Nostalgic GPU battles!!!

[hoax32]

I remember back in the days they called GPU's "Graphic Adapters/Cards"
Here are some big GPU decisions I had to make years ago!

nVidia Riva TNT vs 3D rage 128
GF4 mx440 [8AGP] vs Radeon [9000]
FX5200 vs Radeon 9500
S3 savage [16mb laptop] vs Ati 3D rage [8mb laptop]

haha
felt like sharing it!!!
Back in the days gaming was so much more fun!
Playing monkey island 3 on 192mb ram [win 2000] a celeron [300mhz+a Matrox Millenium 8MB] and king of the roads hahaha.

good oll times!!!

[johnspack]

S3 Virge, or Matrox and a PowerVR accelerator... good times! Think I got 15fps in doom3.... or was it an earlier doom.. Yeah, the old cards were fun.

[t_ski]

Hell, I remember when VESA Local Bus adapters were a huge step up from ISA, and all the cards had sockets for the ram chips. Every now and then I had to squeeze the ram chip into the socket or else the PC started beeping and would not boot...

For the young'ens:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_Local_Bus

[razaron]

Voodoo 2 /thread

[johnspack]

Heck, I remember when I got my first vga card, it was mono with 64 shades of grey, for my 8086 XT, I thought it was so rocking! Much better than 16 colour ega.....
Edit: oh god old tech... the monitor was 64 shades of grey, that's right. Colour monitors were expensive back then.
Edit2: I remember the vga card.. a Trident 4mb vga... wicked card!

[3870x2]

My first video card was a Radeon 7200 PCI, used for Warcraft III. I didn't know much about GPUs back in that day, and it might have been a terrible choice for 2002. It definitely helped my FPS in Wc3 though.

My next card was a 9800PRO used on Doom 3

[brandonwh64]

My first card was a voodoo 3 2000 before that I had onboard video on the 486. The card that replaced the voodoo was a ATI 3d Rage 64MB AGP

[3870x2]

I had a friend that had to get a Voodoo 2 to play either omikron or deus ex, I forget which. Consequently, it provided better graphics and performance for both Final Fantasy VII and VIII for us.

It also helped with Total Annihilation:Kingdoms, among others.

It was amazing to see games that used software acceleration, but could also use hardware acceleration, and to see the difference was pretty neat.

[Frag Maniac]

My first GPU was a GeForce Ti 4200. Hell of card for it's price back then. Had it for 3 years and it served me well. I laughed when I saw in tests that it held it's own against the 5700, but then Nvidia crippled mem bandwidth on those cards for some idiotic reason.

What followed was 7 years of disappointment on an X800XT and X1950Pro. Had lots of stutter and driver problems. Only reason I went with an X1950Pro is I was extending the life of my AGP rig and I found a refurb Sapphire w/ 2 yr warranty for only $109, vs paying $180 for the XFX 7950, which had heat problems and ended up being discontinued.

On my new rig I've been on a Palit Green GTS 250 1GB I bought over the holidays for $70. It's actually downclocked from the reference GTS 250. I've been running it at slightly higher than the highest factory OCed 250s though for nearly 2 years with no voltage added (it's not even possible without a mod).

The 250 has exceeded my expectations. It's a lot like the Ti 4200 in many respects regarding value. I'll soon be replacing it with a 660 Ti non reference card. Probably the new EVGA FTW Signature 2 or MSI PE OC. I plan to use the 660 Ti maybe only two years, then get a Maxwell.

If I keep the 660 Ti 3 years, I will just build another whole new system around a Maxwell.

[tacosRcool]

I feel too young for these conversations.....
I was too poor to afford some decent graphics cards....

[Benetanegia]

Originally Posted by hoax32

I remember back in the days they called GPU's "Graphic Adapters/Cards"

Well actually we still call them graphics cards. It's the proper term. GPU is only the chip inside the card and a GPU is not any chip that outputs video. A GPU is a single-chip graphics processor, which can handle transformations and lighting on-chip. The first one was the GeForce 256. Other graphics adapters/cards prior to the GeForce 256 were not (based on) GPUs.

Anyway, my first dedicated video card was a Riva TNT which had severe compatibility problems on my PC at the time for whatever reason and had to be replaced by a Voodoo 3 3000 shortly afterwards. iirc the Riva TNT had 32 bit color support and some other things, but it couldn't really keep good frames in most games with those settings, from what I remember, so the V3 felt like a much better card, because of it's sheer permormance, despite it's 16 bit color*. Texture filtering quality seemed better than on chips from Ati and Nvidia too. It also lasted many years being capable of playing most games.

