I usually only upgrade when my current hardware fails. That means I'm still playing Skyrim on an AGP card 🤣

Voodoo1 was usable on games in 2001 in some cases. Came out in 1996.

Radeon 9700 was much more usable for later games than Geforce FX.

But GF8 is not showing signs of becoming useless so I think they will be the record holders. I'd say Radeon 2900 too but it didn't really sell well and AMD wants to kill 2000-4000 driver support.

I'd have to say the Radeon 4850. Got that card 4 years ago and it can still run most games at respectable resolutions and graphical settings!
Also, the 8800 series with the record holder being the 8800GTX.

Hmmm. I made lots of mistakes along the way!! First was a Diamond monster banshee then awhile later a Geforce 4MX which I returned for a Geforce 3 ti200. Next fail was a Geforce 5700 Ultra 128mb. Fail after that was a Geforce 7800GT which was overshadowed by the 8 series all too fast!

I've been using a GTX260 since I built my main rig in the beginning of 2009! It still runs great. I'm looking to upgrade to a 560ti if the deal doesn't fall through. Hoping its a good idea to buy it.

Way back when I had most of it right.

In 95 it was a Trident 1mb
In 96 it was a Diamond Voodoo 1 4mb and a Diamond Stealth card.
In late 98 a voodoo 2 8mb and a TNT2 32mb
In around 2k it was a Geforce 256 32mb (think SD-ram version)

I guess If I had to do it over...
Canopus 6mb Voodoo 1
SLI Voodoo 12MB or Voodoo 3 16MB
Geforce 2 GTS/Ultra DDR
Radeon 9700/9800 (If i'd ever buy a ATI videocard 😉 )
Geforce 9800GTX+

Oh yeah.... If it wasn't for current consoles there would probably alot further along. I mean DX9 has been around since 2002?

My list:

Voodoo 1 in 1997
Voodoo 2 in 1998
TNT2 Ultra in 2000
Geforce 2 GTS in 2002 (bought second hand)
Geforce 4 Ti 4200 in 2003
Radeon 9800 in 2004 (bought second hand)
GeForce 6800 GT in 2006 (bought second hand since the 9800 died 🙁 )
GeForce 8800GTX in 2007
Radeon 5750 in 2010 since the 8800 died 🙁

The 8800GTX is the longest living card I've had so far. I would still have used it if it hadn't gone artifacts death on me.... The 5750 is about equally powerful, but it cost less than a third of the 8800 😜

Still havent upgraded after that... 🤣 😜

Anyone who bought a GeForce4 MX got good mileage from it and since it was similar to the earlier GF2MX and GF 256, those earlier cards benefited from the long period of GF4MX support, as well.

From memory, along with the system I was using at the time, and why the card was retired:

Voodoo 1 (166MMX, superseded)
GeForce 256 DDR (P3 450 Katmai, card superseded)
GeForce 3 Ti 200 (P4 1.5 Willammette, card superseded)
GeForceFX 5600 (P4 2.4 Northwood, card died)
Radeon 9800 XT (AthXP 2800+ Barton, slot superseded)
Radeon X850XT PE (Ath64 3500+ Venice, system superseded)
GeForce 8800GTS 640MB (Q6600 Kentsfield, card superseded)
Radeon 4870X2 (Q6600 Kentsfield, card died)
Radeon 5850 (i7 870 Nehalem, sold to a needy friend)
Radeon 6970 (i5 2500 Sandy Bridge, current)

Paradise ?? 2Mb (Paid extra for the extra meg of video ram, and never regretted it. Loved the high-res, high-color I used to get out of it.)
Matrox G400 (Man, I miss the awesomeness that this card provided at the time. Favorite features were the bi-linear filter on 320x200 graphics, and it's very competent TV out support).
nVidia GeForce 3 (Remember being disappointed by the TV out on this post my Matrox. nVidia drivers were lousy compared to the former Matrox ones.)
ATI 9800 (Nothing particular about this card, but it provided great performance for a long time.)
SLI 2x nVidia 7800 (Great cards, but ate up significant wattage on a PC I keep on 24x7.)
ATI 5870 (Died an early death due to Bitcoin mining. :~(, a shame as it was a competent card.)
nVidia 580 (Forced into buying this a week before the 680 came out. Still regretting such, but it's serving me well so far.)

