What was your first? GPU Rewind!

My dad's first real GPU was the ATI Rage II. He said he paid an arm and a leg for it when it came out.

My first GPU was a crappy Radeon X300 SE back around 05'. That was upgraded to a 7300GT around 06' and actually made most of my games work decently well. I later, about a year later, upgraded that GPU again to a 7800GTX and still run that today. I remember Half Life looking beautiful...

 

It was the spring of 1996, I bought a 8MB ATI card I got using my employee discount at Software Etc. I put into my 1st build, a Pentium 120mhz.

 

I remember playing the crap out of that game in the 90s. I hate you, because I'm going to have to dig up my old dusty D2 CD and try to FINALLY beat the final boss of Vertigo when I get home from work. I think I even still have my save data somewhere.

As for GPUs, I think my first was something along the lines of a 4 or 8 mb Voodoo card. I upgraded to a 32mb nVidia of some sort, which I still used until 2009 (complete with 1.6ghz Athlon 64), when I went straight to a 4890. At that point, I had played console games so long that I forgot what a proper PC game was (and after playing modern console ports, I'm still not sure ). Went to my current 6950 in Feb. 2011 after reading an article about how I could make a 6970 out of them and finding one (well, two...) for ~$200 after rebate.

My 5730 is the only laptop GPU I've ever owned, and I'll keep using it until it can't maintain 30+ fps at any settings. I use my desktop most of the time unless I need portability, so I'm not picky or demanding.

 

my first personal desktop had a 8Mb RIVA TNT2....I've still got it somewhere. i promptly upgraded however to a 32mb geforce2 mx

my first laptop had a geforce go 6800 256mb

 

The first real card I bought was a Riva TNT 2 Ultra 32 mb. I got it in 99' and I think I got it from Best Buy. My friends were so jealous when I picked that baby up.

 

I miss 3dfx... they really knew how to blow people away... especially since their best cards were 3d-only.

 

guys, do note that GPU name was invented by nvidia for geforce256 cards

however, my first graphics card was Hercules graphics card back in 1989, it was still monochromatic

first 3d card was creative's voodoo banshee 16mb pci, I hold on to that card even today for it's native glide support and pci interface when something goes wrong on some agp/pci-e card during flashing, hehe

 

Either ATi Rage XL Pro 8MB, or a GeForce MX 440 Go (and I had to keep it on forceware 66.x, iirc, since the later versions disabled the "Software Assisted Vertex shader" functionality. Thinking back, it probably meant DirectX was to handle the functionality, but back then.... I didn't know much, and thought "well, without vertex shaders, this may as well be the Intel Extreme Graphics II I was trying to shake off."

 

Let me try and remember them all:

(i've omitted duplicates and cards I owned for very short periods or did not work)

4mb 2d AGP card
16mb Voodoo3 3000
64mb Radeon 8500
128mb Radeon 9800pro
128mb Radeon x700pro (move to pci-e)
64mb Radeon Mobility x600
256mb Geforce 6800 Ultra
256mb Radeon X1900gt
512mb Radeon HD3870
512mb Radeon HD4850
2x512mb radeon HD4850 crossfire
1GB Radeon Hd4870
2x1GB Radeon HD4870
1GB Geforce GTX280
1GB Radeon HD5830
1GB Radeon HD5850
2x1GB Radeon HD5850 crossfire (fastest system to date with a phenom II X6 @ 4ghz and both radeons at 1Ghz core)
1GB Radeon HD5870
1GB Geforce GT240M
1GB Geforce GTS250M
1GB Radeon HD4670 mobility
1GB Radeon HD5730 mobility
1GB Radeon HD6770M
1.5GB Geforce GTX560M
1GB Radeon HD5870 mobility
1.5GB Geforce GTX570M

 

32mb... first one... that is all I remember
Voodoo 2? Not sure...

 

The Nvidia Geforce 440 MX 64mb. That card lasted me for a very, very long time. From games starting from Battlefield 1942 all the way up to Combat Arms till it couldn't take the strain and put to rest. When I had that card, I tried to squeeze as much performance as possible, even go as far as tweaking the Source Engine for Counter Strike: Source to unlock the Lowest presets.

 

Wow, CS:S was the last game I was able to push my GF4 4600Ti. It was on Highest DX8 preset.

 

You think the 5700 was bad, my first was the FX 5600 when they first came out, not the Ultra version just the standard. It was barely capable of more than the 5200 and was beaten by my dads 2 or 3 year old card he had at the time. And for some reason it had 256mb of RAM! This was in 2003 (possibly 2002) - I am not sure it even needed 56mb given its performance.

