Worst videocard you have ever bought.

Svperstar said:
Matrox Mystique 4 meg. Thing was a POS that could only play the 3 games it shipped with in 3D, couldn't play anything else.

Worst thing was the salesman tried to sell me a Monster 3D but I was like "A passthrough cable? That looks so cheap!"

God I was an idiot then :p
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I'd forgotten about the fact that I bought a 2 MB model for $140 back in 1996. This was the worst card for 3D that I ever bought; very few games would run, as the chip lacked bilinear filtering, antialiasing, and fog support. Worse, my first computer didn't support PCI bus mastering because it was a godawful Compaq Pentium desktop model loosely based around one of their proprietary 486 designs, so even the few games that would run on the Mystique ran terribly. Building a system around a Gigabyte motherboard and Cyrix 6x86 PR200+ with this video card made it come to life; with the overpriced 2 MB upgrade module, I could run my desktop at 1024*768 at 32-bit color. :cool: To be fair the 2D was great, and when I eventually paired it up with a 4 MB Diamond Monster 3D I was in pretty good shape.
 
asus geforce 4200 which promptly died and was replaced with a 4800 which died. i got it swapped for ATI 9600 pro which still works (emergency spare card now)

performance wise the most underwhelming thing i ever bought was one of the MX ones. i cant remember what it was called though.

most annoying card driver/install wise was back in the day there was ATI rage 64 on windows NT
 
Savage 4 32MB when they first came out. :mad:

and also probly the Abti 5900NU for $380. i still regret getting that over the 9800NP, which would have given better performance and saved $120.
 
Baker_God said:
lol, oh woe is you :rolleyes:. Mine would have to be the Sapphire 9500 NP, was barley faster than my previous 9000 Pro and yet cost $70 more :(
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I guess it goes to show that everyone's experience is different. My 9500 NP was one of the best cards I've ever had and I've had a lot of video cards. It's still going strong hardmodded to a 9700pro. It was a steal for $150 (OEM) 2 years ago. It's currently in my 5th rig AXP1800 AGOIA paly.

Back on topic, I was cleaning out the parts closet and I found an old Trident card and a Diamond Stealth3D 4000 based on the S3 virge. Must have totally blocked those out of my mind.
 
Voodoo 3 3000 16MB (I think it was that)

I don't know what the problem was with the card, but it'd always turn my screen black but my computer would still be on. I returned it and got an ATI Rage PRO 32MB kicked ass like crazy, ran OpenGL fine and my CS was blazin'. The Voodoo 3 could barely run CS better then my 4MB SIS Card I had and it couldn't run OpenGL. That ATi card was the bomb :]
 
ya know after looking through this thread I figured out I cannot complain about any of my videocards:

1998 TNT 16mb (vanilla) $120
1999 TNT2 32mb ram creative $170
2001 GF3Ti200 $160 PNY
2003 9500 I memory unlocked to 9500 pro and overclocked (Sapphire)
2004 6800OC all pipes unlocked NV5 $340
 
Asus V7100/2V1D (Nvidia GeForce2 MX)

first Nvidia to support dual monitors
only they didnt release the drivers to fully support W2K for at least a year after I bought it
dumped it for a Matrox Millenium G550 as i needed 2D not necessarilly 3D dual monitor performance
 
6800gt. forget the brand, but couldn't get it working for the life of me, and was building a system for a friend, this was when 6800gts were scarce, so got an x800pro instead.

(love the x800pro now btw)
 
s3 Virge. it was awful... but keep in mind.. this was before any real 3d.
 
elcheapopc said:
I guess it goes to show that everyone's experience is different. My 9500 NP was one of the best cards I've ever had and I've had a lot of video cards. It's still going strong hardmodded to a 9700pro. It was a steal for $150 (OEM) 2 years ago. It's currently in my 5th rig AXP1800 AGOIA paly.

Back on topic, I was cleaning out the parts closet and I found an old Trident card and a Diamond Stealth3D 4000 based on the S3 virge. Must have totally blocked those out of my mind.
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I bought a 9800 pro sapphire for 178-185 dollars on newegg 1.5 years ago...now those were the days.
 
I had a GeForce4 Ti4200 that the fan died on two different occasions. It was a good card if it didn't require so much maintenance.
 
Lets just all agree the FX was probably the worse cards eva!

a fx5900nu was probably my worst vc.

