GPU ownership history

[Celeron_Phreak]

Voodoo Rufus inspired me with the memory lane trip about CPU Ownership History, and now I am curious what video cards y'all have used throughout the years! Here's my list. Unfortunately, I never really dabbled with ATI/Radeon, and I kind of lost interest in them when AMD took over. Also around that time that I went on a long break from deep PC involvement and got focused in on my job.


1990s (Family Daily Driver Machines):

HP 512kb VGA Workstation Adapter (ISA 16-bit)
Diamond Stealth 64 1MB (VLB)
Diamond Speedstar Pro (VLB)
Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 (PCI)
Diamond Voodoo 2 2000 (PCI)
ATI Rage 128 (PCI)


2000s (Personal Daily Driver Machines):

ATI Rage 128 (AGP)
Diamond Monster 3D/Voodoo 1 (PCI)
3DFX Voodoo 3 3000 (AGP)
ASUS V6800/GeForce 256 (AGP)
MX 440SE (AGP)
PNY GeForce FX 5200 (AGP)
Leadtek GeForce FX 5700 Ultra (AGP) - First brand new GPU, purchased after getting my first payroll job
XFX GeForce 6800GT (AGP) - My Last Pre-PCI-E card)
2x EVGA GeForce 7800GT SLI (PCI-E) - (Purchased To Play Half-Life)
EVGA GeForce 8800 Ultra (PCI-E)
nVidia Engineering Sample GTX 280 (PCI-E)

2010s:

EVGA GTX 660 (Purchased to play Crysis 2)
GTX 960 SC (Purchased to play Wolfenstein TNO)
GTX 1080 SC (Purchased for G-Sync and 144Hz monitor)
RTX 2080 Ti FTW3
RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra Gaming (Current)


Similar to my CPU history, most of my GPUs have always been second hand or handy downs. The only GPUs I ever purchase new, while they were still considered "current" would be the FX 5700 Ultra, 6800GT, 7800GT, GTX 660, and the now 3080. It kind of seems astounding now that over the years, I have only actually purchased five GPUs brand new, and I have really never owned a top of the line flagship GPU while it was still considered high end at the time it was purchased.

 

[mackerel]

Treating it like the CPU thread, just listing what I had in my main systems.

2D era:
Cirrus Logic 5429 (VLB)
Cirrus Logic 5434 (PCI)
Matrox Mystique + Rainbow Runner

3D gaming era:
3DFX (the original one that took VGA passthrough to your existing 2D card)
TNT2 Ultra
6800 Ultra (which I later swapped for the GT just to get the cooling noise under control)
HD6xxx can't remember the exact number
560 Ti
280X
960 - even tried this SLI, just don't!
Fury X - had this for one evening before returning it. Really bad.
980 Ti FE
1080 Ti
2080 Ti
3070

Like the CPU thread, I had more ATI/AMD GPUs than listed as I'm focusing on main systems above. Some of note include the All in Wonder, RX 580, Vega 56.

 

[MisterEd]

My memory is fuzzy and I don't have much documentation for what I had between 1995 and 2002. My records are a lot better starting in 2002.

Desktop GPUs

Miscellaneous:
Trident 9680 (1MB) | Trident Union TD9680P
S3 Trio64 (1MB) | Diamond Stealth 64
S3 ViRGE/DX (4MB) | AOpen PT75
ATI Rage 4 PRO (32MB) | ATI Rage 128 PRO

Pre-GeForce:
Nvidia Riva TNT (16MB) | Diamond Viper V550
Nvidia Riva TNT2 M64 (32MB) | Gigabyte TNT2 M64 (GA62232C)

Nvidia GeForce3 series:
Ti200 (64MB) | ASUS V8200T2_PURE_64M
Ti200 (128MB) | ABIT Siluro GeForce3 Ti 200

Nvidia GeForce4 series:
MX440 SE (64MB) | ASUS V8170 Magic_64M)
Ti4600 (128MB) | PNY VCGF4TI46APB)

Nvidia GeForce FX series:
FX 5900 (128MB) | PNY VCGFX59APB)

Nvidia GeForce 6 series:
6200 (256MB) | PNY VCG62256APB)

Nvidia GeForce 200 series:
GTS 250 (1GB) | PNY VCGGTS2501XPB)

