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[Cdammen]

The 3DFX Voodoo boxes looked slick as hell. Great image and design, unlike the horrible CGI creations of other brands.

My first one was a TNT2, then I got a card with 64MB of RAM, I think it was a Diamond card as well. I still have my PII in working order, I just need to dust it off. Only PC build I own a non-OEM license for. I actually have a full copy of Windows 98

 

[Mithos]

My first 3d accelerated graphics card was a Diamond Monster 3DII, the 8MB version.

The thing blew my mind at the time.

My first 3d accelerated gfx as well. still have it around somewhere ;p

 

[Durante]

The first 3D GPU in our family PC was a Voodoo 1, but I don't remember thee vendor.


This was the first GPU I bought for my own PC:

That forest tech demo it came with blew my mind back then.

RIP Matrox. (Yeah, I know they aren't completely dead)

 

[Polk]

1MB of ram. And Video Local Bus. That was a blast upgrade from my Hercules setup

 

[Cipherr]

my first dedicated gpu that I remember buying/getting was a tseng labs et6000 with 2,25MB memory in I think 1996. 2D only yet so beastly.

Wow this is sort of blowing my mind. I didnt even know or learn about GPU's until the voodoo craze. I was aware it was around before then but I never went to look. I didnt get into PC gaming until around that time.

A 2D focused GPU is wild to think about.

 

[UnrealEck]

GeForce 2 MX 440 64MBytes of VRAM.

I was ready to play 64 player Battlefield 1942 and it was awesome.

Oh and I also had a 9800 Pro at one point. Back when ATI ruled. (well not necessarily but the 97 and 9800 cards were really good)

 

[Durante]

Wow this is sort of blowing my mind. I didnt even know or learn about GPU's until the voodoo craze. I was aware it was around before then but I never went to look. I didnt get into PC gaming until around that time.

A 2D focused GPU is wild to think about.

Think about this one: at the time, the (analog!) quality of the VGA signal produced by a graphics card was an important distinguishing feature

 

[Phinor]

There's a distinction between graphics card and 3D graphics card. I don't remember my early graphics cards but the first 3D card I got was a Voodoo 1 with 4MB memory, then Voodoo 2 with 8MB, Voodoo 3 2000 AGP 16MB. I was jealous of the guys who could afford proper Geforce cards but I did finally move onto Geforce 2 MX and then Geforce 2 Ti.

I think you had to have a 2D card alongside those early Voodoo cards because they could only display 3D?

 

[Alex]

I think it was a TNT2, I remember getting it for the original Tribes. Up before then most of my PC gaming was just Ultima Online.

 

[BIGWORM]

My first GPU was a Voodoo 3. After that, I jumped on the AGP bandwagon and got a GeForce 6200. After that:

GeForce 6800GT OC
GeForce 7300GS 128
GeForce 8800 GT 256
GeForce 9500 GT
GTX 260
GTX 560Ti
GTX 660
GTX 680

 

[schwupp]

voodoo 2

 

[lightchris]

I think one of the first I bought all for myself was this one, coming with this beautiful blueish PCB:

A real nice alternative to the GeForce2 MX 400.

 

[Cutreman]

Great update from an ATI 7000 64MB at the time.

 

[BlackBuzzard]

My first real self bought card.

EVGA GTS8800 OC

 

[dookeh]

 

[Terbinator]

An absolutely terribad FX5200 was my first card.

 

[Zimbardo]

my first 3d card was a Diamond Monster 3D (3dx Voodoo 4MB).

was a 3d add in card that worked along side your 2d card.

totally blew my mind with how it made games look and run back then. i had it running along side an ATI 3d Rage.



my very first video card was a crappy Trident card that i soon upgraded to an ATI Graphics Expression.

this was around 20 years ago now. sheesh ...how time flies.

 

[Mr Swine]

I think my first GPU was either the Vodoo Banshee or the Nvidia Riva TNT

This thread is a blast in the past! So many GPU makers back then!

 

[Darkroronoa]

GeForce 6200 TC 128MB (turbocache)

Very weak card but i could play games, the mainstream card back then was 6600 and 6600GT, i was so jealous of them but i did not have money
This card was in a prebuild PC that my brother bought so maybe it doesnt count.

3 years later, in 2009, i upgraded to a Asus EAH3650 256MB. That was the first piece of hardware that i bought myself.

That was a good and cheap card, i could play decent most games and it lasted for many years.

Now i have an A6-5400k APU and no graphics card, but i can play the games i want.

