# Do you remember your most disappointing video card ever?



## Artas1984 (Apr 27, 2017)

Why was it so?

When i had my first desktop PC in 2003 with FX 5200 inside i did not know what to expect, so i could not realize how shity it was. Only so much later did i realize the awfulness of it. I even complained about low FPS in Painkiller not getting above 60 FPS on low settings when that game demanded 120 FPS for competitive and fluent multi player gameplay. I was called an idiot for complaining about low FPS in the forum and the man who said it to me so was right!!! 

The FX 5900XT was even more horrible - i bought it cheap thinking this is the right stuff when the 7 series cards were available already. It was such a disappointment, that in some particular game it got beaten by a low end GeForce 6200. Not even talking about the stomping beat up it took from GeForce 6600GT, which i had around too. Was FX 5900XT the most disappointing high-end card for me? Hard to say now...

Years came by and i realized that when you buy a low end card by naming, you can not expect much from it, so then i stopped expecting anything below X6XX mark from both NVIDIA and ATI, but soon i found the most disappointing video card of my life exactly in that X6XX line! It was the deep Fall of 2007, i had GeForce 7600GT, 7900GT video cards which were, as you know, awesome. But i wanted much more - a brand new top of the line DX10 card, and so i've purchased a slightly used HD 2900XT, but it's not about her!  Fooled ya! Actually i liked HD 2900XT, i even ran it on a low quality "trash class" 350 W PSU

It's about the most disappointing card i ever had, which i acquired in Spring of 2008. OMG! *512 MB GDDR4! 120 unified shader cores!*







The MIGHTY *Radeon HD 2600XT*, which, based on specs was supposed to annihilate my previous GF 7900GT 256 MB GDDR3 with 24 pixel and 8 vertex shaders despite 50+ % less memory bandwidth...

Holly Moses was i wrong! 

It performed worse than anything that deserves facepalm. The one game that i liked to benchmark in the past aside from Crysis was F.E.A.R and i still have the results of many video cards in that game used from 2008 till 2010 in the same Core 2 Quad 3.6 GHz platform.


*MSI Radeon HD2600XT 512 Mb DDR4 {850/1150} - 29 FPS
MSI Radeon X1950XT 512 Mb DDR3 {625/900} - 80 FPS
MSI Radeon HD2900XT 512 Mb DDR4 {740/1000} - 82 FPS
ASUS Radeon HD4830 512 Mb DDR3 {575/900} - 117 FPS
SAPPHIRE Radeon HD4870 1024 Mb DDR5 {750/900} - 164 FPS

ASUS GeForce 6800 256 Mb DDR {350/350} - 24 FPS
SPARKLE GeForce 7600GT 256 Mb DDR3 {560/700} - 32 FPS
EVGA GeForce 7900GT KO 256 Mb DDR3 {500/700} - 57 FPS
GIGABYTE GeForce 8800GTS 320 Mb DDR3 {513/800} - 82 FPS
MSI GeForce 8800GTS OC 320 Mb DDR3 {575/850} - 88 FPS
SPARKLE GeForce 9600GT 512 Mb DDR3 {650/900} - 88 FPS
XFX GeForce 9600GT XXX 512 Mb DDR3 {700/1000} - 92 FPS
EVGA GeForce 9600GT SSC 512 MB DDR3 {740/1000} - 96 FPS
NOVATECH GeForce 9800GT 512 Mb DDR3 {600/900} - 96 FPS
EVGA SLI GeForce 9600GT SSC 512 Mb DDR3 {740/1000} - 136 FPS
*
I had much more various video cards, but did not benchmark them in FEAR.

It was a shocker alright! 29 FPS was even less than my previous GF 7600GT 256 MB GDDR3! Twice slower than GF 7900GT 256 MB GDDR3 and 275 % slower than X1950XT 512 MB GDDR3, which i had later.

I had lots of disappointing and shity cards later on, but never again i felt so cheated like i was with HD 2600XT!

Talk about your biggest disappointment, but do not confuse with just shity card that is supposed to be like shity, and tell us why was it so!


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## RejZoR (Apr 27, 2017)

The only one I was really disappointed was *Sapphire HD6870 Toxic*. Granted, it was very fast, but I never in my life had such a noisy card as this one. And it supposedly came with Vapor chamber and all that. To my luck, store was willing to accept it back and then I've replaced it with Sapphire HD6950 Silent Efficiency instead. It was about the same speed at stock, but it was a lot quieter.


