elianda wrote:

Well I think the ELSA Winner 2000 Pro-PCI 8 is really high end for 1995.

No doubt. But could you buy a Virge card in 1995?

Putas wrote:

elianda wrote:

Well I think the ELSA Winner 2000 Pro-PCI 8 is really high end for 1995.

No doubt. But could you buy a Virge card in 1995?

No you couldn't. It was announced in 1995, but release date to consumers (Diamond Stealth 3D 2000) was late june 1996.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/57506833/ … May96_Part1.PNG

In 1995, Matrox Millennium was all the rage in the computer magazines. So it's subjective. The Matrox is faster in some games/applications than a Vision968 based card.

Right. I am sure top PC 3d card of 1995 was the Gaming Glint.

I updated 2016's best GPU to Nvidia Titan X : LINK
It was annouced today (22.07.2016) and launch day is 02.08.2016.
Basic specs :
3584CC's (GP102), with 12GB of GDDR5X @ 10GHz and 384-bit bus.
Anandtech.com article : LINK

for 1999, Geforce256 > Fury MAXX

- Geforce256's working T&L helps
- Fury MAXX was released on the very VERY ass-end edge of 1999 to the point where shipped products make their destination well past Y2K
- Fury MAXX has issues under Win2k where it'll not be so MAXX
- Geforce256's working T&L helps
- and there's that ddr one

Was looking through Dec. 1991 PC Magazine and it looks like the largest IDE HDD being sold in the ads is a Seagate Swift ST1239A 211MB. It was selling for $569-$599. There is an article in that same issue about buying the right HDD, and they recommended 100MB capacities to allow room for future growth. 🤣. So 211MB and IDE interface seems like a pretty high-end HDD for 1991. There *were* larger (SCSI) drives being sold that year, but they were priced well over $1500, and I'm not sure that is in the spirit of what this list is about?

Also, I noticed that the fastest systems in the ads were 486DX/33, which was released in 1990. The 486DX-50 is listed as best cpu in 1991 (I put it on the list) because that is its release year, but systems weren't being sold (at least in PC Magazine) with the 50Mhz chip yet. Anyhow, just something to consider. Do you want to build the fastest system of a year based on component release date, or based on what you could actually buy in a system that year?

clueless1 wrote:

Was looking through Dec. 1991 PC Magazine and it looks like the largest IDE HDD being sold in the ads is a Seagate Swift ST1239A 211MB. It was selling for $569-$599. There is an article in that same issue about buying the right HDD, and they recommended 100MB capacities to allow room for future growth. 🤣. So 211MB and IDE interface seems like a pretty high-end HDD for 1991. There *were* larger (SCSI) drives being sold that year, but they were priced well over $1500, and I'm not sure that is in the spirit of what this list is about?

Also, I noticed that the fastest systems in the ads were 486DX/33, which was released in 1990. The 486DX-50 is listed as best cpu in 1991 (I put it on the list) because that is its release year, but systems weren't being sold (at least in PC Magazine) with the 50Mhz chip yet. Anyhow, just something to consider. Do you want to build the fastest system of a year based on component release date, or based on what you could actually buy in a system that year?

That is a very good point, was was announced and what was actually on sale, IO personally think it should be the on sale date.

It's already a consumer-grade best hardware list. I'm sure there could be a separate list for professional/industrial grade best parts (like Intergraph 3d cards 😜 and the gigabytes of the 1980s)

leileilol wrote:

It's already a consumer-grade best hardware list. I'm sure there could be a separate list for professional/industrial grade best parts (like Intergraph 3d cards 😜 and the gigabytes of the 1980s)

3D in the 80s was not about cards, but whole systems. For me it is really hard to gather real world performance data of those. And 90s professional cards are not much better. And the galore of Unixes to manage, lot of software lost...

Artex wrote:

Jorpho wrote:

Also, what if the "top hardware" for any given year isn't the same as the best-supported hardware used by most of the games being released? There is surely some "top hardware" that might have been technically superior in some regards but just wasn't popular enough at the time of its release to be useful.

Can you provide an example? I want to make sure I'm understanding your point.

For example, 1998 was a landmark year because of the release of the 3DFX Voodoo2. It was the 'must-have' card (especially the 12MB version) for that year. I'm sure there were some other cards released in 98 that weren't quite as powerful, and I don't care if we list those as well. But for each year we know there are at least 1 or 2 major pieces of hardware released that were the most popular. I think if we can at least gather the info and get it into the sheet, we can certainly go back and make judgement calls on what should or should not be in there.

Physx cards, point and serve

Spread sheet (add to first post please ?) : LINK

Added newest Titan Xp (fully unlocked GP102) : LINK
and ASUS Xonar Essence STX II for best soundcard of 2014 (I'm guessing only internal soudcards count ?).

agent_x007 wrote:

Spread sheet (add to first post please ?) : LINK

Yes please!

Any updates to the database on here? Still hoping for a good list of 2d only video cards.

I have a suggestion, wouldn't it be better if the motherboard field in the spread sheet was replaced wth a chipset field?

We will never agree on what motherboard was the best one for each year. If a certain motherboard was released or not dosn't matter much as it's the chipset that (mostly) is the deciding factor for a motherboards performance and capabilities.

Edit

We (Me) just decided that it indeed would be better...

/Edit

fsmith2003 wrote:

Any updates to the database on here? Still hoping for a good list of 2d only video cards.

Keep in mind this is being filled by volunteers with a common interest. 😀 It's not a requirement for anyone to update...

Check the DOS PCI benchmark link in my signature. That might have more information for you.

Updated list for end 2017 and added 2018.

Updated, Q3 2020.