Do you remember your first graphics card?

AGP TNT2

I don't think I used it for gaming or was ever able to

after that it was a 6600GT AGP

wow, that was something else but so slow on my old 3200+
 
Actually the TNT2 was arguably the card that put nVidia on the map as far as gaming is concerned. I believe it was the card that put 3dfx out of business.
 
I had the s3 virge and it played doom badly.

My first 3d card was the diamond voodoo1 4meg. I remember seeing glquake running on that for the first time. Impressive to what i had previously. The whole bundle it came with looked very impressive. I just had to uninstall them to play the other i did not have enough hard drive space for more than one game. My first custom rig was an hx or tx asus board with 16 megs of ram the soundblaster isa card with the ide plug for the cdrom drive.
 
Scali2 said:
Actually the TNT2 was arguably the card that put nVidia on the map as far as gaming is concerned. I believe it was the card that put 3dfx out of business.
Click to expand...
Reason why 3dfx lost:
Their Voodoo3 card was badly delayed and Nvidia was able to launch three different generation cards in one year.

First Riva TNT 2 -> Geforce 256 sdr -> Geforce 256 ddr (was over 30% faster than sdram-version) --> Geforce 2.

Nvidia raised some attention for first time when they announced Riva TNT card because it had unbelieavable specs for that time, but Nvidia failed to get those promised clock frequencies and that resulted in to very bad pr. Because of that Riva TNT didn't sell well even when it was very good card. Eventually Riva TNT2 had those clock frequencies that they had promised for TNT 1..one year late, but still superior.

-----
My first gaming machine was Amiga500 and I also had Super Nintendo. My first PC gaming graphics card was 3dfx Voodoo1. I was building new computer and I had already bought S3 Trio 3D 4Mb agp, but I couldn't make it work in 3D acceleration..only that game that was provided with it worked..and that had very little 3d accelerated graphical elements and it looked like it weren't game, just tech demo for shitty card.

Then I bought Orchid Righteous-card which were the best Voodoo1 card ever. It did cost 250€ ($400) and it had pretty good game support:
Mech Warrior 2 (3d accelerated version)
Descent (3d Accelerated version)
Fatal Racing (aka. Whipeout)
Monster Trucks
Terminal Velocity
And bucnh of demos..yeah.. 5 full games.

It was jaw dropping to play games 3d accelerated! Fatal Racing was just so perfect :).
 
Niceone said:
Reason why 3dfx lost:
Their Voodoo3 card was badly delayed and Nvidia was able to launch three different generation cards in one year.
Click to expand...

Yup, the GPU business is (or was anyway) the most competitive business in the computer industry ever.
You couldn't afford mistakes... Before 3dfx/3d acceleration, there were a lot of different videochip manufacturers (Realtek, Oak, Trident, Cirrus Logic, Western Digital, IBM, S3 etc).
Most of them never even got as far as releasing a 3d chip at all, and had to drop out of the market soon.
Some of them did get a 3d chip out, but weren't really competitive, such as S3. Then there were some that did have some series of good 3d cards, like 3dfx or Matrox, but eventually made a mistake which delayed their next generation and/or was underpowered/lacking features.

So far only nVidia actually survived such a mistake, with the GeForce FX series. They came back on top with the GeForce 6, 7 and 8 series.
Now it's ATi that's struggling to stay in the race. Next month we can see how well they're doing.
 
3dfx also failed with cards that arrived after Voodoo3. They were late, they lacked features, their performance weren't up to the task, price were high, they were huge and consumed a lot of power.

Nvidia had been market leader for many GPU generations so they had some "buffer". And I don't know..but I thought that Nvidia's entry level cards sold 'enough'..and big money is made on those markets.

Developing G80-architecture consumed huge amount of money for Nvidia (since they started that project already when Geforce FX was young), but did pay of in the end.
 
The funny thing is that ATi spoke of unified shaders long before nVidia did... but in the end the G80 with unified shaders arrived on the market far earlier, and also performed much better, in a large part because nVidia handles the distribution of the workload on their stream processors much more efficiently.

