Do you remember your first graphics card?

Well, here's the oldest card that I bought as a component.

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I had owned pre-built computers before that, but this is one of the early cards I had when I started building my own. It wasn't a gaming card, it was just the cheapest thing I could find to get a picture on my screen. I also had an ATI Rage for a budget machine, I probably still have both of those cards around somewhere.

My first "gaming" card was a Matrox Marvel G200, but it was dual-purpose, for video editing and gaming. It was a bargain for video editing quality in those days. It also got me through endless hours of Half-life, TFC, UT and Starsiege: Tribes.

I briefly had a TNT2-64 or something like that, which was a cut-down lower-performance version of the the TNT2. I returned it after I installed it and found it was giving me worse performance in UT. It turned out I had been playing UT with great FPS on my Matrox because the card wasn't rendering all the full quality shadows and effects like the the TNT2. The TNT2 looked a lot better but I didn't want to pay to upgrade to lower performance, besides it was harder to see the enemy with proper shadows.

I remember clearly when a friend of mine got an TNT Viper V550 which was great back in those days, but it was from an unknown upstart company, Nvidia. I also remember another friend of mine getting a new Voodoo 3 to play EQ. My friend was sharing a house with 5 guys and they were all addicted to EQ. The whole house was playing. It looked boring to me, so I went back to my good old FPS games.

Then I went to a Geforce 3 Ti200 (Black Friday special), which lasted until I got a Geforce Go 6800 Ultra in my laptop. I'm just now building a new machine to finally upgrade and will probably put in a 4850, 8800GT, 8800GTS or 9800GT. Since my current machine is a laptop, I didn't have much of an upgrade path, but I will be able to upgrade more often now with my new SFF box.
 
First one was the Matrox Mystique which I played the excellent Mechwarrior 2 (Enhanced for Matrox Mystique Edition).

Most reviews called it a decelerator but playing MW2 in full 3D glory on Windows 95 brought great PC gaming joy to my life.

The following I moved to: GeForce 2 MX -> Radeon 9800 Pro (modded to XT) -> GeForce 7800GTX (added 2nd one later on for SLI) -> GeForce 8800GTX -> [?] GeForce GTX 280 (Hopefully when it's released... or later when its in greater supply).

I tend to use top end vid cards for a about 1.5 to 2 years & then move on to 2 generations after the last GPU I used.
 
Waaay back my family had a PCjr with awesome 16 color graphics (really! check out screen shots from Kings Quest for PCjr versus for the regular PC from that time!)

Then I think it was some Trident card in the next computer.

The first 3D card I ever bought on my own was the Matrox M3D -- I think it was $20 after a mail-in rebate. It was semi-lousy, but for $20 it did OK.
 
Wow, my 1st computer was a 450 P2 w/16 mb NVidia TNT. Thought that was pretty hot stuff. Back in 98 or 99 it was. My 1st game was some Dinosaur hunt game that was based on some tropical island. Loved that game!
 
Don't remember the card but it was an evga (16 color) I think in a IBM Model 30 in 1985. The year of the first real PC. My first boxed game was "Police Quest."
 
Jim-H said:
Don't remember the card but it was an evga (16 color) I think in a IBM Model 30 in 1985. The year of the first real PC. My first boxed game was "Police Quest."
Click to expand...

EGA = Enhanced Graphics Adapter introduced in 1984.

EVGA = Extended Video Graphics Array that came about in 1991. Or, a graphics card company.


;) :D :p
 
Wow, you people upgrade too much :p.
My first card that I got as a component was a Geforce2 MX. Before that I was on Macs, yay!
Total cards:
Geforce2MX 32MB -> GeForce 4 Ti 4200 64MB -> X800Pro VIVO 256MB -> 8800GTS320MB (Step up) 8800GT 512MB -> (I'm gonna buy whatever comes after 4800 or GTX200 series)
 
hmm after the commadore

256k vesa localbus, 512k pci, 1mb pci, 2meg pc, 4 meg agp (OMG im god at this time), 8 meg agp, 16 meg voodoo (omg god mode again, lol) tnt 2 32 meg, voodoo 3, 32 meg geforce, 64 meg geforce ti200, mx 440, fx 4400 , 6800gt, 7800 gt, 8800gts, 9800gx, gtx 280, and now 2x4870 xfire

christ now i feel old lmao
 
First real video card was the 9800 Pro 256MB, to a X800 XL OCed with ATi Silerence 5, now my 8800 Ultra
 
Vodoo1 > ATI AIW 9800 > X800XL > X800XT > 8600 GT XXX > 8800 GTS(current) > 3850 512 > 3870 512 (Current)
 
Either a Savage or Rage 8mb, quickly upgraded to a Voodoo 2 2000. Man, I miss my Voodoo. Ran Unreal like no bodies business!
 
My first card was some 16mb on a an Intel P2 system. However in my first computer build (when I was a noob) I bought a 5950FX Ultra.
 
