What was your first GPU ever?

[Pantlegz]

Agp voodoo2

 

[Pariah]

Agp voodoo2

No such card. Voodoo 2 was PCI only.

 

[waffleironhead]

Diamond Fire GL Pro 1000

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/3d-accelerator-card-reviews,42-6.html

Check out those images!

 

[Blue_Max]

No such card. Voodoo 2 was PCI only.

Exactly - it has to have been a Voodoo Rush, Banshee, or V3/4/5.

 

[Blitzvogel]

I don't remember what was in the HP Pavilion our family got in 1996. It had something, I did play Flight Simulator 98 on it quite a bit.

My first computer with dedicated graphics was in a Gateway MX2575 or some number like that I bought in January 2006. It had a Mobility Radeon X600 with "128" MB of Hypermemory which was actually 64 MB dedicated + 64 shared RAM. It made possible my first real forays into PC gaming, even though it was drastically underpowered for running games at higher graphics settings. Played lots of BF2 and CoD2 MP in DX7 mode on that thing! I also played Far Cry and HL2 on it quite a bit.

As for my first computer build in early 2007, I put an EVGA 8800GTS 320 MB in it. Holy shit, it was like some miracle being able to play every game at the time fully maxed out at 1440 x 900 at 60 FPS. Of course, Crysis utterly crushed it :awe:

Some good memories and ALOT of money spent inefficiently on my part in some cases. But a great learning experience.

 

[DominionSeraph]

It was a Diamond Riva TNT...I think. It ran like utter crap so I took it back and got a Voodoo 3.

What? The V550 was great.

 

[Zorander]

Riva TNT

 

[bononos]

Not counting mere accelerators, I think it was the Geforce2 MX.

 

[Phynaz]

IBM 8514/a

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_8514

 

[SystemOverclock]

I had a Voodoo accelerator card at some point then moved out of the country from 1999 - 2004 and was pretty much without a PC of my own, so not much time for building or anything.

First card I can remember 100% was by beloved EVGA 8800 Ultra Superoverclocked.

 

[Makaveli]

Trident 2MB
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trident_Microsystems

Ditto!

 

[AdamK47]

GPUs didn't really exist until NVidia started calling them that with the original GeForce.

 

[Majcric]

I think it was the ti 4200. The first one I can remember with certainty was the all powerful FX 5500.

 

[Sho'Nuff]

Voodoo 2. Bought it to play half life of all things.

 

[Gundark]

Matrox Mystique 220.

 

[CP5670]

What? The V550 was great.

I had that too and it was a good card, especially the 32-bit rendering which looked great back then. It wasn't as good as the 3dfx stuff for me though since many games back then were designed around Glide and ran best (or exclusively) on that.

 

[altairauditore]

Nvidia RIVA TNT2

 

[Blue_Max]

IBM 8514/a

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_8514

I suppose if you want to be like that, mine was the Texas Instruments TMS9918A in the TI-99 4/a

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments_TMS9918

 

[Omar F1]

I remember Trident card with 256 colors
16Bit colors was a dream.

Next PC, I had the damned S3 Trio 3D 2X/AGP - which was just a 2D accelerator only.
The problem was, a friend got the 1X version which has the 3D acceleration just fine.

 

[CropDuster]

Voodoo 3 2000 to run Falcon 4 in glide

 

[ElFenix]

"August 31, 1999 marks the introduction of the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) for the PC industry. The technical definition of a GPU is "a single chip processor with integrated transform, lighting, triangle setup/clipping, and rendering engines that is capable of processing a minimum of 10 million polygons per second."

following this definition, for me it was the Geforce 2 mx 400

"technical definition" written by marketing people trying to differentiate their product. nvidia came up with it as a shorthand to show off their new T&L engine built into their latest graphics chip.


based on that usage of GPU it was the geforce256. first graphics chip was a matrox millenium (not sure if that was the chip, the card, or both).

 

[netxzero64]

Diamond Stealth 2mb

 

[GunsMadeAmericaFree]

Trident 512k, back around 1990. Around 1992 I remember needing to buy a replacement card when the original died, and I had to shell out about 100 bucks for a 1 megabyte card. It's an amazing amount of money considering how little performance the card had compared to the ones today, but it was the norm back then.

 

[GunsMadeAmericaFree]

I suppose if you want to be like that, mine was the Texas Instruments TMS9918A in the TI-99 4/a

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments_TMS9918

Ah, the TI 99/4a. That was my original PC - I learned basic on it. Actually, I just referenced it and its cpu with 8,000 switches/transistors when writing up a review of the A10-7800, which now has about 2.4 billion transistors.

 

[JM Popaleetus]

GeForce 3 Ti200