My (incomplete) list:

Voodoo 1
Voodoo 2
Voodoo 3 (all versions, but the speedier the better 😉 )
Banshee
Velocity
Rendition 2100
Geforce 256
Voodoo 4
Voodoo 5
Radeon 9600 Pro/XT 256MB
Kyro (all/any)
GeForce 7600 DDR3
Radeon 4670 1GB
Radeon 5670 1GB
And then some of the Radeons/Geforces that I never tried before

sgt76 wrote:

am I missing something out?

Early PowerVR cards, and early Rendition boards

Voodoo1 was 1996 btw

I'd consider the Voodoo 1, 2 and 5500 to be collectible. The rest on your list just aren't rare enough and/or didn't have a big enough impact on the market to be highly sought after.

1996/7 - Voodoo & Verite (GLQuake and VQuake)
1998 - Voodoo2 SLI
1999 - SGI Cobalt (okay, it wasn't very fast but the 4 Xeon Visual Workstation 540 with it was soooo bad ass).
2000 - Voodoo 5500
>2000 - everything was dull after 3dfx (other than an InfiniteReality system).

How can you have a GTX480 and not have a GTX460 on that list. GTX460 is going to become legendary when people look back 10 years from now.

You also need a GF4MX. Practically everybody had one at some point. So many of them were sold that they held back gaming for years before they finally became unsupported and made way for cards that supported more features and newer standards. The PCX4300 (which performs identically to the AGP 8X MX440) is probably the only DX7 card that you could still get after PCIe took over from AGP.

I really don't think there's much listed here that is particularly collection worthy - Voodoo 1 as perhaps the example that kick started the industry, maybe the Geforce 256. Other than that, there's nothing really remarkable that stands out... certainly nothing I would believe that could justify collecting cards from what are the same series but with extra bells and whistles (modern Radeon and Geforce lineage).

That's IMO, of course!

I'd say my must-have, maybe rather than "collectable", cards would be:

voodoo1
voodoo2
voodoo5
g200 - plays all my dos games perfectly unlike s3's
wildcat vp cards - just for something needlessly different
Ti4 - useful for sooo long
7800gs+ agp - fastest nvidia agp card
7950gx2 - fastest card that still plays avp afaik

anything later is too early for me to tell

I got the Voodoo 1 "reference board" with the software, games, and the link cable... I feel llke this is worthy of being called "collectable". Other than that, just the Nvidia cards that I have/had. I.e. 5900se gold edition, 7950GX2, etc.
I don't consider the Voodoo 3s to be rare enough for "collectability" status, but I'm sure they will be soon enough.
I never had good enough experiences with ATi to consider any of them notworthy except the vintage all-in-wonder cards (I'm probably being too harsh on them because of how much money I wasted on them for subpar performance and mangled drivers).
Matrox, Rendition, and PowerVR are also notworthy for their contributions to early 3d acceleration in personal computers.

😳 Uh oh, I think I'm starting to sound like an Nvidia fanboy. 😦

Wow, I completely forgot about Wildcat! They were awesome cards, though I can't think of any use for them 🤣.

I'd have to say the weirder the better.

MPACT / MPACT 2
the Yamaha chip
3D Blaster VLB
PowerVR boards
Rendition Verite V1000/V2000
Oak Warp 5
NVIDIA NV1
...

Maybe throw in some "turning point" cards like

Voodoo1
GeForce 256
Radeon 9700
GeForce FX 5800
GeForce 8800
Radeon HD 2900

A Matrox Parhelia might be collectible based on it's status as a colossal failure. A 3D Labs Permedia based card or Intel i740 would be good for novelty value as would a Trident 3D card. Oh and an SGI Volari. 😁

Anyway, I kinda more like mentioned the graphics chips/cards that I think are worth collecting.
If you want to know what cards are the most collectible then just do an Ebay search for retro graphics cards and sort as "highest first", it'll probably come close.

What is collectible and what is not depends entirely on the collector. Different people will collect different things.

