Do you remember your most disappointing video card ever?

[rtwjunkie]

I can't help but laugh it was a FX 5200 I was upgrading from a Ti 4200. The 4200 was a better card....Owned the 5200 for an hour...

I literally went back to the Ti 4200 and overclocked the hell out of it until it's limited VRAM became an issue.

The 5200? It is still sitting boxed in my garage. I sold all my AGP cards, but never could bring myself to sell or even give that card to my worst enemy.
So it sits, one day ready for some museum dedicated to pristine classic cards.

 

[Kanan]

MX was later replaced by cards such as the 8600 GT, high clock speeds and shader counts crippled by 128bit bus and still slower than my 7800GT I had before. Luckily it was just a temp. replacement card and replaced by the 7900GT after (yes the one on the screenshot i posted). Still that 8600 GT was lightyears ahead compared to the "performance" the MX440 had. It was a passively cooled "Fatal1ty" XFX.

 

[Sempron Guy]

I couldn't remember being disappointed with any card I've purchase for the last 11 years or so in terms of performance that is. Two cards however popped up in my mind in terms of me having one hell of an experience. The EVGA GTX 460 Boost Edition which died on me after first month of use. And the XFX HD7950 DD which has the worst/loudest cooler on the span of cards I've owned.

 

[Naito]

I have had a Powercolor x1950pro with great cooling and quiet! One of the best cards I've owned! If you'd only had bought this one....

I had an AGP version of that card. That was my first and last ATI/AMD GPU. It got very hot - particularly the AGP bridge chip, it was noisy, the drivers were buggy and to top it off, it was slower than the 6600GT it replaced in quite a few titles. It ended up artifacting to the max, possibly due to the heat slowly degrading components. I may have been unlucky with a dodgy card, but a few people I know, who had a X1950Pro, had similar issues. I did love the arctic cooling heatsink, though.

The card burnt me so much (literally and figuratively), that I haven't been able to even entertain the thought of purchasing an AMD GPU (aside from the one residing in my Xbox) - that's even after knowing they have improved immensely in the 10+ year since (thus my concerns are unfounded). Don't get me wrong, AMD does interest me, and I want them to do well, but it would take something quite brilliant from them to pull me away from Nvidia. Unless Nvidia tripped up, of course.

 

[Totally]

An XFX 6970, first time buying a card that expensive only to find out later that it was one of the most cheaply build cards when it died a few months later, the pcb which had a nice curve to it out of the box was a nice tell to send it back straight away but ignored. It didn't clock that well either.

 

[eidairaman1]

I had an AGP version of that card. That was my first and last ATI/AMD GPU. It got very hot - particularly the AGP bridge chip, it was noisy, the drivers were buggy and to top it off, it was slower than the 6600GT it replaced in quite a few titles. It ended up artifacting to the max, possibly due to the heat slowly degrading components. I may have been unlucky with a dodgy card, but a few people I know, who had a X1950Pro, had similar issues. I did love the arctic cooling heatsink, though.

The card burnt me so much (literally and figuratively), that I haven't been able to even entertain the thought of purchasing an AMD GPU (aside from the one residing in my Xbox) - that's even after knowing they have improved immensely in the 10+ year since (thus my concerns are unfounded). Don't get me wrong, AMD does interest me, and I want them to do well, but it would take something quite brilliant from them to pull me away from Nvidia. Unless Nvidia tripped up, of course.

I had an HIS and sapphire AGP 512, never failed.

 

[jagjitnatt]

I hope you didn't pay money for that garbage. The only thing worse than SiS was PC Chips no-name stuff, which often was re-branded SiS...

It was a pretty expensive machine back in the day if I remember it correctly. Pentium 133 Mhz, 16 MB SDRAM, 1MB SiS 6215C, 24X CDROM, and a MASSIVE 1 GB HDD running Win 95.

 

[64K]

My first graphics experience was with an Apple II in high school.



I have been well pleased with the progress we've had and the GPUs over the years and haven't been corn-holed by a GPU so far. I try to do my research. Maybe I'm lucky.

 

[johnspack]

Matrox Millenium II, then a TNT2 that wasn't what it was advertised to be.. then oh god the fx5200 with a 64 bit bus. My next card after the 5200 was a 7600gt, and it was stupid faster.....
But then on to a 7950gt... which lasted like 2 months because the 8 series came out... oh god....

 

[R00kie]

Welcome thee, for thy has been shit since it came out... the GeForce 2 MX400

another horrible choice of mine back in 2007... Can't believe that I actually managed to overclock this... until it sizzled and died of course

EDIT: this is an X1600 Pro btw...

 

[Kanan]

another horrible choice of mine back in 2007... Can't believe that I actually managed to overclock this... until it sizzled and died of course

Did it "die" straight away, or..? The design looks strange to say the least.

 

[R00kie]

Did it "die" straight away, or..? The design looks strange to say the least.

nah, it kept going for about a year that way, until it finally packed up.

this is the other side of it.