To top it all, the damn thing was nearly £200.

 

This thread makes me realize how poor my memory is, I cant recall half the games I used to play back in the early gpu days.

I know I played Starcraft a bit but mostly saw it at a friends house.

I know I like Dark Forces, Warcraft & Warcraft II, Doom, Hexxen, but there were more than that, atleast I hope so lol.

I dont think I really entered into "real" pc gaming until I got the 5700 Ultra, before that it was probably games like Oregon trail

I guess I was much more of a console gamer back then, I can clearly remember all my nes and atari games, and the sega, sega cd, snes, dreamcast, playstation.

Man thinking back, consoles & games were all a ton cooler and better back then IMO

 

My first "real" GPU was a Creative 3dfx Voodoo Banshee PCI. Playing Half-Life in OpenGL for the first time was a sight to behold, so much so that two of my friends immediately bought the same card.

 

Oh I forgot about Unreal Tournament 2004 I played that game a LOT. That was like "mid gpu" times

 

Love how this thread is taking off. It's great to recall such fond memories and then see where we are today


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A crappy Geforce 4 MX440

 

First graphics card I owned was a ATI Graphics wonder (Mach32 chip) Vesa local bus card. Ahhh VL bus those were the days. (only 2D though)

2 MBs of VRAM and supported DOS!!.

 

Mine was the 3DFX VooDoo 3D. Then it was the GeForce 2 MX.

 

Can't remember what the one in my first desktop was, i remember it ran on AGP 4x though. First mobile GPU was the GeForce Go 6600 128MB.

 

Geforce FX 5200, I remember getting that at Best Buy before Christmas. Game for many years with that card, especially with Medal of Honor Allied Assault.

 

Geforce 6600GT for me.

 

GeForce 7300LE for me.. Then upgraded that desktop to a 9800GTX+. Made me fall in love with PC gaming. Then onto laptops with the GTX 260M and then the 555M

 

Interesting topic.

Hmm. First ever ever GPU was some 32MB Radeon card in a Dell Inspiron 660. I forget the model, but I do remember it ran as hot as hell. First desktop GPU was also some random Radeon that I can't remember. Real old though.

For laptops, next was the Radeon 3200 IGP (Some HP that I bought without having an informed opinion), then a 9800m GS (Asus G50vt), GTX260 (Asus G51vx), and finally the Mobility 5870 (MSI GX660R) I'm still using today. Also, there's honorable mentions for ION2 in an eeePC 1215n and the GT335m in a Dellienware M11x R1.

Desktops have all been IGPs, haha.

 

16 MB 3Dfx Voodoo 3 2000 PCI...ah yes, the greatness of Glide renderer and the 16 bit color depth limitation.

 

Heh, I think I win time-wise

first video card was working on 8 bit (or 16, cant remember) ISA slot that was powered by my 8088 CPU that was rocking on 8MHz. And it was much faster then the norm which was 4.77MHz. I mean I was going to upgrade to 8087 co-processor as well, and put the chip in but it didn't make darn difference, lol. Speaking of the video card itself I doubt I'll find even name for it.

anyways, it was for my monochrome monitor.

Somebody on here said EGA 16 colors - well that came long after I started playing games Specifically I loved playing "Double Dragon" and the "Digger" back then .. oh man

at some point of the time I also had S3 Trio card, lol. Long after my first one though.

EDIT: holy cow, this was my first computer and same monitor as in the picture:

Pravetz computers - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pravetc 16 was what I had

 

My first in a desktop was some kind of ati card with about 8mb VRam, remember playing half life on it, after that I got a geforce 3 and then went from that to a radeon 9600 AGP which died after a very short while so then i had a geforce 6200 which altough being an entry level car did amazingly well and was used for playing source games such as half life 2 and garrys mod after that i went on to laptops but came back to desktops with a gt230 which ive recently upgraded to a gtx 560ti.

On laptops my first had a radeon igp 345m which was hopeless, then went on to a geforce 8400m gt in my vaio which still works today suprisingly although it does run rather hot, its now retired and my current laptop has a GT330m although it barley gets used for gaming so its a bit pointless

 

My first PC was 286sx something. I was kinda small back then and didnt know what gpu is. Then i had 386dx (or well my father had ofc) and then i think my first pc was pentium something and it had Voodoo GFX in it and then it was Vodoo2 SLI it rawked

 

Voodoo 1! I vividly remember installing the PCI card and seeing Quake 2 fired up for the first time in glorious hardware 3D and being totally blown away. Man I feel old now....

