Your first dedicated GPU?

[SImonzax]

I believe it was S3 Savage with 8mb ram, after that upgraded to geforce 2 MX200. A decent upgrade back then..

 

[Oyeve]

Other then my Voodoo and Voodoo 2 cards I had the OG Geforce 256. In fact, I still have it.

 

[lixlax]

My firsts: Point of View ti4200 64MB> Sapphire 9800pro 128MB> Chaintech ti4200 64MB> Hercules 9700pro 128MB.

Seems messy but I considered 9800pro overkill for my needs at the time and replaced it with another 4200. Bought the 9700pro because Battlefield 2 didn't run on DX8 hardware.

 

[MrTeal]

The first GPU I ever purchased was a Rendition Vérité V2100 in the Diamond Stealth II S220. It definitely wasn't the best GPU available, but it was cheap and going from an S3 Virge it made Jedi Knight actually playable.

 

[Raduque]

I believe it was S3 Savage with 8mb ram, after that upgraded to geforce 2 MX200. A decent upgrade back then..

I had the S3 Savage 4 - my god the textures on S3 MeTaL in UT99 and Q3A blew 17 year old me's brain. I upgraded from that to a GeForce 3 Ti200. Generic, but fast as hell.

 

[Ajay]

I had the S3 Savage 4 - my god the textures on S3 MeTaL in UT99 and Q3A blew 17 year old me's brain. I upgraded from that to a GeForce 3 Ti200. Generic, but fast as hell.

GF 3 was the first Geforce I actually liked (half decent 2d image quality + very good at games).

 

[wege12]

My first dedicated GPU was a Fury X.

 

[BW86]

GeForce 2 MX200

 

[sdifox]

CGA

 

[iamgenius]

Diamond Viper v550. I was happy I have got one hell of a card. I played final fantasy 9 in my pc using a psx emulator.

Our friend's Anand review:

https://www.google.ae/url?sa=t&sour...XvJQStN2gvBfW2RBQ&sig2=dIKE0__sCk9sb7M1myKgLQ

 

[DidelisDiskas]

GeForce4 MX 440

Was fine for playing warcraft 3 and the like, but then a friend gave me a cd with the doom 3 demo (or beta, can't remember). Was really excited to try out such a modern game and got my hopes crushed when it loaded up and saw something like this:

 

[CuriousMike]

ATI EGA Wonder! to replace the Hercules card that came on my PC-XT.

The reason for purchasing the ATI card was it allowed me to run CGA ( and EGA ) games on my monochrome monitor.

 

[Iron Woode]

my first video card ever was an ATI Rage Pro Turbo 4mg PCI card.

my first gaming card was a Voodoo 3 3000 APG. I replaced that card a year or so later with a brand new Asus GeForce2 GTS 32mg AGP card.

 

[Oyeve]

GeForce4 MX 440

Was fine for playing warcraft 3 and the like, but then a friend gave me a cd with the doom 3 demo (or beta, can't remember). Was really excited to try out such a modern game and got my hopes crushed when it loaded up and saw something like this:

OMG, I remember that horrible card! I remember buying it in florida for $150 thinking I got a good deal back in 2002, then when I got home to NYC it turned out to be a turd. Thats when I switched to ATI.

 

[flexy]

Riva 128 <--- it was awesome.

I never had a Voodoo....but wasn't the Riva 128 the first actual single-chip GPU that combined 2D and 3D?

 

[Oyeve]

Riva 128 <--- it was awesome.

I never had a Voodoo....but wasn't the Riva 128 the first actual single-chip GPU that combined 2D and 3D?

I thought it was the tnt2.

 

[flexy]

nah, TNT2 came much later than Riva 128.

 

[ElFenix]

Riva 128 <--- it was awesome.

I never had a Voodoo....but wasn't the Riva 128 the first actual single-chip GPU that combined 2D and 3D?

S3 ViRGE was the first. That was 1995 and the slower versions could be beat out in sheer fps by software rendering on fast pentiums once the settings were turned up. The next year saw the Rendition verite, matrix mystique, and ati rage introduced. Nvidia's competing chip at the time was the nv1, which was a commercial failure.


Mechwarrior 2 on the mystique was amazeballs

 

[pcslookout]

3dfx Voodoo 2 something. Forgot.

I am showing my age lol.

 

[flexy]

S3 ViRGE was the first. That was 1995 and the slower versions could be beat out in sheer fps by software rendering on fast pentiums once the settings were turned up. The next year saw the Rendition verite, matrix mystique, and ati rage introduced. Nvidia's competing chip at the time was the nv1, which was a commercial failure.


Mechwarrior 2 on the mystique was amazeballs

Nice. Yeah I just learned about NV1 as well which was before Riva 128. But wasn't there something which made Riva 128 special? Like it was the first card that supported Direct3D or something?

"Matriix Mystique" and the other you mentioned, I totally remember coming across these names often back then when I researched what the "best" PC would be. Matrix Mystique probably the most-mentioned and most popular.

What was it that made the Riva 128 then so unique, compared to these? Was it the price..or possibly Nvidia's marketing?

 

[digitalbuda]

I had a Voodoo something back in the day. But then again I wasn't very big on computers. When I did get into it, my first love was the Ati 9800 Pro 256mb, memory died on the card (pink square artifacts on the screen). I still have the card as a collectors item.

 

[Tup3x]

ATI Rage IIc 4MB. That graphics deaccelerator ruined my childhood gaming. Drivers sucked and if something worked without visual glitches it run so slow that you could almost count the frames with one hand. Luckily RivaTNT 2 Pro came to save the day... The performance boost was so large, zero visual issues.

 

[ElFenix]

Nice. Yeah I just learned about NV1 as well which was before Riva 128. But wasn't there something which made Riva 128 special? Like it was the first card that supported Direct3D or something?

"Matriix Mystique" and the other you mentioned, I totally remember coming across these names often back then when I researched what the "best" PC would be. Matrix Mystique probably the most-mentioned and most popular.

What was it that made the Riva 128 then so unique, compared to these? Was it the price..or possibly Nvidia's marketing?

It was really good at d3d fps-wise(though iq wasn't up to voodoo standards), the ram wasn't segmented like on voodoo cards so it could run at higher resolutions than most voodoo cards, and Nvidia got a lot of board partners in a hurry (I'm guessing the chip cost was fairly low in order to get sales, Riva 128 was literally do or die for Nvidia, it couldn't have another failure).

 

[gdansk]

If I remember correctly my first GPU was an Nvidia MX 440 for the first Medieval Total War. My second GPU was an ATI Radeon HD 4670, for Medieval Total War II.

 

[Shlong]

My first 3 video cards: Riva TNT, Riva TNT2, and Matrox G400.