Nvidia GeForce 500 series:
GTX 560 (1GB) | ASUS ENGTX560 DCII OC/2DI/1GD5)

Nvidia GeForce 1000 series:
GTX 1060 (6GB) | ASUS STRIX-GTX1060-6G-GAMING)

Nvidia GeForce 30 series:
RTX 3060 Ti (8GB) | ASUS ROG-STRIX-RTX3060TI-08G-V2-GAMING)

ATI Radeon R300 series:
9800 Pro (128MB) | ATI All-in-Wonder 9800 Pro

ATI Radeon X800 series:
X800 XL (256MB) | ATI All-in-Wonder X800 XL

Mobile GPU

Nvidia Geforce4 Go:
440 (64MB)

Mobile APU + GPU

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700U
GPU1: AMD Radeon Vega 10 (1GB shared)
GPU2: AMD Radeon RX 540 Mobile (2GB)

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 6800H
GPU1: AMD Radeon 680M (2GB shared)
GPU2: Nvidia RTX 3060 Mobile (6GB)

 

[Celeron_Phreak]

I see a a lot less between the 9 series and the current 3000 series so far, did GPU performance hold people off longer during this time? That's what, a 12-13 year timespan?

I had less hardware during that time, as my career growth boomed from 2008-2015, I had my first child in 2010, and divorced in 2015. So much happened and tech was barely a hobby.

 

[Mr.Scott]

I see a a lot less between the 9 series and the current 3000 series so far, did GPU performance hold people off longer during this time? That's what, a 12-13 year timespan?

No, price did.

 

[MisterEd]

I see a a lot less between the 9 series and the current 3000 series so far, did GPU performance hold people off longer during this time? That's what, a 12-13 year timespan?

I had less hardware during that time, as my career growth boomed from 2008-2015, I had my first child in 2010, and divorced in 2015. So much happened and tech was barely a hobby.

I had to make do with what I had between 2004 and 2012 because I couldn't find work because of health problems. When I got disability I had more money but didn't get excited about building a new computer until Ryzen came out in 2017. That is when I bought a Ryzen 7 1700X CPU and an Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB GPU. I was going to build a new computer in 2020 or 2021 but decided to wait for Zen 4. With Zen 4 being so expensive I have held off. A year ago to hold me over I upgraded my CPU to a Ryzen 7 3700X and GPU to an Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti 8GB. My laptop was giving me problems so I bought a new one with an Nvidia RTX 3060 6GB GPU. With the games I play these GPUs should hold me over for at least a couple years.

BTW, I suspect in 2018 or 2019 people were holding back waiting for the Nvidia RTX 3000 series. Unfortunately, because of COVID, supply chain issues, and hoarding by data miners pushed these cards prices out of reach for most people. Even the prices for older cards were much higher than MSRP.

Now prices have dropped but the supplies are slowly drying up as Nvidia is launching the Nvidia RTX 4000 series. Nvidia RTX 4000 series don't look too promising any time soon because of their high prices, power demands, and size.

I am waiting to see how the AMD 7000 series looks after they become available for review. They look to be lower priced, lower power demands, and a more manageable size but how they will perform is unknown right now.

 

[Celeron_Phreak]

No, price did.

This makes some sense, didn't bitcoin hit hard around 2014? I was so out of the loop, I had to relearn CPU naming, much less what was happening in tech

 

[MisterEd]

This makes some sense, didn't bitcoin hit hard around 2014? I was so out of the loop, I had to relearn CPU naming, much less what was happening in tech

After the RTX 3000 series came out a lot of the cards were grabbed by the data miners. Data miners were so desperate for cards a couple years ago they were even buying up laptops with RTX 3000 GPUs. What was left was grabbed and sold for double or more on Ebay. I read that some people justified buying RTX 3000 GPU for over 1000 USD by data mining with them. If a person bought one of these cards early on they could have netted enough data mining to fully pay for their card!

Now that data mining has collapsed some these used RTX 3000 series mining cards are being sold on Ebay. Before when you bought a used card on Ebay you only had to worry if it had been overclocked and damaged. Now you also have to worry about whether a card had been mined on for a year or more. The mining is not the problem but what the environmental conditions were in the place the computers were is.

