Gaming Discussions

[Robbert]

Hi all!

Yet another day, yet another question, what was your first GPU? Mine was a Voodoo card, though we had PCs since the early 80s (I'm from 86)).

Looking forward to y'all's replies!

Robbert

[hitbm47]

Hi,

My very first own personal build was a GTX 260, but I believe when we were little, we played MS-DOS games like Wolfenstein-3D, Wacky Wheels, Doom II, Duke Nukem 3D, Formula Circuit, QRally which all rendered on the CPU if I am not mistaken.

[orbitech]

Yeah, it's an 80's Atari generation user for me, I actually started out on a Sinclair ZX80 ASM Zilog, and moved on from there, to the Atari's. For GPU's it's a Pre-Rage ATI or Voodoo 3DFX card, I cannot remember for the life of me, what one? Recall is a strange Historian! LMAO! I actually collect retro gaming rigs, so if there any sellers out there post me a shout, and I will get back to you. They have to be in full working order, and in original condition. I have a total retro gaming cave! Team Red Forever!

[Ashley_AMD]

Thank you everyone for replying - reading with my coffee this morning has been a real treat! This is one of my favorite threads now xD

@orbitech you collect retro gaming rigs? Would love to see some pics! As a fellow collector of things, that sounds like something that I may have to look into myself. 😅

[Duh_buhl]

3Dfx Voodoo 3 in late '99. 

[filinux]

Hi all!!

Love these remember when style posts!!  Now if I could actually REMEMBER it would be a LOT better!! 🙂 

My first GPU's had memory measured in Kilobytes rather then MB's or GB's.  I remember hunting forever for the right chips to pop in (install) more memory on them.   I still have several of them still in storage with a couple in my 386 16Mhz and my MONSTER number crunching 486DX 33Mhz!!  🙂

I am surprised to hear a lot of people say their first GPU was a 3DFX Voodoo card.  I remember when the original 3DFX Voodoo came out and if Im remembering correctly (please see above comment about remembering 🙂 it was only a pass through card that would not operate without a source GPU feeding it (remember the vga to vga cable that ran outside the case?).  I LOVED the 3DFX cards from the minute I saw them until my final dual GPU 5.  I would be embarrassed if someone could actually find out how much time I just sat and stared at wall textures in Quake after installing the OG Voodoo card.  🙂

Great to hear from others who "remember when" and hearing about everyone's early hardware experiences!!  

Take care & have F U N!!

[Omnipro]

My first GPU I can remember owning was a Diamond 3DFX. 

[howardmw]

ATI All in Wonder Pro. Back when 486's were top of the line lol. I ran AMD on an ASUS board. Back when a gigabyte was not heard of. It was all megabyte. You know, when Bill said we would never need more than 640k for memory.

[saradaio]

Hello!

On AMD's All in Wonder Pro. I guess it was the most powerful processor back then. The motherboard I was using was an ASUS. Gigabytes were unheard of back then.

Everything was measured in megabytes. I remember when Bill told us we wouldn't need more memory than 640k.   😀

[randycool279]

The classic ATI Radeon 9700 Pro from back in 2002

[Robbert]

I think I've had that card too in my 2002/2003 rig!

[tpefreedom]

Iirc I've never had a dedicated gpu, only intel or amd integrated graphics.

[tpefreedom]

I just recently (as in a few days ago) got my first dedicated gpu. A friend had this card he didn't need (I think he said he had gotten it to test whether his current gpu was the source of a problem or whether it was a different component) and didn't even remember what it was. As it turns out, it is a GT 710. I have not been able to test it yet though. i don't have a desktop to use it with quite yet.

[ipapadop]

3Dfx Voodoo Banshee, I have it somewhere I think.

[bluefalcon13]

My fist dedicated card was a VooDoo 3 2000 AGP

[MerrHeLL]

intel pentium 133 MMX. Although I setup an AMD 386 DX40 for my dad first.

[JickyJr]

Sapphire HD 6950 2gb, I worked so hard for what was just a $200 card, one could dream now for a card at that price .

[msulew]

My first computer was an Apple II, then on to a IIc, LC, Macintosh SE, a PowerMac 6100, iMac G3, and when I finally started on my PC journey, I landed on the R7 250 upgraded that to a 280x and now using a 5700XT!

[mjwill4]

Nice.  What all do you use that computer for?  Any gaming?

[ggriffinz]

Intel 4670K.... Kinda still using it haha. I  oc'ed to 4.2 all core and still running games with my 3070 just fine in 1440p. Honestly i was on the tail end of ddr3 and  lost out for ddr4 so to avoid that situation again i am simply waiting to rebuild my core right with ddr5 when it becomes cheaper. 

