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?

 

[potato masher]

I think much of my old junk is probably in a storage box at grand paps place. I want to say 16mhz was the speed of my first cpu.. IIRC modem was 2400 baud.

My buddy did up a kit 8086 back in the day. A few years back his mom found it in storage and tossed it in the trash. He was pissed! My stuff may have met the same fate, who knows.

You guys out there with stuff stored at your parent's place, let this be a warning.. go grab your stuff if you care about it.

 

[ElFenix]

They're real collectors items now, much like basically any hardware with a 3dfx logo. Speaking of that, man I used to see all kinds of interesting test mule cards and one offs, probably from ID and the other devs around here. They'd show up at first Saturday sales when they were a year or two out of date.

We used to drive up from Austin a couple times a year for those. Get there just after midnight, wander around all the grot gear, get some kettle corn, check out the latest knockoffs of knockoffs, and get back to Austin a little after sunrise.

 

[dajeepster]

Matrox Millennium was my first card i bought... and i think i've owned just about every one listed in this forum at one point or another.

 

[Feld]

Matrox Millennium was my first graphics card. And my first truly 3D card was a TNT2 Ultra: the Diamond Viper V770 Ultra. I played a lot of Mechwarrior III and Interstate '76 on that TNT2.

 

[Arkaign]

Matrox Millennium was my first graphics card. And my first truly 3D card was a TNT2 Ultra: the Diamond Viper V770 Ultra. I played a lot of Mechwarrior III and Interstate '76 on that TNT2.

TNT and TNT2, followed not long after by the GeForce SDR and DDR models, were the releases that showed me that Nvidia was for real in the market. Riva 128 or whatever was alright enough, but the drivers and hit or miss support (compared to GOAT Voodoo 2 setups) left a lot to be desired, much like the pre-Radeon ATI stuff. After 3dfx stumbled and died, we lived in an Nvidia world most of the time until 9700/9800 Pro lol, even if I personally had a few Radeons during that time, like the 7500, 8500, and 9600 Pro, and I helped a buddy unlock one of the L 9500s into a 9700, bargain!

 

[Powered by AMD]

Jazz Adrenaline Voodoo Rush 3D with 6Mb RAM.
Should have kept it with the original box, now is a museum piece and its expensive and difficult to find.

On those days I was only a teenager and didnt have money so I had to sell it to buy upgrades.

 

[Adul]

First 3D card Voodoo paired with a cirrus 2d card I cant remember much on, voodoo banshee, Nvidia TNT2.

 

[Avalon]

An Nvidia TNT2 or Voodoo 4 4500, depending on your perspective

 

[Shivansps]

Diamond Stealth 3 S540 -> Diamond Viper 2 Z200 -> FX5200 -> Abit Radeon 9550 vguru -> 6800GS(Unlocked) -> HD4850 -> HD4670 -> Intel HD3000 -> GT240 -> HD6870 -> HD5850 -> GTX750TI -> RX480 -> Vega 8 -> RX570

That was my life. I also had a GT520 that someone gave me for free when i was using the Intel HD3000 on my 2500K, but the heavily overclocked HD3000 performed better than the GT520 max OC.

 

[Oyeve]

I remember when 7th Guest came out my then video card would not run the video sequences. I went to J&R and bought an Orchid Technologies card for like 200 bucks. Wasted money as the game sucked. The first REAL contender was a Matrox G400 mated with a Voodoo 1 card. Played the first Tomb Raider in Glide mode and was astonished!

 

[Charlie98]

EVGA GTX560Ti 448! I don't know why... but I was fascinated with that card. I did find out later about the multiple screen bug... where the fan ran 100% with multiple screens... or I would probably still have it today.

GTX560Ti 448 > GTX760 SC > GTX970 SSC > GTX950Ti SSC... all EVGA. The 560 is gone, but the other 3 are in use at the moment; I'm thinking about retiring the 760, swapping in the 950, and putting a new GTX1060 into the HTPC.