First discreet that I purchased myself is what I'll assume this to mean.

First one I bought was a TNT2 32MB card, waste of money, that one was.
 
berzerker said:
Well, here's the oldest card that I bought as a component.
Click to expand...

Ah, the S3 Virge... probably one of the first affordable 3D graphics accelerator, although sometimes it was slower than software rendering!
 
9800 Pro 256mb --> X1800GTO --> 7800GTX --> HD3850 256mb --> 7800GTX --> 9600GT (current) --> 8400GS (soon)
 
I wanted a TNT card with 32mb memory for my first card, but for some reason it wouldn't work with my computer, so I ended up going with the Voodoo 2.
 
does a Commodore 64 count? qbert and frogger ftw

but I got a 1.7 ghz Celeron Compaq, that came w/ a nvidia mx2...I think I still have that thing lying around somewhere

nvidia mx2, GForce 4400, 6800 Ultra, x850 PE, x1800M, 7950M gtx SLi, 280 gtx
 
Counting discrete video cards only.

Voodoo1(computer#1)/Riva128(computer#2) -> TNT -> Voodoo3 -> Geforce 2 GTS -> 9700 Pro -> X800 XL -> 7950 GT KO -> ???
 
I may have already posted this but.. 1mb Cirrus Logic vesa local bus. woooo
 
I went from a Diamond Stealth 64 then Matrox Mystique, Monster3D Voodoo, Monster3D Voodoo 2, GeForce 2 MX, BFG GeForce 6800 GT OC, and am now in the process of building a PC with an EVGA GeForce GTX 260 FTW.

Boy, going from a GeForce 6800 with a 2 GHz Athlon XP to a GTX 260 and a 3 Ghz Core 2 Duo is going to singe my eyebrows. :D
 
Cirrus Logic 2MB (I still have it for troubleshooting purposes :D ) > ATI Xpert 98 > ATI Xpert 2000 > GeForce 2 MX > ATI Radeon 8500LELE flashed to stock speeds > ATI Radeon 9700 Pro > GeForce 6800GT OC > Crossfired X1950 Pros > Crossfired HD3870's > Crossfired HD4870's

-V
 
My first one would have to be the Voodoo 3 3000 pci. I was so happy to play CS Beta back in 1999.
 
Well the first discrete card I can recall having was like a Diamond Viper II (Needed it to play FF7 on PC) -- some S3 card or something.
The path:
Viper II -> Matrox Millenium G400 -> Geforce FX5200 (horrible mistake) -> 9800Pro 128MB -> 7600GT -> 8800GT
or something similar to that.
Taa da.
 
First Windows PC was in 97..
Matrox Millenium ->added Diamond Voodoo2 12mb->ATI All In Wonder 128 16mb->added 2nd Voodoo2 (awesome!) -> ATI AIW 8500DV (which never worked right, got it replaced with) -> ATI AIW 8500 128mb -> X800XL -> 4850

The AIW 8500 128mb was a great card that gave its life in an unfortunate (accidental) overclocking disaster whereby I kicked up the AGP bus to 100mhz (my system fried, I was replacing the mobo and having other issues, it was late at night and I wasn't paying full attention-- I wasn't meaning to overclock, even, I was trying to change something else).. poor card worked for about an hour and then just gave up the ghost. Thankfully, I was in the process of assembling parts to build a new system, but I had to run with a borrowed PCI card for about a month.
 
Hmm...am I dating myself here by saying a Hercules Graphics Card? Ah, 16 colour CGA glory.
 
Trident Cyberblade 1mb with an extra 1mb of expandable memory. Oh yeah, I had the fastest 486 on the block. 640 lines of blocky ROTT. Anyone remember the game Bioforge? I eventually got an actual 3d accelerator to play Test Drive Off Road. I'm still a huge Gravity Kills fan.
 
Cheffy said:
Hmm...am I dating myself here by saying a Hercules Graphics Card? Ah, 16 colour CGA glory.
Click to expand...

Lol. I remember those days. I was playing EA Michael Jordan vs. Larry Bird, King's Quest 1 and Wizardry 1 on a green monitor.

BTW, I believe CGA is 4 glorious colors. Then about a year later EGA came out with 16, then the early VGA with 256. Woooo!!!
 
matrox millenium 2 or 4mb(?) vram
gf4 mx440(?)
x800xl 256mb
8800 GTS 512MB G92.
Eyeing that gtx 260 next...
 
a Diamond FireGL 1000pro... ohh the heady days of trying to get quake2 to run with colored lighting....
 
I remember getting that Voodoo card and I was soooo shocked to see how well CS played.. and UT99 was excellent on that card.. man i love this thread, it brings back memories.
 
9600 Pro > X800XT AIW > 7800GS > 8800 GTS (640MB) SLI > 8800GT SLI > 9800GX2 > 4870
 
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