So was doing some reading today and fell down a rabbit hole and it got me to thinking, what GPU’s have you used over the years.
Now I started my computer life before they were even a thing so started thinking about what was the first I bought in a system where it was even a thing. Gonna age myself a bit but here goes.
- GeForce 256
- Something I can’t remember ( probably early ATI )
- ATI 9600 Pro XT
- RADEON 5750
- RADEON R9 380/ Nvidia 1080
- RADEON 5700 XT/Nvidia 3060ti
Until my wife started buying her own parts I went decades without an Nvidia card. Why? The 256 caught fire so I stayed away until recently.
oh lord here we go
/big breath
Not counting the “family computer” from my youth, and only things I’ve bought on my own…
Riva 128 -4MB + dual 3dfx Voodoo2 12MB SLI
Riva TNT2 16MB
3dfx Voodoo 3 2000 16MB
GeForce 2 GTS 32MB
GeForce 4 ti 4400 128MB
GeForce FX 5950 Ultra 256MB
ATI Radeon 1950XTX 512MB
Dual AMD HD4850 512MB in Crossfire
GeForce GTX 260 896MB
GeForce GTX 460 1GB
GeForce GTX 560 ti 1GB
GeForce GTX 650 ti 2GB
AMD RX 470 4GB
GeForce GTX 1060 3gb
AMD RX 580 8GB
AMD RX Vega 64
AMD RX 5700 XT
GeForce RTX 3080
I don’t remember the brands of them all. Earlier cards were probably Diamond, Winfast/Leadtek, PNY, and the newer stuff is the usual culprits.
I remember most buying the two STB Black Magic Voodoo 2 cards from Electronics Botique. If I recall correctly, they were $200 each (I think they were on sale? They must have been a year old when I got them because I paired them with a Pentium 3), and I spent all my part time job money on them. The Riva 128 I got at some computer show, if I recall it was around $100. But at that time, Direct 3D wasn’t very common, and if you wanted to game, you HAD to have 3dfx glide. And you HAD to have SLI for 1024x768. The VGA passthroughs on this setup was ridiculous lol.
Most unimpressive cards where I was disappointed: Voodoo 3 (was kind of a downgrade from the TNT2 IMO, only 16-bit color), 560 ti (wasn’t much better than the 460, still Fermi), and the 5950 Ultra (because it died).
After the 650 ti, I didn’t really play games at all as that’s around when my kids were born. Didn’t really play games again until a few years later and started up again with an RX 470 in around 2016?
Didn’t include OEM stuff like laptop GPUs.
This is basically the last 20+ years worth of GPUs lol.
The Voodoo2 came out in 1998. 
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Yep remember the Voodoo’s. Never had one as they were kind of starting to fade by the time I really started to buy PC’S.
Most I ever spent on one PC was 3 grand and a good chunk of that was the monitor which was a massive Viewsonic 19" when a big monitor was 15 " lol. Actually remember the first time I saw a 30" monitor. Was hooked to a Mac and used for typesetting.
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I could barely remember them all, but here’s a rough rundown of what I remembered:
On-board S3 Trio Virge
3dfx Voodoo Banshee
GeForce 2 MX400
GeForce 4 MX440
ATI All-in-Wonder series (bought every one from the ATI Rage 128 to whatever was last)
ATI Radeon X1600s in crossfire
Nvidia 8800GT in SLI
Nvidia GTX260
Nvidia GTX660
Nvidia GTX970
Nvidia GTX1070
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Forgot about the all in wonders. Pretty sure I had one and forgot about it lol.
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Although they weren’t clocked as high as the standalone cards with the same GPU, I do miss that time frame having my cable and game console connected to my computer… using it as a capture card, a second TV, and a DVR before DVRs were a thing. 
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| Year |
Model |
VRAM |
Interface |
| 1996 |
Nameless Apple Video ASIC |
1MB |
PCI |
| 2000 |
ATI Rage 128 |
8MB |
AGP 2x |
| 2003 |
GeForce4 MX |
32MB |
AGP 4x |
| 2005 |
ATI Radeon 9600 |
128MB |
AGP 8x |
| 2009 |
ATI Radeon HD 4850 |
512MB |
PCI-E 2.0 16x |
| 2015 |
AMD Radeon R9 M370X |
2GB |
PCI-E 3.0 16x |
| 2017 |
EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Classified |
6GB |
PCI-E 3.0 16x |
| 2019 |
Sapphire Radeon 5700 XT Nitro+ |
8GB |
PCI-E 3.0 16x |
| 2020 |
AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56 |
8GB |
PCI-E 3.0 16x |
The downgrade at the end came when my hackintosh tower got repurposed as a living room gaming machine for shared usage w/roommate and a refurbished iMac Pro became my more work-oriented daily driver. It’s capable of WoW @ 1440p60 which is good enough for me at the moment.
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This the special edition or no
Just the regular. The LEDs on the SE are cool but didn’t feel like shelling out the extra cash at the time.
Super solid card btw, I know AMD cards are known for driver issues but it’s taken everything that’s been thrown at it including VR stuff and handled it swimmingly.
I bought the special edition I too like my sapphire nitro
Wish there wasn’t a stock shortage atm I’d like to get myself the sapphire Toxic cards that’s been recently released
I usually love Sapphire, but my goodness, that name is enough to make XFX feel jealous they didn’t come up with it first.
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Oddly enough I’ve never had too many issues with the drivers themselves, the biggest I’ve had was with that old Catalyst software. You just never knew exactly when it would work or not.
Looking at AMD cards I had mostly used
2600xt
4830
R9 270
Etc
I think the GTX 970 was my first Nvidia card which I now use a 1070 which I prob won’t replace till the 4000 series comes out and even then depends on price and if we are still getting gouged by scalpers or Nvidia AIB’s.
I haven’t had any issues with AMD drivers themselves, but the lower end AIBs implementation of coolers on AMD cards that have often been really lacking.
Of all the GPUs I’ve had this one still looks the best:
https://images.mmorpg.com/images/heroes/features/12383.jpg
https://c1.neweggimages.com/ProductImage/14-202-326-S01.jpg
It just looks like it would overheat like heck. I’ve always been about function over form but my newest one is full of rgb so I kind of blew that out of the water this go around.
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EDIT: That was a different thread. I meant to say yeah AMD cards look great and perform well per dollar, but they need some user tweaking for best results usually.
It actually overclocked quite well and didn’t throttle (1700mhz core, 1025mhz hbm2, +50% power limit) but just needed to be undervolted + basically 100% fans so it sounded like a jet engine
Well my 5700xt sounds like that too. Huge contrast from my windforce R9 380 which you barely knew existed.
my RX 570 and 580 are pretty silent on stock settings
they are of course nearing throttling all the time if not doing so, but I just don’t care anymore.
My first video card was an eVGA 16 color, bought it for 150 bucks which was almost my entire paycheck…
Coming from a 4 color VGA card that was amazing…
It’s all a blur after that… whatever the current video cards… but I stopped trying to keep up when video cards cost more than the other parts of the computer combined…
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1 ATI Radeon 9200
2 nVidia GeForce 8400 GS
3 ATI Radeon HD7770
4 nVidia GTX 750ti
and now my RTX 2060 Super
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