What was your most awesome video card purchase ever ?

[komatta]

I had (that I can remember):

TI 4200
-something I probably don't remember-
Radeon 4870 1GB (eventually crossfired it)
Radeon 6950 2GB, unlocked shaders + OC

The 6950 is my favourite because it was relatively inexpensive and after unlocking is as fast as a 6970. It's still pretty good at 1080p for most modern games.

Worst was the CF setup on the 4870. Too many issues with drivers and inconsistent CF performance. I stick to single-card solutions now.

 

[cytg111]

Hands down Voodoo2. Saw a friend run the first Voodoo and started saving for the soon to be released Voodoo2. Eventually went SLI on that card.
What a friggin jump .. It was unreal, from software rendering on 100-300mhz pentium class machines to Voodoo accelerated was night and day.
Everything since then have been incremental advances IMO.

 

[el etro]

The card that i loved most was a Radeon HD7770, my "first" bleeding edge tech video card purchase. The next year i bought a GTX 670, that allowed me to Max that dammed Crysis3 game, but the card i loved most is the 7770.

 

[WT]

Mine was the Canopus Pure3D from 3dfx... 6MB vs. the standard 4MB.

Oh yea, I still own one !! That should be on my pegboard video card display. I have a hard time parting with some of them, so I just decided to hang 'em on the pegboard and remember them fondly.

 

[hg321]

Voodoo 2...it was light years ahead of what I had at the time

 

[StinkyPinky]

I have a lot but it has to be the original Voodoo 1 for me. Transformed how I viewed 3D gaming. It blew my mind.

I also loved my 8800GT which was a beast on a budget.

Worst....never really had a total dog.

 

[Neurodog]

For me it was:

Voodoo 1
Voodoo 2
Matrox G400
ATI 1950xtx

 

[It's Not Lupus]

Voodoo3 3000

 

[godihatework]

Geforce 3 ti200 128MB Gainward Golden Sample.

 

[JumBie]

Geforce 4 MX 440.

 

[Cerb]

Hands down Voodoo2.

This. I even paired it with the good old 3D decelerator, an S3 Virge (I recall finding how it got the name, trying the MW2 version made for it)!

 

[Cerb]

Radeon 9600XT 256MB was the best performance upgrade for me...the IQ was just brilliant on those early 2000's games.HD5850 a close 2nd.
Worst card:NVidia FX5600S 128MB...weak performance,noisy and troublesome.

Ironically, I count the 9600XT as my worst purchase. The drivers were so bad, that I just let it collect dust for a few years. BSODs, Z glitches, flickering surfaces, all kinds of weird stuff. Until not long ago, the card ran for years, flawlessly, with AMD's legacy drivers, though. It had better looking FSAA & AF, no doubt.

I replaced with it with an FX 5900XT, in the end, and replaced the cooler. Should have done that to begin with.

 

[JBT]

probably my 9500 Pro. This was my first Med range card. It OCed well, but wasn't one of the cards that could unlock. It was still awesome.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

getting a 5850 at launch and then immediately modding it with an Accelero S1 (had to destroy the stock HS/fan in order to get the base plate separate which was useful for cooling the RAM but necessary for cooling the VRMs) and then being able to easily hit 1GHz

$259 for the 5850 + $29 for the S1, and then watching the 5800s only go way up in price over the following months, yeah that was pretty sweet.

 

[at80eighty]

Ti 4200

 

[CP5670]

Hands down Voodoo2. Saw a friend run the first Voodoo and started saving for the soon to be released Voodoo2. Eventually went SLI on that card.
What a friggin jump .. It was unreal, from software rendering on 100-300mhz pentium class machines to Voodoo accelerated was night and day.
Everything since then have been incremental advances IMO.

Yeah, the Voodoo 2 was a huge leap forward back then. I had the Diamond 12MB one. A lot of games back then were also specifically designed around Glide. I remember Unreal, Freespace and Battlezone looking and running fantastic on it.

 

[Stas]

Yeah, the Voodoo 2 was a huge leap forward back then. I had the Diamond 12MB one. A lot of games back then were also specifically designed around Glide. I remember Unreal, Freespace and Battlezone looking and running fantastic on it.

Got my hands on Voodoo3 for a Piii build just so I can run Glide in Unreal

 

[cbuchach]

Diamond Monster 3D. Experiencing 3D acceleration for the first time was mind blowing.

I had the same experience with a 3Dfx Banshee

 

[Eric1987]

My 290x because it runs everything at max 4k settings fairly smooth like you [redacted] said it wouldn't.

This is a technical forum -- clean your language up if you want to be able to continue posting in it.
-- stahlhart

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Canopus Spectra 2500 and Pure3D II :

Least favorite - S3 Virge :

 

[CP5670]

Got my hands on Voodoo3 for a Piii build just so I can run Glide in Unreal

I got a Voodoo 3 later on too, but so I could run the same games at the huge resolution of 1024x768 instead of 640x480.

 

[BlockheadBrown]

The first - Rendition's Verite V1000. After that, the ATI 9800 Pro.

 

[Eric1987]

The card that i loved most was a Radeon HD7770, my "first" bleeding edge tech video card purchase. The next year i bought a GTX 670, that allowed me to Max that dammed Crysis3 game, but the card i loved most is the 7770.

Rofl the 7770 was never bleeding edge. It was terrible the day it released.

 

[el etro]

Rofl the 7770 was never bleeding edge. It was terrible the day it released.

I'm talking about the 28nm. I'm not a fan of power-hungry VGAs.

 

[Blitzvogel]

Rofl the 7770 was never bleeding edge. It was terrible the day it released.

It wasn't bleeding edge, but it wasn't terrible either. I consider it another excellent midrange card in the same tradition as the 6600GT, 9600GT, 4770 and others.

Bought a 7750 for my GF's computer last year. Godsend compared to the Intel HD 2000 in that machine. While it certainly is not an R9 290, or even a 7770, it's been nothing but excellent and in many ways outshines even my 5850 in some of these newer DX11 titles.