 

[Mloot]

My first real video card (an upgrade from the integrated video in my first computer) was a Radeon 7500 All-In-Wonder. The fact that I could, all of a sudden, play some 3D games and watch/record cable TV on my computer was a huge deal to me.

 

[Sonikku]

9700pro.

I played Vanilla WoW on it.

 

[Jaskalas]

Geforce 2 Series.

It gave Diablo2 some fancy lighting effects that made the game really "pop".

 

[mopardude87]

GTX560Ti 448 > GTX760 SC > GTX970 SSC > GTX950Ti SSC... all EVGA.

I used to be all about Evga myself going back to a 6200le. Been on a bit of a Zotac kick cause i get some nice cards dang cheap like this 1080 ti Mini i got directly from them for what was the cheapest buy now price on ebay.

I so wanted to take advantage of their 90 day step up program back in the day . Idk if they even still do that?

 

[Charlie98]

I used to be all about Evga myself going back to a 6200le. Been on a bit of a Zotac kick cause i get some nice cards dang cheap like this 1080 ti Mini i got directly from them for what was the cheapest buy now price on ebay.

I so wanted to take advantage of their 90 day step up program back in the day . Idk if they even still do that?

EVGA has always treated me right, and besides the 560Ti fan bug, I've never had a problem with any of my GTX cards. I tend to keep my cards a while, so reliability is a concern.

 

[KMFJD]

3dfx voodoo 1

 

[mopardude87]

EVGA has always treated me right, and besides the 560Ti fan bug, I've never had a problem with any of my GTX cards. I tend to keep my cards a while, so reliability is a concern.

Yeah i got a bit of bad luck with Zotac sadly. I had a Zotac 1070ti crap out last year and idk how but one of the fan blades on my 1080ti came off. It caused a severe vibration so in a odd fix i busted another one off directly from it to limit it. Such a fix works sadly with even numbered fan blades and mine has a odd number so dealing with a vibration that has gotten worst . Damn thing sounds like a dooms day event about to occur when it ramps to a targeted 70% fan speed at 65cel.

I got brave with the 90 day warranty. Not that a rma would cover the fan blade. I swear on my life nothing was close or could have caused it. Just jinxed i guess but that's ok when the fans fail nothing works better then dual 80mm case fans+ zip ties! 2019 was a unlucky year for me,i had a 4k monitor and a 1440p both crap out as well.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Hmmm, let's see:

3dfx Voodoo Banshee - 1998 <---- first dedicated videocard (AGP)
Geforce2 GTS VIVO - 2001
Radeon 9600 - 2004
Radeon X800 AIW - 2006 <--- last AGP videocard
Radeon HD3850 - 2008
Radeon HD7770 - 2012
Radeon HD7950 - 2013
Geforce GTX950 - 2017
GEforce GTX1660 - 2020

 

[Fir]

Probably something by STB, Tseng ET4000 based?
Earlier ISA junk, pre "local bus" VLB stuff... Diamond VRAM, dunno this was Windows 3.0/3.11 so 1993?
Trident cards weren't real cards, at 800x600 they did 16bit color and you could actually see them doing flood fills in MS Paint! HAHAHA! Same card could only do 256 colors at 1024x768 with 60Hz refresh which on a CRT was bloody awful!

The Diamond Stealth 64 video based on VLB with 2MB (yes MB not GB!) was a big improvement and could do hardware MPEG decoding so it was possible to watch full screen video on a 486 dx2/66. That was a big deal in 1994.

Iris Pro 655 on newest surface devices today, by far, will simply destroy it and even GPUs just a few gen ago.

 

[yeshua]

NVIDIA Riva TNT2

 

[ArchAngel777]

My first 3d accelerator was a voodoo rush 6mb card. I had video cards before that, but that was my first 3d one. I didn't even know I had to turn on glide, so I was playing wing commander and just thinking it might look a little better... Lol, then I found the glide setting. Wow. That was in 1997, I think. Great memories.

 

[Genx87]

Voodoo 2. I was blown away by the performance.