Worst GPUs of All Time?

[Ranulf]

Speaking of integrated gpus, the biggest gripe I have is when Dell etc. won't let you install the latest intel drivers to see if you can drag out any improvement. I have a 6 year old Dell that just might be better if it wasn't stuck using 5 year old video drivers.

I don't remember having that many problems with my S3 Virge based Diamond Stealth card. It ran Duke3d, quake and some others well enough but then I only was stuck with it for 2 years.

 

[Tweak155]

Voodoo 5 was actually quite a sweet card.

That's what I was thinking! Had a 5500 myself, was bleeding edge at the time for certain games.

Hmmm personal bad buy...I don't think I had one luckily. I had problems with an ATi 9700 but I don't think that was the card series itself, just the lemon I had.

 

[crisium]

x1950xtx was 450usd when released
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2069

Oh, thanks for the correction! Not as bad timing to have bought it then. The 8800GTS 640mb (also just 2 months later) actually matched it's price then. Less of a letdown in terms of performance, though the unified shaders and DX10 really hurt the X1950XTX relatively more than other dethroned flagships, I would imagine.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

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.

What made them even funnier was that the graphics pipeline was partially implemented in software. Which meant that once you loaded up the CPU, basic GDI desktop performance would go down the drain. That was kind of a big deal with the single cored CPUs of the day, and worse the Extreme Graphics were often paired with low-end Celerons and slow-as-molasses HDDs. So you got a totally unresponsive system for literally 10's of minutes...

 

[lifeblood]

Intel i740. I wasted a lot of money on that POS, back when I didn't have much money to waste.

 

[Mondozei]

The GTX 780 is a good contender. Maybe not the worst of all time, but certainly it is one of the worst GPUs ever released. Of course, I'm following the maxim "there are no bad products, only bad prices".

It released at a very high price for a crappy GPU and it has aged terribly. It went up against the 290X and it has been beaten even by the 280X when I last saw it in GPU benchmarks. I think Sweclockers stopped even using the GPU in early 2015, because it was already obsolete back then. My guess is that we'll look back at 980 in similar ways, but even that GPU will probably age better than the 780 did.

 

[sandorski]

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.

That's what I was thinking! Had a 5500 myself, was bleeding edge at the time for certain games.

Hmmm personal bad buy...I don't think I had one luckily. I had problems with an ATi 9700 but I don't think that was the card series itself, just the lemon I had.

It's AA was years ahead of its' time and was its' strongest attribute. I loved that card for that reason, just beautiful no jaggies display and very good performance.

 

[poofyhairguy]

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.

Very interesting. I didn't know about that one. That is kinda like the Sega and Nvidia created NV1. It used quadratic surfaces instead of polygons back in 1995 and therefore went in the wrong direction of the next 20 years of GPUs. I think only six games (all Saturn ports) supported it.

Ha that is true about late 90s may or may not work. I got the Matrox Millennium 3d. Which was from what I could tell was Matroxs attempt to sell some hot garbage as a 3d accelerator.

The Millennium was Matrox's very popular mostly 2D accelerator. It could barely do 3D but it was made for 2D and was a very successful GPU in that arena because it made Windows very fast for the time. The card couldn't even texture, which to me is like the minimum for a 3D GPU.

The Matrox successor to that card made for 3D was the Matrox Mystique. I had one and I am happy to add it to the list. It was so bad the joke back in the day was it was Matrox Mystake. It lacked bilinear filtering, fogging, mipmapping, and true transparency support so games looked terrible compared to the competition. I did use it for years though as the 2D card for my Voodoo 2.

 

[DrRamtop]

The Matrox successor to that card made for 3D was the Matrox Mystique. I had one and I am happy to add it to the list. It was so bad the joke back in the day was it was Matrox Mystake. It lacked bilinear filtering, fogging, mipmapping, and true transparency support so games looked terrible compared to the competition. I did use it for years though as the 2D card for my Voodoo 2.

I had a Mystique before the Permedia 2. Lovely card for 2D, great performance and nice sharp signal quality. But yes, I think every 3D game I tried either crashed or looked like it was running on a Commodore 64.

(this thread prompted me to go fetch the Mystique from my old parts box. It's the later version with a 220MHz RAMDAC and the memory expansion daughter-board fitted. I really should plug it in at some point, pretty sure it'll still work just fine.)

 

[SPBHM]

S3 Savage 2000 was disappointing, it was supposed to be DX7, but it was actually DX6
anyone remember the XGI cards? they even had a dual GPU to compete with the high end, it did ok on some 3dmark, but it was discovered they were cheating and it was pretty terrible at games...
I would also mention the Voodoo 4 /5 VSA-100; didn't perform well against NV/ATI, lacked important features, it was basically the end of 3dfx...

about i740, it was a failure, but the IGP based on it (810) was pretty ok for 1999/2000.

 

[Concillian]

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.

