Best Videocard of All Time

[imported_DaveA]

geforce 2 gts and the 9700 pro for me.

 

[CMC79]

A few not mentioned: TNT/TNT2--wasn't this the first card to feature speed and 32bit color depth versus the 16bit of the Voodoo cards? I remember that Nvidia made much of this--steered my purchase towards a TNT2 Ultra instead of 3dfx, and that's why I've always seen it as the beginning of the end for 3dfx.

The original Radeon--this is where, to me, ATI came on as a serious contender for 3D cards. Before it seemed like they simply produced inferior 3D chips, oddball cards (Rage Maxx), and the AIW line for Vivo. This was the first card that I remember to really use some elegant engineering to solve problems rather than brute force (the original HyperZ, etc.) If I recall, and feel free to shoot me down on this if I'm off base, the original Radeon was capable of doing what was later going to be known as DX8, but Nvidia pressured MS to change the spec so the Radeon wouldn't be DX8 compliant, and the GF3 would be the first DX8 compliant card.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Wow... software rendering..... good times. I still remember Spear of Destiny, Wolf3d, X-Wing etc... and of course Doom.

As for the video card you cannot really decide on one:

In chronoglogical order:

1. Voodoo 2 : Although the 1 was a gaming revolution, the Voodoo 2 (especially in SLI) was simply the ultimate setup available. 12MB of texture memory!!
2. Geforce 256 : First GPU, T&L engine.
3. Radeon 9700 Pro : God when it was released there is no other word for it, it simply slaughtered anything and everything. First card really capable of Pixel Shading (efficiently).

-Kevin

 

[trinibwoy]

Most impressive card I've ever owned - TI 4200 for the amazing value. Most impressive card since I came on the scene (around the Geforce256) - 9700 PRO.

 

[sodcha0s]

TNT/TNT2

I had (and still use in a spare PC) a TNT2-Ultra, and belive me it was nothing special. It was faster than my VooDoo2, and yeah it had 32-bit color but it suffered from horrendous drivers (yes, nVidias drivers were crap at one time) and it would never, EVER play a new game without major tinkering to the system. Even when I'd get a game to run, it was never without problems. I never could get Half-Life to look good on it. That was one thing about Voo-Doo and glide, games always worked and looked great.

 

[dug777]

9700 pro or 6800 U i guess

 

[user1234]

Originally posted by: dug777
9700 pro or 6800 U i guess

no no no, ONLY the 9700 pro, no doubt about it. See, the 6800 U did provide a leap in performance but it was released at the same time as X800XT which had about the same performance, so it only got half the glory. 9700 pro came out of nowhere to set record breaking performance way ahead of anything before it, and it was UNCHALLENGED by any competitor for a long long time.

People notice how he said the card that impressed the most at the "time it was relased", so hands down it the one and only 9700 pro.

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: user1234

Originally posted by: dug777
9700 pro or 6800 U i guess

no no no, ONLY the 9700 pro, no doubt about it. See, the 6800 U did provide a leap in performance but it was released at the same time as X800XT which had about the same performance, so it only got half the glory. 9700 pro came out of nowhere to set record breaking performance way ahead of anything before it, and it was UNCHALLENGED by any competitor for a long long time.

People notice how he said the card that impressed the most at the "time it was relased", so hands down it the one and only 9700 pro.

fair enuff

9700 pro all they way then

 

[bersl2]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

never did see those high res textures in UT99 on an S3 card

You can easily see them now on any OpenGL compliant card.

Correction: you can see them on any card that implements the OpenGL extensions GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc and GL_S3_s3tc, OR Direct3D ??? and up.

In other news, S3TC is a perfect example of why software patents suck.

Oh, and to not completely threadjack: My first card was a Voodoo 3, but I saw the Voodoo 2 in action, and it was beautiful, so I'll go with that.

 

[Gstanfor]

Originally posted by: sodcha0s
TNT/TNT2

I had (and still use in a spare PC) a TNT2-Ultra, and belive me it was nothing special. It was faster than my VooDoo2, and yeah it had 32-bit color but it suffered from horrendous drivers (yes, nVidias drivers were crap at one time) and it would never, EVER play a new game without major tinkering to the system. Even when I'd get a game to run, it was never without problems. I never could get Half-Life to look good on it. That was one thing about Voo-Doo and glide, games always worked and looked great.

Sorry, can't agree with you there. I never had troubles getting my TNT/TNT-2 (I had both) to run games well and look good.

Speaking of looking good, the TNT series absolutely blasted 3dfx totally out of the water. 3dfx may have been fast, but they were also ugly. I briefly had an S3 Savage too and even it was capable of making a single voodoo2 look silly. Shame the chip was so buggy/fussy and the drivers sucked as hard as they did (yes, I owned a Voodoo2 as well - still do and I'm not kidding on the better looking part).

 

[Bateluer]

V1 and V2, nothing since has truly completely changed gaming. 9700 Pro, Geforce 256 DDR, 6800 Ultra, while all great chips, they didn't revolutionize the industry the way the V1 and 2 did.

The most advanced chip from a technology standpoint is usually going to be the newest video chip on the market.

 

[Schadenfroh]

3dfx voodoo1, no card has been that revolutionary.

 

[Pariah]

Voodoo 2 followed by 9700Pro, and then everything well behind. Not only did the Voodoo 2 outperform everything with one card then just rubbed salt in the wounds with SLI, but it also revolutionized the $600 price tag for gaming cards putting it WAY beyond the cost of any gaming card setup before it. Though there was a time, when the highend drop to about $250, those days are long gone, and we are back to $600. The more things change, the more they stay the same. No card has really come close to coming out of no where and just laying the competition to waste in practically everthing like the 9700Pro did. The 6800U was impressive, but ATi had a comparable product just a couple weeks later, unlike the months it took NVidia to release the hack job GeforceFX (dual slot, cheating drives, etc) to compete with the 9700 Pro.

