A Pictorial History of GPUs
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vorticalbox
New member
My first ever GPU was this bad boy
which i used right up till i recently got the asus 7770 v2 and i still have it now for my second system.
which i used right up till i recently got the asus 7770 v2 and i still have it now for my second system.
alienware
Banned
Yay lots of lovely GPU goodness 
Kambo - what did you have your Voodoo linked with? I ask because they weren't standalone cards and needed another GPU (no matter how crap) to link with..
I had my Orchid linked up with the 1mb S3 card and it was more than enough..
Quake 2 was where it really started to come together though. What a stunning game that was. Was the first game I ever knew where you could blow someone into small chunks then stand there and laugh when the flies turned up :lol:
Kambo - what did you have your Voodoo linked with? I ask because they weren't standalone cards and needed another GPU (no matter how crap) to link with..
I had my Orchid linked up with the 1mb S3 card and it was more than enough..
Quake 2 was where it really started to come together though. What a stunning game that was. Was the first game I ever knew where you could blow someone into small chunks then stand there and laugh when the flies turned up :lol:
dalewakelin
New member
My first gpu, sapphire HD5450, im still using it. Bought it about a year and a half ago.
My second gpu, sold it after a few months. Nvidia quadro 3400.
My second gpu, sold it after a few months. Nvidia quadro 3400.
UkGouki
New member
Forum user AlienALX has created a great thread in which to share your past and present GPUs with others. Get ready for a trip down memory lane, lads.
Continue Reading
nice readup forgot to add my 8 year old 7900gtx which in 2005 was the flagship and a beast of a card yet its still alive and kicking.
that thing has lived through a thunderstorm that took out one of our tvs it lived through various power cuts even the death of 2 power supplys and a house fire! the thing is the terminator incarnate i swear you cant kill it lol
that said my 6 year old 9800gtx i managed to bring back to life after i thought it was dead. all it needed was a small re-solder of one of its power points i also put clean tim on it now its running on my old q6600 system without missing a beat still plays a few of the newer games not exactly maxxed out but good enough on 1650x1050 screen
alpenwasser
New member
Wooot! Front page, awesome! :rock:
My GF3 even gets a mention, thanks Josh!
Also, I like the concept of mentioning good threads on the front page, I'm very much looking
forward to more of that.
My first GPU came in my first computer which was a Compaq running windows ME (terrible, I know). Equipped with a 700Mhz AMD Duron. It was an 8 MB nVIDIA Vanta LT AGP card... i know right? can't even call it a GeForce.. This pc always pissed me off because it seemed like none of the games i had that i wanted to play would even run at all.. (some old star wars game, flight sim, etc)
My next PC my dad helped me build as a project in '04 ish. This thing was fairly beastly for the day. 1.5gb DDR 400, 3.0ghz northwood P4 with hyperthreading.. The gpu was a GeForce4 MX440. 128MB if I recall.
My dad, had to confiscate that pc for work, so he bought me and my brother an emachines in 2005. It only had 512MB of ram, but the athlon 64 cpu it had was better than the old P4, so I was ok with it. (despite running an entire GHz slower and having half as many threads at its disposal). That pc had intergrated radeon xpress 200 graphics which ran my games just fine at the time (flight sims, battlefront, etc). However, Microsoft Flight Simulator 10 ran horribly, so I decided to upgrade it. Mowed lawns until I could afford to max out the ram: 2gb of DDR400, and acquire a decent gpu. I read that FS10 greatly favored nvidia especially for weather, so I bought a 256mb Geforce 8500 GT.
Why was I using a single core rig in 2007? because i was a poor teenager, hence the lawn-mowing.
Unfortunately, the game still ran horribly because it is an extremely CPU dependent game. However, I was broke again until I got a "real" job. so in 2010, after saving up enough money, I built a new PC from scratch. 3.0ghz quad athlon, 4gb ddr2 800, and a BFG GTX 260, core 216, 55nm revision. My first true gamer's card, I loved that thing. I threw everything i could find to play at it. Handled FS10, (thanks to the quad), CoD, Crysis 1 and 2, Metro 2033, Battlefield 3, (though most not at max settings).
