Best graphic change

[tenpole]

I had a super socket 7 board with the new agp slot. When I upgraded my pci S3 trio graphics card to a Voodoo3 3000 I was stunned by the graphics change.

 

[Jimzz]

My god man, 1.21 gigawatts was to much. We've gone back... in time.

But yes I remember the S3 trio. It was good for its time but the Voodoo was way ahead.

 

[cmdrdredd]

When we went from 2D to using Voodoo 1 for Glide.

 

[Yuriman]

I was really impressed with my Geforce2 MX400 from some kind of S3 card. Next biggest leap was probably Geforce4 MX to Radeon 9700.

 

[TerryMathews]

Riva TNT

 

[Pandora's Box]

Riva TNT 16MB to Radeon 9700 Pro.

I still remember having to pick my jaw off the floor haha.

 

[tenpole]

One negative about my gigabyte board was it did not have any ISA slots, which was probably a positive, but I had to ditch my massive Soundblaster card.

 

[SlowSpyder]

I went from software rendering in Halflife and Counter Strike to a Radeon 7200 DDR, this allowed 640x480 to turn into 1024x768 gaming. My gawd....

 

[el etro]

My first PC was a Pentium MMX back in 98, but my first great graphics change was going by the Gma 4500MHD(from a 2009 notebook) to HD7770->GTX670 this year. I Basically jumped from Valkyrie Profile 2(PS2) graphics to Crysis 3 max settings.

 

[bystander36]

I recall the Rvia TNT 2 I believe, which was a huge upgrade in graphics from before with directX 8 and much faster than what I previously had, which I do not recall and the visual increases were huge while I played Everquest.

The next huge upgrade was my ATI 9800 Pro and DirectX 9.0c (If I recall correctly). This brought huge increases in water detail in games like Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and Far Cry.

My next huge upgrade in visuals came with my GTX 470 in 3D Vision (it was supported prior to the 470, but that is when I got it).

Those are probably the most memorable upgrades.

 

[tweakboy]

Tandy comp my dad bought in 80's lol 2k ... with a nice big 5 and half drive 64kb ram.

 

[Ramses]

I went from an S3 Virge to a just released G-Force I bought for most of a paycheck at a mall vid game store way back when. Wife almost killed me but Quake2 was awesome...
Man that was like 15 years ago.

 

[FalseChristian]

I went from an 8MB Matrox M3D (PowerVR) to a 12MB Voodoo2 and I couldn't believe the frame-rate increase as well as IQ.

 

[RaistlinZ]

GeForce 2 GTS DDR. Can't remember what I was using before, but the GTS was one sweet card.

 

[Deders]

I can't decide, going from a 386 with a graphics card with half a MB that could just about run SVGA (not used that term in years) to a PII 350 with an ATI Expert@work that couldn't even properly do D3D didn't exactly blow me away until I put in a Voodoo card in.

Next big step up was from a TNT2 Vanta to a fully fledged geforce 3, along with a 1400 Thunderbird, got about 10 times the performance.

My 6600GT was impresive for the time but upgrading to a 9800GTX+ just blew me away, first massively parallel card I had. I don't think i'll ever have as huge a jump as this.

 

[ShagglestheLion]

Why does Radeon 9700 sound so familiar to me?

 

[TerryMathews]

Why does Radeon 9700 sound so familiar to me?

It was the go-to card in the GeForce 4 Ti era. It's also the earliest one I can remember where a lower specced card can be unlocked (9500-9700)

 

[superrockie]

What about a more recent upgrade. I upgraded from an amd hd 4650 to an nvidia gtx 660ti. From barely playeble bf3 at 1280*720 to be able to max it out on 1920*1080. How's that for a upgrade

 

[tweakboy]

gosh that is a low res. What rig you got ?

 

[Deders]

That's a pretty big jump, at least 5x the performance.

 

[DominionSeraph]

When we went from 2D to using Voodoo 1 for Glide.

This.

Going from monochrome to 16 color was also big.

My 6600GT was impresive for the time but upgrading to a 9800GTX+ just blew me away, first massively parallel card I had. I don't think i'll ever have as huge a jump as this.

I went from a Geforce 2 Go to a 8800 GTS.

 

[Deders]

This.

Going from monochrome to 16 color was also big.

Reminds me of going from a Spectrum to something that could display more than 1 colour in the same 8x8 pixel space

I went from a Geforce 2 Go to a 8800 GTS.

that's a tremendous jump

 

[vanillatech]

1. Upgrading from my Matrox Mystique (without bilinear filtering capability) to a Maxi Gamer 3DFX 4MB, and running Motoracer, Tomb Raider 1 and GL-Quake with 30+ FPS max details!

2. Going from a Geforce 2 MX to a Geforce 3Ti 500. That card ran everything at max for two years in 32bit colour.

3. From my FX5600 Ultra, which I was sure would be a killer card, upgrading to a 6800XT AGP and using Rivatuner to unlock the extra Pixel Pipes / Vertex Shaders (in 3DMark 2003, I went from 2400 ish to 11000). I replayed Doom 3 and went from 640x480 and low details to 1024x768 and high details still with double the FPS ^^

 

[Deders]

3. From my FX5600 Ultra, which I was sure would be a killer card, upgrading to a 6800XT AGP and using Rivatuner to unlock the extra Pixel Pipes / Vertex Shaders (in 3DMark 2003, I went from 2400 ish to 11000). I replayed Doom 3 and went from 640x480 and low details to 1024x768 and high details still with double the FPS ^^

I remember spanning my swap file across 2 drives so I could run this game at full detail, (1024x768, must have been using a 5700) made all the difference for me.

 

[vanillatech]

I remember spanning my swap file across 2 drives so I could run this game at full detail, (1024x768, must have been using a 5700) made all the difference for me.

It was such an awe inspiring game, both visually at atmospherically. But it did take it's toll on the hardware. You really did need a 3Ghz P4 or any Athlon 64 with a top end card to get the most out of it. I remember reading a GIANT F.A.Q which listed hundreds of tweaks you could add to the config file in an effort to smooth things out. Some worked quite well... but I knew it was time to bin that 5600 Ultra and get something with a bit more ooomph :biggrin: