Question what was your first legit video card?

[spaceman]

?
mine was the 16mb voodoo banshee end of 1998 irrc
played moto madness on it and was blown away, well, i was impressed at least
hbu?

 

[PingSpike]

Canopus Pure 3D was my first. It had 6mb!

I still have my Pure3D actually, I bought it used for like $60. Played Thief: TDP with it. I remember I had a resentful relationship with 3D accelerators as they were another expensive component I now had to buy to play games. I'd count it as my first serious card. I had some dumpy Trident fake 3D card before that but I only ever used it for non-accelerated games.

I guess we aren't going to count the Tandy 16 color graphics so that one is right out.

I've been digging the pure 3D lately and trying to run it using different PCI to PCI-e adapters recently,

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Not sure what is meant by "legit GPU", but I have hazy memories of a Trident Accellerator, an Intel i810 , a 3Dlabs Permedia something or another...

But my first "I want to play some real 3D games" card was a Geforce 2 MX200. Moving up to that card was like entering 3D gaming Valhalla after I got to move away from software rendering in ultra low resolutions.

 

[sandorski]

ATI Graphics Solution Plus, this card allowed me to use CGA Graphics on a Monochrome Monitor. This allowed me to play Silent Service, Mechwarrior, F19 Stealth Fighter, Civilization, and Command HQ on my XT and AT IBM Compatible PC.

Next was an STB Blackmagic 12mb Voodoo2 paired with some random Hercules/Trident based 2d video card.

 

[mopardude87]

legit as doing something besides powering up a monitor? That would be a 6200le so i could play some BF2 at somewhat decent frames at a pathetic 800x600 no doubt. I had no shame till i built my first rig and slapped in a 6800 ultra. I had no issues abusing the holy hell out of that 6200le that card was a plague and sold for so long at so many places i swear it wouldn't leave the shelfs. I got tired of that card and the god awful 8400gs. Both were locusts.

I can remember the 6200le shortly after getting a 6800 ultra just getting slammed into a wall. I hated that card so much. I was on a budget and well i figured it was that or Use lord who knows what the hell was on the Emachines onboard that was so bad it had to warrant a rage 128 " upgrade" The emachines was newer then the damn card for crying out loud by at least 3 years?

 

[NTMBK]

ATi Rage Pro, let us play Mechwarrior 2. Good times.

 

[Ajay]

Matrox Millenium + 8MB Creative Voodoo II user here!

Had the same - great combo. First GFX card was some ATi Rage card I bought to upgrade a Mac to play Tomb Raider.

 

[railven]

EDIT: Actually, the first true GPU i owned came with a slapped together PC my mom bought at some "shop," and it was a ATI Mach 64 (or 128? Circa 1995/96). I loved that PoS! How I became a PC enthusiast, young me took it apart and rebuilt it, even upgraded the DX2 33 to a DX2 50 and eventually all the way up to a DX4 100!

When I could finally work, a Voodoo 2, came with my uber (expensive! stupid young me!) Gateway Destination XTV!!! Pizza shop job FTW!!!

First card I bought trying to pump life into that same aging system was a Radeon 7000 PCI edition! It was absolutely terrible, and that's when I started to learn more about what GPUs were.

Next card was in a freshly built rig, the king and legend itself - Radeon 9700 Pro!!!

 

[railven]

I got to move away from software rendering in ultra low resolutions.

Memories...(time stamp: 2:22)

 

[SteveGrabowski]

ATi Radeon 8500. I still remember how blown away my friends were seeing GTA III at 1600x1200 when they were used to playing it on PS2 at 480i.

ATI Radeon 8500 Specs

ATI R200, 275 MHz, 4 Pixel Shaders, 2 Vertex Shaders, 8 TMUs, 4 ROPs, 64 MB DDR, 275 MHz, 128 bit

www.techpowerup.com

 

[senseamp]

GeForce 2 MX

 

[mooncancook]

My first "3D" card was the Matrox Mystique which was a disappointment. Then I added a 3dfx Voodoo and it was a perfect combination.

