The 23 Greatest Graphics Cards Of All Time

[purrcatian]

Radeon 9800 XT, essentially an overclocked Radeon 9700 Pro

Shouldn't that be "Radeon 9800 XT, essentially an overclocked Radeon 9800 Pro"? I did a little bit of research and the 9800 and 9700 seem to have more differences than just clock speed.

 

[firefyte]

I'm pretty sure the picture of the Voodoo 1 is actually a Voodoo Rush card, a sort of Voodoo 1 with 2D card. Later surpassed by the Voodoo Banshee.

I can't remember my voodoo card having anything more than two VGA ports.

 

[Maximus_Delta]

GeForce 8800GT should of been in there... it was stunning value at the time.

 

[Guest]

They jus keep gettin bigger!

 

[garage1217]

The 9800 pro should have got its own page in 2003 as it literally jack stomped invidia at the time!!! Not just a mention under the 9700 about it beating invidias best a year later. The 9700 was important but the 9800 pro was the king of the day. It was a monster overclocker for the time and easy to be modified!

In fact, I still have a running unit sitting about 10 feet from me lol!

 

[Maximus_Delta]

[citation][nom]callmetwotaxisplease[/nom]They jus keep gettin bigger![/citation]

Soon they will be so long you have a hole in the front of your PC for the end to stick out (supported of course) with manual fan control and overdrive style buttons. You will be able to rest your coffee cup / can of coke on the longest cards while you game.

 

[garage1217]

That was Nvidia DOH... What I get for writing at 2am... Good article anyways! Brings back memories!

 

[Guest]

No Radeon 4850 the card which brought high end end cards to mid stream prizes ?

 

[firefyte]

[citation][nom]Maximus_Delta[/nom]Soon they will be so long you have a hole in the front of your PC for the end to stick out (supported of course) with manual fan control and overdrive style buttons. You will be able to rest your coffee cup / can of coke on the longest cards while you game.[/citation]

You'll just end up with an extra box, like a tesla unit, sitting under your desk.

 

[Maximus_Delta]

[citation][nom]firefyte[/nom]You'll just end up with an extra box, like a tesla unit, sitting under your desk.[/citation]

I see. So in the future we will have our 3 monitor displays hooked upto a kind of master box, and then dotted around the room / house numerous other boxes (all communicating wirelessly) handing different computing functions i.e. several graphics boxes, a storage box, a communications box etc. That way you could subtly integrate all your computing horse power into the fabric of your home in a subtle way. Distributed like that would also aid cooling.

 

[ravenmacdaddy]

As of writing I'm using a 260core216 and still going strong. ;D

 

[amk-aka-Phantom]

Great list, but this is basically a list of flagship cards... how about a list of greatest value-for-money cards? 560 Ti, 6950, 5870, 460, etc.?

 

[americanbrian]

The Geforce 4 series was nowhere near the "best" option of that era. The radeon 8500 had comparable performance and cost 1/3rd the price. was about the same as the Ti 4400 so yes the Ti 4600 outperformed it, but it was very marginal and no way worth the price.

Radeon 8500 FTW!

 

[silverblue]

The initial problem with the 8500 was poor drivers.

 

[Guest]

I dont agree with the choices. Most people didnt buy highend cards. How you can leave out the 5870 is mindboggling. The 5870 was the biggest performance jump over the previous gen, thanks mainly to support for eyefinity and power needed to run 3 monitors. The 5870 also sent Nvidia back to the drawing board to design a new card from scratch, which left ATI with no competition for a year.

 

[brendonmc]

The two greatest graphics cards of all time are unquestionably the 9700pro and the 8800GTX. Given that the 8800 spanned 3 generations and still performs admirably even today, I would have to give the ultimate crown the the 8800. It was a masterpiece, and its impact on graphics hardware development may never be surpassed.

 

[animeman59]

My little history with GPUs.

1st PC: ATI 9800 Pro (from Alienware build)

2nd PC: GeForce 8800 GT 512MB (1st custom build)

3rd PC: AMD Radeon 5770 Crossfire w/ 6770

4th PC: GeForce 570 GTX 1.5GB (might SLI later)

All of the machines I've owned never had the highest of the high end GPUs. I've always been happy with mid to near high end cards that gave me the most bang for the buck, along with great power, heat, and noise efficiency. I can't wait to see what the next generation of GPUs will bring to the table.

 

[Onus]

I also would like to have seen the Hercules cards mentioned. In the mid 80s, that was the only way you got "high resolution" (vs. the 320x200 CGA standard of the day) graphics on a monochrome screen; at least until the ATi EGA Wonder (and its VGA Wonder successor) showed up. Both of them belonged also, for being able to interpolate/extrapolate any standard's resolution to whatever actual monitor you had.

 

[Guest]

"Greatest Graphics Cards Of All Time"?
well.. where is the Tseng Lab ET400?

 

[spookyman]

lol...

Wow must be old school. I though introduction of the first EGA or VGA card was impressive. The the 486 with Vesa local buss. I had a 4meg Orchid card back then. Was a very impressive card.

Now missing was the Matrox card coupled with 2 Monster II 3dfx cards in sli mode. Very impressive graphics back then.

 

[Scotty99]

I would like to see an addition to this article, best bang for the buck card in history considering how long it played top shelf games etc.

I would wager a guess of the 9800gtx?

 

[grinderifz]

Got to agree with the comments on the 9800 pro.
That card was epic !!!

 

[hameem 1]

there is no card in 2010

 

[arkadi]

Voodoo1 picture is wrong....I still got a working rig pared with diamond 2d card. What about other 3dfx cards? like 3000...

 

[11796pcs]

Holy crap, we've been using DX9 for TEN years! Wow we do need new consoles. Awesome article, it's amazing how much silicon space they wasted in the early days.