 

[Herne]

Apart from integrated chips, the first graphics card I used was my friend's 3DFX Voodoo after he upgraded to a Voodoo 2. After that, my graphics card history goes like this -

Savage4 Pro Plus 32MB

I remember this card mostly because a friend fixed my pc and claimed this was unfixable, and then when I was at his place I saw it's bios boot screen show when he reset his computer. He claimed it had been "burned" onto his motherboard's bios boot after he'd tested the card in his pc. When I confronted him about it, having already looked behind his pc and seen my card installed there (I knew because he'd had no card of his own, and we had the exact same pc), he insisted on his story and, when he gave it back, it was obvious he'd scraped a coin across the PCI connector. After years of silence he apologised for being a dick and we've been good friends since.

3dfx Voodoo3 3000 16MB

When I knew the Savage4 was done for, I went out and bought this beauty. Wonderful card. Glide was a wonderful API and Unreal engine games really took advantage of it. Wheel of Time looked amazing. Incredible speed, too.

3dfx Voodoo5 5500 64MB (PCI and AGP versions)

Fantastic cards, amazing image quality and the first time I used and was impressed with anti-aliasing.

GeForce TI4200 128MB

Barely remember this card, but it was certainly a step up from the Voodoo5 I'd been using for years.

Radeon 9800 128MB

Great card for it's price/performance ratio. Died on me at some point.

Radeon X800 GTO 256MB

I unlocked the pipes on this at some stage which meant it was basically a more powerful version of the card for cheaper.

GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB

Great workhorse of a card, this. A friend is still using it to this day - the fan is dying, though, last I heard.

Radeon 4870 1GB

Another great card - powerful for it's time, but ran hot and mine had an issue with flash acceleration. I don't know how many times I tried to ask for help because of it only to be told it had been fixed in some long-ago Catalyst update. Yeah, right.

Radeon 6870 1GB

Good performance, but ran hot and ate up the power like it's older brother the 4870. The fan has died on me recently so it's sitting idle, and finding a 90mm vga fan with four pins and the correct mounting bracket has been an exercise in futility. I found one on eBay, but until I find a use for the card I'm not spending needless money.

Radeon 7970 3GB

My current beast. Oodles of memory and an absolute monster when it comes to performance. I think it was in the top five most powerful cards until the recent Radeon R9 and GeForce 7xxx series.

Shame 3dfx didn't stay around long enough for us to get our hands on Rampage...

 

[atpbx]

my first card was a 3DFX Voodoo 3, PCI, 12 mb I think. Absolute loved it, as it made jedi knight, half life, and some other misc games I had back then look so much better.

I think I still have the actual card in my closet somewhere, as a momento.

My first card was also a voodoo 3, I think mine was a 12meg one as well.

I had to get one because free space and half life in software were just slide shows.

 

[Water]

(first 3D)

Diamond Viper V330 AGP, using the Riva 128 GPU.

Dat performance - 35FPS at 640x480 !

 

[mili2110]

First Gpu I ever used was a GeForce 2 MX400.
Think I still have that pc sitting in the closet at my folks home.

Upgraded to a 6800, then dual 9800's, and now dual 680 classy's.

Same here. My first PC had a Gerforce 2 MX400. I Upgraded to a Radeon 9500Pro. That was really a Wooooow Moment. How could you hold out that long to upgrade? I got the 6800GT years later like 2006!?

 

[Marvel]

ATi Radeon HD 5770 1GB

Yes I came to PC gaming late.

 

[cyen]

My first self bought card was a MSI Geforce 3 Ti200, amazing card, bought for 200€ ( dont remember if Euro was already in place, but was that amount).

The card still lives with the core overclocked to ti500 speeds since pratically day one.

My first ever card bought with a pre build PC was a Riva TNT2.

 

[Matarese171]

Yep. Thats the one for me. I remember the box.

I remember playing Quake II and Half-life on shitty video settings. Then I got this card and I remember being blown away with the difference in half-life. Probably the biggest jump in graphics I'd ever seen

 

[MrCunningham]

my first dedicated gpu that I remember buying/getting was a tseng labs et6000 with 2,25MB memory in I think 1996. 2D only yet so beastly.

Not really a 2D based card, but the Nvidia NV1 was based on the Sega Saturn hardware and used quadrilateral rendering:

A lot of early Sega Saturn to PC ports supported this card, because they used software based quad rendering instead of triangles. This card even had two ports for Sega Saturn controllers, and it's own sound hardware. But the card was a failure for Nvidia, so they shifted gears with the NV3 to Direct3D and OpenGL rendering with the Rivia 128.

