Worst GPUs of All Time?

[Insert_Nickname]

I'd say Intel "Extreme" Graphics in their various guises. The only thing extreme about them was how bad they were. Occasionally you couldn't even get a decent picture on screen, as they were often paired with equally bad RAMDACs, glitches on the Windows desktop, unstable drivers, virtually zero 3D performance and I could go on...

Honourable mention to the i740, that the Extreme Graphics were actually based on.

 

[LTC8K6]

The Intel 740 story is pretty interesting. It was very close to being great, but not quite.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel740

 

[Valantar]

I haven't been following the industry long enough to really say, but the GTX 480 and RX 460 stand out. The 480 wasn't all that fast compared to 5870 and apparently it was ridiculously noisy.

The RX 460 is controversial, but it's simply slow, overpriced and doesn't overclock. It's always at the bottom of performance charts even when the RX 480 and RX 470 do very well.

That's an odd conclusion. Sure, the 460 is slower than the 1050, but not by much, and not in all cases. Also, it's cheaper. Power consumption is comparable. You could argue that the Polaris 11 chip is more of a dud, as its biggest desktop implementation lags significantly behind the largest competing small-chip card (1050 Ti), but the 460 itself isn't a bad implementation. "It doesn't overclock" isn't an argument at all - even though Nvidia has hit gold here with Maxwell and Pascal, you're never guaranteed any kind of OC headroom, regardless of GPU. You could also argue that the price difference between the 1050 and the 460 should be bigger - I agree slightly - but that's about it. All in all, the 460 is a very decent low-end gaming GPU. In no way does it belong on any list of "worst GPUs of all time."

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

In recent history one of the worst cards ever is the r9 290x.... pretty ridicolous...runs hot as hell 95+ degrees, 300W, sounds like a plane taking off...and if that wasnt unfortunate enough it was even slower compared to the competition..

lolwut? True at launch and for cards with reference cooling, but the tables have turned on Kepler and AF cards have perfectly acceptable noise levels.

On top of that, ATi cards can literally pay for themselves - just ask any miners here

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

diamond multimedia stealth 2000 3d. this was around the voodoo era. think it was based on the s3 virge?

the only game it worked with right was the modified version of a game that came with it. think it was decent. everything else (that i had anyway) either rendered wrong or so slowly as to be worthless.

 

[USER8000]

The FX5800 and the issues it had with Half Life 2.

 

[DrRamtop]

Lots of candidates for this one. i740 obviously, S3 Virge, Matrox Parhelia, etc.

Kind of obscure now, but the single worst GPU I've ever come across was the 3Dlabs Permedia 2. Creative Labs decided it would be a great idea to sell a gaming graphics card, the modestly named Graphics Blaster Exxtreme, based around a buggy, slow chip that was designed for OpenGL CAD work and wasn't fully compatible with DirectX.

The Permedia 2 lacked so many functions that the Creative Labs drivers ended up doing a lot of software emulation, slowing the thing down to a crawl; in many games pure software rendering was quicker. 3Dlabs provided generic drivers that didn't do emulation, those were merely very slow and had a bunch of visual artefacts in most games.

Honourable mention also to the S3 Savage 2000 with its woeful drivers and completely broken hardware T&L unit.

People criticise today's GPUs, but at least they work. Back in the 90s that wasn't always true.

 

[SlickR12345]

The whole Nvidia's FX 5000 series, AMD's X 100-900 line, the whole Nvidia's 8000 line, AMD's X2000 series, Nvidia's GTX 470 and 480, overpriced turds with giant power draw.

Nvidia's GTX 660, GTX 950 and 960 all of them overpriced turds at insane prices for basically low end cards.

 

[Piroko]

Hmm...
From Nvidia:
The nv30 - Geforce 5800 series.
All cards that died prematurely in the 65nm and 55nm days due to Bumpgate.

From Intel:
The whole GMA series, from start to finish. I have no idea how often I fell into the trap of "well, it has around half the performance of <other card> in <game 1>, that means <game 2> might get around 40 fps in low settings" only to see that second game then running at less than 10 fps for no reason. They deserve a special place in hell. I was genuinely shocked at the performance level of my Phenom 2 igp (880G iirc) back then, because I never expected to be able to play games like SOASE on an igp thanks to how tainted I was from the Intel igps.

From ATi/AMD:
I was late to the party with them, so I can honestly only say that their reference cooled cards were terrible for multiple generations. And probably the HD2900 series.

 

[Genx87]

Ha that is true about late 90s may or may not work. I got the Matrox Millenium 3d. Which was from what I could tell was Matroxs attempt to sell some hot garbage as a 3d accelerator. The thing ran a 3d demo from Matrox and that was about it. Luckily they weren't terribly expensive. I followed up that mistake by purchasing a Matrox G200. Which at least ran DirectX, albeit slowly. After that went with Nvidia\ATI and never looked back. Of course the i740 makes it into my list. Intel trying to advance the AGP bus. Which would had worked if it werent for those pesky cards from Matrox, ATI, 3DFX, and Nvidia that bypassed the AGP slot and put the memory right on the card.