Ever since I built that PC, i've been continuously upgrading it, 1 component (or 2) at a time til the point that now, it literally shares nothing in common with the PC i built in 2010, however, its soul lives on. I finally upgraded the GPU last november when I got back from training and had tons of cash to blow, so i bought a brand new radeon hd 7870. Note, this was my first radeon card, but i've been pretty impressed. While the 260 could RUN anything I could throw at it, I've finally achieved a setup where I can MAX nearly anything i throw at it (other than metro of course).
Misc. GPUs: I've built quite a few PC's for other people since I built my first one for myself. Thrown in a variety of GPU's, such as these (based on budget and gaming/work needs)
xfx hd5450 for my dad
zotac 'ion' gpu for a friend
GTS 250 for another friend
hd5770 for another friend
hd4890 for my step brother (always loved the way they looked)
hd6850 for my brother
and, of course, an hd3870 x2 i got off ebay for chump change to see how crossfire works..
My next PC my dad helped me build as a project in '04 ish. This thing was fairly beastly for the day. 1.5gb DDR 400, 3.0ghz northwood P4 with hyperthreading.. The gpu was a GeForce4 MX440. 128MB if I recall.
My dad, had to confiscate that pc for work, so he bought me and my brother an emachines in 2005. It only had 512MB of ram, but the athlon 64 cpu it had was better than the old P4, so I was ok with it. (despite running an entire GHz slower and having half as many threads at its disposal). That pc had intergrated radeon xpress 200 graphics which ran my games just fine at the time (flight sims, battlefront, etc). However, Microsoft Flight Simulator 10 ran horribly, so I decided to upgrade it. Mowed lawns until I could afford to max out the ram: 2gb of DDR400, and acquire a decent gpu. I read that FS10 greatly favored nvidia especially for weather, so I bought a 256mb Geforce 8500 GT.
Why was I using a single core rig in 2007? because i was a poor teenager, hence the lawn-mowing.
Unfortunately, the game still ran horribly because it is an extremely CPU dependent game. However, I was broke again until I got a "real" job. so in 2010, after saving up enough money, I built a new PC from scratch. 3.0ghz quad athlon, 4gb ddr2 800, and a BFG GTX 260, core 216, 55nm revision. My first true gamer's card, I loved that thing. I threw everything i could find to play at it. Handled FS10, (thanks to the quad), CoD, Crysis 1 and 2, Metro 2033, Battlefield 3, (though most not at max settings).
Ever since I built that PC, i've been continuously upgrading it, 1 component (or 2) at a time til the point that now, it literally shares nothing in common with the PC i built in 2010, however, its soul lives on. I finally upgraded the GPU last november when I got back from training and had tons of cash to blow, so i bought a brand new radeon hd 7870. Note, this was my first radeon card, but i've been pretty impressed. While the 260 could RUN anything I could throw at it, I've finally achieved a setup where I can MAX nearly anything i throw at it (other than metro of course).
Misc. GPUs: I've built quite a few PC's for other people since I built my first one for myself. Thrown in a variety of GPU's, such as these (based on budget and gaming/work needs)
xfx hd5450 for my dad
zotac 'ion' gpu for a friend
GTS 250 for another friend
hd5770 for another friend
hd4890 for my step brother (always loved the way they looked)
hd6850 for my brother
and, of course, an hd3870 x2 i got off ebay for chump change to see how crossfire works..
alienware
Banned
My Prophet was the same and tbh? worst card I've ever had. I learned shortly after that that anything Nvidia put out with MX on the end was crap, and anything with Ti on the end was the one to have.
