 9700 Pro. Too bad the memory died out on it. But it was ok. I got a 9800XT to replace it.[/citation]

Thanks Jimmy. Not sure what I was smoking when i put that in there, but I was bandying about a lot of ancient statistics so It'd have been a miracle if I didn't make a horrendous flub like that at least once.

 

[njgtechguy]

There is an error on the GeForce 3 page. Hardware tessellation became supported in DirectX11, not 10.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

Geforce 256, Geforce 3 Ti, Radeon 9700 pro, and Geforce 8800 GTX. Amazing performance, absolutely revolutionary architectures for their time, and four of my personal favorites. Still have the Geforce 3 Ti 200 my brother gave me.

No FX5800 Ultra or HD2900XT? lol.

 

[haplo602]

You should include GAMING in the title and drop the 'of all time' part. You are missing a LOT of cards in the list with the current title of the article.

 

[themelc]

I still have my old 3dfx Voodoo3. That sucker ran Quake 3 Arena like mad. Perfect timing for the best game in the world.

 

[agnickolov]

A more accurate title would be: "The 22 Greatest 3D Graphics Cards Of All Time". The Voodoo 1 and 2 cards in the beginning of the list are not even graphics cards - they are 3D co-processors for a host 2D graphics card!

 

[QEFX]

Interesting choices. I'd have added:

Rage Fury MAXX: OK there was that minor issue about not working with anything past WinME

KYRO II: The little card that almost did

ATI All-In-Wonder: (8500 mostly) A fast, but not fastest, card that you could game while watching TV (or DVR a show).

Matrox Parhelia: Best name, how many screens do you need? 3? We can do that. Too bad it was 6 months to a year late (and expensive). Nobody mention that face-mapping thing please. R.I.P. Matrox G-series

Lastly-
Glaze3D 4800: The fastest vapor on the planet.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

"Immediately after, Nvidia launched the GeForce 7900 GTX 512 MB with a 512-bit memory interface to keep the crown."

The 7900GTX still used a 256-bit memory interface like the 7800GTX. It was a process shrink down to 90nm, coupled with increased clocks and double the GDDR3 that set it apart.

 

[pirateboy]

not including matrox millenium (and mistique for that matter) shows a noob wrote this....also none of the Hercules cards huh?
Gfx card history does not start with Voodoo1 you noob.

 

[banned_user]

That X1900XT 512 was the only top dog from the list I've owned and it was amazing playing Oblivion with that card. I tried to play it with my modded 12->16 6800NU 128mb for about an hour before I decided that I was going to stop and restart the game when I had something worthy.

 

[radium69]

Wow, I own a lot of these cards.

I still have a voodoo II , voodoo III , geforce 4ti, 5900 ultra, Riva TNT, 6800 Ultra AND 6800GT and 6600GT also, the 8800GTX is still running in my system. It's still blazing fast! Although it's starting to show it's age

More reasons to upgrade! I need moar power!

 

[silverblue]

The 6990 is faster at 2560 than the 590 (great news for Eyefinity) and uses less power, but unless you've got a water block, you're going to be using a megaphone to talk to people. Imagine taking one to a LAN party... you'd find yourself sat alone quite quickly.

What we needed was a revised 6990 with a much better cooler, but at those prices, there's little point.

 

[verbalizer]

9800GX2 - still 'somewhat' capable of playing today's games..
why is the GTX 285 on the list.?
HD 5970 still gets props to this day from me..