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My First PC Graphics Card

C

Chojin

Member
When I got to college in 1998 I saw a guy play GL Quake and it blew my mind. I asked him how come his version of quake look so good while mine was a brown muddy mess. He said because he had a graphics accellerator card.

So I went to best buy and bought a TNT2 with 16 megabytes of ram. I fell in love.

I used it until max payne came out but still have fond memories of my first.

The only thing that made me sad about the card was trying to get the Everquest beta and UltraHLE N64 emulator to work because I had to fiddle with glide wrappers and shit because Voodoo 3Dfx bullshit.
 
R

riflen

Member
Things moved so fast in the 90s. In 1996, the VGA adapter in the first PC I built was a Diamond Stealth 64 PCI.

Back then 3D acceleration was in its infancy and there hardly any DirectX games. Quake Shareware was available, but the game only had a software renderer and my Pentium 120 couldn't do a very good job.

I quickly replaced the Diamond with a 4MB Matrox Mystique and then later in the year my mind was blown after seeing a friend play GLQuake on a 3DFX Voodoo board, and I paired the Mystique with an Orchid Righteous 3D Voodoo 1.

I remember the first performance tweak that I used in GLQuake was to run it at 512x384 instead of 640x480 for much better frame-rate with comparable image quality! I've been on the frame-rate train ever since. Currently enjoying a pair of GTX 780 Ti boards.
 
Warnen

Warnen

Don't pass gaas, it is your Destiny!
With my 1st paycheck from my 1st job at WalMart (back before it was a soul sucking mega chain) I bought a voodoo card. Dont remember what version it was but I got it around when tombraider 3 hit PC.
 
Dibbs

Dibbs

Member
Ivan said:
voodoo3_2000agp_03.JPG
Click to expand...

What in the phuck is a megatexel? lol

My old cards:

Geforce 2 MX 32 mb
Radeon 9200
Radeon 9800 IceQ (with a HL2-bundle key, got it years before the game was released)
 
Krappadizzle

Krappadizzle

Member
The first GFX card I bought personally for my very first build was a Nvidia 9800GTX. I bought and built my first PC soley for playing Crysis. It looked amazing and I couldn't believe what I was seeing and playing at the time. I played mostly console games since the early 90's; beside the few games of Warcraft II and Spiderman Movie Maker on the family PC. What an eye opening experience playing Crysis was.
 
J

jonno394

Member
My first card was bought in February. I decided i wanted to go the Amd route and After a lot of research I went for a gigabyte 280x. Great card. Runs everything I've thrown at it so far. I worry how it'll run witcher 3 but I might upgrade when it comes out.
 
M

mtm5925

Member
Voodoo 3 2000. I bought it to play Quake 3, but instead played UT much more. It could run UT in glide mode at 50+FPS. Amazing experience.
 
Starbuck2907

Starbuck2907

Member
I don't even remember my first card... The only older one I really remember from years ago was an AMD/ATI X800 Pro, which I used for Doom 3.

Before that, I don't even remember.
 
Krappadizzle

Krappadizzle

Member
jonno394 said:
My first card was bought in February. I decided i wanted to go the Amd route and After a lot of research I went for a gigabyte 280x. Great card. Runs everything I've thrown at it so far. I worry how it'll run witcher 3 but I might upgrade when it comes out.
Click to expand...

We all are. You'll be fine. I'm hoping my GTX 780 will run it at a good to great level of playability myself and I know I'm just being apprehensive knowing CDPR's track record.
 
s_mirage

s_mirage

Member
My 3D card history:

3D Blaster PCI (Rendition Verite V1000)
3dfx Voodoo 1
3dfx Voodoo 3 2000
Geforce 2 Mx
Geforce 2 Ultra
Geforce FX 5600 (the only card that I wished I hadn't bought)
Geforce 6800
Geforce GTX 280
Geforce GTX 570
Geforce GTX 680
Geforce GTX 780 Ti

I really wish that I'd kept that Voodoo 3 as it would have been useful for creating a retro rig.
 
C

Calmine

Member
Mine were an old Geforce card that could barely run Doom 3 when I had it.

Then I had a Laptop that I played everything on regardless of what game it was even Crysis ran on it...kinda it was a ATI X300 shared memory!

Then my built gaming rigs with:

ATI HD 3850
Nvidia GTS 450
ATI HD 6850 then Crossfired HD 6850
HD 7950
GTX 670 4GB model
and now running
HD7970 - Won't changing that for a long time.
 
The Hermit

The Hermit

Member
richisawesome said:
this was my first, in this exact same box:



awwww yeah

3D GAMING AT 60FPS!!!!!!!!!
Click to expand...

Mine too.