I would put the NV30(5800 series). And the ATI XTX800XT or however many X and Ts they could cram on the model number. It had potential but ATI\AMD couldnt figure out the software bug in their design process that killed yields. I think some people still have that card on back order a decade later.

 

[SlowSpyder]

HD 2900XT was a real let down - though it probably looked worse than it truly was next to the once in a generation G80

The 2900XT was a let down, but I loved the 2900 Pro. Same 512 bit memory and easy 33%+ OC's.

Of the GPU's I owned I'd say the GeForce 4MX was my biggest let down.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

I have a memory of the NV GTX 9800GTX being released with much pomp and circumstance, and ending up as [inferior] compared to the 8800GTX release. Dunno how much of that was the 9800 sucking, or just how little difference there was between them though. 2xx series came out shortly thereafter and left it in the dust.

Please use language appropriate for a technical forum.
-- stahlhart

 

[IllogicalGlory]

That's an odd conclusion. Sure, the 460 is slower than the 1050, but not by much, and not in all cases. Also, it's cheaper. Power consumption is comparable. You could argue that the Polaris 11 chip is more of a dud, as its biggest desktop implementation lags significantly behind the largest competing small-chip card (1050 Ti), but the 460 itself isn't a bad implementation. "It doesn't overclock" isn't an argument at all - even though Nvidia has hit gold here with Maxwell and Pascal, you're never guaranteed any kind of OC headroom, regardless of GPU. You could also argue that the price difference between the 1050 and the 460 should be bigger - I agree slightly - but that's about it. All in all, the 460 is a very decent low-end gaming GPU. In no way does it belong on any list of "worst GPUs of all time."

Posting it was against the rules of the thread anyway, so I don't want to really argue the point, but I do disagree with you. I just can't think of any circumstances under which a 460 is a good purchase. The same cannot be said for its bigger brethren, which are much much better.

I've only been following the industry for about three or four years regardless. I'm sure there are much worse cards.

 

[dogen1]

NVidia NV1. Who thought that quads were a good idea?!

Yeah, but that was their first GPU. They didn't have an established brand. Plus, it did run some sega ports.

The FX series(specifically the 5800 Ultra) was not only a disaster, but also a huge letdown after the GeForce 3 and 4s. And it was loud as hell. I don't think there's ever been a louder card.

Even if it was actually a good card, I don't think anyone would be ok with that noise.

 

[Erithan13]

I'd say Intel "Extreme" Graphics in their various guises. The only thing extreme about them was how bad they were. Occasionally you couldn't even get a decent picture on screen, as they were often paired with equally bad RAMDACs, glitches on the Windows desktop, unstable drivers, virtually zero 3D performance and I could go on...

Ah the memories. One of the first hype trains I remember boarding was for Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 back in the early 2000s. The previous games in that series were isometric 2D and could probably run just fine on an abacus connected to an etch-a-sketch. RCT3 made the jump to full 3D and brought some sexy texture shaders along for the ride as well. When they released the demo and later the full game, it was a rude wake up call for just how badly old systems were being left in the dust. The tech support forums were flooded by people for whom the game would flat out refuse to run, in almost all cases that could be traced to those infamous words: Intel Integrated Extreme Graphics. I also remember that people would build parks so complicated they literally ran in the seconds-per-frame territory even on the best systems of the day.

Not so much 'bad' as merely annoying: Any laptop GPU. I'm sure they're better these days but I'm forever tainted by my memories of a Dell laptop with a Geforce Go 7900GS. The actual performance was reasonable for it's day (coped with UT3 & Bioshock OK) but the drivers.....Have a problem with the latest games? Just update the drivers, silly! Oh it's a mobile GPU? Well you can just sit tight and deal with crashes, glitches, woefully terrible and inconsistent performance and so on until they squeeze out a driver for that particular GPU in 6 months time that resolves some issues and introduces a bunch of new ones at the same time. Oh you did update the drivers eventually? What took you so long? Nevermind, now you just need to rollback to the third most recent driver to get this game to run because the newer ones won't work. I'm sure you know where the legacy driver versions are hosted right? Ugh. 'Gaming' Laptops. Not even once.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Kind of obscure now, but the single worst GPU I've ever come across was the 3Dlabs Permedia 2. Creative Labs decided it would be a great idea to sell a gaming graphics card, the modestly named Graphics Blaster Exxtreme, based around a buggy, slow chip that was designed for OpenGL CAD work and wasn't fully compatible with DirectX.

But OH, did it make the OpenGL 3D "Pipes" screensaver in Windows 2000 fly! About the only good use for that card. (I had one, purchased as part of a Creative Labs Multimedia Kit.)