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## Vya Domus (Apr 27, 2017)

The Nvidia G105M in my old laptop (8 CUDA cores , yeah single digit ). I knew it wasn't supposed to be anywhere near good , but holy crap...absolutely every even remotely modern game at the time that I have tried wasn't anywhere near playable , 800x600 and all that.


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## Supercrit (Apr 27, 2017)

2600xt was born at a time when ATI and Nvidia thought it was a good idea to stick mid range branding on cards with 1/4 of high end card's power, only until 4670/9600gt the problem was rectified.


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## EntropyZ (Apr 27, 2017)

I can't blame the Geforce 2 MX for being slow, it was cheap. But after I upgraded it to an FX 5200 only then I knew.

I had a total piece of crap.

By the time I had it still held a similar price after 2 years, still makes me cringe when people buy the 610/710 Geforce cards.

After this lesson I have never bought anything entry-level gaming or even below. I didn't know much about how well entry level GPU's ran between hardware generations back then.


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## the54thvoid (Apr 27, 2017)

Never been disappointed as I always knew what to expect for what I spent.  It's the games that suck now.


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## 64K (Apr 27, 2017)

the54thvoid said:


> Never been disappointed as I always knew what to expect for what I spent.  It's the games that suck now.



Same here.


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## Kursah (Apr 27, 2017)

I had an S3 Trio 64v+ 2MB PCI in the late 90's and that thing could barely handle anything accelerated. We had a hate-hate relationship in any 3D games where acceleration was an option or requirement. But it got me started, the 3Dfx VooDoo Banshee that came after made all the difference!


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## Dethroy (Apr 27, 2017)

None. Always been happy with my purchases tbh. I'd rather name the one that I have the fondest memories of - that's a tie between the Voodoo Banshee and ATI 9700 Pro.


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## Artas1984 (Apr 27, 2017)

EntropyZ said:


> I can't blame the Geforce 2 MX for being slow, it was cheap. But after I upgraded it to an FX 5200 only then I knew.



So FX 5200 then! That was expected!



the54thvoid said:


> Never been disappointed as I always knew what to expect for what I spent.  It's the games that suck now.



Ye, the games come out surely more unoptimized then they did in 2007.



Kursah said:


> I had an S3 Trio 64v+ 2MB PCI in the late 90's and that thing could barely handle anything accelerated. We had a hate-hate relationship in any 3D games where acceleration was an option or requirement. But it got me started, the 3Dfx VooDoo Banshee that came after made all the difference!



Could it run Quake at software mode 640x480? I had some kind of 2 MB Radeon card back in my laptop, which i received from US in 2002 and it ran Hexen 2 OpenGL  steady at 800X600.


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## AlienIsGOD (Apr 27, 2017)

hands down the worst card i ever owned  replaced it with HD 4850 512mb Xfire


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## Papahyooie (Apr 27, 2017)

Geforce 6200 BFG edition. Man, the box made it sound like it could play Crysis on Ultra, and Crysis wasn't even out yet... It was a turd, but it did run Oblivion, which was all I wanted at the time. 

On the other hand, I bought a cheap Geforce 8500gt later on. Stuck some ram heatsinks on it, and strapped an intel CPU cooler to it with zip ties. Got an 80% overclock on the core! It could hang with the more midrange cards in some games.


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## Kursah (Apr 27, 2017)

Artas1984 said:


> Could it run Quake at software mode 640x480? I had some kind of 2 MB Radeon card back in my laptop, which i received from US in 2002 and it ran Hexen 2 OpenGL  steady at 800X600.



Yes it could, which I was thankful for! But most other games were viewed in slideshow mode.


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## newtekie1 (Apr 27, 2017)

The eVGA GTX460:






Yeah, it was Fermi, yeah it used a lot of power, but that isn't what I was disappointed about.  I actually didn't mind the GTX460, but this specific card was disappointing because of the cooler.  The cooler had all the makings of a decent cooler.  It was a heatpipe design, similar to the GTX470/480.  But the fan was only half height, not the full height of the card.  This made it loud, and inefficient.  So the card ran hotter than it should have, and was way louder than other cards.


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## P4-630 (Apr 27, 2017)

AlienIsGOD said:


> View attachment 87105
> 
> hands down the worst card i ever owned  replaced it with HD 4850 512mb Xfire



I was playing GTA SA on that card at the time, not sure what brand anymore something with "3d" or so, every setting was locked on it, unable to OC anything....
Not much later I bought another brand, X1600XT after that..