NickOmega
Member
My list is nice and short:
Radeon 9200LE: Came in my first desktop computer bought 2nd hand. Was also the first overclock I attempted, refitted heatsink using AS5 and fitted an old P3 fan, made no difference whatsoever :lol: Still have this in an anti-static bag in an old MoBo box
Asus EAH4670: Was bought from Aria for the princely sum of £46.30 when I built this computer 4 years ago (only had a £200 budget minus HDD, monitor and peripherals) Still managed to play Crysis on reasonable settings and manages Batman: AA fairly well too
Radeon 9200LE: Came in my first desktop computer bought 2nd hand. Was also the first overclock I attempted, refitted heatsink using AS5 and fitted an old P3 fan, made no difference whatsoever :lol: Still have this in an anti-static bag in an old MoBo box
Asus EAH4670: Was bought from Aria for the princely sum of £46.30 when I built this computer 4 years ago (only had a £200 budget minus HDD, monitor and peripherals) Still managed to play Crysis on reasonable settings and manages Batman: AA fairly well too
I agree, the card is pretty much worthless. Tried to install windows 7 on that old machine, and the card is virtually unsupported whatsoever. Not only does aero not work, but you can't even find any official drivers that support the card, so you're left with windows generic VGA drivers or ghetto rigging some unsupported driver which is what i did. Installed halo 1, and it barely ran and with many graphical glitches. That's a 2001 game.. Also i have the IL2 Sturmovik series of combat flight sims, which are based on a 2003 game with a variety of patches updates and expansions, and on the box, it clearly says that Geforce 4 MX is "NOT SUPPORTED". that's the only gpu it mentions lol
Zoot
Active member
That's a badge of shame I wear too. Although I'm slightly better, I saw the light in 2006. :lol:
I forgot my brief entries on the mobile side of things.
ATi Xpress 1150
That powered a laptop I had with an AMD Turion X2 TL-60. It was onboard so the gaming performance was non-existant. It's still alive after nearly 8 years and happily running Debian now.
nVidia Geforce 8600M GT
That's still alive and kicking in my current laptop, with an Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 which is going on 6 years old now. It served me great during college for LAN parties. I have fond memories of 12+ hour Civilisation 4 and Sins of a Solar Empire sessions!
It wouldn't have been a great gaming system but it ran games with their settings turned down just fine. Lugging around the desktop (with the HD4870 and Phenom II) wasn't an option really.
I reckon my next in the mobile world will be an AMD Temash powered one, as those hybrid tablets are looking very interesting.
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This takes me back; my first pc (not a family pc) had a matrox millenium dualhead
That PC got stolen along with loads of other stuff and was replaced with an 1100MHz Athlon with an Nvidia Geforce II (MX IIRC), which was a little below par.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/GeForce_2_MX_400.JPG[img]
When I built my first PC I picked the best card (my)money could buy at that stage; a 7800GTX, which was pretty decent.
[img]http://images.planetamd64.com/athildja/PX7800GTX/7800GTX.jpg
After that I did a complete rebuild, with a pair of 280GTXs in SLI, which were loud, power hungry, and yet I loved them. One is still going strong with a custom cooler on it, the other is on its way out.
http://www.maximumpc.com/files/u7/bfg-geforce280GTX-beauty-small.jpg[img]
I also needed a spare graphics chip for testing so bought an 8400GS, with 512mb RAM. (I love how crippled that RAM must be with DDR2 speeds and a tiny bus)
[img]http://tekgems.com/images/large/GF8400GS-128-PB-box.jpg
I decided to wait for the 480GTXs to be released, found out they were quite poor, and got myself a pair of 5970s. Absolute mistake; I went for eyefinity as well, and found that games worked well with eyefinity but not quadfire; I ended up watercooling them and found they worked fine on their own, but not together. On my next upgrade cycle I sold one of the cards, and kept the other in a half built PC (it just needs an LGA 1366 CPU).
When I got those, I wanted to try out physx, and bought a 9800GT second hand, which turned out not to play with eyefinity. Unfortunately I had a short circuit with a fan, causing the PSU that went bang and took out the graphics chip too. I also bought a 9800GT with a better cooler, initially for a server, but I then donated it to my mum after getting rid of the 280GTXs from my main machine.
I then bought two 680GTXs which currently reside in my behemoth, fully watercooled, and attached to four screens.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7-1bIPHSQ8c/T3pc8KmrreI/AAAAAAAAAd0/UdAJ1QDRvZQ/s1600/koolance_vid-nx680_03.jpg[img]
Finally my server was running a 280GTX, but this started to crash, and after a bit of problem solving I think the 280GTX is dying. I replaced it with the cheapest card I could find: a 610GT which had the advantage of being passive and therefore quiet. It also meant I could remove a very loud fan that cooled the graphics and raid card.
[img]http://www.asus.com/media/global/products/31hEfbwHjinQORmO/P_500.jpg
I think that's the lot.
That PC got stolen along with loads of other stuff and was replaced with an 1100MHz Athlon with an Nvidia Geforce II (MX IIRC), which was a little below par.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/GeForce_2_MX_400.JPG[img]
When I built my first PC I picked the best card (my)money could buy at that stage; a 7800GTX, which was pretty decent.