[eu4ia]

That's a CPU. What what was your first GPU in that build? 😅

[MerrHeLL]

Oops you said GPU. My first GPU was some next to nothing card Diamond card ... rage 128? but Then I got a 3DFX Voodoo 3 Banshee and it was great!

Warcraft II

Resumes,

work estimates

remote login to solaris server at work

dual shotgun modem... amazingly used two phone lines and bonded

[rub9000]

VESA bus Trident. So many years ago now, not sure what version. I had a 386 with 4mg of ram. I bought 4mg more and my wife flipped out. I had to have it to play Doom. Back when we had to create our own wan. I bought the wan card and the ram the same week, for WAY too much. Like 250 for the ram back in late 90s. And the wan card and cable were like 90 bucks. Almost got a divorce over that one. 

[filinux]

I knew you looked familiar!!

I think we passed each other a lot on THE CHISHOLM TRAIL back in the day!!  🤣🤣🤣

Have a great day & have F U N!!

The best things in life are free!!

Try Debian GNU-Linux & Free bad!!

[yoshemahino]

My first gpu I had was a Radeon 7500 in 2001. But that’ doesn’t show my age. How about a desktop pc I had back in 1990 called a laser computer. That thing was heavy. Had its on os but could run windows 3.1 I do believe. I remember it being on like 5 disks. 

[rkramsdell]

I honestly don't know the first GPU I bought.  My first computer was a Packard Bell 486SX 25MHz that had a fancy VGA card,

[Happypotamus]

My first was a 6450 for my Dell 531s (Sempron LE 1250).

[hubbysauce]

MSI r9 390. It was a hand me down so a decent 1st gpu ><

[pcs305]

A Hercules card paired with an AMD 10Mhz 8086 processor and 40MB HDD. It was a beast. 

[Cyberburnout59]

ATI Rage 128 pro...Yes I am a little aged. I used to overclock AMD 486 DX2 CPU with dip switches and Jumpers. 

[rub9000]

I had the DX2 also. Loved that PC. So many hours playing Doom on it. College, Doom, paper for College. Part time job, Doom. Eat sleep? Who needs those things!!!

[dzimmerm]

Well, gee, age myself?

My first real graphics card was probably one of the VooDoo2 series. It had been so long ago and so many architectures past that I can not recall the exact model number. I got the Voodoo card to add to my work machine in order to play Unreal Tournament. There were a group of guys at work that all competed on the company LAN to show off their head shot sniper skills. I was the fresh meat. We also played Homeworld across the LAN which I really enjoyed. 

Before then it was mostly whatever came with the motherboard or whatever I could scrounge from the bargain bin at my local Microcenter or one of the many other small computer stores that had popped up. 

I have been in the computer geek mode since the late 1970s when GPU pickings were slim or non-existent for a regular working class geek.  

[TheMilkManBaby]

I had a Voodoo 3500 TV at release, until my dad stole it(don't remember what I got in return). Finally around late 2006 I got back into computers, and in the summer bought a HD 2400XT. I used the 2400XT all the way till 2017, and finally bought a RX 590, god what a difference.

[rub9000]

My 2nd video card was a Voodo. Loved that card. I was so sad when Voodo went out of business. 

[eu4ia]

The R9 270X was my first discreet card. Before that I would play on laptops with integrated graphics  

[TomVinMurTX]

Never knew what my first one was but it was in my H8. the one came with 80286 is a mystery to me as well.

[Bubbles50plus]

My first computer was a Timex!  Yes and there were no programs for it.  You had to program it yourself and it was all in basic.  Needless to say I did not do much with it.  LOL

[DarkAmethyst]

@Bubbles50plusoooh, that was like a US version of the ZX Spectrum wasn't it? I'm sure I remember seeing something about that. I might wanna track a speccy down myself at some point for that retro collectin'. Priority would be an Amiga though, I accidentally bought a game for that from a charity shop years ago thinking it was for PC.

[Bubbles50plus]

I got that timex in the late 80s to early 90s.  If I still had it I would send it too you, alas it has gone to the silicon graveyard.

[rockym20]

Really wanted a 3dfx Voodoo, but couldn't afford it so my first card was a Diamond Stealth II S220 with the Rendition Verite chipsets.  vQuake was awesome for its time.

[Robbert]

My dad was a huge PC nut, so back in the day he'd upgrade our home PC quite regularly, so I got lucky as a kid!