I think G80 will go down in history as one of the 'great GPU architectures'. Ofcourse the first Voodoo was a complete revolution... The GeForce was another revolution... then there was the R300, and G80 was the most recent landmark GPU.
The big question is: what's next?
 
Well ATi was developer of GDDR3 memory and they talked about it much..and first product using it was Geforce FX5700 ultra.
 
First PC I actually built for gaming...
It had an AMD Duron 750mhz
256MB RAM iirc
20gb hard drive
a used geforce 2 mx 440 64mb from the local computer store
windows 98.
All that to play tribes 2.
over time that evolved till i bought my IBM workstation from the computer store i work at.
Dual Xeons FTW.
 
XFX 6600 XT

I hated that card, it was decent. But i upgraded to a 3870 after that and dont wanna go back to nvidia cards.
 
Great thread!

My first was a Tseng 4000 card ...just deadly with Fractint at 800 x 600 :D ..what to expect with 4MB DRAM! Got it along with my 40MHz (when turbo was ON) 386 back in 1992.

..then a Matrox Mystique 220, which was almost too fast!
 
Z06 said:
XFX 6600 XT

I hated that card, it was decent. But i upgraded to a 3870 after that and dont wanna go back to nvidia cards.
Click to expand...

Just out of curiosity, what was your issue w/the 6600XT that made you hate nVidia cards? Just asking b/c I had a sorta bad experience with the MX 420 that had been in the computer my 'rents got me mostly because it just flat-out lacked features but I still ended-up opting for a 6800 Ultra from eVGA (hence why I ask about the 6600XT- kinda lol but I actually did consider it at one point) and ironically that generation ATi was pumping out the cards that lacked feature support (SM2 instead of SM3) so I more or less just settled into the pattern of picking-up whatever the best option is at the time (since I picked-up a 6800 Ultra I skipped the whole GeForce 7xxx series and ATi Radeon 1xxx series) which next happened to be an 8800GTS 640mb. I was actually pretty wary initially w/the 6800 Ultra after the MX 420, but I haven't found a single reason to gripe about my 6800 Ultra, 8800GTS 640mb Superclocked, and now 8800GTS 640mb SSC (ok, so perhaps a little gripe about how my first generation SLI mobo drops down to PCI-E 8x slots and just flat-out doesn't handle modern SLI well, but then again back in the nForce 4 days Crossfire didn't even exist yet).
 
TerranUp16 said:
Just out of curiosity, what was your issue w/the 6600XT that made you hate nVidia cards? Just asking b/c I had a sorta bad experience with the MX 420 that had been in the computer my 'rents got me mostly because it just flat-out lacked features but I still ended-up opting for a 6800 Ultra from eVGA (hence why I ask about the 6600XT- kinda lol but I actually did consider it at one point) and ironically that generation ATi was pumping out the cards that lacked feature support (SM2 instead of SM3) so I more or less just settled into the pattern of picking-up whatever the best option is at the time (since I picked-up a 6800 Ultra I skipped the whole GeForce 7xxx series and ATi Radeon 1xxx series) which next happened to be an 8800GTS 640mb. I was actually pretty wary initially w/the 6800 Ultra after the MX 420, but I haven't found a single reason to gripe about my 6800 Ultra, 8800GTS 640mb Superclocked, and now 8800GTS 640mb SSC (ok, so perhaps a little gripe about how my first generation SLI mobo drops down to PCI-E 8x slots and just flat-out doesn't handle modern SLI well, but then again back in the nForce 4 days Crossfire didn't even exist yet).
Click to expand...


the quality of gaming just lacked alot. picture clarity, Jaggy edges, colors didnt seem accurate, over clocking ability was minimal. So overall it was a bland card. And i was using a 19" Acer lcd at the time. so that wasnt the problem. Then i bumped up to my 3870, it could be the hardware generation gap, but the difference was night and day. I could of just had a bad 6600xt... but it worked for 6 months that i had it with no problems. Just lacked in my eye's.
 
Z06 said:
the quality of gaming just lacked alot. picture clarity, Jaggy edges, colors didnt seem accurate, over clocking ability was minimal. So overall it was a bland card. And i was using a 19" Acer lcd at the time. so that wasnt the problem. Then i bumped up to my 3870, it could be the hardware generation gap, but the difference was night and day. I could of just had a bad 6600xt... but it worked for 6 months that i had it with no problems. Just lacked in my eye's.
Click to expand...