I had a 4850 and once I added a heatsink to the VRMs it was a MONSTER overclocker. I have no remembrance of how it was stock, but it was a really good value for a modder / overclocker. I don't remember exact numbers or anything, but that card was fast enough that I was pretty comfortable until 28nm.

My fx5900XT, however was an actual turd. You can't put those two in the same category.

 

[sirmo]

The GTX 780 is a good contender. Maybe not the worst of all time, but certainly it is one of the worst GPUs ever released. Of course, I'm following the maxim "there are no bad products, only bad prices".

It released at a very high price for a crappy GPU and it has aged terribly. It went up against the 290X and it has been beaten even by the 280X when I last saw it in GPU benchmarks. I think Sweclockers stopped even using the GPU in early 2015, because it was already obsolete back then. My guess is that we'll look back at 980 in similar ways, but even that GPU will probably age better than the 780 did.

I have to second the gtx 780.. probably the biggest waste of money I ever experienced on a PC component. It was outdated within a year, which was simply unacceptable for a $500+ GPU. One day it was the GPU to get for 1440p gaming, next thing you know, it can barely do 1080p games at ultra. Should have bought a 290x.

 

[Triloby]

Out of all the worst GPU's I've tried in my life, it would be down to these two: The S3 Virge DX and some random Trident SVGA card I had back in the early 2000's.

S3 Virge - No wonder people called that thing a hardware decelerator. So utterly awful when it came to any 3D rendering; never mind the fact that it had decent 2D support. I also remember in a few 3D games that certain effects such as flat lights or smoke would be covered in black boxes, making graphical bugs and glitches more obvious. The only good thing about the Virge was the ability to use one of those freeware alternatives to the SciTech Display Doctor program called S3 Display Doctor or something like that for better VESA compatibility.

The Trident SVGA card I had back then was even worse than the Virge. Even more disappointing 2D and 3D performance, and it could only work under SciTech Display Doctor for universal VESA compatibility. That program was not freeware, and I obviously couldn't even afford (nor did I even want to) to pay for such a program back then.

I was even thinking of putting the N64's Reality Co-processor GPU in here, but I thought it wouldn't be fair to the N64. It had the first consumer grade GPU before even the Voodoo came out, and while the console's graphics have obviously not aged well, their games still look and play a million times better than any of those two godawful GPU's I had above.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I'm surprised people mentioned the VSA 100-based Voodoo5 cards without specifically mentioning the Voodoo5 6000:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voodoo_5#Voodoo_5_6000

Voodoo Volts? Teehee. Also the Kyro II should be mentioned:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/735/18

While it reviewed pretty well, anyone who actually had the Kyro II will remember it as having buggy-arsed drivers and a whole host of other problems. Most folks regretted buying one in the long run, and the Kyro line basically died in its infancy. It was a great card for playing Serious Sam though!

 

[Concillian]

ViRge was definitely a disappointment for many. Most people who bought one bought it because it was a 3D card, but it was the kind of card that supported features only to be able to say on the box it supported them (I call them "checkbox" features). People who did research knew it wasn't a gaming card and in no way compared to any gaming 3D card and so avoided it. As a result, pretty much anyone who owned one felt duped. That particular card was pretty much at the dawn of 3D as a technology, and technically supported 3D features, but wasn't fast enough to utilize any of them at any sort of reasonable framerate when playing a game.

I put that kind of thing in the same category of the GeForce 4 MX cards. I can't remember how many people I talked to who had one of these and was extremely disappointed, but the information was out there. It shouldn't have been surprising that you buy a GPU that's basically a shrink of a 2 generations old low end chip (GeForce 2 MX) and couple it with 64 bit memory that it would perform like garbage. The Ti 4200 was a TON faster, but not all that much more expensive, so people who researched would save up for the Ti 4200, so the only people who owned a GF4MX card were those who felt duped. But, to be fair it was far more difficult to do that kind of research in ~2000 than it is now.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Also the Kyro II should be mentioned:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/735/18

While it reviewed pretty well, anyone who actually had the Kyro II will remember it as having buggy-arsed drivers and a whole host of other problems. Most folks regretted buying one in the long run, and the Kyro line basically died in its infancy. It was a great card for playing Serious Sam though!

*confusedheadscratch*

I had one. It was great, though - never gave me so much as a hiccough.

And since the only other dGPU I'd had up to that point was an off-brand Riva TNT that barfed artifacts on any game that wasn't published by Microsoft*, it was definitely a beloved card to me.

*No, I swear. Age of Empires, MechWarrior, MechCommader, Flight Simulator, all fine. Everything else barfed artifacts. I eventually tracked it down to bad VRAM, which is why I got the 3D Prophet. But no idea why the Microsoft games always worked anyway.

 

[Shivansps]

Diamond Viper 2 Z200 (Savage 2000), kinda it only worked well well on UT and pre-2000 games... and DX kinda killed it. The card was released at December 1999 and was incapable of running DX titles that came from 2000 onwards.