Then I got a Voodoo 5 ( i actually played Half Life 2 on that)
I bough a GTX260 after a long while( i didn't play pc much) which left me a bit disapointed.

Shortly after I finally decided to make a new PC from the ground up, with a good MOBO, Ram and bought a very nicelly reviewed GTX 670 in 2012.

I felt like I own a PS4 since then, such an amazing card.
 
R

Ragus

Banned
Gerofce 4 MX

Everything was fine until I wanted to play Lego Star Wars and Prince of Persia: SOT

No pixel shaders = lol, don't event think about it
 
E

Exploding8

Member
I forget what my first graphics card was... my second was a GTX 260 I think.

I'm not even sure what my current 5 year old gaming desktop has for a graphics card... I keep wanting to say GTX 275 though. I guess that's reasonable looking at the benchmark tests for Crysis, but it feels off; it still plays almost any game on at least medium.

I've been using a gaming laptop for college for the past two years though, hence why I'm unsure xD.

Planning on upgrading over the summer for VR, eyeballing the GTX 770 as a possible candidate but I'm gonna wait to see how prices change.
 
petran79

petran79

Banned
actually the most gaming hours were spent on an ISA Cirrus Logic SVGA card with....512 KB of VRAM

no wonder most ms-dos games were choppy

First real 2D/3D card was an Ati 3D Rage Pro
 
Freeman

Freeman

Banned
The ones I remember:

-Trident graphics card (can't remember the exact model)
-RIVA TNT2 (bought because of HL)
-GeForce FX 5xxx (can't remember the exact model, bought because of HL2)
-GeForce 6800 XT
-ATI HD4850
-AMD 6950

I sold my 6950 to buy another graphics card but I just ended up staying with my 4850, surprisingly most games I want to play run fine with it. I'll only buy a new graphics card once I sell my PS3 (after I play Persona 5), than I'll decide if I go with PS4 or a new graphics card.
 
Melchiah

Melchiah

Member
My first GPU was Radeon 9700 Pro in 2003.

a8clGCal.jpg


It was pretty amazing while it lasted, which wasn't long. It struggled to run the bigger maps in UT2003 at 1024x768/30fps & 4xAA/8AF already when I bought it, and Quake 4 in 2005 was unplayable without making severe visual sacrifices (dropping AA/AF, and setting all on medium, IIRC). 400€ for three years of gaming wasn't really a good investment, and it's one of the reasons I abandoned PC gaming after that brief period. And I really hated the fact, that 9800 Pro and XT came within a year after 9700 Pro's release, making me regret my purchase, especially as the later models didn't have such problems with tasking features like AA.
 
K

Kocolino67

Member
The first GPU I can still remember was the Matrox G400 - with multiple monitor output support before 2000

card.jpg


I don't know what I had before, but it was enough to play Pacific Strike or 1942 Pacific Air War. But the Matrox was a game changer for me.
 
L

lethial

Reeeeeeee
Melchiah said:
My first GPU was Radeon 9700 Pro in 2003.

a8clGCal.jpg


It was pretty amazing while it lasted, which wasn't long. It struggled to run the bigger maps in UT2003 at 1024x768/30fps & 4xAA/8AF already when I bought it, and Quake 4 in 2005 was unplayable without making severe visual sacrifices (dropping AA/AF, and setting all on medium, IIRC). 400€ for three years of gaming wasn't really a good investment, and it's one of the reasons I abandoned PC gaming after that brief period. And I really hated the fact, that 9800 Pro and XT came within a year after 9700 Pro's release, making me regret my purchase, especially as the later models didn't have such problems with tasking features like AA.
Click to expand...

I had that card with a fast processor. I do agree how quickly it was bottlenecked. And funny enough I didn't upgrade for 7-8 years and didn't do much PC gaming.
 
S

soldierblue

Member
Card history (that I can remember):

Voodoo Rush
GeForce 2 MX
GeForce 4 Ti4400
GeForce FX 5900
GeForce 6800GT
GeForce 7950GX2
GeForce 8800GTS
GeForce 8800GT (x2)
GeForce GTX 280
GeForce GTX 285
Radeon 5870
GeForce GTX 480
GeForce GTX 580
GeForce GTX 680
Radeon 7970
GeForce GTX Titan
 
Damigos

Damigos

Member
Jtwo said:
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.
Click to expand...

This was mine too. I remember the awesomeness of 3D!
 
S

sniperpon

Member
We talking just 3d accelerators? First one I ever owned was the Matrox Mystique, which I bought in 1996 if I remember correctly. It came with a hardware-accelerated version of Mechwarrior 2 which I remember being really impressed by at the time.

Of course, I owned a whole bunch of 2d-only video cards prior to that.
 
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