Do you remember your most disappointing video card ever?

[Robert Bourgoin]

For me it was the Vodoo 2 SLI, the second card was just for SLI and could not be used as a primary card. The performance was just ok but allot of expense to run it.

 

[Outback Bronze]

XFX 7800 GT, wasn't much better than my old X800 pro flashed XT PE.

The only benefit was pixel shader 3.

A recent card that gave me the shits was a GTX 980 Strix. You couldn't clock it for shit coz it was voltage locked.

I reckon that's pretty piss poor for a high end card in todays scheme of GPU's...

 

[jboydgolfer]

A recent card that gave me the shits

 

[Assimilator]

My first PC with 3D capabilities had an SiS 6326 4MB AGP card (and by AGP, I mean "it had a PCI-to-AGP bridge chip"). That card was a PoS, but not as bad as the PC I upgraded to, which had S3 ProSavageDDR integrated.

In my defence, I was a student at the time and money was nonexistent, and the new PC was an Athlon XP 2000+ compared to a Pentium III 450MHz, so for the workloads (software development) I was doing it was fine. I remember running UT2003 on that thing... everything had to be on the lowest details (so it was fugly as sin) and it was still slow as balls.

 

[WhiteNoise]

The one card that I regretted buying was the only video card I ever bought that was DOA.
AMD Radeon R9 290X

Pulled it out of the box, installed it and received a black screen. Returned it and bought a GTX 780.

 

[eidairaman1]

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.

Those features on that mx didn't mean diddly squat considering how slow and unreliable the series was

My first PC with 3D capabilities had an SiS 6326 4MB AGP card (and by AGP, I mean "it had a PCI-to-AGP bridge chip"). That card was a PoS, but not as bad as the PC I upgraded to, which had S3 ProSavageDDR integrated.


In my defence, I was a student at the time and money was nonexistent, and the new PC was an Athlon XP 2000+ compared to a Pentium III 450MHz, so for the workloads (software development) I was doing it was fine. I remember running UT2003 on that thing... everything had to be on the lowest details (so it was fugly sin) and it was still slow as balls.

6326 was an IGP on AT boards even.
It ran 3D games, just not well, it was MCM 2 that told me I needed an upgrade from a Celeron 333 and 256/512MB SDRAM

 

[stefanels]

I think it was the 4870X2... running noisy/hot, pc crashes/resets, i had it for 2 weeks (sold it) and got a nice gtx 560ti instead...

 

[yogurt_21]

I was racking my brain to find one I was actually disappointed with...

The best I could come up with was the X1950XT but that was mostly expectation. I had an X1800XT at the time and with triple the shaders I was expecting more than just a slight bump...well that didn't work out.

Alot of people were disappointed with the Rage but I liked it. The Radeon 9000 because it was slower than the gpu it was based on (the 8500) but I loved that card.

Like the OP I loved my HD 2900XT as I did its replacement the 9600GT Sonic. The GTX 480 was a market flop but I ran 2 in sli and loved it.

Even the disappointment with the X1950XT wore off as it was still a kick ass card.

idk. I've had far more CPU's I've been disappointed in than GPUs.

 

[Lionheart]

FX 5200 128mb Vram back in 2003, I was still learning about PC hardware & was unaware of this monstrosity, I upgraded from a ATI All In Wonder Radeon 7500 64mb card, only got a slight improvement in performance & saw pixel shading for the first time as well but the performance bump was terrible lol

 

[eidairaman1]

I was racking my brain to find one I was actually disappointed with...

The best I could come up with was the X1950XT but that was mostly expectation. I had an X1800XT at the time and with triple the shaders I was expecting more than just a slight bump...well that didn't work out.

Alot of people were disappointed with the Rage but I liked it. The Radeon 9000 because it was slower than the gpu it was based on (the 8500) but I loved that card.

Like the OP I loved my HD 2900XT as I did its replacement the 9600GT Sonic. The GTX 480 was a market flop but I ran 2 in sli and loved it.

Even the disappointment with the X1950XT wore off as it was still a kick ass card.

idk. I've had far more CPU's I've been disappointed in than GPUs.

1950 pro was a pretty good bump over a 9800 Pro- 4x the ram at that, my AXP rig ran COD4 with that Card just fine despite IW trying to force users onto SSE2 or something like that...

X1950 PRO, X1950XT HD3850, HD4670, Last of the Fast AGP cards available.

 

[fusseli]

my gen1 - fx5600 256mb was a let down, never that fast (couldn't run Doom 3 on ultra ), but a big leg up from the geforce 2 Ti it replaced.

my gen2 - X1400 mobile was junk, but the gtx 7800go I swapped it with was great.

my gen 3 - ATI 3870 was the "worst" card I ever had, supposedly mid-high end at $250 in 2007. It was just the shrink and OC version of the 2900XT. It never kept up with anything at the time, managed cod4 on high but not >60fps. Couldn't even handle L4D2 maxed out. I upgraded to a 4870 and it was a massive step up. Funny, now they recommend waiting 2-3 generations before a gpu upgrade, back then the single gen upgrade was BIG.

my gen 4 - gtx670 and then two in SLI. Good cards but not enough vram for the horsepower. A single gtx970 was an upgrade even at 1080P.

 

[Kanan]

idk. I've had far more CPU's I've been disappointed in than GPUs.

Maybe we should open a thread for that as well.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

ASUS Radeon HD 7970 DirecCu II TOP

Where to start?
1# First the card was advertised with voltage control but it never actually featured that ability aka false marketing
2# Was a shit overclocker
3# 4 RMAs
4# Final working card from RMA had LN2 Bios flashed to it so ran 3D clocks 24/7 eventually another forum member volt modded it and got voltage control working.

over a year of headaches will NEVER buy an ASUS product again. The amount of bullshit they put me through was insane to finally get a working card that still didn't technically WORK.

 

[Outback Bronze]

over a year of headaches will NEVER buy an ASUS product again

Yeah I'm kinda in the same boat with Asus GPU's. The 980 Strix I bought was voltage locked. Sucks balls hey.

 

[dcf-joe]

I once had two MSI GTX 570s in SLI, the ones with whatever their fancy cooling solution is called. I was very disappointed when a month or two after using them, one of them died. I was so underwhelmed by this that I have since never purchased another MSI video card again.