What is your Upgrade Path?

[Deders]

Nice feedback, guys! Was 8800 gt a big jump in performance at the time?

Going from a card with 8 fixed pipelines to one with lots of parallel shaders like the was a huuuge jump.

I figured the OP meant your upgrade path for your current card....not every card you have ever owned.

It would be a pretty short list of cards we've not even seen yet if that were the case

 

[RaistlinZ]

Geforce 2GTS DDR
Radeon X800
Radeon 5870
Radeon 7970
Geforce GTX 770
Next best single core GPU for under $500 that gives me double the performance of my 770.

 

[MentalIlness]

Those cards were pretty much evenly matched so why did you make that side-grade?

That there was just pretty much to try a GPU from each vendor.

 

[skipsneeky2]

6200 le agp
6800 ultra agp
7800gs agp
8800gts 512mb
gtx280
gtx295
gtx580
7850
gtx670
gtx770

Maybe jump on a 290x, buying about xmas so whatever is $500 and beast and has 3+gb vram.Hopefully Maxwell is out?

 

[Techhog]

This is my first actual gaming machine, but I'll bite anyway.

Intel Extreme Graphics (lol)
Intel GMA 4500MHD
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650
AMD Radeon HD 7950

In all honestly, that 5650 was the most mind-blowing improvement there lol. That thing can't even play a lot of games on low 720p now... Maybe I'll win that 290X.

 

[ChippyUK]

Number 9 Motion FX Reality 771 (How's that for a name!)
Orchid Righteous 3D (Voodoo 1)
Diamond Monster 3D II x2 (SLI Voodoo 2)
Nvidia Geforce 256
Nvidia Geforce 2 GTS
Sapphire ATI Radeon 9500 (9700 pro bios though!)
Sparkle GeForce 6600 GT
Gigabyte Nvidia Geforce 7950 GX2 (The arm sized monster - I kept that one)
Sapphire ATI 4780
XFS ATI 7950

All of my gfx cards are leaps and bounds over the original offering. I normally upgrade every 2 years although the 4780 seemed to last forever.

I do miss Nvidia cards though and will buy a 880 later this year (if I can afford it!).

 

[voodoo7817]

I've been pretty patient on GPU upgrades. This is what I've done over the last 10 years or so:

ATI AIW 9800Pro
ATI 1900xt
Nvidia 8800gt
Nvidia 560ti

I don't like to spend more than ~$250 for a graphics card, and I will upgrade again when a new purchase at that price point can play most new releases at 60fps at 1440p (I'm dying a bit at the moment with the 560ti but I don't see value in upgrading now). Hopefully that will either be the 860/870 or whatever AMD releases to compete with that next generation.

 

[fluffedup]

Trident 3Dimage 975
Real3D Starfighter
TNT2 M64
Radeon 8500
X850XT (briefly... Years after it was a top-of-the-line card)
7600GS (replaced the X850)
5750
7850 2GB (current)
Not sure what the next will be. Probably whatever is $200ish whenever the new Batman game is finally released, assuming it's somewhat taxing.



The 7600GS to 5750 was probably the biggest, immediately noticeable jump in performance.

 

[AdamK47]

Pretty much everything between 1995 and today.

At the end of this year I'll have four GTX 880s and a 32" 4K display with HDMI 2.0.

Along with that I'll be getting 4 Samsung EVO 1TB SSDs in RAID-0, a 5960X, an X99 motherboard, and whatever flavor of DDR4 that will be available at release.

 

[stahlhart]

Diamond Stealth 2Mb PCI
Matrox G400 32Mb DH
Gainward GeForce 3 Ti200 Golden Sample
ATI 9500 Pro
ATI All-In-Wonder 9800 Pro
ATI All-In-Wonder X800 XT
MSI GTX 560Ti 1Gb SLI
MSI GTX 670 2Gb SLI
Maxwell something (still undecided)

 

[f1sherman]

Matrox Millenium 2MB
GeForce 256 32MB
GeForce 2 GTS 64MB
PowerColor Radeon 8500 LE 128MB
Gainward GeForce 7600 GS 256MB
Radeon X1800 GTO 256MB
GeForce 8800GT 512MB
Zotac GeForce 9800GT 1GB
XFX Radeon 4850 512 MB
Club3D Radeon 4890 1GB
MSI GeForce 460 1GB
XFX R9 290 4GB

 

[Hi-Fi Man]

GeForce 6150 LE (Gross onboard garbage)
GeForce 8500 GT (sweet ebay deal lol)
GeForce 7900 GS (another sweet ebay deal)
GeForce GTX 260 core 216 55nm (once again a sweet ebay deal)
GeForce GTX 560 Ti (first actual new retail purchase)
GeForce "insert card name here"

I've had many other cards though, these have not been used in my main machine however.
Matrox Mystique
Riva TNT 2
GeForce 2 MX4000
Radeon 8500 LE (128MB BGA RAM)
GeForce FX 5600 Ultra rev 2 (FBGA)
GeForce FX 5700 LE
Radeon 9800 Pro (Mac edition)
GeForce 6200 PCI (with PCI bridge chips)
GeForce 6600 GT AGP (with AGP bridge chip lol)
GeForce 6800 GT AGP (love this badboy, looks brand new)
GeForce 7600 GS PCIe (passive)
GeForce 8400 GS
GeForce 8600 GT

I really wanted a GeForce 8800/9800 GT back in the day as a teen but I didn't have enough cash until I got my 260 thus making that a moot point. I'm a baby compared to some of you guys but I love older hardware.

 

[lavaheadache]

Wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too many

 

[crashtech]

Reading about all these video cards reminds me of my first video card purchase, a VESA Local Bus card with a CL GD5429 chip. I don't remember the brand, but what a dead-end pile of crap that was.

 

[buklau]

rage128
voodoo5
geforce2 gts (died overvolting)
geforce4 ti4200 (died water spill)
geforce fx5200 (slow)
radeon 3870
geforce 9800gt
geforce gts250
llano 3870K
radeon 7850
radeon 7870

I'm waiting for die shrinks, and/or APU surprises before another upgrade.

2mb ati rage onboard 440lx board (my first comp, donated to goodwill later on after 7 years)
4mb voodoo 1 (got it for free and then gave away)
32mb Diamond Steath III PCI (purchased it and then gave away)
16mb voodoo 3 2000 pci (purchased it and then gave away)
64mb voodoo 5 5500 pci (purchased and still have it)
32mb radeon 8500 agp (purchased, brunt out, throw into garbage)
128mb geforce fx 5200 agp (purchased, and then sold on ebay)
128mb radeon 9500 flash mod to 9700 (purchased on ebay and then sold on ebay)
128mb 6600gt agp (bought on ebay, sold on ebay)
256mb 7600gt agp (bought from newegg, sold on ebay)
256mb 7600gt pci-e (got it from friend for free, sold on ebay)
512mb 9600gt (bought from newegg, sold on ebay)
512mb 9800gt (bought and return back to newegg overheating)
1gb gts250 (purchased on ebay and then sold on ebay)
1gb gtx460 (purchased on ebay and then sold on ebay)
2gb radeon 7850 (purchased it from buy.com, sold on ebay)
2gb radeon 7870 (bought it from ebay, currently using :awe

 

[Pottuvoi]

Pre 3D cards
Verite 2200 2MB
V2200 8MB
Nvidia TNT
Something?
Ati 9700pro
Nvidia 6800
Nvidia 8800
Nvidia 480
Nvidia 680

Next should be either Ati or Nvidias next gen chip. (waiting for something that actually upgrades ROPs etc.)

Next CPU will be Skylake. (Currently running with Intel I7 920)

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I have a 660 Ti now.

So I guess when I can get something that's at least 2x as powerful as that, for <$250, and which fits in a 10.5" or smaller form factor (mini-ITX case) then I'll get that. Assuming I play games that would benefit.

If you mean historically, I had an 8500LE that was nice. I got a 9600XT to play Homeworld 2 and Doom 3. I got an nVidia 7900GS for the dual-DVI capabilities, and it was also a nice GPU upgrade. I got a GTS 250 to replace that when it died a few years later. I side-graded to a Radeon 7750 because it was way quieter and used a lot less power. Experimented with Eyefinity using Crossfire 7750s, which was fun, but yeah.

Built a new system in 2013 (SFF) which needed a good single GPU (no Crossfire, obvs.) The 660Ti seemed like good bang for the buck, and I was doing Folding@Home at the time, which used to work better on CUDA. Dunno if that's still the case.

 

[exar333]

Reading about all these video cards reminds me of my first video card purchase, a VESA Local Bus card with a CL GD5429 chip. I don't remember the brand, but what a dead-end pile of crap that was.

Hmm, almost the same first card for me as well. Was trying to get a card that would help my MW2/Earthsiege 2 performance on a 486/DX2-50 machine (my first 'multimedia' computer. Was pretty disappointing...

On the other hand, when I got the Diamond Monster 3D (voodoo) on my P166mmx box, THAT was amazing. Nothing like Glide3D/OpenGL versions of games like Quake. It was eye-opening/. I was hooked.

 

[hurrakan]

Hmm I only remember the last few:

BFG GeForce 8800GT OC 512MB - ordered December 2007 for £143
Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4870 1024MB GDDR5 - ordered March 2009 for £143.47
1536MB MSI GTX 580 Twin FrozR II/OC - ordered May 2011 for £289.58
2GB MSI GTX 680 Twin Frozr/OC - ordered September 2012 for £346.68

No idea what was before the 8800 - that's as far back as my Gmail account goes.

I defintely had a 3DFX Voodoo card that I played Quake 2 and Carmageddon on.

Actually I just had to RMA the 680 and now I'm back using the old 4870... and it's holding up pretty well! I still get over 60fps playing Path of Exile with almost same settings (turned off anti-aliasing and dropped shadow quality down a notch). Fan gets loud and FPS drops when the screen gets too busy but it's still playable - much better than I would have expected. I don't think Path of Exile is very well optimised though.