The 23 Greatest Graphics Cards Of All Time

[twztechman]

One interesting thing about this review is that the first 3/4 of these cards were affordable and were widely adopted. The last 4-5 cards are all dual GPU cards that are beyond most peoples budget so I don't think they are relevant. I just took a look at NewEgg and there are no 6990s listed and and there is one 590 which retails for $750.)

I have owned a bunch of these and I believe the 5870 is one of the best all time cards. It was the first card that could reasonably run games on a 30in monitor (2560x1600) without lowering the resolution. While the review lists the 5970, I think the 5870 was the card that demonstrated one of the biggest advances in years.

 

[silverblue]

[citation][nom]arkadi[/nom]Voodoo1 picture is wrong....I still got a working rig pared with diamond 2d card. What about other 3dfx cards? like 3000...[/citation]
They did mention the 3000, however it was still limited to 16-bit colour and wasn't the best performing card at the time.

The Kyro II should be mentioned... internal 32-bit colour meant 16-bit mode was the best looking of any card, not that there was any point in using it. It did stuff with (on paper) unimpressive hardware that occasionally made cards priced twice as high blush.

 

[Guest]

still have my Voodoo1 card, I will never let it go, call me sentimental

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]dragonsqrrl[/nom]"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.[/citation]

Yeah, that was a major flub on my part. I can honestly say I'm not sure how that got in there. What i meant to mention is the 7800 GTX 512 MB, a card that got a huge boost in core and memory clocks compared to the standard 7800 GTX, but it's architecturally the same. Fixed!

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]purrcatian[/nom]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.[/citation]

Architecturally, not really. There might have been a die shrink and some tweaks, but same pipelines, same memory interface. You run a 9700 PRO at the same clocks as a 9800 XT, you get the same performance.

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]njgtechguy[/nom]There is an error on the GeForce 3 page. Hardware tessellation became supported in DirectX11, not 10.[/citation]

Yup, fixed this one! Thanks for the heads-up njgtechguy.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]Maximus_Delta[/nom]GeForce 8800GT should of been in there... it was stunning value at the time.[/citation]

If this were a list of the best graphics card values of all time, the 8800 GT would have probably topped the list.

But this is a list of the cards that earned the title of fastest card available. The 8800 GT was never the fastest card available, so it loses out unfortunately.

 

[cmcghee358]

I think you should have included retail price at launch. To really put the performance and cost in perspective. Just my 2 cents.

 

[cleeve]

"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."

"I dont agree with the choices. Most people didnt buy highend cards."

Once again, guys: this is a list of the top performers, not the top values. What you're asking for is a separate list, and maybe we can make that happen in the future. but that's not the point of this article.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

This article isn't a list of the greatest cards, but a list of the top-performing cards of each generation.

A list of the greatest cards would've included the legendary G92 8800GT, or the best bang-for-buck ATI 4850.

 

[silverblue]

If that's the case, why the GF2 GTS and not the GF2 Ultra?

 

[lncpapa]

Wow... I've owned most of these cards. Maybe I really am a "graphics whore" like some of my friends say.

 

[silverblue]

[citation][nom]Cleeve[/nom]Once again, guys: this is a list of the top performers, not the top values. What you're asking for is a separate list, and maybe we can make that happen in the future. but that's not the point of this article.[/citation]
You're right, and it's something that most of us missed in our eagerness to get to the cards themselves, but the title did throw me as these may be the strongest cards, but not necessarily the greatest. Still, our bad.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]silverblue[/nom]If that's the case, why the GF2 GTS and not the GF2 Ultra?[/citation]

Those are GeForce 2 cards, and the GeForce 2 is there.

 

[amk-aka-Phantom]

If this were a list of the best graphics card values of all time, the 8800 GT would have probably topped the list.

Only if you forget that by default its fan only runs @30% max, which caused many cards to die after overheat. Have one in my junkbox - got burned by FC2 on my friend's rig... Thousands of same cases on Google. Still, a great card.

 

[silverblue]

Incidentally Cleeve, your avatar... isn't that the softmod from 9500 to 9700 Pro courtesy of the fact that they were on the same PCB?

 

[cleeve]

Incidentally Cleeve, your avatar... isn't that the softmod from 9500 to 9700 Pro courtesy of the fact that they were on the same PCB?

Some of them were, yes... if they used the same PCB, you could usually mod it. Changed the memory interface from 128- to 256-bit if I recall correctly.

 

[silverblue]

ATi quickly changed it so that the 9500 had its own specific PCB, which was a shame, but the 9500 wasn't around for long anyway.

 

[tinmann]

When the TNT 2 Ultra came out I was in gaming Nirvana.

 

[newbie_mcnoob]

I miss 3dfx. I remember playing the original Unreal and Unreal Tournament using Glide. I didn't have to wait for the lame "Pre-caching" screen my friends got with their Direct3D cards.

 

[monkeysweat]

would be nice to have a list of the cards that were the "people's champions" cards that had great output compared to price,,, some of those cards on this list would still be on the other list,, but something more people could relate to

 

[cypeq]

Only bad thing about this article is that majority never seen this gpu's besides benchmarks... They may be in memory of some1 running benchmarks for life ^_^

all of them:
1. had overkill performance for all games at release
2. had incredible price equaling to midrange gaming rig (especialy dual gpu's)
3. Price/performance ratio was horrible
4. They rarely give you year of braging rights ^_^

 

[silverblue]

Precaching in UT...

That could be enabled or disabled in the INI file or by typing preferences in the console and browsing to the [D3DDrv.D3DRenderDevice] or [OpenGLDrv.OpenGLRenderDevice] sections. Even now, using the enhanced OpenGL driver, I get a momentary PRECACHING message on loading the game, but as I said, that can be disabled.

The Glide and MeTaL renderers didn't have a UsePrecache setting.

 

[billj214]

I actually have all of these cards listed in a box somewhere, starting from the Vodoo and Matrox cards. Imagine if I put all that money spent on high end video cards into stock instead of playing games!

 

[Guest]

No 8800gt, no 4850, gtx 460... these were the greatest cards the ones that gave huge performance boosts at the midrange, power to the masses! Not those $1000 ovens almost no one has!