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Not so much 'bad' as merely annoying: Any laptop GPU.

Yeah, ever since the late 90's/early 00's, my stance was 'A gaming laptop isn't.'

 

[Scoobyd00]

For me it was the 6800GT. Drove me away from any Nvidia based cards for more the 10 years.

The first card with a onboard VPU and highly marketed as the best video encoding card that could also excel in a gaming world.

After spending over 300 dollars on their top of the line card you find out weeks later that the "onboard VPU" is broken and that $75.00 video cards can actually encode movies faster.

Nvidia's solution to a card they released with a hardware problem?

We know its broken, we dont care, we will not replace them with any other card BUT we will SELL you some software fro $20.00 to help speed our broken $300.00 card up to levels of other $75.00 cards on the market.

Last nvidia based card I bought up until the 1070 I just go last week, since 2004.

 

[amenx]

I have a memory of the NV GTX 9800GTX being released with much pomp and circumstance, and ending up as [inferior] compared to the 8800GTX release. Dunno how much of that was the 9800 sucking, or just how little difference there was between them though. 2xx series came out shortly thereafter and left it in the dust.

Those cards were in different price tiers, the 8800gtx was far more expensive than the 9800gtx ($650 vs 350 I believe). Nvidia erred in the naming of the G92 cards, as well as not trying hard or caring much to increase performance since it was already beating the 2900xt.

 

[crisium]

What about cards that seemed good for the time, but short-term subsequent releases stunned them?

The fastest non-unified shader card was the X1950XTX. $650 in September 2006. A user got to enjoy the fastest card on the planet. For 2 months. Then the 8800GTX launched. 'Nuff said. It's not unusual for flagship cards to have their reign overthrown after a short while, but the shift to unified shaders and DX10 is huge. You didn't just miss out on xx% more performance, but significant compatibility for all games moving forward.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Those cards were in different price tiers, the 8800gtx was far more expensive than the 9800gtx ($650 vs 350 I believe). Nvidia erred in the naming of the G92 cards, as well as not trying hard or caring much to increase performance since it was already beating the 2900xt.

That makes sense. The marketeers who have been coming up with naming conventions for IT hardware for the last decade and a half need to be taken behind a shed and shot. Intel *almost* got it right with the i-series, then they went and started mucking it up with mixing M series, bringing out 'named' i-series which cross architectures, etc. Then you've got mobile versions of chips, sometimes sharing the same nomenclature otherwise.

Buncha asshats.

 

[Head1985]

What about cards that seemed good for the time, but short-term subsequent releases stunned them?

The fastest non-unified shader card was the X1950XTX. $650 in September 2006. A user got to enjoy the fastest card on the planet. For 2 months. Then the 8800GTX launched. 'Nuff said. It's not unusual for flagship cards to have their reign overthrown after a short while, but the shift to unified shaders and DX10 is huge. You didn't just miss out on xx% more performance, but significant compatibility for all games moving forward.

x1950xtx was 450usd when released
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2069
To topic:Worst gpu:
fx5800
fx5900
GF6800
GF7800
GF7900

 

[USER8000]

What about cards that seemed good for the time, but short-term subsequent releases stunned them?

The fastest non-unified shader card was the X1950XTX. $650 in September 2006. A user got to enjoy the fastest card on the planet. For 2 months. Then the 8800GTX launched. 'Nuff said. It's not unusual for flagship cards to have their reign overthrown after a short while, but the shift to unified shaders and DX10 is huge. You didn't just miss out on xx% more performance, but significant compatibility for all games moving forward.

You want to also compare that card to the Nvidia competitor at the time. The X1900 series actually did much better in shader heavy games than the 7900 series.

 

[amenx]

What about cards that seemed good for the time, but short-term subsequent releases stunned them?

The fastest non-unified shader card was the X1950XTX. $650 in September 2006. A user got to enjoy the fastest card on the planet. For 2 months. Then the 8800GTX launched. 'Nuff said. It's not unusual for flagship cards to have their reign overthrown after a short while, but the shift to unified shaders and DX10 is huge. You didn't just miss out on xx% more performance, but significant compatibility for all games moving forward.

The GTX 780 fits that bill. Close to 290x performance then slipped to near 280x levels over a year or so.

A card no one mentioned yet is HD4850. Popular then and well reviewed... but had high idle temp (70c) for reference card and load of 95c. I had a gtx 470 reference based card, load temps were about 90c and hated it due to fan noise. Any hot and loud card in my view is a fail, regardless of how well it performs.

 

[imported_bman]

S3 Virge graphics decelerator. One of these came with my family's home computer in the mid 90s, I don't think there was one game that I could get it to work with.
Voodoo 4 & 5 series
Nvidia's FX series
AMD's 2000 & 3000 series