* I wasn't very aware of the change back then, I just couldn't see a big deal. Or maybe the games using 32 bit color didn't really take advantage of it. Or maybe the trick that 3DFx used on its RAMDACs and the fact that internally it actually did 32 bit calculations made the difference unnoticeable for the most part.

[ThE_MaD_ShOt]

My first dedicated card which I bought was a Ati Rage Fury Pro, which I still have with all of it original accessories, game discs, and everything still in the retail box. From there I went to an Original Radeon, the one that didn't have a number tied to it. After that was a 9500 pro then a 9800xt.

[SIGSEGV]

my first card is nvidia geforce mx 440 4x AGP used to play need for speed underground 2 and most wanted along with intel pentium 4 1.8ghz hehe

[t_ski]

I remember playing the original Need for Speed on my Matrox Millenium 2MB card (before I added my Voodoo card). Those graphics were awesome at the time. Little did I know

[ThE_MaD_ShOt]

I think I may have the original Need for speed in my game collection. LOL

[Benetanegia]

Originally Posted by t_ski

my Matrox Millenium 2GB card

Yeah, you wish.

I did have the Millenium 2 MB before the TNT, had completely forgotten about it. It didn't have 3D acceleration if my memory serves tho, so I don't know if it belongs to this thread.

[t_ski]

I realized the ram mistake just as I was getting onto TPU this morning.

As for 3D acceleration, I didn't know there was a requirement listed anywhere in this thread? However, when I coupled the Matrox with the Voodoo card, they were a set The Voodoo added some nice visual effects in Monster Truck Madness, like lens flare.

[Benetanegia]

Originally Posted by t_ski

I realized the ram mistake just as I was getting onto TPU this morning.

Hehe. But just imagine. I didn't believe the CD, so imagine 2 GB of vram. When CD-ROM launched comercially in Spain, my PC had 80 MB HDD and I simply couldn't believe they'd release a disc with 650 MB of storage.

As for 3D acceleration, I didn't know there was a requirement listed anywhere in this thread?

You're probably right, I just thought that it was maybe not worth mentioning that's all. I don't know what graphics processor my previous PCs had before the Pentium that had the Matrox and I didn't really care. I just tend to put the Matrox Millenium in the same bag, because it didn't change my gaming perception as much as the 3D accelerators did.

However, when I coupled the Matrox with the Voodoo card, they were a set The Voodoo added some nice visual effects in Monster Truck Madness, like lens flare.

And 15 years ago I would have been tremendously jealous of your setup. Like I said in the above paragraph, as soon as I saw 3D accelerated graphics I fell in love with them. So much that it's been my main interest ever since, even chosing my career to be based around CG.

[patrico]

lol I used to love my HIS 9550

HIS 9550 iFan 256MB (128bit) DDR AGP Core Clock 250 MHz with •Four parallel pixel pipelines
•Two parallel vertex processing engines

it was a beast hehe

[Outback Bronze]

Had a mate give a voodoo 2 for my familys pentium 3 500Mhz back in the day.

My first personal system had a p4 2.4ghz with a geforce 4 mx440 128mb.

Of course my first single upgrade card was a 9800 pro. Gees i use to love playing farcry on the original dx9.

Its amazing how far graphics cards have come. Not only raw power but aesthetically speaking as well.

[EiSFX]

My first Video card i boguht was a Geforce 2 MX200 with 32MB. And it wasen't even for my own PC. That was when we still had a shared family PC.

[Rei86]

Originally Posted by tacosRcool

I feel too young for these conversations.....
I was too poor to afford some decent graphics cards....

Same.

My Sony Vaio that we purchased in Japan had a slot loading DVD drive and a Slot loading MD drive and some ATi GPU.

Upgraded that to a ATi 9800 Pro....

After that I took off and built my own CPU and my love affair for AMD CPUs (FX53) and nVidia GPUs (BFG 6800GT) started.

Till Intel pushed out the Core Duos.

[brandonwh64]

My first PC was a 486DX 4mb onboard ram and a 20MB hard drive. had windows 3.1 on it and It played doom at a whopping 20FPS

[t_ski]

My first PC was an IBM PS/2, which was an Intel 286 8MHz(?) and only a 3.5" floppy. No HDD, and the monitor was monochrome. :/

I used to play pacman on it though

[gdallsk]

My first card was Geforce 2 MX 400 64 mb. IT played almost anything which didnt require more than 1.1 shaders. Half life 2 actually stuttered a bit but i managed to finish it back then. Served me well for a VEEEEEERY long time: from 2003 till 2007