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

[MikeySCT]

IF memory serves, I'd started out with a my first personal build, an Intel P3 933MHz, with either a GF2 MX400 or a GF TNT Riva 2 (can't quite recall which). You can say I was a late bloomer as I was in my late, very late, 30s then.

So yeah, just over 20 years now. I'm retiring from upgrades and building my own rig now, though the last will be an X570S mobo with the spare R0 3900X + RX 6900 XT, so I'll ride off into the sunset with two all AMD builds...

Edit - I'd forgotten to mention that, before the P3, I was messing with those generic pre-builts, in those beige cases, I recall owning a 386, then a 486. I may have had a P1 in the period between it and the P3 build.

[tolcheen]

I liked the TNT Riva 2. That was a solid card.

[esonique]

3DFX Voodoo myself.

[BigAl01]

Same here, the 3DFX Voodoo graphic accelerator card.

[GreatnessRD]

First discrete GPU

EVGA 1060 3GB 😤

[trickfred]

I wanna say it was like a 1-2MB Trident card from the mid 90s? First 3D GPU was a Voodoo Banshee though!

[bobpi]

Whatever graphics the TI 99/4a had, then Apple IIe, Apple III, and Amiga. As far as my first PCI discrete GPU was a Matrox Mystique I think.

[kayuu]

RX570 8G

[larrydarren]

3DFX Voodoo II. 😀

[RansomEOlds]

Just found my receipt from Feb. 1997. --- S3 ViRGE 3D PCI 4MB video card. $100.00

[RansomEOlds]

Next computer had a Diamond Viper 770 AGP with 32MB of ram!

[Axxemann]

IIRC, I think it was a 3DFX Voodoo 3 that went into the Pentium 233MMX that was the "family" PC. My first personal build was a K6-2, and I had mounted an ATI Rage Pro in there. 

[ReddHerring]

the original riva tnt card was the first GPU i could afford at the time

[petosiris]

I don't remember what my first GPU was.  I bought my first PC around 1983 and I can't even remember I bought a graphic card.  It was an Intel 8088 or 8086 CPU inside.  Probably an 8088.  Before that I had several "Home computers", which weren't even PC compatible, because the original IBM PC wasn't released yet.  After the PC wiped out the chaos of different home computers, the typical screen was an amber block text monitor and not many games could be enjoyed on such a screen.  We enjoyed a lot of text fun instead (don't ask me what it was ... I don't remember that either).  We had 1 MB RAM and could use over half of that, upto 744 KB I think. The rest was grabbed by MS DOS.

I think it was years before I tried to play a game and it was probably PacMan or Breakout.  The latter was a game where you moved two vertical bars, one on each side of the screen, to avoid the bouncing ball (actually, a square) in the middle to escape off screen.  I had actually made my own Breakout game on a Zinclair ZX-80 home computer in 1980 and it worked great.

The first real game I can remember playing was Leisure Suit Larry.  That was fun.  In the beginning.  Saying naughty things to the girls and get slapped in the face.  Haha!  It was perhaps some much needed training to communicate with girls in general. 🤣

Later I had 286 and 386 (with 387 math processor) and 486.  Still can't remember what GPU I used with that.  Those days Compaq was "Better IBM compatibility than IBM" and regarded as the state of the art / Rolls Royce and the best you could buy.  I started an IT Consultant company in May 1988 and borrowed ca. $5K in the bank to buy a 386 25MHz Compaq PC.  Wow, that was something!  I think it had 16 MB RAM too!

Anyway, I used the PC for programming mostly (with Borland Pascal) and not many games.  Gaming for me came about a decade later, in mid to late 90's, when I played Star Wars Tie Fighter and others in the same series, and the Wing Commander series.  Oh, I loved those games and was dismayed when the Space Sim genre suddenly died out ... but luckily came back ca. 2012 with Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen, among others.

[chambs1]

GeForce MX400 for RTCW and Star Trek: Voyager Elite Force. Then joined the military. After I came back, I bought a BFG 7950GT to play FEAR on max settings. That was a great card. Been exclusively a PC gamer ever since.

[sdizzol]

The very first card that i bought was a MSI Radeon 7870 ghz edition.  The first computer i bought was a prebuilt and it had a 6800 gt.

[hoor889]

The interface was one of the older Invidia 5200 series AGP interfaces. Those computers had 64MB or 128MB of RAM, I believe. VRAM is all that is needed, not DDR. All you had to do was plug it in. Software for overclocking is not available. In the BIOS, which looked like DOS at the time, you could find temperature readings if you had the right MOBO. 

[Snuggis]

I don't remember... I had an actual desktop, those that you normally had on the desk with the monitor on top...

[petosiris]

---

@Snuggis wrote:

I don't remember... I had an actual desktop, those that you normally had on the desk with the monitor on top...

---

Haha!  I had to laugh when I read this.  Are desktops so rare now that people talk in past tense about them? 😅 

I have never played video games with anything but a desktop myself.  Laptops have too many compromises (or too expensive) to be interesting, and they're often impossible to upgrade much.  Cell phones have too small screens (and no game I like).  I've never owned or used a console either.  So I'm a desktop guy. 

It doesn't mean I don't have a laptop.  I have three, actually, and I have a modern tablet from the top shelf, but I use them for other things than gaming -- mainly when attending genealogy meetings and travels.  I also have one in my home office and even one in the kitchen.

[Snuggis]

Haha! They are getting rarer, but I guess they are not exactly rare yet. I'm still using a desktop today, but in the more normal tower style we've been used to the last 20+ years.

[petosiris]

I went the opposite way with my latest case, buying the biggest I could find.  It's 37cm x 50cm x 65cm (WxHxD), which is about 15" x 20" x 26".  I wanted a big case to get room for water cooling stuff and many case fans on low speed & noise.  Plus I wanted room for serviceability.

[igni]

Trident TVGA9000

Had some good times with Trident.