Your favorite graphics card?

[Curio]

I've had many graphics cards over the years, but a couple stand out.

3dfx Voodoo2 12MB: IMO, the shift to 3D accelerated graphics has been by far the biggest jump in graphics quality in recent times. I remember seeing Forsaken (1997) in hardware rendered 3D (using a ATi Rage 2 based card) and my jaw hit the ground. Soon after, they announced the Voodoo 2 and I pre-ordered one without a second thought. Then I ordered another for SLI. These days the improvements are incremental, but back in the 3dfx days the Voodoo 2 was a massive leap into the future.

nVidia GeForce 6800nu: Didn't really buy one of these with the intention of unlocking/overclocking. It was just the best I could afford at the time, and I got one on sale. To my amazement it fully unlocked from 12 pipes to 16. I figured it probably wouldn't run reliably at that, but after testing in 3DMark for an hour or two, it was rock solid! So then I started ramping the clock speeds up. I can't remember how far I got, but it was a hefty chunk before I hit problems. Knocked it back down a little until it was stable. I basically had a 6800 Ultra - and that card ran for years (with no extra cooling) and was absolutely stable.

Over to you guys.

 

[Curio]

Can't remember the exact model, maybe it was the 9600 Pro Radeon, but I distinctly remember how much of a game changer it was & how great playing games on it was (had a Voodoo 2 before then iirc). Didn't change it until it burned out (literally) for a 4850, which failed quite quickly then got RMA'ed for a GTS 250. No matter, that's the most memorable one for me, it was such a great performer. Granted, I wasn't really as tech literate back then but I do remember how I felt about it. Got the 7950 soon after release, and that should've been a bigger deal but the CPU upgrade made a much bigger impact so it kinda got overshadowed (Q8200 -> i3 3240). Then I had a 380 briefly and a 480, the latter which was quite good (and still is!) and definitely appreciated it a lot but it was still part of incremental upgrades. And now a V64, which also feels also incremental on the 480 (and it is), and even though I love what a beast of a card it is it's not game changing. I think that sort of a revolutionary shift isn't coming anymore but at the same time I also upgrade more often, so that contributes to it too.

Regardless - AGP Radeon of uncertain identity you are forever my champion.

Radeon 9600xt by any chance? That was a great card. I had one of those too. It was the bang-for-buck champ at the time.