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## MxPhenom 216 (Apr 27, 2017)

HD5870. Swapped it for a gtx470 instead.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Apr 27, 2017)

Evga gtx4602win two 460s on one card. And man had i spent some time looking at its web page, i had dual 5850/70 on water blocks but due to hype i thought it worth a go , damn thing developed the most irrational behaviour it quickly got booted to the draw it now lives in , too dear to throw and i couldn't sell it.


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## AntDeek (Apr 27, 2017)

Asus 8500GT SILENT MAGIC, a 512MB version. 
My problem with this card was how the silent cooling was not adequately cooling anything at all, super high temps. Card played crysis 1 though.


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## P4-630 (Apr 27, 2017)

Hell my own first desktop (acer) came with ati X300 (passive cooled), I was able to finally play FarCry!!! (don't ask me the exact fps though....but it worked!!) , I even OC'd the snot out of it...

Oh sorry, it seems a bit OT... Forgot, it's about the worst card...
Well actually the X300 was a shitty card once I found out the power of better ones..


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## Ferrum Master (Apr 27, 2017)

Radeon 7000 was worse.

Then Matrox Parheila.

Anything from Geforce FX.


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## Tomgang (Apr 27, 2017)

If i shall say i where dissapointed in a gfx
I owned my self. It has to be gainward gtx 570. The cooler where noisy as hell and it oc badly. Vram already from new where to little for the games i played and it used alot of power.

Else gfx i dit not own my self has to be gtx 480. Hot as hell with stock cooler and used so much power that you needed your own small newclear powerplan out in your backyard. Vram where also some what to the small size.


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## Yukikaze (Apr 27, 2017)

The first computer I put together myself had a 6600GT, more by luck than anything else because I didn't know much about computers at the time. I've had computers before, of course, but as I wasn't big on graphics then, I had nothing to be disappointed by, really. But seeing as the 6600GT was one of the best price/performance cards at the time, and I've been pretty computer-literate since, I had the fortune of never owning a disappointing video card


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## AntDeek (Apr 27, 2017)

The FX 5200 I used to have was good for anything on par with CS:Source lol


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## Countryside (Apr 27, 2017)

To be honest in my many years i never had a disappointing GPU because i know what im buying and i know how to take care of my babies.


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## AntDeek (Apr 27, 2017)

Countryside said:


> To be honest in my many years i never had a disappointing GPU because i know what im buying and i know how to take care of my babies.



In my case, all of this was before Amazon and good Newegg reviews and our only source of info on these cards were whatever the dude at the computer shop said!


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## FordGT90Concept (Apr 27, 2017)

GeForce4 MX* 440

*Mortiferous eXperience


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## oinkypig (Apr 27, 2017)

the GTX 280 replaced with x1800xt by AMD


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## Kanan (Apr 27, 2017)

My first ever GPU I ever had (hardly to call a GPU anyway it was more like a simple video card) was the ATI Rage II+ with 2MB SD Ram, and it was supposed to be a "3D card" but it performed absolutely worse once you used OpenGL or Direct3D with it - and not only that, the picture also just looked bad then. So I was down to play Half Life with 2D graphics  aside from that the card was fine as a simple video card used for 2D stuff, but wow that was disappointing! After that I never had a bad GPU again, too well informed and yeah that one was given me by my dad anyway so not really my fault anyway  my first actual "GPU" then I bought myself, was the GeForce 256 and it was great!


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## Countryside (Apr 27, 2017)

AntDeek said:


> In my case, all of this was before Amazon and good Newegg reviews and our only source of info on these cards were whatever the dude at the computer shop said!



"Whatever the dude at the computer shop said" 

Reminds me of an video of a man who buys a pc from the shop and the seller says this is the best pc at the moment so the man goes home and then sees a commercial that says a new version of the pc was just released 
so he goes back to the shop and buys the newer version goes home and there is that commercial again and he goes back to the shop.


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## Kanan (Apr 27, 2017)

I read PC magazines a lot before the internet era with reviews and YouTube videos and shit. "What the guy in the shop said", well he is a seller he would also want to sell you shit if possible


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## dorsetknob (Apr 27, 2017)

Kanan said:


> I read PC magazines a lot before the internet era with reviews


I'm a fast Reader 
i also read the mags ( for Free of course ) sometimes had to visit several shops to finish the magazine's
This was before they started to shrink wrap them


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## Kanan (Apr 27, 2017)

dorsetknob said:


> I'm a fast Reader
> i also read the mags ( for Free of course ) sometimes had to visit several shops to finish the magazine's
> This was before they started to shrink wrap them


I had a abonement for famous german magazine "GameStar" for many years, my father paid it. Yeah it was nice... they had just the essential amount of game hardware reviews and that was about enough to know what to buy and what not.