 

[BloodMoney]

3Dfx Voodoo was my first GPU. I remember begging my dad to let me save money to buy one after seeing it running with Mech Warrior II at an Egghead store in Monroeville, PA.

 

[Typhares]

My first card was this beauty:

 

[Ont]

One the early ATI Rage cards, which only ran Mechwarrior 2 really well. Games like Quake looked ugly. That all changed with Voodoo 2 (can't remember the brand), Quake and Myth: The Fallen Lords looked amazing.

 

[Ivan]

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

It was a GeForce 2 MX for me. My memory's kind of fuzzy on what I played with it, but, boy, it sure soldiered on until the Windows 98 PC had to go and be replaced with an XP PC with a more recent then-ATi card. (I think the old card kind of fell apart after trying to run Sims 2.)

 

[notBald]

My first card was also a voodoo 3, I think mine was a 12meg one as well.

I'm pretty sure they were all 16MB, which I though was a lot at the time.

All my cards:

ATI Rage II 3d charger

Crap, just crap. I knew this card was crap at 3D before I bought it, but I thought I could at least get some 3D gaming out of it, but no. It was literally faster to run my games in "software" mode, making this card more of a 3D deaccelerator. Big disappointment.

Voodoo 3 2000 PCI

Now this was a sweet card. Cheap and performed like a champ. Had no complaints with this card beyond it not working too well with new games after 3DFX folded and driver development halted.

MSI Geforce 4mx 440 64MB

Heh. I still remember the name of this card. I bought it because at least in benchmarks it outperformed the Voodoo, and it had a cool TV-out feature I wanted to try. All in all I was unhappy with this card. It was way faster than the Voodoo 3 in theory, but it introduced me to something new and unwanted: judder. Framerate was all over the place, and vsynch was not a good option. Further there was a small dinky fan on the card that made a high pitch noise. It was always on and always annoying.

Geforce 6600TD

I had been out of PC gaming for a while when someone gave me a game for Christmas. The game seemed interesting and I wanted to play it, but it was no go on the 440 MX. The game required DirectX 8, and while I tried tricking the game with various tweaks I could not get any graphics to show. Not willing to wait for a post order I went straight out to a store and bought this card for way more than it was worth, but it played the game.

And it was worth it.

Eager for more gaming I decided to upgrade my PC, unfortunately the 6600 was a AGP card so...

ATI Radeon x1300

I got this card for free. The owner found it too noisy you see. And was it noisy, I pondered a fan replacement but it wasn't worth it for a card this slow. I tried to stick with it but it was quite frankly too noisy. It goes with the story that the guys I gave this card to told me the noise wouldn't be a problem for them, but bought themselves a new card a couple of days later.

Geforce 8600 GT

Cheap and excellent. The only drag was that I now thirsted for something better. I quickly sold the card for not much less than I got it for.

Geforce 9600 GT

This is the only GPU to die on me, but it lasted for a good number of years before that. It was roughly twice as fast, and a substantial boost to image quality in newer games. Even so I wanted more...

Geforce GTX 460 1GB

It took a year from I got this card to I actually played a game on it, but when I did, wow. From a 360 to this was a massive jump, not as big as the 8600 -> 9600 but close. The card still performs like a champ, over three years old now, and while I've starting thinking about a replacement there's no rush. This might be the card I stick with the longest.

 

[Jezbollah]

My first graphics card upgrade was a Voodoo Rush. I didn't know until later that it was a crappy 3D card but what the heck, it let me play all those GLIDE accelerated games like Tomb Raider, Quake et al.

Final Fantasy 7 PC also came out around the same time, and because I didn't have a Playstation, I finally got to play the latest installment of my favourite game franchise (albeit in the worst horrible way ever lol).

My next card would be a Voodoo 3 2000, the best little graphics card ever. I miss 3DFX. Those were crazy times. Anyone remember this awesome gem of an ad?

My first card was a Voodoo as well. Just the difference it made to Quake with GLIDE/OPEN GL was astonishing.

 

[Futaba]

All of mine, in order.

