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[Dr Mayonnaise]

Don't remember my first GPU, but I do remember the first one I bought for my self. It was a GeForce 8600GTS.

 

[Saintruski]

9800gt > 480 > 670 FTW > 980 Classified



Case: Corsair 900D
Motherboard: ASUS Rampage V Extreme
CPU: Intel 5960x @ 4.6GHz
GPU: EVGA 980 Classfied @ 1650MHz
RAM: Corsair Dominator Platinum 16GB DDR4 @ 3000MHz
PSU: EVGA 1600 G2
Raid Card: SUPERMICRO AOC-SAS2LP-MV8
OS and Software Drive: Samsung M.2 XP941 512GB
Game Drives: 3 x Intel 730 Series 480GB Raid0
Mass Storage: 8 x Seagate 3TB Drives

 

[-Gozer-]

I was a bit late to the dedicated gpu scene.

I still have the card and box for no good reason.

 

[bsod]

Although I got the PCI version since my shitty Celeron sporting PC at the time didn't have an AGP slot. I remember playing CS 1.5 after the upgrade and going, "Damn, so this how I play when everything runs like butter."

 

[MrCunningham]

I made a grand leap from a Geforce 5200 to the Geforce 5900 Ti! Oh, how naive I was 11 years ago.

God, I remember buying a GeForce FX 5700 Ultra back in the day, with 256MB GDDR2, what a noisy POS that was. It burned out on me after a month of use and swore me off of buying another Nvidia card for quite a while. But I was able to exchanged it for a Radeon 9700 pro with 256MB of RAM. The 9700 Pro was a pretty sweet card for the day. For a while I was purely rolling with AMD and ATi. The Athlon XP 2700+ and 9700 pro made for a nice combination.

I stayed with AMD CPU's until I made the jump to the i5 2500K.

 

[SystemBug]

Nvidia 8600 GT. I thought I could run Crysis lol. It did. At 15 fps

 

[RadioJoNES64]

My first graphics card was a Nvida 6500 gt. It came inside of an eMachine computer my parents got me from Wal-Mart.

 

[Later Alligator]

i had a voodoo2, blew my mind at the time

 

[FLAguy954]

I build my first rig in April last year with a 4670K and this baby:

I was very impressed with the build quality and immediately became a fan of MSI branded GPUs. The card also served me well @ 1080p before I sold it towards an MSI 290 purchase a couple of months later.

 

[Wag]

Hercules Monochrome card.

 

[xillyriax]

think i went GeForce 2MX -> GeForce FX 5200 -> 8800 gt -> gtx 460 -> gtx 750 ti

i had a ati 9800pro in there somewhere :/

 

[Deraldin]

First dedicated graphics card I had was a GeForce 4 MX, but the first one that I bought that didn't come as part of a prebuilt was a Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro.

I think I might still have the box sitting in a closet upstairs. The card itself is gone though. Ended up dropping off that computer at the recycling center.

Complete progression:
GeForce 4 MX -> Radeon 9600 Pro -> Radeon 4850 -> Radeon 4870 -> R9 270

 

[Psyrgery ES]

My first graphics card was the NVidia TNT2.

It was amazing back then

 

[Harshak]

Vooooo2 12 MB.

Quake 2 became such a smooth ride with that!

 

[nowarning]

The first one I had that I can remember the name of was a Geforce 2 MX400, I had a few builds previous to that but I just can't remember what they were for the life of me, I got it into PC gaming when I was real young but obviously didn't have a hand in doing the builds myself. I'm trying to rack my brain to think what I had with a P166 but I just can't remember.

 

[DeSo]

I think mine was something like a Geforce 2 MX. Bloody povo card but loved it at the time.

 

[curlycare]

If I remember correctly, my first card was Riva TNT2. Soon after updated to Geforce 256 DDR. What a lovely card it was.

Whole progression : TNT2 > 256 > Geforce 4 MX 440 > Geforce 6800 LE > Geforce 7800 GS > Radeon 3870 > Geforce 9800 GT > Geforce 560 Ti > Geforce 670 > Geforce 970
Crysis has been the first game to boot after installing new card since 3870.

 

[pswii60]

My first was the Orchid Righteous 3dfx back in 1997. Don't even have a 3D card these days, console gaming ftw

 

[nowarning]

I think mine was something like a Geforce 2 MX. Bloody povo card but loved it at the time.

Yeah I remember that card, I didn't ever realize it was a budget one until recently, ignorance is bliss because I can never remember having any issues with it on any games haha.

 

[MetalRain]

My first card was 3dfx Voodoo Banshee bought in late 1998, I had no idea which GPUs were good at that time, but it served me well with games like Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast. It took 6 years before I updated PC.

 

[Kayant]

I went all in on my first build -

 

[petran79]

best gaming memories on PC were spent on a crappy Cirrus Logic with 512 kb

 

[RayMaker]

Riva TNT 2 m64 32mb

Paired up with a p3@600mhz and 128mb of ram

Was such a beast.

Could play half life, red alert 2 and Max Payne (which did stutter on that sniper section)

 

[FairFriend]

GeForce MX 440 -> FX 5700 (yeah I know, what a shitty card...) -> AMD 7850

 

[pLow7]

I could play Oblivion with that beast.

 

[Arkanius]

The thing I hate with GPUs nowdays is that they are so god damn thick.
Dem coolers

 

[Hoya Destroyer]

A Geforce 2 MX 200.

The Card was replaced twice in the span of two months. Btw Hercules was a brand of hardware owned by ubisoft.