 

dedicated gpu .... Trident 256kb card from 1991
but i have to say graphics that git me gaming were the Tandy TRS-80 model 1m a.k.a the trash 80, and the c-64

 

Ha, yeah! Kings Quest on the TRS-80 was awesome. Or maybe it was a Tandy, I dunno same thing though. Never owned a C64 although several friends had one. I had a TRS-80 Color Computer 2 & 3.

 

Looks like a microwave oven

 

had to have been a Tandy 1000 or such for Kings Quest. the trash 80 was strictly running BASIC, and sierra games were DOS based

I still have the 5.25/3.5" disks for all the kings quest and space quest series

I only had the first and third trs-80 models, but did upgrade from cassette tape to 5.25" LD disks with the model 3

 

Maybe a Tandy. It was a friend's computer, or parents I should say. But we'd spend hours together playing that game. It was quite fun, well at least for a couple of tweener geeks.

 

5200 FX Was mine too! Before that, software rendering LOL hahah

 

Here's some software rendering for you...

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My first graphics chip was a VIC-II on the Commodore 64 motherboard inside the beige case with integrated keyboard...leaps and bounds ahead of the IBM PCs and Apple IIs at the time...however, being a chip, it was integrated and you had no choice for graphics processing...

My first dedicated graphics card was a Matrox Millenium (PCI 64-bit) in a Micron P90 desktop.

The card that forever changed PC gaming for me was a Diamond Monster 3D II (3dfx Voodoo 2) 8MB PCI daughter card. I still had the Matrox card installed in a PCI slot and used the pass-through cable. I bought the Monster for around $300, and never regretted a penny of it. I fell in love with playing Wing Commander: Prophecy, and Freespace/2.

My first laptop (Toshiba 315CDT) had a 64-bit PCI C&T 65555 w/ 2MB. Not very exciting, but I could play Mechwarrior 2 (no 3D) on it. I finished Starcraft, Fallout and Baldur's Gate on that machine.

My Toshiba 5200-S119 had a 64MB nVidia GeForceFX 5600 Go. This chip was exciting, and promised that the gap between desktop and mobile gaming was closing. After this laptop, I've never bought another gaming desktop.

 

if you're talking about x86 systems, then it was the 4MB version of ATI Rage Pro, but the first dedicated GPU was Geforce2 MX,the first GAMING gpu I bought was a desktop GTX295, and my first mobile GPU was intel 915GM express (and it sucked) and my first mobile GAMING GPU is the one in my sig!

 

Yep, the old C64 brings back some good times. Remember the SX-64? My first "laptop"..in a streach. But the Amiga 500 is where I saw my first Ray Tracing graphic. I'm hooked

 

A riva 128. I remember i really wanted a pair of voodoo 2's, but alas, I was a poor child at the time.

 

Rendition Verite 2200 PCI - oh yea!!!

 

Ah yes, the Amiga 500. I loved that thing, used it through college. Had the side box expansion kit with an 80MB hard drive for like $200 and 1.5MB extra RAM for a whopping 2MB total RAM. But it was the fastest gaming machine in college, everyone was in our dorm room playing basketball, worms, lemmings, civilization, and some odd 3D games that just didn't exist on PC's or consoles at the time.

It had nothing to do with being a poor child, I remember my first Voodoo card (Voodoo 1 4MB?) was like $350. Voodoo 2 12MB's were about $300 iirc. At the time $600 for video cards was outrageous. Of course today enthusiasts drop that much in a heartbeat.

 

My first 3D card was made by Rendition in 1996. In fact it was one of the first 3D cards released which was followed by Voodoo or 3Dfx. My memory fails me atm.

But I remember buying the card just to play Quake.

 

I cant remember the model, but my first gpu, was supposed to be a via S3 in a 386.

I went to geforce unknown model after that, I sincerely needs to boost my memory

 

No one ever seems to have had the Amiga 600, which was basically a slightly improved 500 in a much smaller system, always the 500. Was I the only the person with one!?

 

Intel GMA 4500MHD

Does that even count?

My first 'real' GPU is the one i'm still using now (can't afford to get a new laptop) the ATI 5650.

 

On-board Nvidia GeForce MX 440, then an ATI Radeon 9200SE and then an ATI Radeon 9600.

 

I counted mine. I'm in exactly the same situation as you are (Quadro 2000M is my first "real" GPU). I probably could have bought another iGPU since I don't game often, but I figured that I'd gift myself something nice last birthday and I wanted to somewhat "future-proof" my laptop.

 

Wow. Looking at the list of GPUs showing up here, I realise that one of three things must be the case:

1) A lot of you are really young.

2) A lot of you didn't have a computer with a GPU until relatively late in life.

3) Both.