Savage S3
Matrox Mystique
Matrox M3D (worked along side the mystique)
3DLabs Voodoo Velocity 100
Matrox G200
ELSA Gladiac GeForce 2 MX
Gainward GeForce 3 Ti 500
Leadtek GeForce 4 Ti4400
Sapphire Radeon X1990 XX
BFG GeForce 6800GT
Zotac GeForce 8600GT
PNY? GeForce 8800GTX
Zotac GTX 260
PNY GTX 460
Gigabyte GTX 580, then 580 SLI, then 580 three way SLI
Gigabyte GTX 680
Nvidia GTX Titan
Gainward GTX780Ti Phantom, then three in 3-way SLI

Actually had more than this but many were ebay flips (buy non-working, repair or have them RMA'd and sell on), as far as i can remember the above are the ones i actually bought specifically to use.

Bonus! - CPUS.

Cyrix 333 (233mhz)
AMD K6-2 400
AMD Athlon 900 (Socket A)
AMD Athlon 64 3200+
AMD Athlon X2 5000+
AMD Phenom II X4 940 BE
AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE
Intel i7 920
AMD Phenom II X6 1100T BE
Intel i7 3970X

I have really fond memories of the Cyrix 333, it was around the time I was big into evangelion and kept trying to build a geofront in unreal 1's editor, was also the time when i (and was never repeated again in the history of pc gaming) got a performance boost from using a PCI sound card rather than the onboard, actually made unreal 1 multiplayer playable (13fps or so boost!)

The M3D was awful, it took a long time messing with dll files in quake and quake 2 to get it to actually use it - when it did, it ran great, but for the most part it wouldnt, to date the velocity 100 was my favorite card, i have vivid memories of sitting in my diningroom on my crt monitor installing win2000 fresh, then rollcage for pc and it blowing my mind how much of a FPS boost i got over the last card.

 

[Sordid]

My first PC had an integrated SiS 8Mb card. Paired with a crappy Cyrix MII processor I played tons of games on that thing at horrible resolutions/framerates :lol

My first dedicated card was a GeForce FX 5700, bought it 'cos it was cheap and it overclocked pretty well. It felt awesome playing UT2k4 and Doom 3 with that thing!

 

[Quasar]

Mine was some TNT2 based card.

 

[Nakazato]

Radeon 9000 pro

 

[fantomena]

9800 GX2.

 

[jblank83]

Matrox Millenium

2d acceleration forever

 

[Stulaw]

The first one I bought myself, which I'm still using now is a XFX Radeon HD5850 1GB, it's been really good to me these past 3 and a half years.

Before that I had a laptop with integrated graphics that couldn't even play Quake Live (it refused to) and we had a family PC with a Radeon X300 128Mb. Before that I have no idea what our PCs had.

 

[Thorgal]

My first one was a GTX 9600 .

it was a good card and gave my then shitty of the shelf PC a nice boost .

 

[SuperHans]

ATi 9800 Pro 128MB, bought it for Far Cry, Doom 3 and HL2 when it eventually came out. It came with a S-video cable for SD comfy couch PC gaming. Before this all I had was rubbish integrated graphics. I think it was some VIA thing. Always wanted a Voodoo 2 but couldn't afford it. Had to play Quake 2 in software mode at around 5fps on a P1 MMX.

 

[MisterM]

I had something before my MX440 but for the life of me I cannot remember what it was. It made Quake 2 look awesome though.

Then I went 9800pro/3850/6850 and now 7870XT

 

[Romir]

Diamond Voodoo 1 4mb, not counting the ATI rage something that came with my first pc.

 

[Cheeky]

My first one was an Nvidia geforce 4 but i was to inept at the time to know which one. I used to play WoW on it, raiding with an astonishing single digit frame rate and still topping the dps charts. Afterwards i had a 7600GS which was another OEM card this was the last time i would get an OEM machine.

First card i actually bought would be a 8600GTS, followed by a 9600GT(Which i then put in SLI) Then i switched to an AMD 4770(single) which i had for about two months before jumping to a 4890. this one i used till i switched to a 7950 about a year ago.

 

[ozmozz]

my first card was a 3DFX Voodoo 3, PCI, 12 mb I think. Absolute loved it, as it made jedi knight, half life, and some other misc games I had back then look so much better.

I think I still have the actual card in my closet somewhere, as a momento.

Same card for me

 

[red731]

3DFX Voodoo 2 12MB from Ati Mach 64 2MB

 

[velociraptor]

This was my first GPU.

It kinda sucked.

I wish I would have gotten a 9700/9800 Pro instead.

The only games it played well were HL1, CS, UT2003/UT2004, Jedi Knight etc.

 

[Ranger Taffles]

Good ol' 9600GT. Had a blast with it for around 3-4 years or so.