Through history, NVidia had very few innovations many people accredit to them. ATi was first to 32bit, not Nvidia. 3dfx was first to true hardware FSAA, not NVidia. 3dfx announced the V5 would have the feature, then before the card made it to market, NVidia released a driver hack for their card that enabled AA. PowerVR was the the first with a T&L engine, not Nvidia.

 

[sandorski]

The card that wowed me the most was the Voodoo 2, but the card that started it all was the Voodoo(never had one though). Really, the discussion is pretty much over from that point. The Voodoo not only changed the Performance of games drastically, it also changed the Look of games drastically, no other card has done that since.

 

[Elcs]

Originally posted by: WobbleWobble
I'm suprised no one has mentioned PowerVR's Kyro based cards. The Kyro 2 put up very good speeds for the money. Its Tile Based Rendering techniques were highly efficient, drawing only what you saw on the screen, not everything behind it as well like every other chip. If only they caught on and were able to get some real hardware T&L support.

Hidden Surface Removal was an inspired idea. For the most part, the Kyro II was a superior card to its direct competitors. I went from a 16mb TNT1 to a Kyro II and I only upgraded to a GF4 Ti4400 because my grandfather visited America... Now on a 9800Pro.

It was let down, mainly by its obvious lack of HW T&L and pretty poor drivers. Due to the fact they werent taken up, at times there were quite a few compatibility issues with games or parts where the Hidden Surface Removal techniques didnt quite work 'seemlessly'. All round, it was a card with potential to make it big.

16mb Nvidia Riva TNT.
I believe that was the first card that proved a 2D/3D card could be successful.
Rather than having a separate 2D and 3D card.

 

[kobymu]

the first ati AIW pci
it had 4MB so it kick ass in games AND could sopport 32bit colot depth in 1024x768 (wohho!) AND had a tv-tunet for win95

 

[mwmorph]

geforce 2 ultra. It was so good, nvidia rereleased it again 2 generations later.

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: mwmorph
geforce 2 ultra. It was so good, nvidia rereleased it again 2 generations later.

LMAO

 

[ScrewFace]

I think my favourite videocard of all time was my 128MB DDR-SDRAM BBA Radeon 8500. I was introduced to TruForm and SM 1.4. That card blew me away as I could now play Quake3: Arena at 1600x1200.

 

[hippotautamus]

When I first got my Riva TNT2...I think that was the model...16mb of vram...damn that thing ruled. I remember playing NHL99 for the first time and watching the intro video...damn it was awesome.

 

[kmmatney]

I'm a true budget gamer, so the best cards for me were:

1) Voodoo3 1000 - This was a $45 card that played all modern games at the time.

2) Radeon LE (the original): This was a $75 card which, after flashing to a new BIOS, would turn into a $160 Radeon.

I ran the Voodoo3 1000 with a Celeron 300A@450, and I ran the Radeon LE with a Celeron 500@800. In both cases, my budget systems played just as well as systems costing hundreds more. I can't say that anymore, though. Budget gaming is dead.

Edit: I guess I have to put my $120 GeForce4 Ti4200 in there as well. I had this overclocked to above Ti4400 speeds, and it still plays games everyday in my son's computer.

 

[Crescent13]

ATI Radeon X850XTPE, and NVIDIA Geforce 6800Ultra 512.

 

[kmmatney]

The worst card I ever bought was the Voodoo Rush, with the Vendition Verite chipset. Luckily it was purchased for work and not for home, ans we were able to allocate 2D only use. It was utter crap - no better way to put it.

The second worst card I ever purchased was the Diamond Stealth II. II had this on my work computer years ago, and it never worked properly in 3D.

 

[nRollo]

This isn't even really a question, the 6800Ultra 512MB is the "best card of all time", so far.

Sometime this year the R520 or G70 will replace it.

 

[RajunCajun]

Kmmatney, you're wrong about the Voodoo Rush. That card DID NOT have a Rendition Verite chip. The Rush combined a VooDoo1 3D accelerator with a 2D chip from a different manufacturer (can't remember the company off hand), but it was not a Rendition.

The Rush wasn't so much a failure as it didn't live up to claims made. The VooDoo chip was slightly slower in 3D than a stand alone V1. Also, the 2D chip wasn't the fastest. The next 3dfx card to combine both 3D and 2D was the Banshee based on the V2 chip, but in some multitexturing games it also was slightly slower than the VooDoo2.

The Rendition series were available with 2 different chipsets - V1000 and V2xxx. Both chipsets used a RISC-based chip for both 2D and 3D. At the time the chips were some of the VERY few than could run at 24bit color. These chips showed much promise and performed very well for its time, but ultimately Rendition was bought out by Micron and allowed to slowly die.

IMHO, the "Best Videocard of all Time" has to be based upon something revolutionary, first of it's kind that humbled all other cards. So with this definition here is my short list:

Voodoo1 Graphics - 1st truly modern, high performance 3D
GeForce Ti series - 4200/4400/4600
Radeon 9700 - DX9 in all it's glory
???????????????

It wouldn't be right to add any newer cards now - NVidia & ATI have just improved DX9 performance; nothing really new.

Now, cards that I've owned in chronological order:

Diamond Stealth S220 - Rendition V2100 PCI 4mb
Diamond Monster 3D - Voodoo Graphics PCI 4mb
Diamond Monster Fusion - Voodoo Banshee PCI 16mb
Diamond Viper V770 - TNT2 Ultra 32mb AGP
eVGA GeForce2 MX 32mb AGP
MSI Ti4200 64mb AGP
eVGA FX5900SE 128mb AGP
Leadtek 6600GT 128mb PCIe