Need help picking the most important gpus in history

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skittle101

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Apr 20, 2013
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I plan on making a collection of the most important graphics cards in history but I can seem to narrow them down.
I could use some suggestions
 
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Ra_V_en
1) Tseng Labs ET4000 - one of the most popular 2d card in early 90's
2) 3dfx Voodoo - the very first 3d accelerator for the masses. Breakthrough in gaming due to alpha blending and antialiasing. No more pixelation, dizziness and headaches playing FPS's, YAY!
3) Riva 128 /ZX - 2d card with build in 3d accelerator, also with AB and AA support.
4) Matrox G200 - Environment Mapped Bump Mapping
5) GeForce 256 - hardware T&L support.
6) Radeon 7000 - ATI joins the game with proper 3d card which finally is not crashing and being incompatibility with 99% of the games LOL. Their previous Rage series was a nightmare. Btw there was a "Fury" card already back there ATI RAGE FURY MAXX, AMD is not being originall this year :p
5) GeForce 3 -...
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Maarsch

Maarsch

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Sep 14, 2012
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3dfx Vodoo card (or maybe II)
Or the monster 3d card maybe?

Are those the cards that started making 3D card available to general consumers? Those are the first with that functionality showing up in the shops I remember.
Although I was a kid at the time, so . . . you know. Totally accurate account of that.
 
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Dizzario

Dizzario

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Sep 1, 2014
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Also:

  • nVidia Riva TNT(if i remember correctly, was the first GPU able to work on two texels simultaneously)
    nVidia GeForce 256 (The original, iirc; first gpu to support TnL (Transform and Lighting), Environmental Bump Mapping and DDR memory)
    nVidia GeForce 4200 Ti (Amazing Performance for the price and time)
    nVidia GeForce 6000 series of GPUs (First GPU to Re-introduced SLI technology after 3Dfx's bankruptcy in 2000 and nVidia's acquisition of 3Dfx)
    nVidia GeForce 7900 GX2 (One of the first single card, dual gpu designs)
    nVidia GeForce Titan (First non-special edition consumer GPU to cost $999+)

    3Dfx Voodoo2 (Introduced SLI, a.k.a. Scan-Line Interleave, this is separate from nVidia's SLI-Scalable Link Interface, however both did effectively the same thing)

    ATI 3D Rage (One of the first GPUs to support the AGP interface)

    Matrox Parhelia (iirc, First GPU to have a 512bit memory bus and the ability to drive three displays simultaneously)

I don't really agree with the GTX 970, its nothing special imo.

Also not sure if your counting things like the nVidia Tesla's or Quadro's. But the first Tesla is a milestone as its the first "GPU" not really designed to actually display graphics, but simply used as a processing accelerator.

Not sure if this counts but, ASUS's nVidia GeForce 3 v8200 (First consumer GPU I am aware of to offer 3D gaming via interlaced frames with alternating LCD glasses and amazing driver work by ASUS's engineers http://www.dansdata.com/images/v8200d/kit440.jpg )
 
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Ra_V_en

Ra_V_en

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Jan 17, 2014
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1) Tseng Labs ET4000 - one of the most popular 2d card in early 90's
2) 3dfx Voodoo - the very first 3d accelerator for the masses. Breakthrough in gaming due to alpha blending and antialiasing. No more pixelation, dizziness and headaches playing FPS's, YAY!
3) Riva 128 /ZX - 2d card with build in 3d accelerator, also with AB and AA support.
4) Matrox G200 - Environment Mapped Bump Mapping
5) GeForce 256 - hardware T&L support.
6) Radeon 7000 - ATI joins the game with proper 3d card which finally is not crashing and being incompatibility with 99% of the games LOL. Their previous Rage series was a nightmare. Btw there was a "Fury" card already back there ATI RAGE FURY MAXX, AMD is not being originall this year :p
5) GeForce 3 - programmable pixel and vertex shaders!

nVidia from FX, ATI from 9XXX series started going crazy throwing out dozens of different models within the same family, so it became more advertising then revolutions.
There should probably be some more options in the middle and after but thats what i remember being a posh hardware back in the days.

@ UP Btw i had 4200ti with some of the shaders unlocked and oc'd at performance of almost 4600, good times :)
Good call with that SLI, forgot about it.
 
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Solution
McHenryB

McHenryB

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Jan 31, 2015
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The original IBM CGA adapter would be an essential. As would a Hercules graphics card for the 5150. I'm not sure if you would count the original MDA as a "graphics" card but it was certainly the most widespread early display adapter. Get them now, if you can find them, before they become too rare.
 
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JUICEhunter

JUICEhunter

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Oct 23, 2013
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S3 Virge gave us the first taste of Direct3D with games like Microsoft's Hellbender and Monster Truck Madness.

Shoftly after 3dfx had the Diamond Monster 3D (it wasn't a GPU it was a 3d upgrade that required you to keep your existing GPU) which also gave us games like Tomb Raider and Mech Warrior using the GLYDE API which was superior to D3D and the games looked and ran great.

I'm 32 and remember spending my b-day money when I was very young on the above mentioned GPUs upgrading my first Pentium 75Mhz Win95 system. (Huge upgrade over 386/486 CPUs/Win3.1).
 
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Ra_V_en

Ra_V_en

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S3 Virge indeed gave us the first taste of 3D but at performance unacceptable to play. I'm not sure what was it's flaw but i believe it was similar story like with early Radeon cards... no clarified standards and MS with its poor Direct3D implementation (seems nothing changed here till today) made a hard time to do a proper drivers. So back at the time you had working but ugly "software mode" or crashing and horribly slow "hardware mode" with some fancy looks.
This is also probably why Voodoo had to take out Glide cannons out, just like AMD did with Mantle lately, history likes to repeat.
 
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