2001 - 2011: biggest vga failure of the decade?

Ok, let's have some fun. What video card was the biggest failure of the decade? Interval between 2001 - 2011.
Speaking about desktop video cards from ATI or NVIDIA. It is unfair to drag other chip makers as their marketing strategy was totally different/or they released their products not regularly, casually or for different apps.

Please share your memories and comments.

I think it is safe to say the these cards should be the contenders:

GeForce 4 MX series (for being slower than GeForce 3 Titanium, even GeForce 2 GTS, for misleading marketing strategy)

GeForce 5 FX series (for being loud and slower than the whole ATI 9K line when taking direct competitors)

GeForce 7950GX2 - (for being unstable and not delivering the expected performance)

GeForce 8400GS 1 Gb (for using so much RAM and sucking anyway)

GeForce 8600 series (for not being able to outperform 7900 series, in cases even slower than 7600GT)

GeForce 8800GTS 320 Mb version (for being unplayable at higher resolutions and loosing to X1900XT/XTX cards)

GeForce 9400GT 2 GB version (for being the first VGA to have 2 Gb frame buffer, but for not using it efficiently, in reality loosing to 7900GT and being too overpriced, also for misleading the customer)

GeForce 9800GX2 (it was supposed to be the card, that took hi-resolution gaming to the next level, but it turned out to suck at high resolutions when compared to 8800 Ultra - outperforming it by not much and AA scaling was very bad too, so basically this card was released just to overthrow the HD3870X2, but with no real value,
and even though it was faster than SLI 8800GT, it was not what the people expected)

GeForce GTX280 (for being not competitive price wise and in many cases
loosing to SLI 8800GT)

GeForce GTX465 (no purpose even to exist + alot less ergonomic and reliable
than GTX460, but more expensive)

Radeon X600XT (for getting totally destroyed by it's competitor - GeForce 6600GT)

Radeon HD2600 series (for being even slower than GeForce 8600 series, which already were bad)

Radeon HD2900XT original version (for being awaited for so long, and then just barely matching 8800GTS performance, also for being ridiculously power hungry)

Radeon HD2900XT 1 Gb DDR4 version (the card that supposed to kick 8800GTX *** was just 7 % faster than HD2900XT original, but was so much more expensive)

Radeon HD2900GT (for being slower than Radeon X1950PRO)

HD5830 (for not outperforming HD4890 in cases)

To continue the ATI list..
3850 and 3870 for failing utterly when AA was turned on.
5830 for costing too much and performing too little.
6790 for the same reasons.

To continue the bizarre logic that made you include some of the cards on the list,
HD 5450 for not being faster than the 4890
GT 430 for not being faster than GTX 295
And so on....

ratbuddy said:

HD 5450 for not being faster than the 4890
GT 430 for not being faster than GTX 295
And so on....

Click to expand...

I am sure other people know exactly what i meant and it is not bizarre.


GT430 was not supposed to beat GTX295, what in the blue hell are you talking about here? I had in mind the fact that every generations new mid-range performance card is expected to be faster than last generations high-end single gpu card: 6600GT faster than FX5900 Ultra, 7600GT faster than 6800 Ultra, 9600GT faster than 7900GTX, GTX460 faster than GTX280, GTX570 faster than GTX480 and similar ways...

Now, let's continue on topic, sorry that i had to be a bit nasty here, but it was necessary to defend my position and explain why i put 8600 in the list.

I did include HD5830 however - makes sense. No way HD3800 series deserve to be in that list, because those cards were designed to be put in the middle performance soup of high-end video cards and their pricing was very aggressive + those cards really were silent, had tons of new tech applied on them and were very power efficient. Honestly speaking one of the best ATI cards ever.

Edited: Artas, you can make your point just as well without insults and gratuitous comments.

RT

6600GT hands down for it's firey performance. I knew of more 6600GTs that burst into flames that didn't... it inspired my avatar.

oh this has to be for one card, and one card only:

the Ati radeon X850XT Pe

name is pretty self explanatory, but this card was the height of su'ping up an older card to meet the competitors, in the end it was so su'ped up it was in fact a terrible card.

Artas1984 said:

You really are out of the league with the latest comments.
I am sure other people know exactly what i meant and it is not bizarre.

You pretend stupid or really don't get it?

GT430 was not supposed to beat GTX295, what in the blue hell are you talking about here? I had in mind the fact that every generations new mid-range performance card is expected to be faster than last generations high-end single gpu card

Click to expand...

By your own logic, the 6790, 6850, and 6870 are failures since they're slower than 5870. Ditto for the 5750/5770 vs the 4870 and 4890.

You included the 8600 because it was slower than the 7900, but it was still a decent card for the time it was on the market.

Now do you see why it was bizarre?

Plenty of people did like the HD 3850 and 3870, but the fact remains that their AA performance was broken. For that, they deserve a spot on the list.

In case of HD6800 series, ATI warned that the cards will replace the HD5700 series and will not claim the HD5800 spot. That is a different thing - you knew that too, there was no point in taunting me that stupid way..

In case of HD5770 - it did outperform the HD4870 slightly in situations where memory bandwidth was not a factor, as well as HD5750 did outperform the HD4850 slightly in same situations. You are one of the 9 people from 10 who justify the release of 8600 and HD2600 series, where the rest of the world had them guillotined. 8600GTS was a decent card alright - only because it was faster than HD2600XT. For the same price you could have got an X1950XT 256, which annihilated both cards to a point where their release did not make any sense, except supporting DX10 and having an internal video decoder. I can remind that there was a 7600GT version with 800 MHz DDR3, which outperformed the standart 8600GT...