 

[sandorski]

Diamond Viper 2 Z200 (Savage 2000), kinda it only worked well well on UT and pre-2000 games... and DX kinda killed it. The card was released at December 1999 and was incapable of running DX titles that came from 2000 onwards.

It was flawless in UT and Q3 and was one of the fastest cards in those 2 games. Every other game, literally, had some issue with it. Hell, even the Windows Start pic was corrupted with it.

 

[imported_bman]

I'm surprised people mentioned the VSA 100-based Voodoo5 cards without specifically mentioning the Voodoo5 6000:

The 6000 with its external power supply still gets a laugh out of me. I will give 3dfx's marketing department credit for being on point with those slick boxes post Voodoo 2.

 

[DrMrLordX]

*confusedheadscratch*

I had one. It was great, though - never gave me so much as a hiccough.

Huh. I knew a guy who had one and he complained endlessly about driver crashes and sluggish performance in games that had hardware T&L.

 

[postmortemIA]

ViRge was definitely a disappointment for many. Most people who bought one bought it because it was a 3D card, but it was the kind of card that supported features only to be able to say on the box it supported them (I call them "checkbox" features). People who did research knew it wasn't a gaming card and in no way compared to any gaming 3D card and so avoided it. As a result, pretty much anyone who owned one felt duped. That particular card was pretty much at the dawn of 3D as a technology, and technically supported 3D features, but wasn't fast enough to utilize any of them at any sort of reasonable framerate when playing a game.

I put that kind of thing in the same category of the GeForce 4 MX cards. I can't remember how many people I talked to who had one of these and was extremely disappointed, but the information was out there. It shouldn't have been surprising that you buy a GPU that's basically a shrink of a 2 generations old low end chip (GeForce 2 MX) and couple it with 64 bit memory that it would perform like garbage. The Ti 4200 was a TON faster, but not all that much more expensive, so people who researched would save up for the Ti 4200, so the only people who owned a GF4MX card were those who felt duped. But, to be fair it was far more difficult to do that kind of research in ~2000 than it is now.

I agree, GF4 MX series were simply a scam from the green Co. Two generations old back then meant that instead of DX 8 card, you get DX 7 card.

 

[SPBHM]

I agree, GF4 MX series were simply a scam from the green Co. Two generations old back then meant that instead of DX 8 card, you get DX 7 card.

thing is, it was priced well enough, almost all games at the time worked in DX7 mode, and the MX440 128bit and higher were fast enough (they had way higher clocks than the geforce 2 and improvements to the architecture that made them more efficient) for the games out back then, and the card just worked, no driver dramas like the Viper II Z200 mentioned earlier and many others,
I remember having an MX 460 in 2002 and it was very nice on what was one of the most popular games at the time, BF1942, it would run it at 1024x768 max settings no problem; not great by any means, but not really the worst, the MX line IMO... well apart from the 64bit crippled cards and so on...

the geforce 2 MX was also quite nice, I upgraded from the terrible Viper II to one and it was great, all games just worked.

 

[Raising]

Fury x

 

[Valantar]

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.

I had a 4850 and once I added a heatsink to the VRMs it was a MONSTER overclocker. I have no remembrance of how it was stock, but it was a really good value for a modder / overclocker. I don't remember exact numbers or anything, but that card was fast enough that I was pretty comfortable until 28nm.

When I first built the PC I still use today (!) I ran dual HD4850s in CrossFireX. They were ... pretty awful, but I messed up pretty badly when picking them too. I was trying to be "smart" and save money, and bought the 512MB RAM version. Not a good idea when trying to game at 1920x1200, even by 2008-2010 standards. I hadn't caught on to RAM not scaling in multi-GPU setups. Oops. And did I mention the noise? Goddamn, those coolers were awful. I think the FX 5800 Ultra in the video on page 2 is louder, but not by far. It has forever tainted my view of single-slot coolers. I ended up trying to stick Arctic Accelero S2 coolers on both cards, and had major trouble getting CrossFire bridges through those massive heatsinks, not to mention having to dremel off parts of the original heatsink to cool VRMs and other parts. And, of course, that turned them into triple-slot cards. I do believe I modded the cards to be 4870 equivalent (can't remember if this was through Omega Drivers or some other miraculous solution). In 2011 i replaced them with a single 2GB HD6950, and never looked back.

Damn, GPU prices have risen in recent years. Might be related to the currently weak Norwegian Krone, but by today's exchange prices I paid the equivalent of $151 each for my 4850s, and $200 for the 6950. My fury X was three times that ...

 

[dark zero]

NVidia FX series, and the Titan Z.

Titan Z is the WORST of the bunch.... even the FX series were useful somehow.

From AMD side... the RX 460, except the fanless one. That one is the total opposite and the card that all the 460 series could have gone.

Also the GTX 1060 3GB edition... that is an insult of all the cards.

On mobile there is the Mali 400 series...

Fury x

At least the Fury X is the best current cryptominer for a long time.