What would you rate as the most important GPUs?

[Yrkoon]

tnt2 ultra followed by the first geforce, first card to use ddr memory if i recall correctly and a decent bump in performance and signalled the end of 3dfx, had both of them the creative varients and loved them plus who can forget a card called creative geforce annilhator pro

 

[Efour]

Voodoo Banshee
2d and 3d on 1 card. The start of my slippery slope as a gaming hobbiest.

 

[Troezar]

Some really interesting points, I've learnt a lot just reading around some of them. I didn't really get interested in PC's until the latter end of the 90's. My abiding memory was the high cost and speed at which the hardware would be superceded by something much more powerful. One of the reasons I've always had an affinity for AMD/ATI, they were affordable.

I had an ST Microelectronics Kyro II https://www.anandtech.com/show/735 great card for the price with tile basked rendering. Whilst ultimately losing out to more expensive cards it was able to beat the Geforce 2 Ultra in many tests.

 

[HangTime]

3dfx Voodoo Graphics for making 3d acceleration viable / mainstream (there were other 3D cards, but too many flaws). That will always be top dog for me and was also the first 3D cardI owned.

9700pro and 8800GTX were very good / long-lived cards for their time, essentially cards I wish I'd bought. In the old days cards were really starting to struggle mid-way through the next generation but they were two cards that you could viably be using 2 generations on (I know that's commonplace these days, but the pace of change was much quicker back then).

You could maybe make a case for the influence of some lesser cards, e.g. those pushing the envelope on quality such as the Matrox G200 (bump mapping), PowerVR (antialiasing), TNT2 (32bit colour) etc

 

[glenimp617]

Voodoo

 

[Raiden85]

Geforce 3 for me, first GPU with programmable pixel shaders was a pretty big jump in visuals.

 

[chaparral]

9700pro/9800pro big jump in performance and still affordable

I had the 9800pro AIW back then and still struggled to get over 30FPS in Far Cry with high graphic details, Had to lower the res or the graphic details

Not bad as what crysis framerate was with a brandnew 8800gtx which was something like 10fps to 15fps in some levels

 

[arknor]

Geforce 3 for me, first GPU with programmable pixel shaders was a pretty big jump in visuals.

That was such a crappy era.
wrong pixel shader version on your GPU? oh sorry you can't play this game.

 

[Armageus]

TNT2 M64, Geforce2 MX, Geforce4 Ti4200, Radeon 9500/9600, Geforce 6600GT, Radeon 7850

All great budget cards, that helped push performance forwards in big leaps but without pushing costs up (compare that to today )

 

[Sh4rkie]

1. Voodoo 1, no debate needed. The leap from what was around at that point in time was huge (Cirrus Logic, Matrox, Kelvin cards etc.)
2. Voodoo 2 next because it built on the above but with sli you could get 2 x 12mb cards for 1024x768 gaming and it was lush!

 

[rare]

Agree with most of those already mentioned. Surprised no one has said 7970 (unless I missed it!).

That was a superb card and quite a feat from AMD. Coming from the 6970 which had a rather lukewarm reception to the 7970 which took the performance crown at launch was a mighty achievement. And that card stayed relevant for years. Heck, it can still prove serviceable in some titles to this day!

 

[OspreyO]

Voodoo
TNT

 

[JasonM]

Riva 128
3dFX Voodoo 1 then Voodoo 2
Early Matrox graphics cards, but can't remember what ones, but back in 1994/95 Matrox were ahead of the game.

 

[harmattan]

Voodoo 1 - First dedicated graphics card that actually meant something
ATI 9700 - Massive uptick in performance that was really the first to start the trend of PC gaming outpacing consoles.
ATI Xenos GPU/1900 XT - First card/GPU with unified shaders
GeForce2 Go 200 - Really, the first mobile GPU that allowed playing modern games on laptops
RTX 2080 (ti) - Despite the price bump from prior series, and the mediocre rasterization improvement, first series to introduce a new method of rendering that is actually usable

Honorable mention...
Geforce 5800 Ultra - First multi-use card that could both render graphics and act as a leaf blower.

 

[Kirby Wurm]

The first Titan, when Nvidia tested the waters for higher pricing which started the pattern.

 

[Raiden85]

The GeForce FX series, what a complete failure that series of cards were, the Radeon 9700 Pro destroyed it when it came to pixel shaders 2.0, plus it was the series that was caught for driver cheating if I remember

 

[Cyber-Mav]

Voodoo 1. First proper 3d card.
Geforce 256. Game changer with hardware tnl
Nvidia A2000. Efficiency cant be matched

 

[OspreyO]

There was also the Geforce MX cards which I think had less strict power requirements and the Go range sprung from this.

 

[GloriousMess]

3dfx Voodoo 2, as it was a stonking card that ran QuakeWorld quite well. I still used software though.
Nvidia 8800 GT - I recall it being a card that lasted me quite a while.
Nvidia 980Ti, as it's still in use in my partner's PC all these years later. Probably the best value card I've ever purchased.
AMD 6900XT, because it runs everything great in my current rig. No complaints.

 

[keyser van someone]

I played Quake 2 in software mode and modem for the first few months back in 1998, as did a lot of people back then. I went straight to Voodoo 2 and it was like having a Playstation on my PC, it was for earth shattering.

Then later with ISDN and Geforce 1 card I basically couldn't miss with the railgun