Voodoo 3 may not be rare, but it's a great card to have, definitely worth collecting 😉
And besides, what isn't rare now could be rare in 8 years. Just look at what happened to the 486 mobo's 😉

Once in a blue moon these will show up on ebay, but they're hard to find nonetheless:

- PowerVR PCx2 cards (i.e. Matrox M3D)
- Rendition cards
- Videologic Neon 250 (PowerVR Series 2, aka Dreamcast-derived graphics processor)

Some other stuff that's worth collecting, at least for me:

- Early professional graphics cards (i.e. Intergraph Intense 3D Wildcat), earliest one I know of is from 1994 and is fully OpenGL 1.0 compliant. probably only works with WinNT though.
- Various 3DLabs graphics cards (i.e. Oxygen GVX1)
- Early SGI workstations
- Any graphics card not sold in the US (can still be based on common graphics chips) - namely the Gigabyte Voodoo Banshee, or various PowerColor Voodoo3 cards

Neon 250 is quite rare and would be neat to have.

The Dreamcast PowerVR CLX is actually considerably faster.
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=349365&postcount=3

However, I find that once I get some of these cards and find out how flawed they are, that my interest really drops. Most of the old cards have varying degrees of issues and gaming with them is not very cool if they have major image quality problems and no performance. Nevermind the hair pulling of stability issues. There are a number of reasons Voodoo beat everybody else. 😉

What I think would be cool is a huge retro hardware Wiki with lots of high resolution card photos and game screenshots. I have a boatload of screenshots ready to go, btw. (see sticky) 😁

swaaye wrote:

The Dreamcast PowerVR CLX is actually considerably faster.

Actually it's the heavy ASM for the SH4 CPU games had that is the real muscle behind the Dreamcast. It's essentially T&L right there.

I believe for collectible status, certain cards deserve more recognition. The following are my collectibles, irrespective of their performance profiles, and in no particular order :

1. Voodoo 1
2. Voodoo 2 in SLI
3. S3 Virge
4. PowerVR card (Kyro I & II)
5. Diamond Edge 3D (NV1)
6. nVidia Riva series (128, TNT,TNT2)
7. Rendition Vérité card
8. Matrox Mystique and Millenium (heavily advertised in 90s)

Again, this list is not based on performance but more on familiarity or nostalgic elements, and not in any particular order.

I have a thing for #9 video cards. past that the voodoo's. And basically any of the old cad cards. like the evans and sutherland series.

Well, quite a different response from what I expected. It appears that apart from some consensus on the Voodoos, most just consider something to be collectible based on nostalgia or past experience rather than looking for the highest performance/ most expensive cards.

The reason I initially posted this up was to get some feedback as I'm in the midst of building up my collection of video cards spanning from the 90s (S3 Virge) right up to present day. I have most of the 90s and early 00s cards, so am now concentrating on cards from 03 onwards. My plan is to have at least one ATi/ AMD card and one Nvidia equivalent for each generation.

No particular reason for my list other than drooling over each of these cards when they were new....

@sgt76: You kinda hit the nail on the head 😁

I personally also favor mid-range cards over high-end cards as they are easier to build a system around (they produce less heat and less noise). It's mostly practical, easier to keep case temps low and saving 50W's on a PSU is quite important to me, saves me from having to buy slightly higher rated PSU which in turn tend to be much more costly then the slightly lower rated PSU's 😉

Of course for earlier high-end cards, this doesn't really matter much

sgt76 wrote:

Well, quite a different response from what I expected. It appears that apart from some consensus on the Voodoos, most just consider something to be collectible based on nostalgia or past experience rather than looking for the highest performance/ most expensive cards.

The reason I initially posted this up was to get some feedback as I'm in the midst of building up my collection of video cards spanning from the 90s (S3 Virge) right up to present day. I have most of the 90s and early 00s cards, so am now concentrating on cards from 03 onwards. My plan is to have at least one ATi/ AMD card and one Nvidia equivalent for each generation.

No particular reason for my list other than drooling over each of these cards when they were new....

High end cards aren't necessarily hugely impactful on gaming. Yes, they allow you to run games with all the options on High or Ultra, but only the wealthiest gamers can even afford to shop the high end, so their overall impact is limited. It's the mainstream cards that sell in large numbers and manage to do things that nobody thought was possible in a card in their price range that usually leave the biggest impression which was why I mentioned the GTX460 over the GTX480. The GTX460 (and HD6870 on the AMD side) can run most games at decent framerates with enough options cranked up to look good, especially the overclocked versions. That's one of the things that makes a card collectible to me. As for vintage cards, uniqueness is what gets me. A card that does something in a way nobody else does like PowerVR or Rendition. A card that never sold well originally and rarely turns up for sale also manages to lure me in once in a while, even if it has a reputation for being a "bad" card, the rarity factor alone is sometimes enough to get me to hit the Buy It Now button.