Thanks for this trip down memory lane.

Think my path was like
some Tseng Labs 2 MB PCI
Voodoo 3 3000 PCI
GeForce 2 MX 400
Radeon 8500 LE
Radeon 9800 Pro
Geforce 6800
GeForce 8800 GTS 320 MB
Radeon 4850 512 MB
Radeon 6950 2 GB

Was happy with all of them, hard to pick by longevity. Price considered 8500 LE and 4850 were best purchases.

2000 - Quadro on a P3 700 (I wanted a GF2 GTS, but there was none available and they gave me the ELSA GLoria II).
2003 - GeForce Ti 4200 AGP 8x on P3 1.4 GHz (I loved the PIII)
2005 - Radeon 9800 Pro on A64 3000+ (bought in 2005 and was still using it in 2012 until the Arctic Cooling Silencer on the R9800 begun to fail).
2012 - AMD E-450 (a temporary replacement for the above rig, will probably end up as my XP "retro rig")
2012 - ...and hopefully in a month or two - GTX680, most likely ASUS with DirectCU II

It seems the R9800 was my best choice, but I think most modern cards will work now for years or at least until next-next-gen consoles come to the market.

2000-2001 Rage fury maxx. I still regret selling this to a friend...
2001-2002 Geforce 3 ti500 it was a hand-me-down from a friend. long story short I had weed and he diddnt...
2002-2003 ati 9250
2003-2004 ati 9600se (this thing overclocked and ran like a raped ape)
2005-2008 nvidia 7800gs I HATED this card, but it lasted near forever while i hung onto agp
2008-2009 ati 3850 still hanging onto agp
2009-2010 nvidia 260 (216) I still use it for F@H& physx
2010-now Ati 5870 nice running card.

It seems I went between the 2 camps quite reliably. The only card I diddnt re-sell was the 9600se and that was because I killed it. I was running it overclocked with peltier & water. I was running close to a 100% overclock. When suddenly the vram decided to shit the bed and it went downhill from there. Which was sad, because it was keeping up with the 850xt pe in most games, and I would have sold my left jewel for one of those...

Asus P2B - P2-350, P3-600 via slotket adapter
1999 - 16MB GraphicsBlaster Riva TNT 1
200? - 32MB Geforce 256 (Transform and Lighting!)

Asus Tusl2-C - P3-600, P3-1400E (longest lasting PC, still have most of the parts)
200? - 64MB 3D Blaster Annihilator Geforce 2 Titanium (it was awesome at the time. I still have it)
2004 - 64MB Sapphire Radeon 7000 PCI (secondary card, VGA to SCART)
2004 - 128MB Leadtek Geforce FX 5900XT (it had 2.2ns RAM like the Ultras, I once flashed it with an Ultra BIOS and overclocked it to bits, this broke the TV-out)
2005 - 256MB Leadtek Geforce 6800GT (huge performance leap)

Asus P5P800SE - P4 630, P4 651
Used the 6800GT until it died, first time I had a video card die on me. I used the old Geforce 2 Ti for a while. I remember getting Doom 3 to run on it somehow, it was missing a lot of graphics but was fully playable!
May 2007 - 256MB Leadtek Geforce 7600GT (my last AGP card)

Asus P5Q-E - P4 651, C2D E8500
December 2008 - 512MB Leadtek Geforce 9800GTX+ (huge performance leap)
February 2011 - 1024MB ASUS Geforce 460GTX (first video card w. only digital outputs)

Asus P8Z77-V Pro, i5-3570k
June 2013 - 2048MB EVGA Geforce 660 GTX

1999-2001 - Some sort of AGP Riva TNT that came with my PII. I didn't know much about tech back then and don't seem to have the card any more, so I don't know anything else about it.

