Standout cards over the years?

arc@css · 29 Apr 2011 at 22:39

BEN_UK said:
9800 Pro 128Mb for me, remember driving to OcUK on day of relase and picking one up, £340 if i remember correctly April 2003 right ??

Had a beast of a system back then, think it was a P4 Northwood 1.8A @ 2.4Gz.

It was the card to have for Half Life 2 right ??

Yep, that series I think, since that was around the time when HL2 was released.

rounddodger · 29 Apr 2011 at 22:39

For me it was my EVGA 8800 Ultra, awesome card and overclocked like a beast. Still have my old 12mb Voodoo2 knocking about, fond memories indeed.

gufufawug · 29 Apr 2011 at 22:41

1st post, yea...
For me it would have to be the 8800GT. Only replaced it last year for a 5870, and that was only for dx11 and not because it was struggling with performance

James J · 29 Apr 2011 at 22:44

ebilcake said:
People seem to forget the R9700 Pro came first and was not much slower, that was the card that destroyed nvidia at the time, R9800Pro/XT were just the refreshes.

The 9700 pro is also where the massive driver complaints against ATI actually started as they were truly abysmal back then.

As for whoever said they wasn't sure why people pick the 6xxx series of nvidia cards, its probably because you could unlock cores to gain insane levels of performance on the entry level 6800 series of cards. I for one bought a 6800LE for around £70 new and it fully unlocked and overclocked to the 6800GT version which was around £200 more lol.

UTmaniac · 29 Apr 2011 at 23:47

Voodoo 3 2000 PCI
9700 Pro
8800GTS 512

are the highlights for me since I began PC gaming with Unreal Tournament. My 8800GTS 512 is just beginning to show its age in the last few months for my games collection, not being capable of running games with all the bells and whistles turned on.

If I had the cash burning a hole in my pocket, a 6950 MSI Frozr III would probably be ordered at the mo...

paradigm · 29 Apr 2011 at 23:50

Radeon 9500, which was, in most cases unlockable to 9700PRO.

Or indeed the 9800PRO which would softmod to 9800XT (and which I wrote an auto-executing flash disk for). http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17229146

Guru · 29 Apr 2011 at 23:53

I liked my ti4600 then x850xtx and then GTX260SSC

andy_mk3 · 30 Apr 2011 at 00:13

I still run an 8800GT, even on a sub £100 pc, it still plays games very well. Just Cause 2 on high gets 35fps average, GTA IV runs 25 fps average, it's good enough for me and can't expect any better for what I paid for it!

AzZ · 30 Apr 2011 at 00:42

Ah yes..the 9800 Pro. That was my first ever card and after a year I think the fan on the HS died and the card killed itself. I remember the HS was all cracked. Good card, I liked the PCB.

JasonKnights · 30 Apr 2011 at 00:47

No ones mentioned the riva TNT 2! I bought a geforce 3TI 10yrs ago and passed it on to my brother when the geforce 4 came out and he still uses it now ( he's very tight if you haven't guessed lol) but it's still going strong!

Rroff · 30 Apr 2011 at 00:50

andy_mk3 said:
I still run an 8800GT, even on a sub £100 pc, it still plays games very well. Just Cause 2 on high gets 35fps average, GTA IV runs 25 fps average, it's good enough for me and can't expect any better for what I paid for it!

I have a GTX260m (which is actually a 1Gig 9800GT) in my laptop and it still plays the latest games with max settings at upto 1680x1050 with 4x AA and fps over 40 most of the time, just the 512MB VRAM on the 8800GT lets it down a bit, starts to struggle at 1920x tho.

niftyfifty · 30 Apr 2011 at 00:51

Geforce 256

Geforce 4600ti / ati 9800Pro

Ati x1950

Geforce 8800 GTX/Ultra

Geforce 260

Ati 6950 (bargain when unlocked)

marc1024 · 30 Apr 2011 at 10:24

460gtx and the ati 5770 for being epic performance at there prices when first released.

Secret_Window · 30 Apr 2011 at 11:30

3dfx Voodoo (I think it was the first release which really stood out)
ATI Rage series (never owned one so couldn't tell you the best one)
Nvidia Riva TNT 1 & 2 (Was considered the Voodoo beater at the time)
Nvidia GeForce 256 and GTS (MX cards were good also)
PowerVR Kyro II (Was able to rival the Radeon and GeForce cards)
Nvidia GeForce 3 (Promoted lots with Doom 3 and was the only card that could play it with decent graphics at the time)
Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti 4200 and 4600 (MX cards were good also)
ATI Radeon 9xxx series (9500, 9600, 9700 and 9800 all brilliant cards)
ATI Radeon X1000 series (X1800, X1900 and X1950 all brilliant cards)
Nvidia GeForce 7 Series (7800 GTX, 7900 GT/X&GTO, GX2)
Nvidia GeForce 8 Series (GT, GTS, GTX and Ultra)
Nvidia GeForce 9 series (only one worth mentioning in my opinion: GX2)
ATI Radeon HD 4xxx series (4830, 4850, 4870, 4890 and X2)
Nvidia 200 series (260, 275, 280, 285, 295)
ATI Radeon HD 5xxx series (5770, 5830, 5850, 5870, 5970)
Nvidia 400 series (460, 465, 470 and 480)
ATI Radeon HD 68xx series (6850, 6870 - worthy mention mainly for CF)
Nvidia 500 series (570, 580 and 590)
ATI Radeon HD 69xx series (6950, 6970, 6990)

I deliberately missed some out as I felt that some just weren't that great. I may have missed some really worthy mentions though too, but forgive me as this was rushed.

degoose · 30 Apr 2011 at 11:38

geforce 2 as well 64mb ram , classic stuff

Salsa · 30 Apr 2011 at 12:19

I loved my Matrox G400 Max! Hardware bump mapping for the first time. 3Dmark looked so sexy!

chaparral · 30 Apr 2011 at 12:45

Menthis said:
My 7800 gtx still lives i believe its gathering dust atm though

My 7800gtx 512mb is still used all day everyday in my old SN26p shuttle

(It maybe a 7900 GTX as i can't remember if it is a 7800 or 7900..

)

Fatboyuk2 · 19 May 2011 at 21:58

7950gtx what a card still got mine

Xelene · 19 May 2011 at 22:21

X800 GTO2. That was a good clocker.

Steveh_monkey · 20 May 2011 at 00:16

I've only ever built one PC and I'm still using the graphics card in that, X1900XT. It's served me well over the years.

I just visited Guru3d and had a quick peep at some of the older graphics card review going right back to the 9800 PRO. The change in cooler size over time really sticks out at you. Woah.