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The "worst" purchases you've ever made

razorpakk

razorpakk

razorpakk

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Let's talk about some bad business we've all done in the past :o
I'm not just talking bad GPUs, more like buying the wrong thing at the wrong time.




sparkle1.jpg

When I started gaming the 9800Pro/XT were the top cards, there was no doubt about it after Nvidia's disappointing 5800.
Even knowing that (I must've been 13) I opted for a Sparkle Nvidia 5900XT (or PE? Something like that) just because it was more expensive...
It wasn't that bad really, but I remember water reflection in Half Life 2 not being rendered properly on Nvidia cards. Things have changed...
I did love the weird trash can it came with.



nvidia-geforce-9800-gx2-1.jpg

Few years later I went from an 8800 Ultra (embarrassing, I was way too spoiled) to 9800GX2.
Granted I didn't lose any money in the transaction, but that thing was so warm and loud...
And SLI back then, what a nightmare!

That's it, let's hear some horror stories!
 
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razorpakk said:
Let's talk about some bad business we've all done in the past :o
I'm not just talking bad GPUs, more like buying the wrong thing at the wrong time.

That's it, let's hear some horror stories!
Click to expand...

Gigabyte GV-3D1:o...

Jumped in blind:o...

Back then SLi was garbage as it more or less only worked on the games they used in reviews:o...

Only worked on the MB it was bundled with:o...

Don't tell anyone I told you:o...

I'll close the door on my way out.:D
 
The onboard graphics on my purple-shirt clearance PC (I'd been a console boy since leaving the Spectrum and the PC1512 behind, I knew nothing!) wasn't up to playing the WMVHD demo videos, let alone games, so I knew I needed to buy a discrete GPU.

As I knew that I knew nothing, I bought a magazine to find out what to go for as this was when the internet was but a fledgling and this showed the best as the 6800 and mentioned the 6600GT was also excellent. Went back to the palace from which my PC had come originally, but no 6800 or 6600GT on the shelf. They did have a 6200 with TurboCache which I figured must be pretty much the same thing as the numbers were almost the same (only one digit difference in both cases) and this comes with TURBOCACHE which sounded all Knight Rider-y. The final thing that swung it for me was it came with a free game, Far Cry. I was sold, £60-odd (from memory) changed hands and I was very excited by my new found gaming prowess.

The card turned out to be slower and less capable than my onboard had been! The "TurboCache" was more accurately "we haven't given the card any VRAM at all, so it'll use system RAM instead which is much slower". I installed Far Cry and found it could play it, but only after I'd lowered every setting I could find including my expectations for any kind of smoothness.

How disappointing was the 6200TC, well in my time I've paid money for an HD2900 PRO, a 3870, and half a dozen GT440's (with tiny fans that ran at 100% all the time) and I STILL consider the 6200TC to be the worst GPU purchase I ever made.
 
Sapphire HD6950 2GB.

It wasn't bad but it didn't overclock more than 30Mhz and didn't unlock to a HD6970
 
Don't think I've done too badly though as much by happy accident in some cases as design - I did buy a 5900XT but it was a carefully considered purchase of the Gainward Golden Sample 5900XT that clocked like a monster (both core and memory did 40-50% overclock stable) and made up for some of the lacklustre of the 5 series (though the poor shader quality on later games was a bit of a let down) and was relatively inexpensive for a card that could easily hold its own against the 5950 ultra and 9800 pro though think it struggled a bit against the 9800 XT.

EDIT: I miss the days when Gainward made some cards that were truly special.
 
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I've had an FX5600 and GeForce 6600LE. I am the winner.

Edit: Forgot the 8600GT and 3870. 3870 wasn't that bad though, just sucked at AA.
 
I ALWAYS research my Hardware to within an inch of it's life before I buy so I never buy crap.
I bought Watch Dogs at launch though......:confused::eek::mad::o

Edit: I remember feeling disappointed about the Geforce 2 GTS. I was just just expecting more coming from a TNT2. I got over it though.
 
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7950 on release week. Got a reference OCUK branded VTX card, had no idea really of what I was buying other than I couldn't afford the top of the range 7970. Had no idea about reference or customer blowers etc. Cost me about £340 including delivery.

6 months later bought an IceQ Turbo on D.o.t.D for £180 for x-fire. Been mad at myself ever since for paying so much at release.
 
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i bought a 5900xt and hated it, the fans would not slow down after gaming untill i rebooted, worst thing about it was the day after i bought it nvidia released the 6600gt
 
First bad purchase was like 15 odd years ago when i bought the ATI 9800xtx. Spent half my entire PC budget on that alone and 6 months later it was so behind everything else it was a joke :(. 15 year old me was sad hehe.

After that it was when i thought i should be running 2x XFX 260 Black edition cards together with an x58 XFX motherboard and found out the XFX motherboard could barely overclock due to poor bios and both the 260s was faulty.

Later bricked the dual bios trying to update the x58 board using the exact method they listed (Boot CD, i have updated several other boards so i wasnt new to it) to find out later that the bios update was kinda faulty to.. not touched XFX since, well bought a XFX XXX series PSU and regretted that to due to excessive noise but atleast it worked :P
 
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