There was an image quality difference between ATi and nVidia but that gap has pretty much closed now- though I admittedly didn't have much of an image quality issue w/my 6800 Ultra (nothing noticeable anyway and nothing I can specifically peg on the 6800 Ultra given that I generally have used the 8800GTS 640mb to either layer AF, AA, and rez on older games or have been able to drastically step-up settings on the newer games; but I also should note that my 6800 Ultra's lifespan passed on my Hyundai 17" 1280x1024 monitor, so there are a lot of variables I can't account for in terms of image quality between the two cards, lol).
 
Z06 said:
XFX 6600 XT

I hated that card, it was decent. But i upgraded to a 3870 after that and dont wanna go back to nvidia cards.
Click to expand...

I never knew there was a 6600XT. Was it better or worse than the 6600GT? I can't find the specs anywhere. I bet that was night and day. 6600GT was similar to the Radeon 9800 Pro. Quite the jump you made.
 
Graphics Blaster 3D 4mb->voodoo3 2000 (pci 16mb)->geforce 3-> geforce 4200 -> ati 9600xt -> geforce 6800 -> hopefully gtx280
 
I dont remeber my first card, but my first one that i payed for was a ATI Radeon 9250 128MB Pci for $100 and that was like 2-3 years ago.
 
first one i bought and owned, ATi All in wonder 128 32Mb 2x AGP thing rocked quake III! and Ut99!
 
my first video card ever purchased was a 4mb voodoo graphics addon card. Back in mid 97... Sheesh, I remember paying upwards of around 140 bucks for the thing at a computer show! But damn.... being able to see underwater in quake 1 was the BEST!!!!! :D
 
My first legit card I bought with my own monies was a Geforce 2 MX 400

Before that it was a Voodoo card :LOL:
 
The first card I remember was a Creative Banshee 16mb. Not bad for its days in 98-99. Had tons before that though but nothing spectacular.
 
I can't remember exactly but it had 512K of memory and used the ISA bus. I want to say it was a cirrus logic or something like that, and it was in a 386...the first computer I ever built myself. I think I was 11 or 12 at the time.
 
Oh yeah I remember exactly my first VideoCard :cool: My Brother and I shared our computer at Home back then, we both paid for parts, and we bought Quake1 and heard about this thing called OpenGL mode :eek: Would allow Quake1 to look way cooler than software mode.

So we went to WorstBuy and picked up a brand new TnT2 Ultra, but we also had a VooDoo2 when they first came out, so not sure which one was first ?
 
ATI 3D rage technolgies soemthink (3d wow)
0MB ram, 0mhz clock on everythink (with oldest and newest GPU-Z)
 
Well my very first computer that I had all for myself was a hand-me-down IBM 386 with 4mb of ram and a 150mb hard drive. Who knows what kind of graphics card it was though, probably some obscure cirrus logic chip. I loved playing xwing and tie fighter on that thing :D 4mb of ram was a lot for a 386, too.

The first REAL graphics card that I had (i.e. the first video card that actually had any sort of hardware acceleration or whatever) was a 4mb S3 Virge VX that was in a pentium 166 machine with 32mb of ram.
 
First card was a Voodoo Banshee 16mb that came with my Quantex. Then I upgraded to a GeForceMX200 (or was it 400?) for Medal of Honor: Allied Assault.
 
Whatever my apple IIe and commodore 64 had >.>

First self purchased pc had an s3 virge 2mb :D Until I installed a voodoo 1

first self built pc 9700pro
 
I had two computers before the era of 3D video acceleration. My first machine was a Tandy 1000 EX with an Intel 8088 processor and a 5 1/4 inch floppy running MS-DOS (no hard drive, and no idea what the video comonents were, except that it supported an amazing 16 colors). The Tandy lasted me almost 10 years for writing papers and playing Rogue and Infocom games in high school and college. I bought my next machine specifically to play Doom. It was a 66 MHz Pentium system with 8 MB of system RAM which I think had a Diamond Stealth 2D video card of some kind in it with 2 MB of video RAM). That machine lasted me about 4 years through grad school.

