So did you go the FX5900 ultra, 9800XT or were you like me? GeForce 4 mx 440 because it's all you could afford.

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IceCubicle99@reddit

Hard to remember the order now but I think it was GeForce 3 Ti 200, some flavor of GeForce 4, FX5700, and 9800 Pro.

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Vehicle_Remarkable@reddit

Fx series is trash, ATi at its prime before AMD

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Objective-Horror-479@reddit

6600gt, 7600gt, 8600gt, 9600gt and so on... i like old games................

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kl4ph4rk@reddit

9800pro, until the molex connector caught fire while playing some doom 3 stresstest

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I grabbed an OEM Radeon 8500 LE in 2002 from a store that would sell grey box graphics cards, waited two years for a used 9700 Pro to show up in 2004, and held onto that until I replaced it with a 7900 GS in 2007 when I made the jump to PCI-E.

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conzilla@reddit

I was in the 5700 and 9600 price range.

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Mravac_Kid@reddit

I had a GeForce 2 MX, and later managed to get an All-In-Wonder 9800 SE.

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rugger1869@reddit

9800XTX dawg

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Enough-Fondant-4232@reddit

I gave up gaming in the 90's. Spending all day working on computers kind of squelched my need to play games on them when I got home for the day.

The fanciest graphics card I ever had was a Matrox quad (4) head card in the Win95 days. I still have it somewhere.

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MyDF-Throwaway@reddit

9600XT for me.

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Safe_T_Third@reddit

Radeon 9600 then upgraded to a 7800GS

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Starryguy76@reddit

I was using some 8400 GT cards and a 128 All-In-Wonder, for multi-monitor flight simulators. Finally I got a GT 750Ti. Wow! Later, a 1650. I went to the other side with an RX 580. Most recent is a NOS Founder Edition 980. All I will ever need.

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DualPerformance@reddit

7200 GS > 8600 GT, those are my older cards

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majestic_ubertrout@reddit

Felt like one of the ATI 9600 cards was a perfect middle ground in those days...

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flecom@reddit

yep that's what I had, got it cheap compusa black friday

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URA_CJ@reddit

Mid 2002 - late 2007: ATi All-in-Wonder Radeon 7500 64MB

Initially this card wowed the socks off me coming from a 486DX with S3 Vision864 1MB, but it quickly hit it's ceiling in games (Doom 3 was unplayable without the Voodoo patch) and the TV features became indispensable after my TV set died.

Surprisingly the card supports HDMI video output and pair that with its ViVo feature makes for an interesting way to hookup retro consoles to a modern TV.

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frenchretronerd@reddit

I built a new PC with MX 440 with my first salary. It was still a nice improvement after my Celerin 533 and i810. I kept ot for a year and switched to Radeon 9800 Pro with money from my second summer of work. The real banger back then.

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username6031769@reddit

MX460. All I could afford at the time.

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Laktosefreier@reddit

Came from a MX440 to a 9800SE@PRO using Omega driver 🥹

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CrazyErniesUsedCars@reddit

MX440 64mb was my first real big boy graphics card in like 2006 I think? I bought it at a used PC parts store for like $20 to replace my 32mb PCI S3 Virge. I was not rich!

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PoolRamen@reddit

In my case it would have been the FX 3000 as main, then various randoms for other PC's

I remember a lot of people arguing with me that it was bad value for gaming and them not understanding I didn't give a shit. This went on for a while, though recently people seem to have acknowledged that the Blackwell 6000's are a no-handicap do-everythinger, so I no longer get pushback.

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fadedspark@reddit

First new GPU was a 6800 Vanilla AGP. Unlocked to 16x6 from 12x5 and it was fantastic.

A little VRAM limited in some titles but that's the way she goes sometimes.

Couldn't fit the GT in the budget.

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pmodizzle@reddit

Wish I could remember exactly what model but I remember buying a GeForce 4 for my P4 3.0ghz HP Pavilion around 2003/2004. I got a great deal on the system itself and going from I think a PIII 600mhz to this P4 3ghz was incredible.

My teenage brain would probably explode to find out that 20+ years later my CPU does only 2.1ghz (wasn’t thinking about 64bit multiple cores back in the day)

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Accurate-Campaign821@reddit

I was like you... GeForce 4 MX 440 AGP 8X because it's what came with the $30 "for parts or not working" system I bought back in 2004 😂

System worked fine after I put things in the correct slots. As it arrived, specs were Athlon XP 2500+, 256MB DDR 333, 160GB SATA HDD, GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8X 64MB, and a generic 300w power supply. (it got quite a few upgrades over the next couple of years). It played Half Life 2 decently... In DX7 mode. 800x600.

