• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

My First PC Graphics Card

The Llama

Member
My very first GPU that I paid for was this beast.
evga_8800gtx.jpg

The 8800GTX, that card lasted me years.

The 8800GTX and then the 8800GT were amazing cards.
 

AkIRA_22

Member
I'd had my brothers hand me downs for years, Voodoos, TNTs. This was the first one I bought with my own cold hard cash...

XFX8800GTS-002.jpg
 

Cutebrute

Member
1001ati3.jpg


The card was actually a 9600xt with a similar case, and it was part of my first self-built PC back in 2005. My parents let me do it for my 12th birthday. I intended to play HL2 on this card, but I only really played HL1 and The Sims on it. That sucker was able to handle Prey (2006), so that card's might wasn't completely wasted.

I just built a second PC earlier in the year, and now I am admiring my GTX 760.

Also, in googling that picture, it reminded me of just how ugly the marketing and packaging was/is for GPUs. Why can so few companies get it right?
 

rrs

Member
Not exactly mine, but the first GPU I ever used was an ATi Rage II chipset in my grandparent's VAIO. I can remember playing POD and Wipeout on it.

The first GPU in a computer all for my own was a Geforce 6600. I don't think I really pushed it before getting a way better GPU on a laptop and broading my horizons on genres.
 

inm8num2

Member
My first in a desktop was a GeForce Ti 4200 with a Dell Dimension desktop over 10 years ago. Mainly had been using a laptop before that.
 

Cipherr

Member
3DFX Voodoo, I remember that much but I cannot recall the exact one because I had more than one. Wish I could though. Good times.
 

HaNks

Banned
not such happy memories here. never had a real gpu in our family pc when i was growing up. i wasn't really a pc gamer anyways but loved some of the fps stuff like quake 2.

pevnQXH.jpg


intel i740 card, that incoming game looked great with agp support but a poor card. no open gl and direct 3d was pretty shoddy, barely ran UT.
 

Mupod

Member
Voodoo 3 PCI. Didn't have an AGP slot, but it ran everything I had perfectly.

Kept me going well into Warcraft 3, which it handled fairly well outside of tower defense maps.
 

Mohonky

Member
Everybody's first card was the Riva TNT2, haha.

Think mine was too, I can barely remember now. Whatever it was it was paired with a Pentium 75mhz with 8mb of ram. Otherwise before that I cant recall any specs but it ran on Windows Commander? Or Dos Commander or something.
 
These R7s are great for casual gaming (i have the 260x) and runs D3 very nicely at medium settings... definitely a great investment for $100 ....

Cheers on the new card :D

900x900px-LL-774ac9b3_IMG_0292.jpeg
 

DogMeat77

Member
The first video card I bought strictly for gaming was either the 3dfx voodoo 1 or voodoo 2. I don't remember which.

I do remember how amazing Quake looked using the 3dfx cards though. Dat yellow glow.
 

emag

Member
Honestly don't remember. It was part of a pre-built from a no-name manufacturer in '91. I do remember replacing it with a 2 or 4 MB card later in the 90s. I'm pretty sure the replacement was an S3 board, but I'm not absolutely certain. Definitely pre-3D.
 
The first card I ever got was a PNY FX5200 PCI version. I asked for it for one of my birthdays. When it came time to build my own computer I'm pretty sure the first card I got was an ATi x800 GTO. Built a system after HL2 came out with the ATi card, an AMD Athlon XP 2500+ and 1GB of RAM. It was my first computer and I saved up money from my birthday and christmas to get it.
 

Woo-Fu

Banned
I must be old, my first graphics card upgrade was for faster 2D. We're talking Tseng Labs and Matrox era.
 
My first card I gamed on for real after IGP was a shitty ATI 4350. After that, I upgraded to a 5850. Now I'm on a GTX 680. Having GPU muscle is so good.
 

ss_lemonade

Member
My first pc had a geforce 4 mx. Upgraded to a geforce 4 ti 4200 in less than a week thanks to a friend who was getting rid of it. I must say, I was surprised by how big of an upgrade that was (I wasn't aware back then how gimped that mx lineup was lol)

I've been through a couple of gpus now: 6600 vanilla, 8800 gts (320mb), gtx 275, 7970, and now a 780.
 
I had a GeForce FX 5200 and a good friend of mine lent me his GeForce 4 MX 440 just so we could play Battlefield 1942 together haha.
 

XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
First video card I can remember was some Cirrus-Logic card for my 486SX. Supported all the VESA SVGA modes available at the time pretty well!

First 3D add-on card was a Voodoo 1. After that I got a Riva TNT.
 
First Gpu I ever used was a GeForce 2 MX400.

