The 30 Year History of AMD Graphics, In Pictures

[IInuyasha74]

From the ATI Wonder in 1986 to the AMD Radeon RX in 2016, we take a look at the evolution of AMD graphics.

The 30 Year History of AMD Graphics, In Pictures : Read more

 

[adamovera]

Archived comments are found here: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-3207492/year-history-amd-graphics-pictures.html

 

[larkspur]

The 6970 uses a Cayman GPU, not a Cypress GPU as is stated in the slideshow.

 

[XaveT]

I still have a 5870 in production. Great card. And six miniDP ports on one card is great for the workstation it's in. I'm sad to see no current flagships with the same configuration, I may have to do two graphics cards or get an unneeded professional series card at upgrade time.

 

[Nuckles_56]

This sentence doesn't make a lot of sense

"All-in-Wonder 8500 close to the performance of AMD's Radeon 8500, which was enough to compete against Nvidia's GeForce 3."

 

[cub_fanatic]

I have a couple of those 8500 all-in-wonder cards with the remote, receiver for the remote, the giant dongle, the software and all. A friend had them sitting in his garage and was going to chuck them so I took them home. I believe they were used in a doctor's office or something so that they could have a single display in the room and switch to TV while the patient waited and then back to a desktop to show them x-rays or whatever. I have one hooked up to a Pentium 4 Dell running XP but can't figure out much of a use for it in 2017. Even the tuner is almost useless unless you want to capture a video off of a VCR since they can only handle analog.

 

[Martell1977]

My first ATI discreet GPU was a Radeon 9250, and it was pretty good at the time considering the resolutions of the CRT monitors. My second was a Radeon 3850 AGP, while my brother went with a nVidia card. I sold the 3850 with the other parts, working, on eBay mid last year....my brothers nVidia card barely outlasted the warranty.
Next came my 6870, which I got in 2010 and tried crossfire in 2015, but ended up upgrading to a R9 390 as the 6870's ran into memory issues.
I know a lot of people complain about AMD/ATI drivers, but I've had more issues with nVidia driver (especially recently) than any AMD. Both my laptops have been nVidia GPU's (8600M GT and 1060 3gb).

Awaiting to see what Vega brings, I'm surprised it didn't at least get a tease at the end of the article, but hey, maybe this is a lead up to a Vega release soon?

 

[Guest]

I look forward to the next 30 years.

P.S. Maybe eventually heterogeneous compute will work. I doubt it. In any case, they seem back in formation, and charging forward.

 

[blackmagnum]

I hate reading this page format on IOS; lots of problems and hangs with page scrolling.

 

[CRO5513Y]

You can definitely see the change in Aesthetics, what ever happened to all the fancy details and characters on the cards?

(I mean to be fair not much room to fit them on cards these days since most have non-blower style coolers).

 

[LaminarFlow]

Hard to believe that I've been an ATI user for almost 15 years now. Always had a somewhat limited budget, I picked up a 9600XT in 2003, then X1900 XT in 2006, HD 4850 in 2008 (for $125, that was the best computer part purchased I ever made), and R9 280X in 2013.

 

[Vlad Razvan]

Ok - first of all, the 9800 pro is faster then both the 5900XT and 5900 Ultra. The FX series was a flop, with bad thermals, noisy fans, horrible DX9 performance and high price. The 9800 PRO dominated performance charts until nvidia released the 5950 Ultra - but ATi answered with the 9800XT, witch gave them back the performance crown.

Second, while the X800XT was marginally slower in openGL then the 6800Ultra, ATi quickly released the X850XT witch outperforms both cards. Things are still tied in openGL, but the X850XT has a clear advantage in D3D titles.

Third - the X1800XT was a bit of a flop. nVidia's 7800 was a superior card in most aspects. ATi fought back with the X1900 series. The X1950 PRO traded blows with the 7950XT, while the X1950XTX beat the 7900 Ultra in the majority of games. Unfortunately the X1950XTX was a hot and hungry card. It can be considered ATi's GTX 480.

 

[chinaman]

3870 x2 repurposed as a wall ornament........died 4 years ago, garbage display after 5 minutes of use and no more driver support can still be used as a hand dryer still I think:v

 

[mitch074]

Big up on the HD4850 - the only card I had that lasted as long was the HD7770 that replaced it when it finally blew up 4 years after I had bought (and voltmodded, and recooled) it. The Geforce4 4200Ti was the last Nvidia card I really appreciated, as my GF6600 (non-GT) was nice but not mind-blowing.

 

[Xeres Forteen]

I'm more of an nVidia person but I had the All-In-Wonder 9700. One of the best cards I've ever owned.

 

[MartinGM]

At the time Matrox threw in the towel ATI/AMD became my first choice in video cards for 17 years. But a couple of weeks ago I actually bought my first NVidia card, the GeForce 1080. Thanks for a trip down memory lane.

 

[Swordkd]

The original Radeon also had VIVO, unlike what the photo shows. This was before the All-in-wonder. I had that card, and used it to record the Twin Towers attacks straight off the cable.

 

[pbug56]

I had an all in one wonder, I think the 7500; ATI claimed you could digitize analog video. It really couldn't. What a hunk of junk; and it was my introduction to tdr errors.

 

[mapesdhs]

Not mentioned in the article, I remember the X1950 Pro AGP 512MB was a very popular card for AGP users. I used one for a long while until finally switching to PCIe (8800GT).

 

[BLKBRD]

My first GPU was a Nvidia GeForce 4 440 that came with the game Ballistics. I upgraded to a ATI 9700 Pro after seeing the "car paint demo". I never went back to Nvidia since. I currently have a XFX HD 7970 and am very happy.

 

[matthyst1]

Current GPU is a 5750. Only regret is it is not a 5830. Looking at Rx580 or Vega 56 - for einstein@home or similar.

 

[10tacle]

I didn't realize this was a three month old article. I still have my HD 4870 (ASUS Dark Knight) in a backup PC running good. In any event:

"The Radeon R9 Fury X outperformed Nvidia's GeForce GTX 980, but traded blows with its GeForce GTX 980Ti. As a result, determining last generation's king often came down to game selection and quality settings."

Yeah it traded blows with the *reference* 980Ti. The Fury X had very little overclock headroom being so highly overclocked out of the factory. A run of the mill factory overclocked 980Ti was faster and when user overclocking on top of it, it left the Fury X in the dust - all while still consuming less power (just like the Vega 64 vs. GTX 1080). Also, the Fury X was priced exactly the same as the 980Ti ($649 USD). The GTX 980 was $549 so the Fury X wasn't really in the same league.

 

[Tom Griffin]

I had a very old 486dx-33 using an ATI EGA wonder with one of the first NEC Multisync monitors. Nifty care crap drivers. The moved to a STB card since one of the developers lived in my area of work. Wow, how things have changed; graphics card advance and drivers are somewhat less craptacular.

 

[Tom Griffin]

Grrrr, cannot edit my post I meant to say "Nifty care they take shoveling out crap drivers." But that when they were ATI and based in Canada.

 

[Karadjgne]

I've owned only 1 amd gpu. An X800GT. Come to find out later when drivers were constantly crashing, that in reality it was an X800GT LE, a Dell card with chopped everything but the name. Performance was about the same as an X600.
My favorite card for many years was neither amd nor nvidia. 3dfx Voodoo 2 2000 16Mb. Crying shame nvidia bought them out and basically squashed everything but the api which was partially incorporated into physX. Would have loved to see what they could do today,since neither ATI or nvidia could touch those cards for performance in 2d or 3d at the time.