2001-2005 - Upgraded the PII to a Radeon 7500 64MB AGP after I bought some game and it had problems due to the Riva TNT not fully supporting DirectX 7. My first experience in computer upgrading. A lovely card though, and it served me perfectly for the last four years I used the PII as a main system.

2005-2009 - Radeon Xpress 200 integrated graphics, used 128MB of system memory. I finally upgraded to an Athlon 64 tower, but money constraints left me with this crap. By 2008 it was mostly futile trying to play new games on it.

2009-2010 - Upgraded the Athlon 64 to a Geforce 8400GS 512MB PCIe. I had intended to just wait until I built a new machine, but for $25 I couldn't resist. Really quite a noticeable boost over the integrated even though it wasn't that powerful of a card. Since I was used to the integrated graphics, I mostly had older games on there and I was pretty satisfied with it as a result. I could even pump Half-Life 2 up to 1280x1024... it only took five years after its release for me to catch up!

2010-Now - XFX Radeon 5870 1GB PCIe, in my first real gaming tower. Set me back an insane amount, but even two years down the road it still runs everything on the best settings, at least with everything I've tried. I imagine it will serve me well for quite a long time.

I don't recall dates but here's the order for my main PC

onboard ATI Mach64
onboard Intel something
GF MX 440 PCI
FX5200 AGP
GF6600 AGP
7800GS+ AGP
HD4850 PCI-E

Knowing then what I know now, think I would have bought these as they became available:

Voodoo 3
GF Ti4600 or Ti4800SE
6800gt or the 7800GS+
HD4850

Pre-2000 I went through two S3 cards, can't remember which ones, wasn't much into hardware back then.

In 2000 I got my first real 3D card, a Voodoo 5 5500 AGP. I used that beauty for five years.

In the next years I went through a bunch of Radeons; 9250, 9100, 9700, 9800 and an X800.

November 2008 is when I bought my current card, a Radeon 4670 512MiB. Still hasn't let me down.

I should note that I'm not a graphics whore. I can still enjoy a game of Settlers II or Transport Tycoon or C&C Red Alert, etc.
If performance is slow, I lower the graphics settings and anti-aliasing is something I rarely use.

Well I am outdated - the most recent game I played was Unreal 2.

But I have several machines with voodoo 3 cards - those will pretty much handle any of the old glide games.

I also have a couple of machines with Radeon 9600 cards; one of those I used for Unreal 2.

I have never had a Nvidia-based card (shrug).

In retrospect, I should've just stuck to Voodoo2 12MB then Geforce2 GTS then Radeon 9x00 then HD3xxx.

1998 Voodoo 2 12meg
2000 Voodoo3 3000 PCI
2002 Geforce TI4200 64meg
2005 Nvidia 6800XT 128meg (256 bit)
2007 Nvidia 7900GS
2011 Nvidia 9800GT (Freebie)
2012 Nvidia GTX 480 (Bought for $100, sold for $150 a few months later never used, I bought a P2 overdrive socket 8 & 6200 pci with the funds...)

My favourite card was the Geforce ti4200 64meg, this was purchased midway 2002, I remember Geforce 3ti500s being the shit at the end of 2001 and were selling for like $700-$800 when introduced, the ti4200 kicked its ass and only cost $340.

1998 TNT made by Diamond (Diamond Viper 550)
The graphics card in this rig was never upgraded (P2-350, later a p3-550 Katmai)
2003-ish Radeon 9600 in a new rig (XP 3200+), later upgraded to a
2008-ish GF7600GS AGP, later upgraded to a:
HD4670 1GB
2008-ish GF7600GS (in a s939 3500+ rig), later downgraded to a
Radeon 9600 (as I put the GF7600GS in one of my LAN rigs)
And my newest rig has:
HD5670 1GB

The graphics card I used longest were the TNT and the Radeon 9600, though I was more satisfied with the performance of the latter