what was your FIRST video card?

[AdvancedRobotics]

First one I remeber is a Viper 330. I had two before this but have no clue what they were.

--aR Labs

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Far back as I can remember:

S3 Trio64 1MB (DX4-100@133)
S3 ViRGE DX 4MB (AMD K6-2 450)
Voodoo2 12MB (AMD K6-2 450)
TNT 16MB (C300A@450)
geForce SDR 32MB (C300A@476)
geForce2 GTS 32MB (Athlon 1.2)
geForce2 Pro 64MB (Athlon Palomino XP1700)
Radeon 8500 64MB (Athlon TBird 1.33)
geForce4 Ti4200 (Athlon Palomino XP2100)

Next will likely be a Radeon 9500 on a Barton XP2500.

- M4H

 

[Peter]

Color Large Screen expansion card for the Atari TT desktop publishing workstation ... Tseng ET4000 chip, 1024x768 256-color, 1 MByte RAM, no acceleration at all, 800 deutschmarks at the time (400 dollars). Yes, times have changed.

 

[sandorski]

Trident 128kb(don't remember for sure) in an XT back in '86.

 

[skriefal]

Trident 8900C (ISA bus, 512KB RAM) . 1990? 1991? Somewhere around that timeframe.

 

[sodcha0s]

First computer came with a Trident 1M 2D only card. I upgraded within a year to a 2M Matrox Mystique. ($200) Quickly learned that the 3D on that card BLEW CHUNKS so I spent another $200 on a 3dfx voodoo1, and Quake was a whole new experience....

BTW, the 'ol Matrox card is still in use in my daughters system, along with the o/c'd celery 300a...LOL

 

[ctk1981]

First graphics card I purchased seperately: Voodoo3 2000 PCI. It was on a Junkpaq 4540 model that had onboard video. I kept wondering why I would get wasted in Unreal. Slapped in the Voodoo3 and I was a killing machine.

Sadly noted....the Voodoo3 2000 desperately needed an active heatsink. I fried it once, no o/c or anything, it just ran hot. Got a replacement from 3dfx, second one lasted a long time. It actually turned purple on the back of the bracket from the heat. I threw it away a few months ago, still have the box though.

 

[vss1980]

Western Digital 90C31 based (Paradise) ISA graphics card....... ahhhh when 2D windows accelerators were the rage and EISA/MCA was as good as it got......

 

[DarkKnight]

3dfx(STB) 12mb Voodoo 2

 

[UnTech]

My first 3d card was a Creative 3d blaster that never could run opengl so I bought a Voodoo 1. Then when I bought another computer it came with an Ati Rage pro 8 meg if I'm not mistaken. But the Ati couldn't run games as good as the Voodoo so put the Voodoo in the system. I used that set up for about a year and a half until I bought two Voodoo 2's.
Then six months later I bought a Hercules Geforce 2 GTS 64mb and used that for about two years.

The Hercules GTS2 was probably the card I used the longest because in just the last year I have bought the following video cards:

Visiontek Geforce 2 MX 32mb
Gainward Geforce 3 Ti 200 64mb
ATI Radeon 8500 64 mb
PNY Geforce 2 MX400 64 mb PCI
Visiontek Geforce 4MX 420 64mb PCI
Visiontek Geforce 4 4600 128mb (card died on me)
Leadtek Geforce 4 4600 128mb
ATI AIW 9700 pro 128mb
Leadtek GeforceFX 5800 Ultra 128 mb

 

[fluxquantum]

hmmm...i recall having a gateway system. it had a TNT2 Vanta 8MB AGP video card. wow..those were the days. it's amazing how far we have come.

 

[razor2025]

First card was a Daytona TNT2 M64 AGP. Stupid local reseller made it look like it was TNT2, but found out later that (I was a bit PC illiterate at the time) it was cheap version.

Then my upgrade path:
-Visiontek GF3 Ti200, from Black Friday sale @ Best Buy (this was the card I held the longest after that TNT2 M64) It was almost god-send.