So.. No - i don't see how it is bizarre.

Cheator said:

6600GT hands down for it's firey performance. I knew of more 6600GTs that burst into flames that didn't... it inspired my avatar.

Click to expand...

You mean you place 6600GT as one of the best cards or worst?... Ehh. Firey performance? What do you mean? It burned in your PC?

i would have to say the geforce fx series of cards would be the biggest 'failure', at least from a consumer's point of view. maybe it was because we weren't used to dual slot coolers or the vacuum cleaner sound of a graphics card fan at full speed but they certainly got a ton of crap for the fx series. people complained about the noise and the heat they produced, that's for sure. proof:

Artas1984 said:

GeForce 8400GS 1 Gb (for using so much RAM and sucking anyway)

Click to expand...

256MB is "so much"?

Artas1984 said:

You mean you place 6600GT as one of the best cards or worst?... Ehh. Firey performance? What do you mean? It burned in your PC?

Click to expand...

Thread title said:

biggest vga failure of the decade?

Click to expand...

VOODOO

radeon 3450 and 4350 for absolutely sucking, worse than onboard intel graphics.

NVIDIA 9400 for being slower, and not supporting Physx while the 8400 did.

(G{in}[AK)TION] said:

VOODOO

Click to expand...

i think 3dfx were actually a good compnay for the time, its just they took the wrong gamble when it came to building a card, they gambled on the idea of scaling many gpus, whereas other companies worked on just the one, making it better and faster, which is why they ran out of money and got brought by nvidia, not biggest failure of the decade, just bad luck.

what about the x1300 on a pci slot? i was using it to play some of my games but noticed it slagged on some of my games so i put it in my pentium 4 and pentium 4 ht computers and it still lagged a bit. i even opened up windows during the winter to see if it would help...it did but only some.

i got myself a Radeon X1050 on a AGP slot. im gonna isntall a GPU Fan and also put in a dvi, s-video, and vga slot bracket once it gets here. (i like gaming on older pcs sometimes if you must know)

(G{in}[AK)TION] said:

VOODOO

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lets get the facts straight here... voodoo took to long to get out the v5 6000 card due to current psu's at the time. not being able to handle the load of the card which is why they came up with the voodoo volts included with it. if anything 3dfx should have gone with help from quantum3d. see below for more on why...

TheQuadFather said:

i think 3dfx were actually a good compnay for the time, its just they took the wrong gamble when it came to building a card, they gambled on the idea of scaling many gpus, whereas other companies worked on just the one, making it better and faster, which is why they ran out of money and got brought by nvidia, not biggest failure of the decade, just bad luck.

Click to expand...

really? they are doing that now in a way with single board SLI/CF. we have come full circle to those that set the standard way before where we are now. in a way they were ahead of there time and other companies were more hungry for market share. as 3dfx had a really good head start on NV and ATI. to back track to multi chip scaling and why 3dfx should have enlisted help from quantum3d, see links.

http://www.thedodgegarage.com/3dfx/q3d_mercury_faq.htm
http://www.thedodgegarage.com/3dfx/q3d_aalchemy.htm

main thing being that chips would be turned on or off depending on settings. as in using 2xAA or higher(highest was what 4x at time, if i recall right) more chips would be turned on and thus no loss in FPS happened. cant say the same for current cards now, nuff said.


biggest blunder of a video card, has to be the NV FX series IMO. unless you want to consider the laptop GPUs what would de-solder them selves from the board due to the heat.

i have to agree, voodoo was ahead of its time

Evilsizer said:

lets get the facts straight here... voodoo took to long to get out the v5 6000 card due to current psu's at the time. not being able to handle the load of the card which is why they came up with the voodoo volts included with it. if anything 3dfx should have gone with help from quantum3d. see below for more on why...



really? they are doing that now in a way with single board SLI/CF. we have come full circle to those that set the standard way before where we are now. in a way they were ahead of there time and other companies were more hungry for market share. as 3dfx had a really good head start on NV and ATI. to back track to multi chip scaling and why 3dfx should have enlisted help from quantum3d, see links.

http://www.thedodgegarage.com/3dfx/q3d_mercury_faq.htm
http://www.thedodgegarage.com/3dfx/q3d_aalchemy.htm

main thing being that chips would be turned on or off depending on settings. as in using 2xAA or higher(highest was what 4x at time, if i recall right) more chips would be turned on and thus no loss in FPS happened. cant say the same for current cards now, nuff said.

Click to expand...

woah thats a lot more in depth than my reply, what i meant by gambling with the idea of scaling multiple gpus, it was defiantly a gamble at the time, with the state of psus in that era etc and how it hadnt been done before, so if anything voodoo were ahead of their time, as scaling multiple gpus is quite the norm now but back then it was impossible, its a shame though, i would of loved to see a third choice when i came to video cards these days.

I personally have to say that the biggest disappointment of all time to me was the Diamond HD2600XT 512 Mb DDR4 version. This card looked like a Ferrari, was silent and cool, very power efficient. But the performance.. Well it was out gunned in FEAR by a 7600GT!.. What a joke.. It did perform better in other games, but i did not care...

Generally speaking the GeForce FX was indeed the worst crap i had, particularly the FX5900XT i had was a crap, a card from which i expected big things, but it sucked, when i compared it to a 6600GT.

Gtx 590
fx5200