 

[pandemonium]

Cool question. Bringing back the nostalgia! Rage 128 Pro here. IIRC I ordered it, along with the rest of my build, out of the Aberdeen catalog (offline).

 

[EXCellR8]

first discrete adapter I bought was a 6200 GT from best buy... garbage card but then I upgraded to a BFG 6800 GT, which was certainly better.

this was my Athlon XP computer, circa 2004

 

[Muadib]

I still have my Pure3D actually, I bought it used for like $60. Played Thief: TDP with it. I remember I had a resentful relationship with 3D accelerators as they were another expensive component I now had to buy to play games. I'd count it as my first serious card. I had some dumpy Trident fake 3D card before that but I only ever used it for non-accelerated games.

I guess we aren't going to count the Tandy 16 color graphics so that one is right out.

I've been digging the pure 3D lately and trying to run it using different PCI to PCI-e adapters recently,

That's crazy that you have one!! I should have kept mine, but it went when I sold that pc. I had a Diamond card before it, that gave you 16 color graphics.

 

[SPBHM]

the first I can remember is some Cirrus Logic GD5424 with 512k

 

[Charlie22911]

If by video card you mean something resembling what we think of today, it would be the ATI All In Wonder 9600.
Specifically this one:

ATI All-In-Wonder 9600 Specs

ATI RV350, 324 MHz, 4 Pixel Shaders, 2 Vertex Shaders, 4 TMUs, 4 ROPs, 128 MB DDR, 196 MHz, 128 bit

www.techpowerup.com

Used it to play games of the era like Half-Life 2. It wasn't high-end, but that card was great in that my PC was also my TV. So you could say I had an HTPC before it was cool *hipster noises*.

If we are defining video card as anything that can output to a monitor, then I believe it was an S3 Trio (32 or 64, IDK). I wasn't really doing much with PCs back then, I was too into the SNES's excellent library.

 

[kawi6rr]

ATi Rage Pro, let us play Mechwarrior 2. Good times.

LOL, that's exactly the reason I bought my first card MW2 Mercs.

 

[Hi-Fi Man]

GeForce 8500 GT 512MB. Got it super cheap on eBay because the fan was busted. Not a great card, but it was much faster than the 6150 LE onboard that my nForce 4 board had.

 

[CropDuster]

Voodoo 3

 

[dlerious]

The first I can remember was an ATI 8514a card with OS/2 1.2 . Don't remember the model, might be laying around here somewhere. A lot of my early cards were ATi. Used All-in-Wonder for recording analog (TV, VCR).

 

[Head1985]

First S3 virge 1MB.First 3D riva TNT2 ultra.

 

[f2bnp]

First one was an S3 Virge on our Pentium 133 and then later on I had an integrated SiS 310 on the SiS 630 chipset, but neither could be considered great for gaming by stretch of the imagination. The first discrete gaming card I bought was a PIxelview GeForce FX 5600 XT, a gigantic POS that I should have never bought and in conjunction with my Celeron 2.4 proved to be completely inadequate for games even just a year later. I should have got for a Radeon 9600

 

[snoopy7548]

I remember around 1996/7 I wanted a Voodoo Banshee but my mom wouldn't let me buy it because she didn't like the name. I even tried to tell her it was just a graphics card, but nope.

It got to the point where I needed a 3D accelerator (heh), so I ended up buying the Quantum 3D Raven from Electronics Boutique. It came with three games - Gex, NFL Blitz, and San Francisco Rush. Good times...

 

[badb0y]

Depends on what you mean by legit.

First GPU: ATi Radeon 9200 that came prebuilt from Sony
First GPU I plugged in myself: Some FX GPU (maybe 5200 or something)
First Highend GPU: X800 XT I bought used and past it’s time.
First Actual Highend GPU: 7950 which I flashed to 7970

 

[Krteq]

S3 Trio 3D/2X 4MB ... still running in "legacy" DOS/W95 machine