2002 ATI Radeon 8500 (Green!)
2005 Sapphire Radeon 9600XT (was already slow when I got it) - fail
2006 Sapphire Radeon x1800GTO (had a cool long life, did not disappoint me until last summer when it crashed and stopped showing any reasonable 3D)
2011 Gigabyte HD 5670 (worked a month and then crashed, had to go back to x1800GTO for 4 months before the dealer replaced it due to the warranty)
2011 MSI HD5670 - current, love it.

I don't get it why they still make monsters like HD7990 since you can buy a $100 card for 5 year old system (I use Core 2 Duo E6300 1.8Ghz) and play most games at maximum settings...

Right, I'll try and recollect my graphics cards - at least the 3D-capable ones... Mostly they will be what I used for day to day gaming, not what I collected over the years or had as a spare inside my LAN-box.

1997: STB Velocity (Riva 128)
1997: Voodoomania (Voodoo Graphics)
1998: Creative Graphics Blaster TNT (Riva TNT)
1998: Guillemot Maxi Gamer (Voodoo2 12 MB, much later SLI'ed)
1999: Diamond Viper V770 Ultra (after cancelling my order of Hercules' Dynamite TNT2 Ultra after a month of wait, my friend got one...)
1999: Creative Annihilator (Geforce 256, returned due to incompatibility with my Irongate-Board)
2000: Elsa Erazor X² (Geforce 2 GTS)
2001: Asus V8200 Pure (Geforce 3, my most expensive card yet I think)
2003: Geforce FX 5800 Ultra (after price drop, I had a Radeon 9700 Pro at my disposal, so no need to buy one - I would have preferred it over NV30 in that case)
2004: Geforce 6800 (passively cooled from Gigabyte, 12-pipe version)
2005 (Q4): Asus Radeon X800 XL (needed to upgrade because the 6800 did not handle Oblivion very well)
2006 (around late summer): MSI Geforce 7900 GTO (the almost inaudible cooling was the main reason)
2008 (June): Zotac Geforce GTX 280 AMP (I needed a fast card for my 30-inch display)
2009 (October): Radeon HD 5870 (main reason: Supersample-AA available!)
2011 (March possibly): Geforce GTX 480 (sale, about half the launch price)
2012 (End of May): Radeon HD 7970, the overall feature set and the easy Supersample-AA did tip the scales in favor of this card and against GTX 680 - plus, it's over a hundred EUR cheaper.

That's it so far - hope I did not forget anything important.

I've had more cards that i can count, but a few lived far longer than others.

Not going way back to my older stuff, i'll just put it through Pentium up until now, and only main machines:

S3 Trio 64 2MB
Matrox Mystique 2MB - Much better than S3!
S3 Virge 4MB
Voodoo 1 / Matrox M3D
SLI Voodoo 2 - Those days...
3dfx Voodoo3 2000 - This was my favourite standalone of all i had
Geforce 3
Geforce 4 TI 4800SE
Geforce FX 5900XT - Quite good performance for it's price, lasted quite a while.

At this time i sold my main rig and went laptop. Decided later to have both.

Geforce 7600GS
SLI Geforce 7600GT
single Geforce 7950GX2 then SLI
SLI Geforce 8800GT
ATI HD5770
ATI HD5870

I must also confirm that GF8800 GTS have served me well over the years. Twas really a good bang for the buck. Aside from that, only Voodoo 1 and Radeon 9700 were inside of the machine for a longer time span. GF2 was there only for a season, V3 also, and other cards arent even worth mentioning (and there was a lot of them).

...well maybe the ATI VGA Wonder 512kb should also be mentioned: twas in the machine from 1990-1994. Not bad, eh? 😀

lets see....

Number Nine-2mb [1995/96?]

Stealth 3D-2000 Pro-4mb

Voodoo 1-4mb [what an eye opener!]

Voodoo 2-12mb [nice card]

STB Velocity Riva 128-32mb [did not like this card] quickly moved on to a...

Voodoo 5500-64mb [great] upgraded mobo after year and a half but it didn't fit the AGP slot, so..

ATI 9700 Pro-128mb [great card 2001-2005, but missed glide]

SLI [2x] EVGA 7800GT-256mb ea. [great combo 2005-2010]

CF [2x] HIS HD5770-1gb ea [powerful/cheap won't move on until I upgrade to Win7 for Dx11, whenever that happens]

Diamond Stealth II S220 Rendition Verite V2200-4mb [eBay'd a few years ago in anticipation of a retro W95/Rendition build, just now completed - along with a W98/V5500 build.

