The fasted/best card from each year

[w3bbo]

I think people are getting pretty confused about timings in this thread
Here's my take, ignoring factory clocked special editions and SLI/x-fire etc

2005: Nvidia Geforce 7800GTX 512meg
2004: Ati Radeon X850XT Platinum Edition*
2003: Ati Radeon 9800XT
2002: Ati Radeon 9700Pro
2001: Nvidia Geforce 3 Ti500
2000: Nvidia Geforce 2 Ultra
1999: Nvidia Geforce DDR*
1998: 3dfx Voodoo2 12meg (very impressive considering how early in the year it debuted)
1997: 3dfx Voodoo Graphics
1996: 3dfx Voodoo Graphics (!)

*questionable availability before year end.

Agreed.

 

[glenimp617]

2003 - 256mb Radeon 9800XTX ?

 

[FreeStream]

try benchmarking the x850xt in rainbow six vegas, or splinter cell double agent. even a gf6200 will score infinitley higher than the x850xt.

so no way you can claim that round up of cards as being the fastest without some rock solid evidence taken from all round the world.

and your even forgetting the 7950gx2 which was out the same tome as x1900 cards were, and is significantly faster than the x1k series.

Except in games where SLi didn't work and the fact they were quite equal in others?

 

[Dureth]

Hang on your telling me that a GF6200 is faster than an x850xt in splinter cell double agent? Got anything to back that up as it sounds ridiculus!

Edit: Just found out that the game is SM3 only, so an x850 wont even load it let alone benchmark it, which is pretty crap from ubisoft.

 

[Noxis]

I think people are getting pretty confused about timings in this thread
Here's my take, ignoring factory clocked special editions and SLI/x-fire etc

2005: Nvidia Geforce 7800GTX 512meg
2004: Ati Radeon X850XT Platinum Edition*
2003: Ati Radeon 9800XT
2002: Ati Radeon 9700Pro
2001: Nvidia Geforce 3 Ti500
2000: Nvidia Geforce 2 Ultra
1999: Nvidia Geforce DDR*
1998: 3dfx Voodoo2 12meg (very impressive considering how early in the year it debuted)
1997: 3dfx Voodoo Graphics
1996: 3dfx Voodoo Graphics (!)

*questionable availability before year end.

Disagree, you cant ignore available products because it doesnt fit with what you like. A single benchmark needs to be picked for this otherwise we gonna go round in circles.

Prime example is that the Voodoo3 was better and faster than the original GeForce at everything but DirectX. Thats sounds like a big deal now but back then everything was OpenGL/Glide. Same goes with the GF2 vs Voodoo5.

Need to boil it down to either "graphics card" or "graphics solution" thereby removing SLI and XFire.

So my two corrections for the above is:

2004: nVidia 6800 Ultra Extreme (this was a product by nVidia rather than a made up product by XFX etc..)

1999: Voodoo3

 

[HangTime]

I considered the 6800UE but it was pretty much a marketing ploy for the paper launch rather than a genuine card that was available to the public in any kind of quantity. I'm also not entirely sure how well it would fare against the x850xt-pe (since I only ever saw benchmarks against the x800xt-pe) but that's probably one of the closest fought years.

I would disagree with your choice of Voodoo3 for 1999 however. It's ludicrous to claim that the v3 is faster in opengl than the Geforce DDR - just look at the benchmarks, it simply isn't the case.

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/q3videoroundup2/page9.asp

Here you can see that the v3-3000 is getting completely annihilated in quake3 even using WickedGL drivers. In high resolution the DDR leaves it for dead, running at twice the speed. OK so the 3500 would be slightly faster due to 10% higher clock speeds but still nowhere near enough to close the gap

Then there's the fact that it doesn't support 32bit colour (which was at last a playable setting thanks to the DDR)

Don't get me wrong, I'm a 3dfx fanboi and actually bought a voodoo3 at the end of 1999 But that was more to do with price, given the choice I'd much rather have had a Geforce DDR. The only thing the V3 has going for it is glide support.

V5 vs GF2ultra is slightly harder to call but by then D3D was becoming more mainstream and to be fair the V5-5500 was more competitive with the GTS than the Ultra (with the possible exception of certain FSAA modes).

 

[Bennah]

Oh, I can see this going on for ages

 

[jaykay]

doesnt something like tomshardware or some review site do a year round up for the best cards each year

 

[Klo]

I was under the impression that the 9800pro came out in 2002, and is faster than 9700pro. Or did it come out 2003?

 

[Bennah]

It is faster than the 9700 pro, but I think it came later. Also the 9800 XT was released in the same year as the 9800 pro, couple of months later I think.

 

[Jakus]

One small problem with this is 12 months is a long time in GFX cards so the latter cards of the Year will always be faster !

My personal favs were Geforce 2 and Ati x800 , both of which lasted far more than 3 months..

 

[HangTime]

One small problem with this is 12 months is a long time in GFX cards so the latter cards of the Year will always be faster !

In theory yes, although in the early days there were some notable exceptions. The Voodoo1 came out in 1996 but was also the fastest card of 1997, and the Voodoo2 debuted very early in 1998 but held on until year end.

It's interesting that NV/ATI have stuck with a 6-9 month release schedule despite the story a couple of years back that they were going to be moving away from such an aggressive R&D cycle, moving back to 12-18 months.

 

[Big.Wayne]

I was under the impression that the 9800pro came out in 2002, and is faster than 9700pro. Or did it come out 2003?

I bought my Radeon 9800 for £218 in August 2003, the 9800 Pro was £299 at that point.

I didn't know that the 9700Pro was out as early as 2002, guess it must have been? No mention of the 9500 Pro yet? that was a very popular mid-range overclockers card.

 

[Pablo72]

I think you'll find the 7800 GTX was the card of 2005.

And still is in my opinion... top piece of kit, and still doing the business!