What is Your Favorite GPU You Ever Owned? Your Least Favorite?

[Headfoot]

I just looked it up it was about 14% faster than a much older 8800gtx.
Just saying, I don't see anything great about that card.

The 4850 was legendary. It was hardly slower than the 4870 (OC vs OC) and it was really cheap. Great card. IMO it was the spiritual successor to the 8800 GT of the past generation for great performance at an outstanding price

 

[VirtualLarry]

The 4850 was legendary. It was hardly slower than the 4870 (OC vs OC) and it was really cheap. Great card. IMO it was the spiritual successor to the 8800 GT of the past generation for great performance at an outstanding price

It was a lot like getting a 1070 card, for a 1050 price. I had four of them at one point.

 

[f2bnp]

Indeed. It's just like someone said in the previous page, it came out a year and a half later than the 8800GTX, was faster and cost 150E instead of 500E.
I loved the hell out of that card.

I should also say that the 8800GTX was legendary and I remember drooling for it. The performance increase over the previous generation was unprecedented, it was faster than the 7950GX2 even! I should have added that to one of my favs as well .

 

[lyssword]

I know people will crucify me for liking 3.5gb card, but evga 970 (up from ati3850) has been great to me for the last 2 years, bought it used for low 200. Quiet operation, decent fps even in latest games with some settings turned down. Least favorite was one of my earliest video card purchases: geforce 2mx 400, just a crappy cut down card

 

[KevinH]

Favorite - 8800 GT
Lease Favorite - GTX 680

 

[PPB]

Favorite - HIS IceQ 7950 Boost. Never had a semi-ish high tier GPU (when It launched) in my DIY career. Everything felt high quality of that GPU: Cooler (people bash the semi-blower design but I found it really up to task), frontplate and PCB design.
Least Favorite: Chaintech FX 5200. Worst SKU in the lineup of the all-time worst generation of GPUs from Nvidia (and I certainly can't think anything from AMD or ATI even came close as bad as FX 5xxx series).

 

[AtenRa]

8800GTX and HD7950 are those that have stood above the rest in the last 10-15 years and i have used many from both AMD/ATI and NVIDIA in the past.
For dual GPUs the GeForce 7900GX2 and AMD HD5970, both of them pure porn in performance at the time of release.

Least favorite ?? something like MX440

 

[railven]

Favorite: Radeon 9700 Pro
Least: Radeon HD 2900 XT

Honorable Mention: Radeon HD 7970.

 

[TeknoBug]

Favorite? 3Dfx Voodoo2 and somewhat 8800GT.

Least? GeForce FX5700, didn't render properly in many games that it prompted me to go out and get an ATI Radeon x700Pro.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Voodoo 2 (and later SLI) for me also. 8800GT second place

Worst would be the 280x.

 

[Byte]

Wow remembering what GPUS i have, i sure had a ton. And seems like im a big nvidiot, until i got into mining and bought a dozen radeons. My favorite is pob the 460 as it got it almost half off from a crazy sale, next to the 1080. Worst is probably 670 as the perf dropped off so fast compared to the radeons only 2 years later.

My gaming card list.
VooDoo Fusion
VooDoo 3
GeForce2 GTS
GeForce3 Ti500
GeForce4 Ti4400
Radeon 9800 Pro
GeForce 6800
GeForce 7900 GT
8800 GTS 112
9800 GT
GeForce GTX 260
GeForce GTX 460 v1
GeForce GTX 670
Radeon 290
GeForce GTX 970
GeForce GTX 980Ti
GeForce GTX 1080

 

[Blue_Max]

Favorites: My original 3dfx Canopus Pure3D, the only one with 6MB memory instead of everyone else's 4MB!
Honorable mentions:
My current fleet of EVGA GTX 960's w/ 4GB and backplates. Rock solid, super quiet, low power consumption on all the speed we need for any of our games at max detail (or close!)
ELSA Geforce DDR. Not only was it almost as fast as the next Geforce2, it had some of the clearest 2D for those of us on VGA monitors. The only one as clear as Matrox.

Worst: Voodoo Banshee and Voodoo Rush. Nice they took one slot instead of two, but speed was lower than the Voodoo2 and V1 they were supposed to replace.
Almost forgot an i740 video card that didn't support API's like openGL, etc. Had terrible 2D fuzziness as well. Huge disappointment - my classic 3D Virge card at least was acceptably clear, even if its "3D" capabilities were practically nil.

 

[TeknoBug]

GeForce4 Ti4400

Had that card too and it was a great card, but the fan died without my knowing and the card got fried and ended up substituting a GeForce MX440 for a while which struggled in some games.

 

[KevinH]

Wow remembering what GPUS i have, i sure had a ton. And seems like im a big nvidiot, until i got into mining and bought a dozen radeons. My favorite is pob the 460 as it got it almost half off from a crazy sale, next to the 1080. Worst is probably 670 as the perf dropped off so fast compared to the radeons only 2 years later.

My gaming card list.
VooDoo Fusion
VooDoo 3
GeForce2 GTS
GeForce3 Ti500
GeForce4 Ti4400
Radeon 9800 Pro
GeForce 6800
GeForce 7900 GT
8800 GTS 112
9800 GT
GeForce GTX 260
GeForce GTX 460 v1
GeForce GTX 670
Radeon 290
GeForce GTX 970
GeForce GTX 980Ti
GeForce GTX 1080

I had a similar history.

Voodoo 2 8meg (!)
Riva TNT 2
Geforce
Geforce 2
Geforce TI 4600
Ati X800 Pro
Gaming Laptop for a two years with a 7950?
8800 GT
GTX 460
GTX 660
AMD 7870
AMD 7950 (Witcher 3 caused me to swap out quite a few cards during a brief period)
GTX 680
AMD 7970
GTX 1060


I think I'll have the 1060 for a LONG time.

 

[BFG10K]

Best:

• 9700 Pro. 1600x1200 with 16xAF playable in virtually every game at the time. Back in 2002 this was a huge deal.
• 7900GTX great drivers and dead silent for a high-end card.

Worst:

• 6800 Ultra: hot, expensive, loud, and never worked properly with nForce chipsets and Windows XP's DEP.
• GTX470 and GTX480: hot and both sounded like jet engines.
  
• 8800GTS: shockingly poor drivers that took around a year to get decent. I had it in my drawer for months because it was unusable in about 75% of my games. Also died shortly after a year thanks to bump-gate.

 

[GoodRevrnd]

Only correct answers are Voodoo2 and 9700 Pro. Those cards were such massive game changers. Countless great nvidia cards, I just don't think any of them offered the complete leap those two cards did.

 

[jlo82585]

well i have only ever owned nvidia due to amd's naming scheme never making any sense to me ever but..

best - gtx470, bought it back when 9800gtx was still king and the 470 while very loud would run circles around it. the 470 had its faults, like poor cooling which ended mine but it was the first gpu I bought that allowed me to play 99% of my library at max settings.

worst- gt5600 i don't think i need to say more, it was the first gpu I ever bought and was so terrible i didnt buy another one or even consider PC gaming as an alternative for consoles for years..

the gtx 970 is making its way to the worst list basically because of how nvidia hyped it up only for me to buy one and it cant even play the division on ultra at 1080p with 60fps.

 

[casiofx]

Favourite:
1) HD5670: cheap but can run 1080p games without problems.
2) R9 290: Well no explanation needed.
3) GTX1070: fast, power sipping and cool, but biggest reason that I liked it is because of the combo with gsync monitor.

Least Favourite:
1) Radeon 9000: wrongly bought for being too cheapo

 

[IllogicalGlory]

Most of my video cards have been pretty cool. I don't use them all that much, sadly. The only one that stands out as bad was a 6670 DDR3 that came with the prebuilt "gaming" computer I used once. Just freaking slow. Although, it still kind of wowed me; I had been using $300 laptops to game up until then - meaning 8-15 FPS in Oblivion/Fallout 3, which I played constantly. 6670 was good for about 60 FPS in those games at 900p. The FX-4100 that it came with didn't help, sadly.

 

[Timmah!]

I loved my Gtx 590

 

[DrRamtop]

Too hard to pick just one card for each category.

Favourites:
1) VTX3D Radeon 7950 - a lovely card, came with a 10% factory overclock (800>880MHz) and the GPU running at just 0.96v under load. Cool, quiet and completely fuss-free. Hugely powerful when new and even today still a good, solid card. And it's probably made me something like 4x the purchase cost in crypto mining over the years.
2) Radeon R9 Nano - my current card and total gem. Small, quiet, low-power and just eats up any game I throw at it. I still find it amazing AMD managed to cram a full-monty Fiji into this little thing and power it from a single connector.

Not So Favourite:
1) Asus reference-model Radeon 290. I bought a pair of these, and oh boy was it a mistake. Loud, hot and generally awful. In Crossfire they sounded like a jet engine and throttled like crazy. And both cards had the black-screen bug and had to go back to Asus for replacement. They sent me a pair of Direct CU II 290s, one of which caught fire from an exploding VRM a couple of months outside the warranty...
2) GeForce FX5900 - 'GeForce' and 'FX', I don't need to say more.

 

[Ken g6]

The only GPU I've really disliked was, I believe, an ATI Rage Turbo Pro from 1996. Way too much artifacting. I think it may have been broken.

Since then the discrete GPUs I've bought have all been Nvidia, starting with a 460, and each has been an improvement on the last.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I had an ATI Rage Pro (3D? Turbo?) AGP card, in a 440BX mobo. I ran it at 100Mhz AGP bus speed. Worked great, though slower than the Voodoo2 cards of that era in 3D.

 

[ElFenix]

Favorites: My original 3dfx Canopus Pure3D, the only one with 6MB memory instead of everyone else's 4MB!

*canopus pure3d club high five!*


can't really say i have a least favorite graphics card. i never had any true stinkers.

 

[ctk1981]

My first video card was a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI card. I had purchased Unreal and couldnt play it with the onboard graphics....went out to walmart and picked it up. Was shocked at the difference it made. Unfortunately the cooling in that compaq tower was inadequate.....it basically burned itself up. 3dfx was kind enough to replace it with no questions asked. After that I would say that next big wow moment was the 9700/9800 pro.

Duds for me....Geforce 2 GTS (creative labs no less) and Matrox cards (as far as gaming went).