Which Graphics cards do you regret buying?

Freddie1980 · 6 Jul 2021 at 16:51

One of other one regret buying was a Geforce FX5600. I bought that for my first ever custom build and I really wish I had plumped up the extra £20 and bought the ATI 9600 Pro. I don't know what went wrong at Nvidia during this time but someone had a brain fart when then came up with the FX series as performance was dire. Even without proper benchmarking tools I could tell from playing games like Unreal Tournament the card was performing that well as I was reducing setting to make the game smoother.

DazQ87 · 6 Jul 2021 at 17:08

Freddie1980 said:
One of other one regret buying was a Geforce FX5600. I bought that for my first ever custom build and I really wish I had plumped up the extra £20 and bought the ATI 9600 Pro. I don't know what went wrong at Nvidia during this time but someone had a brain fart when then came up with the FX series as performance was dire. Even without proper benchmarking tools I could tell from playing games like Unreal Tournament the card was performing that well as I was reducing setting to make the game smoother.

I bought the same card for my first custom build as well, paired it with an Athlon XP2600, I didn't really know too much about graphics cards at the time or read enough reviews being the 16yr old pc building noob at the time.

old gamer · 6 Jul 2021 at 17:12

Fx5600, utter garbage and to add to my misery the 6600gt released the day after I bought it

Freddie1980 · 6 Jul 2021 at 17:28

DazQ87 said:
I bought the same card for my first custom build as well, paired it with an Athlon XP2600, I didn't really know too much about graphics cards at the time or read enough reviews being the 16yr old pc building noob at the time.

I built mine when I was 21 but the weird thing was I did read some reviews (including magazines like PC Format) and I still went ahead and bought it like a fool

. The problem was a friend of mine who I went to University with told me to buy Nvidia as ATI drivers were trash which turned my head and created a bit of fanboy out of me. Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately) the FX5600 was so poor any prospect of me being a Green Team fanboy quickly dissipated and after I replaced the FX after it broke with the 9600 Pro I realised ATI cards were pretty good and I've been going between either companies products ever since.

Concrete · 6 Jul 2021 at 17:54

darket said:
You were ment to pair it with a Voodoo 2 , didn't you get the memo ??

Yeah thats exactly what I ended up doing shortly afterwards, it actually got a lot of use until I went Gerforce 2 iirc.

darket · 7 Jul 2021 at 11:48

Concrete said:
Yeah thats exactly what I ended up doing shortly afterwards, it actually got a lot of use until I went Gerforce 2 iirc.

The only 3d card back in those days that was worth its salt was the Nvidia Tnt and Tnt 2 (and of course the Geforce when it came out) other than that all the other supposedly 3d cards were useless and only useful for 2d applications

Blue160 · 7 Jul 2021 at 23:12

RX580 4GB. Good card but not enough performance. I replaced it with a 1070 after less than 6 months. A classic case of buy cheap, pay twice.

4k4uNuNu · 7 Jul 2021 at 23:20

GTX 570, good chipset but it was a blower card, never again.

GTX 960, not a bad card but needed to upgrade to an awesome 1060 6gb a year later.

Vince · 7 Jul 2021 at 23:31

darket said:
The only 3d card back in those days that was worth its salt was the Nvidia Tnt and Tnt 2 (and of course the Geforce when it came out) other than that all the other supposedly 3d cards were useless and only useful for 2d applications

What about the voodoo3 and the powerVR Kyro? I always thought the Kyro was decent. Didnt they release a tnt2 with a half width bus that was just utter dross? That was it the M64 I remember back in the day almost being fooled by it.

Oh and ati cant forget them this would have been around the time of the 7500/8500 cards and the 8500 was a damn fine card.

No that was later this would have been around the time of the original radeon the r100 also a damn fine card for the time.

HangTime · 7 Jul 2021 at 23:42

Yep M64 and iirc there was some other crappy half-baked TNT2 card, but its name escapes me.

TNT was nothing special. Voodoo2 12MB arguably a better 3d card.

Uhtred · 7 Jul 2021 at 23:54

HIS ATI Radeon X1900 GT. It was faulty from day one but instead of returning it I tried to install better cooling which didn't fix the problem. Replaced it with a 8800gt within a year.

Vince · 8 Jul 2021 at 00:02

I thought of one card I bought back in the day because specs looked like it could be good but it was genuinely terrible, let down by drivers. I never really got a driver that properly worked anybody remember the SiS Xabre 600?

JohnG7 · 8 Jul 2021 at 01:26

1) Gainward GS7800 AGP as in no real gain over the 6800 Ultra AGP (rectified when Gainward GS7800+ AGP came out (basically an AGP 7900 GTX).

2) GTX 780Ti again no real gain over the GTX 680 4GB (again rectified when the full fat Titan X came out).

Rroff · 8 Jul 2021 at 02:08

JohnG7 said:
2) GTX 780Ti again no real gain over the GTX 680 4GB (again rectified when the full fat Titan X came out).

Something wrong there - unless you were playing sub 1080p (or VRAM limited) it was around 50% faster in most cases.

JohnG7 · 8 Jul 2021 at 02:22

1080p and 1440p dependant on what monitor I was trying out (falling back to 1080p G-sync in between) but I would have used DSR so basically always 1440p.

I can say the 780Ti (3GB< the issue IMO) was my worse purchase ever as at least I returned the Gainward 7800GS within 2 weeks of owning it, the Titan X (12GB) blew the 780Ti away.

TheSoupladel · 8 Jul 2021 at 11:40

2x 8800GTS for SLI in 2008 before realising that Sli is and was largely a waste of time and money.

I also once had a ATI card that was utterly hopeless and kept crashing, as they say once bitten twice shy, i have never had a radeon GPU since

Anorc · 8 Jul 2021 at 12:08

Long time ago now I got a 980ti that was wasted on my 1920x1080@60 screen! 970 would have been plenty.

clone · 8 Jul 2021 at 15:23

A pair of EVGA 470s god they run as hot as the sun but they did look good.

darket · 8 Jul 2021 at 15:36

Vince said:
What about the voodoo3 and the powerVR Kyro? I always thought the Kyro was decent. Didnt they release a tnt2 with a half width bus that was just utter dross? That was it the M64 I remember back in the day almost being fooled by it.

Oh and ati cant forget them this would have been around the time of the 7500/8500 cards and the 8500 was a damn fine card.

No that was later this would have been around the time of the original radeon the r100 also a damn fine card for the time.

Ah yes I forgot about the voodoo3 that was a great card. I shouldn't have put in the tnt2 really , but for it's time the TNT was still a very capable card , it's just that 3dfx dominated that era and with an Sli feature that actually worked you can see why they were the choice for most enthusiasts

Yaayuh! · 8 Jul 2021 at 16:04

Vince said:
What about the voodoo3 and the powerVR Kyro? I always thought the Kyro was decent.

Seems like brilliant timing.

https://overclock3d.net/news/gpu_displays/lost_joker_2_3dfx_and_powervr_card/1

:cool: