VOGONS


What is your favorite vintage Video Card?

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Reply 20 of 53, by Anonymous Coward

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Asking me to choose my favourite graphics adapter is like asking my favourite sound cards. There are lots of good ones, but not one that excels in everything.

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Reply 21 of 53, by LunarG

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Matrox was always my favourite brand. Probably to a large extent due to the fact that it (the Millennium) was what every teenage nerd of my generation dreamt (and way of getting the spell checker to accept British English?) about owning back when the 486 was still hot. It became the most coveted graphics card back then, and I think the longing to own one simple made the Matrox name stick to my brain.
When I did get my first Matrox card though, a Mystique 220, it has so much better image quality than my previous S3 Trio 64V+, that it only reinforced my impression of the brand.
The card I wanted more than any other, but never got until recent days, was the G400MAX.

Aside from that, I do have a soft spot for 3dfx cards, except probably the Voodoo Rush and Banshee.

As a "Vintage Workhorse" today, I think my Millennium with 2MB is great. It is great in the system it normally sits in (my DX4), it has drivers for practically any OS in existence so it's great for testing, and it would be just as suitable for a Pentium based system if I decide my 486 simply isn't fast enough.

WinXP : PIII 1.4GHz, 512MB RAM, 73GB SCSI HDD, Matrox Parhelia, SB Audigy 2.
Win98se : K6-3+ 500MHz, 256MB RAM, 80GB HDD, Matrox Millennium G400 MAX, Voodoo 2, SW1000XG.
DOS6.22 : Intel DX4, 64MB RAM, 1.6GB HDD, Diamond Stealth64 DRAM, GUS 1MB, SB16.

Reply 24 of 53, by Tiremaster400

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Voodoo II
Voodoo Banshee

Reply 25 of 53, by fyy

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Voodoo 3, it was the first video card I ever owned. Put it in my first computer too, a 116 MHz AMD K5 machine, haha. Poor Voodoo musta been so bored, but all my games played better!

Reply 26 of 53, by sliderider

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GeForce 256. When the first GeForce hit the streets it blew away everything else out there. It changed the entire gaming landscape. The other graphics chip makers had to up their game substantially or drop out.

Reply 27 of 53, by GeorgeMan

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Voodoo1.
Totally shocked playing FF VII on a 1997 Pentium MMX on this!
The clicking sound it made when being enganged also adds to the νοσταλγία (nostalgia) factor.

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Reply 28 of 53, by FaSMaN

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Out of the cards that I owned and bought new it has to be:

Voodoo 1 (changed my life, got stolen at school 🙁 )
Gigabyte Geforce 254 32meg (First card I got with 100% my own money)
Ati 8500 (Great fast card cant remember what happened to it)
Saphire Ati x800 Pro (first top tier card I owned)

Honorable mentions:
Riva TNT (Replaced my Voodoo 1,loved it but upgraded it to the GF256)
Voodoo 5500 (only got it a few years ago)
Voodoo 6000 (wont ever own one 🙁 )
Ati Rage Fury Max (same as above)
Sis 315 (wasted opportunity 🙁 )

Most Hated:
Sis 6326

Reply 29 of 53, by F2bnp

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Alright, let's see:

Voodoo 1
Blew my mind, simple as that. Quake was really impressive, as well as some other games like Fifa 98 which looked rather bare in Software mode.

Voodoo 3
The best all-rounder of the 3Dfx cards. Plenty performance with great compatibility. The go-to card for most late 90's retro builds.

Radeon 9700 Pro
Marks a pivotal point in GPU history, but I'd never look for one nowadays.

GeForce 6600GT
Legendary card because of its value for money. It usually was well ahead of the FX 5950 for a very sweet price. I'd also include the lesser 6800 models like the LE,XT and vanilla for their unlockability, meaning you could potentially make your card run about as fast as a 6800GT.

GeForce 8800GTX
Milestone in performance gains, IQ and AA improvements. A lot of praise should go to the 8800GT as well, which brought about 85-90% of that experience to the masses.

Reply 30 of 53, by candle_86

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Well I've owned so many FX 5200's ill claim the FX 5200 as my favorite, no seriously I counted I've owned 57 of them.

Reply 31 of 53, by leileilol

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candle_86 wrote:

FX 5200 as my favorite, no seriously I counted I've owned 57 of them.

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Reply 32 of 53, by Evert

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candle_86 wrote:

Well I've owned so many FX 5200's ill claim the FX 5200 as my favorite, no seriously I counted I've owned 57 of them.

Don't know if I should laugh or cry. But in all fairness, they are decent for older machines and have good backward compatability.

My favourite vintage graphics card has to be S3 Virge I had in my Pentium 1. I had that computer for 6 years. Learned to program on it and played lots of DOS games.

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Reply 33 of 53, by fyy

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Evert wrote:
candle_86 wrote:

Well I've owned so many FX 5200's ill claim the FX 5200 as my favorite, no seriously I counted I've owned 57 of them.

Don't know if I should laugh or cry. But in all fairness, they are decent for older machines and have good backward compatability.

The FX 5200 is the worst card ever. I got scammed into getting it once when one of the big box stores was selling it with 256MB vram for cheap. The PCI version is literally on par with many of Intel's GMA graphics chips built into motherboards, it's that terrible. As long as you don't use it for gaming, it's OK I guess.

Reply 34 of 53, by filipetolhuizen

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The best ones I had were the Geforce 6800 and 7900GT for their best mix of performance and compatibility I've ever seen. The Geforce 3 was outstanding for its time as well.
The Voodoo Graphics changed my concept of gaming forever.
On the PowerMac was the Radeon 7000 for its compatibility and major boost over the stock Rage128 and the Radeon 9200 for a huge peformance gain (was the worst pain in the b**t getting it to work, though).

Reply 35 of 53, by mwdmeyer

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I really like my Voodoo 4. Faster than a Voodoo 3, has 32bit colour, runs cooler and 32mb ram. It is a great card.

Didn't do well in market at the time as the Geforce 2 MX was faster/better, but the Voodoo 4 compared to all the TNT2s (even the ultra) is a lot faster.

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Reply 36 of 53, by candle_86

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fyy wrote:
Evert wrote:
candle_86 wrote:

Well I've owned so many FX 5200's ill claim the FX 5200 as my favorite, no seriously I counted I've owned 57 of them.

Don't know if I should laugh or cry. But in all fairness, they are decent for older machines and have good backward compatability.

The FX 5200 is the worst card ever. I got scammed into getting it once when one of the big box stores was selling it with 256MB vram for cheap. The PCI version is literally on par with many of Intel's GMA graphics chips built into motherboards, it's that terrible. As long as you don't use it for gaming, it's OK I guess.

Actully funnily enough me and my friends played farcry back in 05 at lans, I had an FX5200 back then, and with all settings at medium, forced DX9B the FX5200 would not render the water correctly making it 100% transparent for me on any map, meaning i could accuratly shoot anyone swimming, was a big advantage on maps like surf 🤣

Reply 37 of 53, by PhilsComputerLab

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Too many choices, this question is hard to answer.

I like pretty much all cards from Nvidia. They have given me little issues and it's (at the moment) not too hard to find older drivers.

3dfx cards also mean a lot to me. Had a Voodoo and Voodoo 2 as a teenager, so they are awesome.

For ISA anything from TSENG, WD or CL. I remember upgrading from a slow OAK to a Tseng ET4000 and how it improved all games.

For PCI only systems, a S3 Trio 64 V+. Had one in my Pentium 133 as a teen. It was recommended by this magazine PC Player I believe.

Matrox are great, but I don't have no personal connection like with the other cards,

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Reply 38 of 53, by Munx

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candle_86 wrote:
fyy wrote:
Evert wrote:

Don't know if I should laugh or cry. But in all fairness, they are decent for older machines and have good backward compatability.

The FX 5200 is the worst card ever. I got scammed into getting it once when one of the big box stores was selling it with 256MB vram for cheap. The PCI version is literally on par with many of Intel's GMA graphics chips built into motherboards, it's that terrible. As long as you don't use it for gaming, it's OK I guess.

Actully funnily enough me and my friends played farcry back in 05 at lans, I had an FX5200 back then, and with all settings at medium, forced DX9B the FX5200 would not render the water correctly making it 100% transparent for me on any map, meaning i could accuratly shoot anyone swimming, was a big advantage on maps like surf 🤣

Almost everyone I knew had an FX5200 in their setup. I was slightly less unlucky and had an FX5500. The bright side is that I feel better knowing that I wasn't the only one tricked into buying one thinking it was a powerful card because of the high video memory.

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The FireStarter 2.0 - The wooden K5
The Underdog - The budget K6
The Voodoo powerhouse - The power-hungry K7
The troll PC - The Socket 423 Pentium 4

Reply 39 of 53, by PcBytes

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Here we go,from old to new:

1.S3 Trio 3D/2X AGP 8MB
2.ATI Rage IIC
3.ATI Radeon VE/7000
4.FX5200 128MB
5.FX5500 256MB
6.Radeon HD3450 512MB (AGP version)
7.Geforce 210 1GB PCI-E

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