P1 120Mhz:
ELSA Winner 1000 Trio/V ( S3 Trio 64/V+ ) 2 MB
later added a Voodoo Graphics 4 MB

K6-2-400/450:
for a couple of days a S3 Savage but returned the PC cuz of problems
they changed it for an ATI XPERT 99 or 2000 (Ati Rage 128 AGP)
sometimes this card was crap so i added the old Voodoo 1
When the Voodoo 3 came out i bought a V3 3000 ( that hot beast temp-wise)

Duron 750:
Still the V3 3000
As the first Geforce showed up i bought the Creative Labs Annihilator Pro (Geforce DDR)

P4 1.6A:
Geforce DDR
Asus V8200T2 Deluxe ( Geforce 3 Ti200 )
Leadtek WinFast A350 XT TDH ( Geforce FX 5900XT )

Athlon 64 3700+:
Geforce FX5900XT
MSI NX7600GT-T2D256EZ ( Geforce 7600GT passive cooled)
ATI AIW X1900

Athlon X2 3600+:
ATI AIW X1900
ATI HD 3850

E5200:
ATI HD 3850

Q9650:
ATI HD 3850
MSI N460GTX Hawk

i7 2600K:
MSI N460GTX Hawk (would be still my latest card if the RMA hadn't taken so damn long xd )
MSI N560Ti TwinFrozr III OC

Alucard wrote:

MSI N560Ti TwinFrozr III OC

Sry but I gotta hijack this thread for personal purpose now 😏

Is that card as silent as they say in reviews? I've been looking for a silent 560/ti (@ full load) and was thinking about getting that MSI...

Here's mine!

(2D) - S3 Trio 64
(2D) - Matrox Millenium II 4MB AGP
(2D) - Matrox Millenium II 8MB AGP
(2D) - Diamond Stealth 64 Video VRAM 3200 PCI
(2D) - Diamond Stealth 64 Video
(2D/3D) - 3DFX Voodoo3 3000 PCI (Silver Heatsink)
(2D/3D) - 3DFX Voodoo3 3000 AGP
(2D/3D) - 3DFX Voodoo3 2000 PCI (Black Heatsink)
(2D/3D) - 3DFX Voodoo5 5500 AGP
(3D) - Orchid Righteous 3d (4MB 3DFX Voodoo)
(3D) - Diamond Monster 3D II x 2 (12MB 3DFX Voodoo 2)
(2D/3D) - Creative 3D Blaster (NVIDIA Riva TNT2 Ultra)
(2D/3D) - VisionTek nVidia Geforce 3 ti500
(2D/3D) - Leadtech Winfast NVIDIA Geforce 4 ti4400
(2D/3D) - BFG NVIDIA Geforce 6800GT OC
(2D/3D) - Gainward BLISS GeForce 7800 GS+ (7900GT)
(2D/3D) - Sapphire Radeon 3850 AGP
(2D/3D) - 2 x ASUS ROG 5870 2GB Matrix Platinum PCIe x16 (Crossfire)

duh, well.. they not necessarily gfx cards investments but I here I go 🤣

2000: pentium III 500 + crappy pcchips board with SIS chipset & onboard 626 video + 192 ram

2007: Athlon 3600+ x2 + 1gb ddr2 533 (LOL) +asrock alive nf6g vsta + 7300(sucked) + 160gb hd

2008: Q6600 + ASUS P5QC (p45 hybrid mobo) + 4gb 1333 cas 7 (once again, 🤣 🤣) + 9800gtx (This is what I consider one of the most notorious upgrade I've done during the years. Was like a night and day difference between this glorious card and that poor 7300le. My eyes couldn't believe how *NEARLY* everything run so butter smooth with this card ). Two psus died here (including a corsair vx550 and a 600w generic one 🤣, a 500gb HD and an ASUS p5kc with failed sata ports 😁

2009: i7 920 + Evga Classified E760 "the OCing gloryhole" +3x2 gb 2000 c9 gskill ram. Once again, something had to die.. and it did 3 days after building this pc 🤣 it was my i7 920 because of vtt downvolting (back then I couldn't believe it)

later...