This was also my first one. I bought it off a friend for a few bucks around 2004 or 2005 so I and my younger brother could play a few games I had on my Celeron 633Mhz PC (which I still have and use occasionally for DOS games and such). I used it mainly for Mafia and Guild Wars, the latter of which my younger brother got as a birthday present from his friends who wanted him to play it with them online.

My second was an Radeon HD 4350 1GB DDR2 around 2010 that I bought because I finally got another desktop to replace the one above, and that was only thing at the TigerDirect store that I could afford at the moment.
It worked well enough, but I recently replaced it with a Radeon HD 7750 1GB GDDR5 that I bought a few months ago on Amazon, which is a huge improvement, and I'm quite happy with it.

I don't really play PC games often, though...partly because I get distracted by the internet every time I get on my computer. Hah. Well, that, and a lack of hard drive space. I should really do something about that. I used to play PC games all of the time as a kid, though...but that was more because my older brother wouldn't let me use the console we had at the time very often, so I had no other choice but to play on the PC.
 

Daingurse

Member
Here's my first card :

14-143-032-06.jpg


That's the Geforce FX 5500 256MB 128bit DDR PCI gpu. Not PCIE! Nope, just plain ole PCI. I remember running Half-Life 2 at 1024x768 on medium, averaging around 30fps and being blown away. Played WoW on that GPU, with poor performance for a looooong while.

The PCI slot was my first major bottleneck as a PC gamer. Held me back for years.
 

XiaNaphryz

LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Here's my first card :

14-143-032-06.jpg


That's the Geforce FX 5500 256MB 128bit DDR PCI gpu. Not PCIE! Nope, just plain ole PCI. I remember running Half-Life 2 at 1024x768 on medium, averaging around 30fps and being blown away. Played WoW on that GPU, with poor performance for a looooong while.

The PCI slot was my first major bottleneck as a PC gamer. Held me back for years.

How the hell did you not have an AGP port by that time at least?
 

nbnt

is responsible for the well-being of this island.
8600 GT
Man, playing Crysis at 800x600 was such an incredible experience.
 
The one and only original GeForce. GeForce 256.


I dunno why, but the GeForce 256 really was my favorite card I owned from the past. Maybe because it was my first foray into Nvidia cards, or maybe because it was the first card I spent my own cold hard cash on. But going from some sort of Rage Pro to a GeForce 256 was amazing. It ran Unreal Tournament '99 at about 50+ FPS at 1024x768, and 40+ at 1280x1024 at 16bit colour and 30+ at 32bit colour. Overclocking the card, I could get it up to the mid 40's at 1280x1024 @32bit colour. I remember being really ecstatic with those numbers back then. It was the card that sold me on the GeForce brand name as a whole.

Though I remember this card starting to struggle around the time I was playing the original Max Payne on it at 1024x768@32bit colour. The game was still playable on that card, but really did hit some low framerates when the action heated up.
 

Sinfamy

Member
I do not remember the name of my first GPU. It was from 2005, it had 256MB of VRAM and it was not an ATI or Nvidia card.

However from what I remember:

8800 GTS 640MB > 9800 GTX+ > GTX 260 > HD Radeon 6870 > GTX 660 Ti > GTX 780.
 

shocktrooper

Neo Member
My first was a Matrox MGA something, absolutely worthless for 3d rendering but it was good enough for emulating Neo Geo games.
Then I finally got a Geforce 3 Ti 200, the golden one with the 3d stereo glasses. Played Medal of Honor Allied Assault until I got nauseous
From there ATI 9800 XT -> 8800 GTS -> GTX 275 AMP -> 660 Ti
 

Arkam

Member
Intergraph Voodoo Rush w/ 6MB of EDO RAM. Boy was that a game changer for me. And the beginning of my PC building addiction.
 

Saganator

Member
My first card was the Riva 128, the generation before Riva TNT. I think it had 4MB of video ram. Not a bad card, but it would not play Battlefield 1942 =[
 

Anteater

Member
I've had a few gpus but I didn't build those PCs myself.

I did my first build this year and I got this card:

flqFfPA.jpg


It was a lot bigger than I imagine it to be, it's kind of crazy
 

Rafterman

Banned
$(KGrHqJ,!qIFJcjRZ!cGBSdwL45-Mw~~60_35.JPG


This was my first 3D card and it really was a monster. Voodoo 1 4mb PCI card, I didn't think it could get any better after seeing games on this thing. I also used to just loop the Final Reality benchmark, it was pretty amazing at the time.
 

Brofist

Member
Just picked up an R9 290 yesterday. Reference but price was too good to pass up. If it's runs too hot I may water cool it anyway so not really worried.
 
Top Bottom