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Beige_Box_Enthusiast@reddit (OP)

6600gt is still one of my go-to cards in 98 builds. Very good card

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Accurate-Campaign821@reddit

That and a 7600GS (AGP of course). My board died beforehand though and I went with a PCI-e 8600GT. A somewhat "meh" upgrade as it was too slow to really appreciate DX10, but it handled my DX9 games well enough for the most part. CnC3 ran great. Several driver bugs though, good lord. It was either CTD or get oddly stretched textures shooting across the screen. They finally got it figured out by the time I got a 9600GT and later 8800GT.

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WingedGundark@reddit

From roughly this era I had GF3 ti200 2001-2002, Radeon 9700np 2002-2004 with unlocked bios. All on wc loop and OCd as much as they go. 9700 was wonderful, from 275MHz original clock I ran it at 400MHz. Hence, I never bothered with 9800 and bought X800 XT PE when I changed from sA to s939 and A64.

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berrmal64@reddit

2002-2004 I wanted a R9700 so badly. I had a gf2 mx400 that was ok-enough though, and at the time I preferred to spend my cash on gas and weed lol.

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gen_angry@reddit

Radeon 9600 XT from PowerColor I believe.

It ran pretty well till it started artifacting. Replaced it with a x800 XL AGP, then a x850 Pro AGP because I was a dumb college kid with too much disposable income. Replaced it all a year later when I got a PCI-e based system with a x1950 Pro. At least then I started making upgrade choices that made more sense 😛 (next was a HD 4870)

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schluesselkind@reddit

I had a FX5200

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Ok-Hotel-8551@reddit

9500 softmod to 9700

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mosca_br@reddit

I had the fx5700 and I might have had an aftermarket cooler on it.

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fuzzy-panics@reddit

Had a GeForce FX 5700 LE but longed for the FX5900. Ended up inheriting a X800 pro as my last AGP card, in my reliable Northwood 2.8ghz HT.

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Cool_Dark_Place@reddit

I had a GForce 4 MX 440 for a little while as a stopgap in 2003/2004 while I was saving pennies to build my Doom 3/Half Life 2 rig. My system at the time was a Willamette 1.8ghz Pentium 4 system with a 64MB Geforce 2 MX400 that I thought I'd gotten a great deal on in late 2001 (turns out that Socket 423 was a dead end, and Rambus RDRAM was NEVER getting cheaper🙄). Lol... the MX440 was a dog, but I was happy with it, as it was definitely a step up from the GeForce 2 MX400 it replaced. I finally pieced together my AMD64 3200+ system in mid 2004, and the MX 440 card was in it for a couple of months until I saved up $500 and got my crowning jewel for the rig... a GeForce 6800GT 256MB! That system absolutely shredded Doom 3 and Half Life 2, but man... that card put out some heat! It would keep the computer room about 5 degrees warmer than the rest of the house!

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bigbearlol@reddit

Mx 440, ti 4200, fx 5200 I still had some fun

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Sad-Author-729@reddit

I had a 9700pro when these were released and went to an x800pro after which I flashed into an x800xtpe. still have both cards. Would love to have an FX5900 or FX5800 card today though

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Maeglin75@reddit

ATi Radeon 9800XT for me.

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sneekeruk@reddit

Geforce 3 ti200 and then went to a Radeon 9800 pro. I had a Geforce 4 mx for a bit before the Geforce 3.

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H0verb0vver@reddit

Same here, GTA3 ran but the framerate was horrible.

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JJDoes1tAll@reddit

The MX 440 was so good 😄

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overratedcupcake@reddit

No. I got the FX5200 because it was all I could afford. People like to dunk on that card but when compared to the nothing I had before it was great. I have nothing but good memories.

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Accomplished-Camp193@reddit

MX 440 64-bit. It died in anything made after 2004 running above 1024x768, which wasn't really that much of a problem back then with the cheap "17 CRT I've had, even 640x480 looked good enough for me. 128-bit variants fared much better, I often call that the GeForce 2 Super, because with a moderate overclock, it outperformed the GTS.

The ATI counterpart was the 9200 SE, wasn't any better, it was DX8 capable but it lost almost every time in OGL compared to NV cards.

Over the years, I've acquired a bunch from both sides, usually from the trash heap. I call them AGP cockroaches because they're still very cheap and accessible, very little to go wrong with them, and they still refuse to die unlike high-end parts.

I'm still looking for a 9700 Pro or a 9800 XT so I could relegate the 9550 XT to the S462 rig.

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waitingForThe_Sun@reddit

Geforce FX5900 XT and reflashed it 😅

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YannisALT@reddit

They both still look pretty.