2009-2010: PII 350 with a soyo 6ba mobo and a slow*"ass"*hell sis 6326 that couldn't even run resident evil 1 d3d with a framerate better than 20 fps.. BANG!!! PSU explodes cause of bad voltage selection! 🤦 there was acid spilled over all my previous TNT1 and it died.. so my only alternative was this sis card..

then..

Voodoo3 3000 DELL AGP (no s-video)- Yeah baby!, glide!!

Voodoo5 5500 AGP - FSAA!!

2011: several i7s 2600k + Maximus IV extreme b3 + 8gigs 2133 c9 + antec HCP1200 PSU

GTX580 SLI

GTX580 TRI-SLI 🤣

6990 Quad CFX 🤣

and now..

2012: GTX680 Tri-SLI

2xDiamond Monster 3d
4xQuantum3d SBi200

there are some missing things here but well I didn't want to extend myself so much 🤣

subhuman@xgtx wrote:

2012: GTX680 Tri-SLI

now I want to know your display setup

elfuego wrote:

Alucard wrote:

MSI N560Ti TwinFrozr III OC

Sry but I gotta hijack this thread for personal purpose now 😏

Is that card as silent as they say in reviews? I've been looking for a silent 560/ti (@ full load) and was thinking about getting that MSI...

The 560 Ti is a Twin Frozr II, the "III" is only to be had with the 560TI-448 core which is based on GF110 rather than GF114.

That said, for the GF114-based 560 TI Twin Frozr II, the fan can be rather loud depending on your graphics cards' BIOS. For some reason, MSI opted to concentrate on ridiculously low GPU temps rather than a reasonable balance of noise and temperature.

With the fan manually fixed at some 40-ish %, you're still in the non-critical range for tempe and have a nearly inaudible card. Your mlieage may vary though and depend on your case, airflow etc.

single GDM-FW900 at 2560x1600 😊

The Geforce GTX 260 was also a good investment.
I picked one up at the end of 2008 for under $200, same as I paid for my 8800 GT, and the thing is twice as fast. Playing Fallout 3 at 1600x1200 on high with a nice steady 60fps was a delight with the GTX 260, as the 8800 GT was a 1024x768 medium settings 45fps kinda card. Up until my latest purchase (GTX 670) my son has been playing BF3 with the GTX 260, something I think would cripple the 8800 GT.

Worst investment: Techworks Ultimate 3D (Cirrus Logic Laguna)
Ordered one of these strait form the company as soon as they released in 1997 (my birthday). Cheap price and 4MB of RAMBUS lured me in. It was total garbage, but Techworks was nice enough to take it back, but I was out shipping both ways.

I also did the same thing with a Hercules Teminator 2X/i when it came out, figured it would smoke my Voodoo 1 with intel's new tech and fancy AGP. It did not, sent it back. Out shipping again. Not a bad card like the Techworks mind you, but wasn't any faster then my Voodoo1, in my system anyway. After these 2 lessons, and with the help of the internet, I never bought another video card without reading a couple reviews first.

Here's my video card history:
Cirrus logic 2mb (onboard my Packard Bell)
S3 Virge 4mb
3dfx Voodoo 4mb
Voodoo 2 12mb
Voodoo 3 16mb
Radeon VIVO 64mb
Radeon 8500 64mb
Geforce 5900 XT 128mb
Geforce 6800 GT 256mb
Geforce 7900 GT 256mb
Geforce 8800 GTS 320mb
Geforce 8800 GT 512mb
Geforce GTX 260 896mb
Geforce GTX 460 1gb
2x Geforce GTX 460 1gb in SLI
Geforce GXT 670 2gb

My progression the last 15 years.

1997-1999: S3 Virge on an Acer P166MMX <--- Poor university student, couldn't afford them new-fangled PIIs + Voodoos 😢 An oc'ed 166MMX@200mhz + Virge could still play porno VCDs just fine, which was nice.
2000: Matrox G400 <--- with my HP Vectra VL600 866mhz 256mb rambus beast. Payback for being so long on shitty hardware. Bought with my first job.
Then a Geforce 2 MX something or other sometime later cause friends said you needed a Geforce for gaming. I liked Impression's city building games a lot back then, so I didn't require nor care for massive 3d capabilities.
2003-04: Geforce FX5200. Shitty today, godly for someone upgrading from 1999-2000 era cards. Still on P3s - my 866mhz Vectra plus a Dell 4100 1ghz. I could play Sid Meier's Pirates perfectly 😁 so I was a happy camper.
2005-06: My next big upgrade. 6200, 6600, 6600GT, Radeon X550 + s939 A64. Could somewhat play HL2, FEAR, etc at 1024x768…woohoo!
2007-2008: The need to play Oblivion at 1680x1050 maxed out prompted the next big change. 8800GT on an AM2 5200+ system clocked to 3ghz. Now we’re talking! My backup rig had a Radeon 3850 on a 2.86ghz E2180.
2009: GTS250 + AM3 7750BE.
2010: GTX460 + Phenom II 955BE.
2012: Radeon 7970 + i7 3820.

sgt76 wrote:

My progression the last 15 years.
....Phenom II 955BE.

