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Your favourite gpu, ever? Blast from the past..

My favourite GPU that I ever had a Geforce 4 Ti4200....that card got the ever-loving **** kicked out of it pretty much 24/7 for nearly three years, overclocked to the point of insanity and never let me down. It's still running today in a computer at a friend's house (not even sure that the fan has had to be changed yet!).
 
Its quite incredible how many really old cards that have been abused and clocked as far as possible and still work, see so many dead gpus right now. Anyone think that the quality has dropped? Has cost overrided quality.
 
Orchid Richeous 3D (voodoo 1).

The difference in quality going from software to hardware rendering was just incredible. Going from grainy, 320*240 res software quake at around 10fps, to "high-res" (640*480) 50fps with a ton of extra graphical bells and whistles... it was just unreal. You have to realise that, back then, you just never really got what we would consider "smooth" framerates today. Not with software rendering. Playing the game at 50fps just felt... spooky.

Number two would have to be the voodoo 2 SLI setup I had afterwards. Unreal 1 was a thing of beauty on GLide... With the 2*12Mb cards the game would run at an unheard of 1024*768 res (800*600 was the max with a single card).

All other GPU upgrades have felt like tiny increments in comparison. It was the massive jump from.software to the voodoo1 that originally sparked my interest in GPU technology, and I've been following it clisely ever since. These days I'm more interested in the tecb than in the end product (gaming performance), but that's life!
 
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6600 gt and 7600gt especially as i got it brand new for 60 quid off ebay when retailing for like 130 :p never missed a beat

also ati 4850 great little cards
 
I had an 8600GT which was small, quiet and overclocked ok. It took loads of abuse and foolish overclocks but never missed a beat. Wish I could have afforded a 8800gs though.

Or maybe my 4890 I got to replace the 8600. It was s huge leap in performance, I was blown away. It overclocked acceptably too.

Just now I bought a 4850 for a secondary build and it overclocks to the max CCC will allow, and canq run games like AC2 maxed with aa at 1080p. Would have been sensational bang for buck at the time?
 
Remember buying a Creative 3D Blaster Riva TNT2 32MB around 1999, was crap for EverQuest, hated most Nvidia cards going back, the image quality was pants for years.

3dfx Voodoo 5500 64MB was great for EverQuest on my 14" monitor - AA/AF worked a treat - good image quality, so that will have to be up there with my favorites.

For ATI it would have to be my HIS Radeon X1900XTX IceQ 3 Turbo 512MB.

The OCZ Geforce 8800GTX 768 MB was a big jump for me, and Nvidia finally decided to put image quality on par with ATI.
 
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7800gt -> 5850 xtreme -> 5850 extreme CF -> 6970 -> 580 -> 580 SLI

and im hoping to get the 700 series when it comes out :)

and my favourite is the 580 because it something i always thought was the bees knees.. then i got one :D
 
images
 
My Evga 8800gtx had since 2007 although died on me this week!! i can still remember unboxing it just in awe on how much a beast it was xD

Great Card though but times move on it was time for a change lets hope my new card becomes my favourite....
 
I never used to take much notice of hardware as long as the games played I did not worry. That all changed when I got into building my own rigs (I got fed up using Dell PCs) since then I have had

GTX 8800 SLI > GTX 295 SLI > HD 5970 CF > GTX 590 SLI > GTX 690 SLI

I still use the last 3 rigs but my favorites were the HD 5970s as they stayed at the top of the GPU tree for a very long time.
 
Defy Belief said:
Its quite incredible how many really old cards that have been abused and clocked as far as possible and still work, see so many dead gpus right now. Anyone think that the quality has dropped? Has cost overrided quality.
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No they produced less heat is partly the reason I'd imagine

I guess my favourite was probably the tnt 2 ultra even though I was pumped to get a voodoo at the time glad someone mentioned the 8800 GTX didnt that thing reign for ages ?
 
My first serious gaming rig was an AMD 3200 Barton core with this beast:

** No Hotlinking - Rules on posting images ***

The Leadtek Winfast 4800Ti.

If I remember correctly it was by far the most powerful graphics card on the market by a considerable margin, I remember wowing my friends by running both Unreal Tournament 2003 and 2004 side by side on max settings with max bots in spectator mode. It held it's own until shader model 3 started being used in DX9c. All that for a mere £128.

The next card I had that really sticks in my memory(probably because of the world of hurt it put on my bank balance) was the ASUS Extreme N7800 Dual, limited to 2000 ever made, weighing the best part of a kilo and costing the best part of £1000(back in 2006!), it was the first SLI card on a single PCB in existence, just dug mine out of storage for a photo opp:

p1010668m.jpg
 
Voodoo 4 4500 PCI from way back in the day, 32Mb of Vram made all the difference to Midtown Madness haha

and my first proper card from a few years back, Sapphire HD 5770 (with the egg shaped cooler) the things this would chew through at 1080P and 60fps, amazing card!!
 
Diamond Viper V550 Riva TNT. This was the first card I "modded" by adding a 40mm fan to the passive heat sink. Grim Fandago used to bring it to its knees before this mod.
 
Defy Belief said:
Its quite incredible how many really old cards that have been abused and clocked as far as possible and still work, see so many dead gpus right now. Anyone think that the quality has dropped? Has cost overrided quality.
Click to expand...

"They don't make 'em like they used to" :)

Well there's a fact that modern cards are generally very power hungry: even if both camps are now pretty energy efficient compared to Ferni, even the 680 is 160-200W with the 7970 a bit above that (or a lot above that if overvolt and OC like mad). Just the fact that some of old classic cards had passive cooling says it all.

But in general I would say cost cutting has gotten worse. High power means amongst other things good quality capacitor etc., and in so much electronics capacitor plague is still with us - hence the feature list on good of cards and motherboards about solid and/or Japanese capacitors.

The BFG 8800GT card in your OP is almost the exact card I had which bumbgated on me (after BFG went bust), so I don't have any good memories of that really: it was fast in its days (although a bit noisy) but broke before its usefulness was truly up. Been put off Nvidia ever since. And in hindsight I should have been weary of a GPU manufacturer whose CEO says 'We Are A Software Company'. Okay that's not what he meant but maybe the emphasis on software meant that basic electronic engineering was less important to management :(
 
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