Don't forget, people were used to paying 300-400 USD for a mid range GPU and 500-600 USD for a high end GPU. Now new GPUs are sometimes going for double and triple that or more.

 

[magellan]

@mackerel
I had a Matrox Mystique, mine came with Mechwarrior Mercenaries(?). Anyway, what is the Rainbow Runner add-on card for? TV tuner?

The Voodoo 3 2000 PCI card blew the Matrox Mystique out of the water -- even though it only supported 16-bit color.

 

[Niku-Sama]

@mackerel
I had a Matrox Mystique, mine came with Mechwarrior Mercenaries(?). Anyway, what is the Rainbow Runner add-on card for? TV tuner?

The Voodoo 3 2000 PCI card blew the Matrox Mystique out of the water -- even though it only supported 16-bit color.

oh thats a matrox card you could upgrade the ram on, i had one of those, it was pretty good for 2d stuff, i remember playing age of empires on it pretty well.
i too went voodoo 3 after that but i went 3000, it was the only one i could find, then a Geforce 2 GTS/pro and then on i cant remember until a few cards ago

 

[mackerel]

I had a Matrox Mystique, mine came with Mechwarrior Mercenaries(?). Anyway, what is the Rainbow Runner add-on card for? TV tuner?

I vaguely remember that game. Big stompy mechs?

Rainbow Runner was a daughterboard upgrade for (some?) Matrox cards. It added video capture capability, so I used it to at the time to make digital recordings of stuff. We're talking VHS era though, so I think the (PAL) format was something like 352x240 or thereabouts.

 

[DaveB]

Some More Recent GPUs

MSI Ventus RTX 4070 Ti 12GB
ASRock Intel Arc A750 8GB
Asus RTX 3060 Ti 8GB
XFX RX 6700XT 12GB
XFX RX 470 4GB
EVGA 3060 12GB
PowerColor RX 5700XT 8GB
EVGA 1660 Ti 6GB
EVGA 2080 8GB
Gigabyte GTX 1080 8GB
Zotac Mini 1080 8GB
MSI GTX 1070 8GB
Gigabyte Mini GTX 1070 8GB
EVGA GTX 1060 6GB
EVGA GTX 1060 3GB
Gigabyte HD 7970 3GB
PowerColor HD 7950 3GB
XFX 7850 1GB
PowerColor 7750 1GB
Gigabyte R9 380X 4GB
MSI R9 290X 4GB
XFX R9 290 4GB
MSI R9 280X 3GB
Gigabyte R9 270 2GB
ATI R9 Fury 4GB
GTX 980 Ti 4GB
GTX 980 4GB
EVGA GTX 960 4GB
MSI GTX 960 2GB
GTX 650 Ti 1GB
GeForce 9800 GX2 1GB
Etc. ....................

Way Older GPUs

 

[magellan]

@mackerel
Mechwarior Mercenaries was a big, stomping mech game, but mechwarrior 2 was the game bundled w/my matrox mystique (and it was even enhanced just for the matrox mystique):
https://archive.org/details/mechwarrior_2_matrox

So the rainbow runner card had coax inputs for VHS or cable television or RCA jacks? No TV tuner though right?

Post magically merged: Jun 27, 2023

oh thats a matrox card you could upgrade the ram on, i had one of those, it was pretty good for 2d stuff, i remember playing age of empires on it pretty well.
i too went voodoo 3 after that but i went 3000, it was the only one i could find, then a Geforce 2 GTS/pro and then on i cant remember until a few cards ago

That's almost exactly the upgrade route I went: Matrox Mystique ---> voodoo 3/2000 PCI --> Geforce 2 GTS/pro. In retrospect the Matrox Mystique was a waste of money though -- it was barely supported by any games and quickly became orphaned.

 

[mackerel]

So the rainbow runner card had coax inputs for VHS or cable television or RCA jacks? No TV tuner though right?

My memory isn't great on it but I think it had a splitter cable that fanned out to composite and S-video. No coax. No tuner.

 

[magellan]

@mackerel
It's too bad Matrox dropped the ball w/parhelia, they could've been a player in the gaming world if not for that. It seemed like they were an early innovator in PC gaming, but quickly eclipsed.