I've had one in my main rig for almost 1-1/2 years. Did you unlock the 4 cores and OC? 4-cores/OC @4ghz air cooled with no special adjustments was a super deal for $84...

tincup wrote:

I've had one in my main rig for almost 1-1/2 years. Did you unlock the 4 cores and OC? 4-cores/OC @4ghz air cooled with no special adjustments was a super deal for $84...

There's nothing to unlock- the 955BE is a native quad core. I only ran mine at 3.6ghz stock vcore, though I did bench it at 4+ ghz @ 1.5+v a few times for laughs. Great chip.

As a collector it is hard to say what I had when except for a few special cards that really brought some great memories. The first card was the Riva TNT (Viper 550 agp) that served me through many hours of aoe2 and n64 emulation. Was pretty sad that I killed it when trying to mod the cooling. Moving on around the same time is the v3 2k pci and still have it in use. Amazing little card even now and when I travel it serves me for my retro needs. Jumping many moons and years the next few cards in line were two evga 7600gs that brought me the joys of sli when SFR mode was still king. A year and a half later it is a 8800gtx which represents some of the best times that i had while playing wow 😉

The others mostly nameless in a collection except for a few that stand out like a kyro2, v5 5500agp, gtx 460, two gtx 280, two 7900gtx duo, ect.

ATi Graphics Ultra ISA (Mach8, 1MB, 256 colour). This card came with my 486. I used it from 1992-1997, my longest running card. By 1997, the 8-bit windows graphics looked like complete ass, and it was slow. The last game I ran on this one was Space Quest 6. It barely ran.

ATi 3D Pro Turbo PC2TV (Mach64GT, 8MB) PCI. I ran this on my unstable first gen K6-200 system. The 8MB provided absolutely no advantage over the 4MB card, and the picture was a little fuzy. Pretty compatible though. I never actually ran any software that supported the 3D "rage ii" graphics. (1997-1999)

3Dfx Voodoo3-3000 AGP, 16mb. This card had really good image quality, and it was fast. The 16-bit dithered rendering looked way better than the nshittia 24-bit colour at the time. (1999-2001).

Nshittia Gayforce2 32MB + Voodoo2 SLI 16MB. My friend convinced me to switch to Nvidia, but I only did so without sacrificing glide compatibility. I think it was a bad move. The 2D image quality looked like ass. The 3D was faster than the voodoo3, but I still thought glide looked better. (2001-2003)

ATi Radeon 9600 Pro 128mb. I was angry with ATi for quite a long time after they screwed me out the OpenGL drivers they promised they would provide for the Mach64GT. I gave them another chance with the 9600, and it was just okay. (2003-2006)

ATi Radeon Mobility X1600 128MB. I abandoned desktops for a Crapbook Pro. The X1600 helped make this laptop get incredibly hot when using graphics intensive apps. I stopped buying ATi after they were sold to AMD. (2006-2009)

Nvidia GeForce 7300LE 128mb. This was a really low end card, but it got the job done. No complaints, except that bad solder joints eventually rendered it useless. I paid a whole $10 for it, and I spared no expense. This card convinced me that nvidia was no longer crap. (2009-2012)

Nvidia GeForce 210 512mb. This card is low end, but passively cooled. I use it because it's supported by osx86. I'll probably continue to buy nvidia cards until integrated graphics is the norm. (2012-present)

Looking back, I probably could have gotten by with less cards. Here's how I would have done things if I could do it over again:

1992-1999: Tseng ET4000W32P 2MB for VLB.
1999-2006: Voodoo 3-2000 PCI
2006-Present: Nvidia 7300LE PCIe 256mb (a higher quality model with good solder joints)

I don't play games, so this would have been totally doable for me.