 

[biffzinker]

sizzled

The card managed to sizzle?

to make a hissing sound in or as if in burning or frying

- This?

 

[johnspack]

Yeah, forgot, had a geforce2 mx400 as well. So many crap cards......

 

[R00kie]

The card managed to sizzle?

- This?

A virtual sizzle

 

[Kanan]

A virtual sizzle

Ouch. I guess your overclocks were a bit too much for a passively cooled GPU.

 

[biffzinker]

Interesting way of creating what some might call art though.

 

[jboydgolfer]

My first graphics experience was with an Apple II in high school.



I have been well pleased with the progress we've had and the GPUs over the years and haven't been corn-holed by a GPU so far. I try to do my research. Maybe I'm lucky.

I remember using those (or the 2e)in summer school "computer programming" + 420 . It's a wonder I ever made it to college at all . I think we ended up basic programming a cow taking a poop , as a matter of fact I'm certain of it ,it was my summer project . Expectations were not high in those classrooms,everything else was

 

[64K]

I remember using those (or the 2e)in summer school "computer programming" + 420 . It's a wonder I ever made it to college at all . I think we ended up basic programming a cow taking a poop , as a matter of fact I'm certain of it ,it was my summer project . Expectations were not high in those classrooms,everything else was

I only remember a game on the Apple II that was a aggravating as all hell game. You got to go through a maze and guards would give you a map but they might be lying or they might be telling the truth. I failed all over the place.

The real prize, for me, was a much older computer that took up a whole table in one of the rooms and had for a user interface a typewriter/printer that could save a Basic program on punch tape. That was fun to program for me.

 

[Bo$$]

You sir are the man for even trying SLI on that thing cause $hit + $hit only equals more $hit

I didn't know they were LE cards, I thought there were the GT version so i was going to unlock the shaders... worst purchase ever!

 

[m0nt3]

GeForce 4 MX 420 PCI (the last nvidia card I would ever purchase). in the year 2000/2001 with an HP Pavilion we had that had the AGP slot removed, although the pinout was still there as well as BIOS options. I needed something to play Unreal Tournament and it did nicely with that. Built my first computer for Unreal Tournament 2003 /HL2/Doom 3. Athlon XP 2700+ and radeon 9800 non-pro. I really miss those days, spent a lot of time on the AMD forums.

 

[Vario]

Worst card I ever owned was a ATI Radeon 9600 SE. Suck Edition. My dad bought this for me in high school. 64 bit memory interface ensured it was slower than our Geforce 2 Pro. It took about 5 minutes to load a BF 1942 game when the Geforce 2 Pro system loaded it in about 1 minute. By the time the map loaded the game was halfway done. The gameplay was always choppy and the best frame rate it could manage might be high 20s. The 9600 was pulled and the Geforce 2 pro reinstalled. I think the 9600 SE ended up in the old computer. I actually sold the 9600 a year ago for about $30.

 

[Apocalypsee]

I've owned so many GeForce 4 MX440 and FX 5200, from 64-bit to 128-bit, passive or active cooled cards. If I'm not mistaken, about 5 MX440s and 4 FX5200. Thing is, back then it's very hard to get good info about these cards and review about them is scarce, some mag don't really tell the complete picture like online review nowadays, with AIB making so much variant out of it (Low profile, full height, BGA memory, 64MB or 128MB memory etc.) doesn't help either.

The GeForce 4 MX was indeed based on old GeForce 2 MX but with some GeForce 4 Ti feature like LMAII bandwidth saving tech and Accuview AA but lacked the important DirectX 8 compliant vertex and pixel shader (it have software vertex shader that run off CPU) that requires to run new games, without it some game refuses to run and some that did run looks bland. I still remember playing CnC Generals with MX440 with no shining reflection on water surfaces. The FX5200 is the same GPU with DirectX 9 compliant vertex and pixel shader but it too slow to run it, mainly because the FX architecture.

It isn't a good performer but I'm able to run Doom3 with MX440 (with a lot of tweaking to make it playable) and UT2003/2004 on FX5200 (low res to make it playable). Somehow it teaches me how to tweak the game, making me learn how things works and also learn GPU overclocking, what does TSOP vs BGA differences etc.

 

[tugrul_SIMD]

R7870 Hawk (pitcairn GPU)

After I used it for 3 years, I overclocked, but it didn't break. Sometimes even tried 1475MHz on GPU and it silently continued running.

Tried furmark, many hours of gaming, opencl computing for hours with too many heat-cycles, it survived.

In the end I used it 2 years more!

I could have bought a R9 series(much more performance) if it had failed but it didn't so I continued with it until I sold it for 75$.

Its only bad side was undefined limits. I didn't know the limits of it. It could destroy the power supply unit if I continued to oc above 1475MHz (with 1515MHz memory)

 

[jboydgolfer]

i think thats the opposite of disappointing. unless poor performance, short life, and little OC were your goal OFC.