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Nvidia vs ATI (AMD) Showing my age!

Soldato
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1 Apr 2014
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I've been with Nvidia for the past decade but I've had all sorts of cards over the decades. IBM, Cirrus, Matrox, S3, 3dfx, Trident, ATI, Nvidia, Oak, Tseng, Hercules, and doubtless others.
 
Associate
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2 Mar 2011
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97
I've been with Nvidia for the past decade but I've had all sorts of cards over the decades. IBM, Cirrus, Matrox, S3, 3dfx, Trident, ATI, Nvidia, Oak, Tseng, Hercules, and doubtless others.

Before 3D cards it didn't matter that much although at SVGA period some cards were pretty slow (Trident) although the difference was fairly minor. Then came the 2D acceleration period, where you had to be careful not to get suckered by PC Magazine reviews which were drooling over blazing fast Excel scrolling but often the cards were slow, as in slow-slow in games.

Golden days for Intel when a new game wouldn't run properly on the fastest CPU you could buy.. And those processors were way expensive. After Voodoo there was a long period where the CPU mattered little as long as was not something silly like Cyrix. Floating point math was the achilles heel of e.g. AMD K6 but then Athlon eventually came along..
 
Associate
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Plymouth
S3 Trio 3D was my very first card and then my dad bought me a geforce2 mx400 and that was an astronomical jump in performance. I still remember how jealous all my friends were. Good times :)
 
Associate
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11 Jun 2021
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I jump between based on price - performance - features. Last purchase was a 970 and i'll be getting a 3000 series next because I want the full RT experience (best available), however if saw a 6000 series card at the right price I'd probably grab it (6700XT for the price of a 3060 TI ).
 
Associate
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20 Jul 2005
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775
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Earth
I've been with Nvidia for the past decade but I've had all sorts of cards over the decades. IBM, Cirrus, Matrox, S3, 3dfx, Trident, ATI, Nvidia, Oak, Tseng, Hercules, and doubtless others.

That’s a good list. Can’t say I had IBM as a gpu but pretty much had everything after that. Missing powervr though!

I can still remember my dad bringing home a 286 laptop with a massive handle.
 
Associate
Joined
2 Mar 2011
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That’s a good list. Can’t say I had IBM as a gpu but pretty much had everything after that. Missing powervr though!

I can still remember my dad bringing home a 286 laptop with a massive handle.

He's missing Targa, that's what guys were jealous of in 2D framebuffer heyday. It still didn't make your games run that much faster, being just a framebuffer, but maybe 10-20% faster? e.g. Cirrus was later invention, it did some windows 2D acceleration but was pretty decent in DOS framebuffer gaming as well. These days "pixel" gaming (= looks like crap from 30 years ago) is fashionable but 3D games from the days make nobody nostalgic. Ugly, slow, yecch. There was a funky period when every game looked alike since they all used Glide and the same phong shaded 3D objects..

As for 286, yup, my first computer was that. Amiga would have been nicer in many ways but dad didn't want to buy a toy. So instead I got an office tool that never ever got used for anything too useful.. Turbo button, you guys remember those? ;)
 
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