Voodoo 2
Voodoo 3
Geforce 2 Ultra
Geforce 3 Ultra
Radeon 9800 Xt
Radeon X800 Xt PE
Geforce 8800 Gtx
Geforce 280 x2
Geforce 580
Geforce 690

I might not have got all the models abbreviations correct but I think I did.

I think I had the perfect upgrade path. I believe those were the top cards of their gen. Poor Ati hasnt done it as well since the x800 really.

I've since stopped upgrading my machine unless if I really have to, since working 40+ hours a week and having other errands to run doesn't really permit me to play games as often as I used to. But here's the history going as far back as I can remember:

Desktop graphics cards:
Unknown Realtek SVGA card, VLB, 512 KB or 1 MB? (can't remember exactly)
Number Nine GXE64 Pro (S3 964), PCI, 2 MB
S3 ViRGE (integrated), 2 MB
S3 ViRGE DX (integrated), 2 MB
ATI 3D Rage II+DVD (integrated), 2 MB
SGI CRM/Cobalt (integrated into SGI O2 workstation, shared memory architecture)
Diamond Stealth II S220 (Rendition Verite 2100), PCI, 4 MB
Diamond Stealth II G460 (Intel i740), AGP, 8 MB
Diamond Monster 3D II (Voodoo2), PCI, 8 MB
3Dfx Voodoo3 3000, AGP, 16 MB
Diamond Viper V770 (RIVA TNT2), AGP, 32 MB
Diamond Viper V770 Ultra (RIVA TNT2 Ultra), AGP, 32 MB
Diamond Viper II Z200 (S3 Savage 2000), AGP, 32 MB - the worst piece of doo-doo I've ever owned
ASUS V7100 Deluxe (GeForce2 MX + TV tuner, etc.), AGP, 32 MB
ATI Radeon (7200) DDR LE, AGP, 32 MB
ATI Radeon 8500, AGP, 64 MB
Gainward GeForce2 Ti, AGP, 64 MB
Gainward GeForce3 (original), AGP, 64 MB
Leadtek WinFast A170 TD (GeForce4 MX 440), AGP, 64 MB
Leadtek WinFast A250 LE TD (GeForce4 Ti 4200), AGP, 64 MB
AOpen Aeolus GeForce4 Ti 4200, AGP, 128 MB
Intel i865G IGP
NVIDIA nForce2 IGP (GeForce4 MX)
NVIDIA nForce 430/GeForce 6150 IGP
NVIDIA nForce 610i/GeForce 7050 IGP
Sapphire Radeon 9600 XT, AGP, 256 MB
Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro, AGP, 128 MB
Sparkle GeForce 6600, PCI-E, 256 MB
Biostar GeForce 6800XT, AGP, 512 MB
Sapphire Radeon X1600 XT, PCI-E, 256 MB
XFX GeForce 7900GS, PCI-E, 256 MB
ASUS GeForce 8600GT, PCI-E, 512 MB
ASUS GeForce 9500GT, PCI-E, 1 GB

Mobile graphics cards:
CGA graphics card integrated into Toshiba T1200XE laptop
Western Digital 90C26, ISA, 512 KB
Chips & Technologies 65545, PCI, 1 MB
ATI Rage Mobility, AGP, 8 MB
ATI Radeon IGP 320M, 16 MB
Intel GMA 950
NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600, PCI-E, 256 MB (x2)
NVIDIA GeForce GT 130M, PCI-E, 512 MB

Stuff given to me for free or found in scrap bins: (all of these still function)
Diamond Stealth 64 DRAM (S3 Trio64), PCI, 1 MB
Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 Pro (S3 ViRGE DX), PCI, 2 MB
Diamond Speedstar A55 (S3 Trio3D/2X), AGP, 8 MB
Diamond Stealth III S540 (S3 Savage4 Pro), AGP, 32 MB
Jaton Trident 3DImage 9750, AGP, 4 MB
ATI 3D Charger (Rage IIC), AGP 8 MB
ATI Xpert 2000 (Rage 128 VR), AGP, 32 MB
SiS 305 IGP
MSI TNT2 M64, AGP, 32 MB
Guillemot Maxi Gamer Xentor 32 (RIVA TNT2 Ultra), AGP, 32 MB
Generic NVIDIA GeForce2 MX 200, AGP, 32 MB
SiS Mirage IGP
VIA/S3 UniChrome Pro IGP
Sapphire Radeon 9550, AGP, 256 MB
Sapphire Radeon X1600 Pro, AGP, 512 MB