That box looks very familiar to me. Im pretty sure that was my fist card too. It was purple and blue, 32 MB and had a cute little heat sink on it.
I installed it into my Celeron 500 desktop, but Baldurs Gate still had significant loading times and bad frame drops IIRC. lol

 

[Kezen]

Btw Hercules was a brand of hardware owned by ubisoft.

If memory serves they sold mostly Nvidia designs.
Hence the very good relationship between Nvidia and Ubisoft.

 

[c0de]

Diamond Monster 3D II. With amazing 12mb ram...

Should've waited for the Banshee to have windowed gaming, too.

 

[c0de]

Vooooo2 12 MB.

Quake 2 became such a smooth ride with that!

Unreal! That jump from software rendering to glide...

 

[KojiKnight]

Another voodoo 2 user, 12mb... I always intended to get a second to pair them off for added performance, but I never did before my first one died and I moved on to other pastures.


Thinking back on it... 'greener pastures' were a TNT riva 16MB, an nvidia 5200FX, 6600GT (finally a 'real' graphics card, it was glorious!), then a Radeon 9600 that was unlocked to a 9800, then my 2600HD, 3850HD, 5770HD, 5870HD, then my current 7870.

 

[Nabbis]

Nvi 7900GTX(died in less than 1 year)--> Ati 1950xt --> Nvi 290GTX --> Amd 6870 ---> Nvi 780GTX.

 

[Bl@de]

I don't remember. Some VGA/SVGA card in a 486DX system. Not Matrox. I'm very sure of that. First "modern" card would be the Guillemot MaxiGamer 3D with amazing 4MB Ram.

 

[Trojan X]

I think my first dedicated GPU was a TNT2.


Lovin' that little guy in the OP. I got a Radeon 9800xt in 2003 (like, the titan of it's day. it had 256gigs of memory) and it was so laughably whimpy looking compared to top of the line cards from today.

Omg! The TNT2. That use to be thegraphics card that ever PC gamer out there had to own or strive for. Brings a tear to eye thinking about it.

I had voodoo 3dfx card. Forgotten exactly which one.

 

[Seik]

TNT2 represent!

I can play quake 3 with this? Hell yeah.

Yessss! My man!

 

[Trojan X]

Ahhhh! That's the one. I brought this for my first pc but it didn't fit, so i had to get a new pc to install it. Yes, back then, i was too scared and unknowledgable to build a PC.

 

[dgrdsv]

My first videocard was some Cirrus Logic chip. It was back in 1992 I think. No 3D whatsoever.

My first 3D videocard was ATI Rage II. It was a total crap in 3D and that's why I got myself 3dfx Voodoo 2 to accompany it in a couple of years.

 

[Beautiful Ninja]

My first video card was a GeForce 2 MX 200 PCI. Bought it to play Oni on my 800mhz Sony Vaio Duron computer. I never did end up beating Oni.

Upgrade chain after that was Radeon 9500 Pro > Radeon 9700 (killed it installing heatpipes) > 9800 Pro > X800 Pro (cheap upgrade when I traded in the 9800 Pro to ATI) > HD 4670 (died when the fan on the heatsink literally snapped in half due to dust) > HD 5770 > HD 6950 (given to me by a friend) > GTX 770.

Geez, counting it out now I had 7 consecutive Radeons before I bought my second GeForce card. It wasn't like I had anything against nVidia either, it just seemed like every time I went to buy a new GPU AMD had the best options for the money I had to spend.

 

[Lalalandia]

Matrox G220 + PowerVR PCX1

That DirectX power!

Spoiler

That was useless because most contemporary titles were on the GLide API or ran best with the 3dfx OpenGL mini driver

 

[Durante]

This was my first GPU. S3 Virge. Absolutely terrible.

 

[Sinfamy]

Nvidia 8800 GTS 640MB.
Was a beast, it even ran Crysis at my shitty resolution, with 2GB of RAM, Windows Vista, and an Athlon X2 5400+.

 

[hodgy100]

Geforce 6200. shit tier card. but it was enough to let me play Halo 1

 

[spekkeh]

virge 3d , graphics decelerator

Haha yeah same here. 1996 or something? I had the Diamond 3D version I think, but it was just an S3 Virge. Probably the first time I bought a piece of hardware for my PC (or was that an extra SIMM RAM?). That experience was great. Exciting times. Insert a card, get supernew 3D experience. The card itself though... Got completely demolished by my N64 next year.

edit: same as Durante

This was my first GPU. S3 Virge. Absolutely terrible.

After that I got a Riva TNT2, that was the first graphics card I had that was actually capable of outputting something decent. After that.. I don't remember.

 

[Spineker]

I can distinctly remember when my love of PC gaming began. Battlefield 1942. I wanted a decent rig with a Radeon 9700 in order to play it. Sooo long ago now.

 

[teokrazia]

Voodoo 2, bulk.

 

[Drunken Master]

Was a decent one, used it for 3 years without a problem.

 

[NarrowPath]

My first was a Diamond Monster 3D (3dfx voodoo 1), it had 4 megs of vram, son. It only did 3d, no 2d. It was a PCI card.

 

[Label]

I think one of the first I bought all for myself was this one, coming with this beautiful blueish PCB:



A real nice alternative to the GeForce2 MX 400.

I had the EXACT same graphics card! What a blast from the past. This thread is a lovely nostalgia trip

 

[spekkeh]

These R7s are great for casual gaming (i have the 260x) and runs D3 very nicely at medium settings... definitely a great investment for $100 ....

Cheers on the new card

Dunkel Weissbier? Silly germans.

 

[c0de]

Matrox G220 + PowerVR PCX1

That DirectX power!

Spoiler

That was useless because most contemporary titles were on the GLide API or ran best with the 3dfx OpenGL mini driver

Unbelievable what a mess DirectX was back then.