[img]http://images.planetamd64.com/athildja/PX7800GTX/7800GTX.jpg
After that I did a complete rebuild, with a pair of 280GTXs in SLI, which were loud, power hungry, and yet I loved them. One is still going strong with a custom cooler on it, the other is on its way out.
http://www.maximumpc.com/files/u7/bfg-geforce280GTX-beauty-small.jpg[img]
I also needed a spare graphics chip for testing so bought an 8400GS, with 512mb RAM. (I love how crippled that RAM must be with DDR2 speeds and a tiny bus)
[img]http://tekgems.com/images/large/GF8400GS-128-PB-box.jpg
I decided to wait for the 480GTXs to be released, found out they were quite poor, and got myself a pair of 5970s. Absolute mistake; I went for eyefinity as well, and found that games worked well with eyefinity but not quadfire; I ended up watercooling them and found they worked fine on their own, but not together. On my next upgrade cycle I sold one of the cards, and kept the other in a half built PC (it just needs an LGA 1366 CPU).
When I got those, I wanted to try out physx, and bought a 9800GT second hand, which turned out not to play with eyefinity. Unfortunately I had a short circuit with a fan, causing the PSU that went bang and took out the graphics chip too. I also bought a 9800GT with a better cooler, initially for a server, but I then donated it to my mum after getting rid of the 280GTXs from my main machine.
I then bought two 680GTXs which currently reside in my behemoth, fully watercooled, and attached to four screens.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7-1bIPHSQ8c/T3pc8KmrreI/AAAAAAAAAd0/UdAJ1QDRvZQ/s1600/koolance_vid-nx680_03.jpg[img]
Finally my server was running a 280GTX, but this started to crash, and after a bit of problem solving I think the 280GTX is dying. I replaced it with the cheapest card I could find: a 610GT which had the advantage of being passive and therefore quiet. It also meant I could remove a very loud fan that cooled the graphics and raid card.
[img]http://www.asus.com/media/global/products/31hEfbwHjinQORmO/P_500.jpg
I think that's the lot.
alienware
Banned
I'm pretty sure that's the one I had. 16mb IIRC.
alpenwasser
New member
Man, we had one of those back when Matrox were pretty much the only halfway affordable
option for dual-screen setups (it was my dad's PC, so it's not in my post thought).
On another note: Some of your images are not yet working (I think you're missing the forward
slashes for the closing [/img] tags).
MrKambo
New member
Yay lots of lovely GPU goodness
Kambo - what did you have your Voodoo linked with? I ask because they weren't standalone cards and needed another GPU (no matter how crap) to link with..
I had my Orchid linked up with the 1mb S3 card and it was more than enough..
Quake 2 was where it really started to come together though. What a stunning game that was. Was the first game I ever knew where you could blow someone into small chunks then stand there and laugh when the flies turned up :lol:
i think i had the S3 too, i remember the cable used to loop round, and one night my cable split in 2, omg i cried that night.....
alienware
Banned
i think i had the S3 too, i remember the cable used to loop round, and one night my cable split in 2, omg i cried that night.....
Yeah back then there really wasn't much of a choice tbh. Cirrus logic used to do a 1mb card but the S3 Trio was about £25 and did everything the Cirrus could so there wasn't much point in bothering with much else given that you needed the Voodoo to do the hard work.
I avoided Nvidia for years because I hated the way they won out over Voodoo. Most of their marketing was just boasting and bragging. They began the GPU crap war that's for sure :lol:
Mine is quite a short history but the first GPU was an ATI I think, but it was so long ago I can't remember the model. Then when GTA San Andreas came out, the game kept crashing and had very low framerate on the ATI card, so I took my savings and went to the closest computer shop and asked for a card that would play GTA:SA and was recommended a nVidia FX5200.
Next upgrade to E8400 and Palit 4850
The 4850 died after ~2 years(tried to bake it, it "cured" the BSOD's but all the artifacts were still there) and I got a Gigabyte GTX460 1GB
Next upgrade to E8400 and Palit 4850
The 4850 died after ~2 years(tried to bake it
, it "cured" the BSOD's but all the artifacts were still there) and I got a Gigabyte GTX460 1GB
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