I replaced with a 6800GT. I paid like $230 for it and kept it maybe 6 months I think. That whole generation was pretty lame for Nvidia.
 
well, it would have be be a toss up

either the crappy creative voodoo banshee (of course it was pci!)
or the piece of trash FX 5600 that hopped immediately to the wife's pc because it was so craptacular.
that's when i got my 9800 pro :p
 
My CGA IGP in my 286 was pretty bad - great for the time, but it could only do 16 colors

My worst "real" video card was a Cirrus Logic (cant remember model) in my 486 - always had driver issues with Win95 and it. It had an astounding 8 mb (which was a hell of a lot for 1995!)
 
USMC2Hard4U said:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHA

Winnar.

I think this thread should come to an end with the FX5200 Being the worst card evar
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That's an odd opinion. The FX5200 works. Several other cards listed above are all clearly much worse:

Savage3D, a card so bad and buggy that S3 completely dropped support for it not long after it came out
Matrox Mystique, an incompatible video card
and other cards with similar problems, at least initially

A 9200SE is a "worse" (slower, fewer features) video card than the FX5200, but I missed anyone mentioning that one. But of course both work and i'm sure many are happy with those low end cards. The difference is that the 128-bit memory FX5200 are actually decent DX8.1 gaming cards, while the 9200SE is still slow in any DX7/8.1 games.
 
EVGA FX 5200 light version. That's right, 64-bit memory interface. Worst card evar, though it still "works" and powers a mom web browsing box.
 
ati expert 98.......paid like 60$ for it, 8mb pci card, i dont think it was capable of doing 3d, sigh all i wanted to do was play games.
 
magnetik said:
3DFx BANSHEE!!! That thing never worked right.
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It is a close call between the

CREATIVE/3DFX BANSHEE

and

GeForce FX 5200-series

I think both can claim the title as they were each specially and horribly performing cards for their price. The SADDEST part of everything is I owned both of those cards!!!! Man I am a sucker. The only smart thing i did was buy an oem 9800 pro a year and a half ago.
 
Kyle_Bennet said:
Hehe, rookies.

Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 PCI (S3/Virge)
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I still have my old Diamond Stealth 3D 4000 ADD or whatever that weird slot was back in the early days of K6. 4mb of 3d goodness :D. When I got it, I couldn't play Shadows of the Empire properly, most of the menus were distorted and it would speed up and slow down at random intervals. I could play Q2 in software mode without TOO much lag, but it was still pretty slow :D
 
An old VLB ATI Mach32 2MB card I had. Never did work completely right with any computer I owned.
 
I'm another person that wonders why the FX5200 is being ragged on so bad. Cripes, it's a cheap video card. They work properly, and don't have half bad image quality with new drivers. I've been using an Albatron FX5900 NU for about a year and a half now, and I haven't had any problems with it at all. I got a good price on it and flashed it to a 5950 Ultra. I still have it and still use it to game. It's worked fine, and I never used the initial release drivers, so never noticed really poor image quality. With the settings up, quality is actually fairly respectable, although slower than its ATi competition. It's all the same to me when things are zipping by at how-many FPS.

However, many many moons ago my brother bought a Diamond Viper II. The FX series might have had sub-par anisotropic algorithms and DX9 ability and what-not, but at least they worked to a limited extent! NOTHING on the DVII ever worked right. The Savage 2000 chipset is easily the worst 3D chipset ever conceived by mankind. Nice checkerboard tiling in Counter-Strike and Half-Life, it wouldn't run QIII correctly... actually, it didn't do anything correctly! Biggest waste of $180 or whatever my brother paid for it in the history of my family. Anyone who picks the FX series as being "worse" cards than the Savage 2000 never had any experiences with the Savage 2000.
 
Voodoo 3000 card, hands down, takes the biscuit. As in "16 bits is enough for anybody." The second-to-last bad decision 3dfx ever made (the last bad decision being "screw architecture, just add chips - we'll keep the cost down somehow...").

Used the damn thing for a long time, though - in my wife's machine (Celeron 466). Only time she complained was when I got her "Myst: Riven"; screens looked like they were supposed to be illuminated with a Blacklight...

I finally upgraded her to a nForce2 IGP board (GF MX400 graphics, but slower since it uses system memory and she only has 256MB to begin with). Granted it still sucks, but more than it should because I have to keep the VGA cable pulled out slightly at the bottom or else I get bad ghosting onscreen for some reason (I'm using masking tape as a spacer)...

--KS
 
I can't remember exactly, this was before I really knew a lot about PC's. I bought it locally at some dive to replace a Diamond V550 for the first Deus Ex game but it actually ran much slower than the Diamond V550 cost more and came out probably a year or two afterwards. I think it might have been another TNT card but I can't remember what the hell it was. I returned it the same day.