Then with my next machine (P2 400 MHz) I joined the 3D era with a Real 3D Starfighter i740 8MB AGP Video Card, which I quickly ended up supplementing with first one Diamond Monster 3D II 3DFX Voodoo2 12MB PCI, and then a second one in SLI (1024x768 baby!). That baby was my Quake 2 machine.

Since then I have run a Creative GeForce 2 GTS 32 MB AGP, an ATI Radeon 9700 PRO 128 MB AGP, and my current GeForce 6800 GT AGP. It will soon be retired when I build my next machine with either a Nvidia GT/GTX 280 or an ATI Radeon 4870.
 
My first system was a Kaypro 8086 running at a whopping 4.77MHz, with dual 5 1/4 floppy drives. One was for programs and the other was for data. I upgraded the video card from monochrome text to 4 color CGA and played Frogger in all it's cyan and magenta glory!

One of my favorite memories was beating Leisure Suit Larry with a friend during a barbeque at my place in like under an hour. We were so tanked that we were Larry and the game made complete sense. Scary.

I think we lost at wiffle ball that day...
 
Yes .. my first add-in GPU was ATi

Rage Fury 32; better IQ compared to my faster and not much later, GeForce256[SGRAM]
--with a P4 Celeron 300 [was it "A"?; the 'good' one] at 450/500Mhz

i forget the system RAM =P
-win98 then SE.

My first Computer was Atari 800xl .. note the recycling of the names and numbers
- was it 64 bit?; i know it had cartridges and the big floppy and i also used it as a word processor and game machine. After learning a machine language, i got to Basic. Then i quit computing till the mid 90s again with a 286, i think [somewhere in between was a Mcintosh/Apple atrocity]
 
Matrox M3D PowerVR. I remember playing Star Wars: Dark Forces (can't remember if it was the first or second one). I do remember a patch came out to support PowerVR. It was like a night and day difference at the time.
 
Pyros said:
My first system was a Kaypro 8086 running at a whopping 4.77MHz, with dual 5 1/4 floppy drives. One was for programs and the other was for data. I upgraded the video card from monochrome text to 4 color CGA and played Frogger in all it's cyan and magenta glory!
Click to expand...

yep, I think that's the earliest I remember, tho I was really small and that was our family computer. BASIC sure had a lot of potential combined w/CGA, and Frogger & RedAlert (an old boat shooting game, not Command&Conquer RA) looked great, centipede too.

Later someone gave us an old 286 with EGA (16colors, almost "lifelike" :) ) and a Seagate 32MB HD that sounded like a jackhammer.
Next we upgraded our 'family' computer to a Dell 233MHz with a STB Velocity 128 (4MB) AGP 1x, ran Command & Conquer & Red Alert soo nicely.. even Tiberian Sun.
Shortly after I got a cheaaap 150MHz laptop w/some accelerated 2MB card, it worked OK for Quake 1 and other older games, actually Quake 1 was insanely fun on that thing over the internet or LANs, even if the screen was shrunk down.

Finally saved enough for a gaming computer, Athlon 900, 640MB, 20GB HD, and a GeForce 2 MX... it didn't run Quake 3 that great, so back to bestbuy it went, and a week later at a computer show for just over $200 I got my big bad GeForce 2 GTS 32MB *GigaTexelShader* :eek: it did come w/some sweet screen demos, the floating monster-fish, the castle-globe, modifiable tree & reflecting pond :cool:
And then...
GeForce 4 MX 64MB ... sucked, 1.5yr after the GF2 GTS but w/same performance
GeForce 5700 128MB .... not bad actually, overclocked very well & made BF1942 & DesertCombat run amazingly good. It's actually still used once in awhile today for BF2 :p
GeForce 7950GT 512MB .... still primary GPU, runs very well & OCs nicely. All games I play (TF2, CS:S, HL2, BF2, Hitman, GhostRecon, FarCry) run maxed out on it at 1680x1050 w/all settings

so next is TBD depending on what hardware comes out over the summer :)
 
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