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Graphics cards that made you go "WOW!"

GoogalyMoogaly

GoogalyMoogaly

GoogalyMoogaly

Soldato
Joined
29 Aug 2010
Posts
8,547
Location
Cornwall
Hi,

I'll start off by saying that I know there was a thread recently about first, best and worst graphics cards, so if anyone deems this to be too similar then I'm happy for it to be closed/deleted.

This thread came about because I've been told I don't praise my AMD cards enough. It got me to thinking that the reason I don't feel the need to praise them publicly is that while I don't think they're bad cards, they've not really made me go "WOW!".
So I started thinking back to the last card that did.

I'm guessing this may depend on how often you change your card. If you've just upgraded from a GTX480 to a R9 290 (Pro) then the performance increase will probably be significant. Plus you'll probably be amazed at how cool and quiet the new card is :)
I tend to upgrade about once per generation, so I think the performance impact for me is less each time.

For me there has to be something special to make me go WOW!. When I spend £300 on a new card I'm expecting ~50% performance improvement, so that alone isn't going to make me go WOW!

The 3 cards that stand out for me are:
  • 3Dfx Voodoo (1) card - Back when these came out it was really something different. It wasn't just a performance thing, it changed the look of the game too. I remember playing Quake and Quake 2 with OpenGL (I believe this was the time of the mini-OpenGL driver). As I recall I didn't overly like the graphics changes, they made everything look softer (if I recall correctly).
  • 640MB 8800 GTX - I think I moved to this card from an Nvidia 6600Ti or something and there really did seem to be a performance jump. It was also a massive card. I believe at the time I was mostly playing City of Heroes, CoD4 and Crysis. Considering the fuss that had been made about Crysis I was impressed with how well it did (DX9 mode, didn't want Vista).
  • AMD Radeon 5870 - Again the jump was from my 8800 GTX so the performance difference was huge and I got Win7 at the same time so got DirectX 11 and Tessellation!

Now I realise we all have different criteria as to what impresses us about a graphics card, but I was wondering what cards have impressed other people and why?
 
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Geforce 3 with UT99. It made my mate's 3dfx card look rubbish :p

Stuck with that and a crap pc for years until upgrading to 5870 which was pretty wow.
 
When I went from my 6870 to my 680 that made me "wow". But normally I upgrade once a generation and to the same tier so don't really get that too often. It'll be like when I upgrade my 780 to a 880/Ti or a 390/X - I doubt it'll be that impressive but it does keep me on the curve :)
 
Going from the built in mb graphics (hd 3000) to a 1 gb ddr5 5670 was ridiculous and meant that I could actually play ff14, and to a decent standard.
 
My current ones, when I got them out the box they screamed quality at me. When I got them installed I was shocked how quiet they are. And when I overclocked them both hit 1202/7008 with no problems.
 
I went from a MX420 to a 6800GT and that was a wow moment. Going from a 5850 to a GTX480 was as well. Not in the performance way though. More like, holy crap this thing sucks a lot of power!! :D
 
HD 5970s in quadfire

I looked at the running temps and said wow.:D

290 owners don't know how well off they are until they see how hot a couple of HD 5970s run.
 
Switching to an 8800GT from some crappy AGP 3D Hercules card iirc and it just blew it away for me. At that time, I did a big upgrade that cost me something like £400 for a new mobo/CPU and GPU.... Times have changed a little :p
 
7990 made me go WTF when it hit 103c :eek:


In terms of big visual change my first discrete card was a voodoo 3 2000 pci, plonked it into my Packard bell that had ati rage integrated graphics and suddenly everything was playable and looked better :)

Voodoo 5 5500 with its anti aliasing was also a big change for visuals. Since that though its mainly been speed upgrades and I've not had the "wow" type of experience since the voodoo 5.
 
3dfx Voodoo 1 for me - the real start of 3D gaming. After that I'll have to go for the 780 Ti - max settings on everything at 1080p and enables gaming at 4K.

ETA the mention of the V5 5500. Yes, I had one of those, and yes, the start of anti-aliasing was indeed important, but it didn't have a wow factor.
 
Going from 6950 crossfire to a 7970 was a bit of a wow moment for me, just for the fact it ran BF3 so much better and smoother.
 
My first ever nvidia riva tnt 2 16mb which handled Quake 3 arena was always impressive.

Then the others that stick in my mind in no order of preference are,
Geforce ti4200 128mb
RADEON 9800pro (maybe the best graphics card ever?)
7970 when it came out i switched a crossfire 6950 setup to it.
290pro that flashed to an x went from xfire 7950's to it.
 
3Dfx Voodoo card...It was the 1st 3d card ever and when I first saw 3D Quake in Glide that made me say wow!! I also remember Unreal as super graphics game.
 
Upgrading to a 8800gt and being able to play crysis. Runner up to that is probably a leadtek ti 4600 that absolutely destroying any game and allowed me to start using AA for the first time.
 
I've always waited until the upgrade was a big 'un. So they've all been "wow" in their own way!

Starting with on-board graphics on my old Ambra Sprinta 486...

S3 Trio (didn't realise that I needed a gfx card when I put together my first PC :p So just having a working computer again was pretty "wow" :p)

3DFX Voodoo 1 (first 3D card ever, wow Quake looks good now!)

VideoLogic Kyro II (wow Deus Ex looks amazing now).

ATI R9000 (made EverQuest a whole lot smoother)

ATI R9600 XT (came with Half Life 2 - definately wow, but maybe cheating!)

GT8800 (a real wow card)

GTX 460 (wow that's good value for money!)
 
ATI 5770 HD - Best card I have ever owned! Ploughed through everything I chucked at it, even at 1080P sipped the juice and only 1Gb of Vram, but damn, might try to re-build my old gaming rig at some point just to savour it all lol.
 
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