The second worse was the onboard card that came with the first PC I bought over ebay when I started getting into PC's again. I paid a total of $300 dollars for a AMD 2000+ with 512 Megs of Ram 60 gig HD and VIA mb about 3 1/2 years ago. Crap, I can't remember the name of that one either, I know it had some tech that made UT run faster but was otherwise useless. I guess I have a hard time remembering the names of things I think as crap :) I replaced it with a 9500pro, and had to replace the VIA mb because VIA also sucks.
 
Someone gave me a FX5200 after I sold them my FX5900XT and before my 6800GT arrived. Well, that FX5200 is still on the floor of my office. "Can I sell this card?" they asked. Dude you can't even give this away. In fact, take it back. I don't want to admit I used it.
 
had bought a 9600xt. wasnt really impressed for 200$. returned it and went looking for a vanilla 9800. couldnt find any locally so bit the bullet and went for a 9800pro.
what a ride that was. the box was re-shrunkwrapped with an old bfg ti4200 in it.
BadBuy honored the return, acknowledging the in-store, non-factory shrinkwrap. (Thanks Kyle!)
brought the new 9800pro home. fired it up.. and voila.. red dots. :(
checked it out.. factory heatsink pins were not pushed in/secured..
damn thing was only held on by the grease and overheated. talk about bad luck..
brought that one back. fearing similar overheating/hsf failure ordered an ati silencer for it.
figuring this card better last me a while. got a good year out of it. the constant power spikes/outages in my area eventually trashed both my computers..even with ups's.
guess the ups's lost their clamping ability after seeing so many spikes and on one computer i lost a power supply, the 9800 and a hd, and on the other i lost a motherboard
and cpu. all in one shot. :(

upgraded to nf7-s, mobile 2600oc'd to 2.6ghz, x800pro vivo+silencer..been good since. :)
 
the worst card I ever got was a voodoo rush ($200). I had it for about a week. Everytime I wanted to turn my comp on I had to move the card to a new slot. I had a POS compaq compaq at the time. When I could play games they looked great. I took it back for an ATI All in Wonder with a Rage II chip (ugh). Thankfully I wisened up and bought a Voodoo 1 to pair with it about a month and a half later. 6 months later the All in Wonder decided to put on a show for me and start smoking in my computer. I RMA'd it and got a new one. 6 months later same thing happens. I finally pitched it in the garbage. I still have the Voodoo (diamond knows how to make a card last).
 
Worst card would have to be either my CGA Card that I got for free or my MGA card that came with my first PC. hehehe gotta love the old 8088 processors.
 
pxc said:
Matrox Mystique, an incompatible video card
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Incompatible with what?
I've had one for a few years in my Pentium (replacing the godawful Stealth 64 I had in there)... and I've never had problems with... Crisp image quality, very good Windows acceleration, and really fast with DirectDraw stuff too. I once timed videoram writes on that thing and got to over 120 mb/s... Not bad for the PCI bus' theoretical limit of 133 mb/s.

It's now semi-retired in my Pentium Pro 200, together with an Apocalypse 3Dx... which is quite a lot of fun (now the Apocalypse 3Dx is an incompatible videocard... a lot of D3D stuff doesn't really work properly :)).
 
A Diamond Viper II with the savage2000 chip from S3. Bought it because it was 100$ and i couldn't afford the Geforce2 GTS that i wanted. S3 only even updated the driver for that card ONCE :mad: ran the proprietary s3 metal mode in unreal tournament (99) which ran well but caused tearing. Would have loved the card a bit more had the drivers ever been updated (no support for win2k/xp - S3 are you listening??!!!) but alas the card was a POS.

I second this guys opinion

However, many many moons ago my brother bought a Diamond Viper II. The FX series might have had sub-par anisotropic algorithms and DX9 ability and what-not, but at least they worked to a limited extent! NOTHING on the DVII ever worked right. The Savage 2000 chipset is easily the worst 3D chipset ever conceived by mankind. Nice checkerboard tiling in Counter-Strike and Half-Life, it wouldn't run QIII correctly... actually, it didn't do anything correctly! Biggest waste of $180 or whatever my brother paid for it in the history of my family. Anyone who picks the FX series as being "worse" cards than the Savage 2000 never had any experiences with the Savage 2000.
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The viper2 was such a turd definitely the worst videocard I ever purchased. Judged on its own merits the savage 2000 chipset sucked copious amounts of ass.
 
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