The 23 Greatest Graphics Cards Of All Time

[mosox]

Also Radeon HD 4870, first GDDR5 card.

 

[michalmierzwa]

Great article! Nice trip down the memory lane 🙂

 

[phraun]

The 9700 Pro... Good times. Also, 9500's that you could unlock to 9700's.

 

[nathcarter]

My first card was a Geforce MX420. Not exactly a graphics powerhouse. However, my next card? The fabled ATi X800 XT Platinum Edition. Top of the top of the line. I felt closer to Jesus when we first got that card. Unfortunately, shader model 2.0 was its undoing, and it was time to move on to a pair of mobile 8700GTs in a Dell XPS laptop. From there, my lovely little GTX260, which unfortunately cracked under the pressure to be replaced with my current (and rather beloved) card, a GTX560 without the Ti. I love it, it loves me back, and our relationship is excellent!

 

[verbalizer]

My first card was a Geforce MX420. Not exactly a graphics powerhouse. However, my next card? The fabled ATi X800 XT Platinum Edition. Top of the top of the line. I felt closer to Jesus when we first got that card. Unfortunately, shader model 2.0 was its undoing, and it was time to move on to a pair of mobile 8700GTs in a Dell XPS laptop. From there, my lovely little GTX260, which unfortunately cracked under the pressure to be replaced with my current (and rather beloved) card, a GTX560 without the Ti. I love it, it loves me back, and our relationship is excellent!

ROFL - that's a cool reply..

 

[Guest]

I have a working PNY voodoo fx card! Anybody interested?

 

[verbalizer]

SPAMMERS DIE..

 

[haplo602]

[citation][nom]Ikaruga[/nom]Sorry, I wont It's not because I'm not into interesting arguments (I love them tbh) or because I want to dodge out from a debate without accepting if I'm wrong or anything, etc.. It's just because it would be several walls of text (literally!)... You just can't cover years of tech history in a forum postI found an "error" almost on every page, I give you an example with the first one: I clearly remember that (as a developer) I had a 3dfx card in my system very early (prelaunch), but the animator guy with his special dedicated 3D-workstation built for Softimage had a much more powerful professional card at the same time, therefore (imho) the statement: "superior to every other product on the market" is true if you consider "every other product" on the mainstream level only.[/citation]

Well I ma missing the 3D Labs cards in the list too (Permedia f.e.) 🙂 full opengl acceleration. The Voodoo cards looked like kids compared to that one ...

Anyway writing a title like 'Greatest of all time' and then shrinking the meaning to top of the line performer in each generation is quite dishonest. You could have picked a more suitable title (but that would not bring so many referals right ?).

 

[The Halo Don]

5970 is a legend.

 

[eddieroolz]

I'm still running the derivative of one of the most popular cores ever, the G92 and proud of it

 

[Guest]

I still have my Voodoo1. It will forever hold a place of honour.

Q1, Rockies & water viz FTW

 

[Guest]

Ehh......... where is G92?
I knew for fact that this is the longest-running GPU, renamed and recycle for 3 generation.......... starting from 8800GT, to 9x series and 1x series

 

[mikenygmail]

There should have been 25 cards total, including the legendary ATI/AMD 9800 Pro and the awesome 7900 GTO, which was an underclocked 7900GTX! Both provided amazing performance and excellent value at one point.

 

[warezme]

I think I have owned most of the Nvidia cards in this list, now including the 590. Memories, memories. In addition I owned two 12MB in SLI Voodoo2's when the came out, two 295's in SLI when they came out. I opted for just one 590 cause two is just over kill. I'm such a graphics WHORE!

 

[dalauder]

This article is entirely ill-conceived. It just posts the most powerful card of each generation, more or less. What it should be posting is the best performing card for the price points. That means the gems of the GeForce 400 and 500 series would be the GTX 460 1GB and GTX 560Ti. I cannot fathom how a list of greatness could include the heavily flawed 6990 and skip the nearly perfect GTX 460 1GB.

 

[verbalizer]

This article is entirely ill-conceived. It just posts the most powerful card of each generation, more or less. What it should be posting is the best performing card for the price points. That means the gems of the GeForce 400 and 500 series would be the GTX 460 1GB and GTX 560Ti. I cannot fathom how a list of greatness could include the heavily flawed 6990 and skip the nearly perfect GTX 460 1GB.

kinda of stated the same thing, just not as well.
+1..

 

[jamsbong]

3dfx Voodoo 1 and 2 are unbelievably great cards. I have really fond memories of them. Always blazingly fast and never disappoints. Everything else that came later was just pale by comparison.

 

[borisof007]

I owned the TNT2, a 7800 GS AGP, 9800 XT, 9800GX2, GTX 260 (core 216), and my latest, GTX 285 (was given to me as a replacement cause my 9800gx2 burned out).

 

[verbalizer]

@ borisof007 - how does that 9800GX2 compare to the GTX 285.?

 

[Guest]

I saw the no.1 store above
...

 

[008Rohit]

Awesome Article.

 

[silverblue]

[citation][nom]LORD_ORION[/nom]You are crazy people for not including the Vodoo 5, because it only included a new feature (AA) that is present on every video card since then.Also seriously, no 8800GT? The card that brought price/performance for all?You are clueless.[/citation]
Erm... the Voodoo 5 didn't introduce AA. Sorry.

 

[PhoneyVirus]

Anti-aliasing and hardware tessellation 10 years later and we still don't use it the way we should be just WOW. Also I though Voodoo 3 was the last card when Nvidia took them over but it's Voodoo 5 5500 I won't forget that.
Really nice tripe in time Toms hardware I love hardware like this.

 

[amk-aka-Phantom]

^ Voodoo 3 kicks ass.. still have one and still amazed on how much stuff it could play.

 

[PhoneyVirus]

Anti-aliasing and hardware tessellation 10 years later and we still don't use it the way we should be just WOW. Also I though Voodoo 3 was the last card when Nvidia took them over but it's Voodoo 5 5500 I won't forget that.

Really nice trip in time Toms hardware I love like this.