-Couple of GF2 GTS-Pro-Ultra and Radeon DDR 32MB, while I was trading in forums. I had them for at most 2-3 weeks and then they were resold to pay for another one.

-Went through a couple of Radeon 8500(LE), none were in my system for more than a month. The best was the Built by ATI 8500LE 128MB, I OCed that sucker to 300/300.

- bought Creative and Hercules Geforce 256. Sold the Hercules and kept the Creative one for my 2nd rig.

- Bought a Gainward TI4200 64MB from Newegg refurb. Decent card, but I didn't like the image quality in standard setting. Esp, the texture and filtering wasn't as great as my 8500LE.

- Now, I'm using a Saphire 9500 Non-Pro modded to 9700.

Too bad I didn't get to upgrade my PC when KyroII was out. Those are were pretty interesting. Oh, and I completely missed on the whole Voodoo thing.

 

[nemesismk2]

My first video card was the cirrus logic 1mb 5422 isa but my first 3D video card was the creative labs 3dblaster extreme 4mb pci video card which used the permedia2 chipset.

 

[vss1980]

My first 3D accelerator card was the Videologic Apocalypse 3Dx (PowerVR1 PCX2 chipset)...... near Voodoo1 performance but not at 3Dfx prices.

Follow-ups:
ELSA TNT2 Pro 32MB
Leadtek Geforce DDR 32MB
Sapphire Radeon 9000 Pro 64MB

 

[PClark99]

4MB Virge S3 Video Decellerator.

Then back in 1998 I added an 8MB Creative Labs Voodoo2.

 

[holdencommodore]

My first computer actual desktop computer (apart from the Texas Instruments Sinclair Spectrum ZX) was a old Amstrad 80286 8MHz system unit with intergrated VGA. First actual video card I had was some OAK Tech. 256 KB VGA card for my 368 system (the only Intel based computer I have ever owned!!). Then it goes something like this...

Trident TVGA 8900B ISA (512KB)
Media Vision Pro Graphics 1024 (VL Bus)
S3 Virge 325
SiS 6326
Intel i740
TNT2 M64 PCI and AGP
STMicro/PowerVR Kyro II
NVidia GeForce 4 Ti4200

I think that's it, though I've probably left something out...

Cheers

 

[PanzerAmd]

First post and my first video card which i brought ( S3Virge onboard ) was a voodoo 2 12MB ( Quantum3D ) card.

 

[Rankor]

Hercules Graphite 128 VLB 2MB, $250, 1994

based off S3 Trio 3d chipset. the supplied drivers for the card were trash in Windows 3.1. This was the first time I ever heard of reference drivers. I used the S3 reference drivers to get the card to work.

 

[Wag]

Hercules CGA/Monochrome.

Do I win a prize? Lol.

 

[DTSS]

8mb voodoo

 

[Boogak]

It was a 2mb S3 ViRGE integrated into the mobo of my Compaq P166 machine. It also had a 4mb PowerVR "3D" card (3D in quotes because that thing basically sucked arse). My 1st video card upgrade was a 4mb PCI STB Velocity 128 based on the nVidia Riva128 chipset. Ah, the glorious days of running MotoRacer in full filtered Direct3D glory... Here's the rest of my upgrade path:

8mb Matrox Productiva + 12mb Voodoo2
16mb Voodoo3 2000
64mb GeForce2 Pro
128mb GeForce4 Ti 4400
128mb 9700 Pro AIW

 

[BadAssAccountant]

My first card was a Voodoo 3 PCI that I bought at Wal-Mart. It didn't play well with the integrated video in my Compaq, but it finally started working with a BIOS update.

 

[Booster]

256KB ISA 16-color EGA with a 286 PC exactly 10 years ago. Holy crap, that's a lot of time.

 

[NYHoustonman]

Regular-Trident 4MB
Accelerator-Viper V330

 

[MistaTastyCakes]

S3 Trio 64V+ is what my old driver diskette told me, but I barely remember.