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## FreedomEclipse (Apr 27, 2017)

AntDeek said:


> The FX 5200 I used to have was good for anything on par with CS:Source lol



My friend had a Passive version of one of these cards. I managed to take the cooler off my dead 9700pro and fit it to the FX5200 and got some crazy OC out of it  

I cant quite remember the kind of frequencies i got but I dont think i had many problems playing games like farcry on 1024x768 or games like BF1942 with the max numbers of bots at the highest graphical setting


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## TheRagnarok (Apr 27, 2017)

For me it would have to be an XFX 7600 GS Passive AGP for my Pentium II Gateway but it only had PCI slots. I Returned it to Sams Club immediately.
Had little access to the internet at the time and knew nothing about AGP, PCI-E
Anyways, I took that money and put it down on my first and last OEM Compaq with a Sempron 3200, 256mb, 80gb Hdd.
It had a full length PCI-E 16x gen1 and two gen 1 SATA ports! Been building my own ever since.


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## Toothless (Apr 27, 2017)

Well.. I'd say my HD8400 that's stuck in my 5350 is pretty bad.. I know it's an APU but good Lord it can't even do LoL decently at 1600x900. 

Other than that it's gotta be my 780s due to how loud they were.


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## cdawall (Apr 27, 2017)

I didn't really have one. The only card that gave disappointing performance to me was my dad's (this should show age) PNY FX5700 128MB VIVO and even then it was a beast overclocker.


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## MrGenius (Apr 27, 2017)

The BFG 6800 Ultra OC AGP. It didn't OC for shit. And the VRAM crapped out eventually @ stock volts and a weak-ass 37.5MHz OC. Though it did hold up for quite a while with that OC(more than 5 years). Not too disappointing performance wise really. It still managed some fairly impressive FPS with minimal OC.


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## Jetster (Apr 27, 2017)

FX5200 then the HD6870


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## Melvis (Apr 28, 2017)

I guess my last AMD cards where the most disappointing, my two MSI 280X Gaming. Great performance, but heat was an issue and more then anything else the Drivers where a massive issue for me, over 10 driver updates and they all broke crossfire, very sad. Also two of the same card had died under warranty. Apart from those cards, the 3850/4850/4870X2 X2/7930's all great cards but the 7930's needed a better cooler, they over heated alot.


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## Frick (Apr 28, 2017)

Countryside said:


> To be honest in my many years i never had a disappointing GPU because i know what im buying and i know how to take care of my babies.



Same here.

I too had the 2600XT and it was great. I got it really cheap and it performed exactly as I expected it to.


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## Divide Overflow (Apr 28, 2017)

The only video card I really remember being a disappointment was my Matrox MGA Mystique.  The poor video quality and horribly slow 2D speeds were unexpected and unwelcome with such an expensive price tag for the time.  These were the early and uncertain times of accelerated PC graphics.  Nobody knew which software solution was going to take off, Direct Draw, OpenGL, Glide API, Direct 3D and eventually DirectX were all new and different vendors had widely different support and performance on each.  The real salt in the wound was the much better performing alternatives that were released soon after from ATI and Nvidia.


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## alucasa (Apr 28, 2017)

Does Intel's GMA count? One hell of sucking chipset.


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## TheLostSwede (Apr 28, 2017)

Well, I was a bit disappointed with the fact that my first PC only had 256KB of graphics memory and I was unable to get hold of the memory upgrade chips to make it 512KB so I could get enough graphics memory for VGA resolution. As such, I could only play at MCGA. I think it was a Cirrus Logic chip, if I don't remember all wrong.

The third PC has onboard S3 graphics with 1MB of graphics memory, but the upgrade I bought to 2MB did't work, which was disappointing as well. S3 was pretty shit at anything that wasn't 2D though.

After that I got better at understanding computers and stopped buying crappy things and I can't say I've been really disappointed since.

I guess it helps that I was actually doing the reviews for at least one of the big computer magazines a few years later as well, since then you really knew what was good, especially after a 30 card group test with every brand under the sun. I miss those days sometimes...


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## lagginswag (Apr 28, 2017)

Abolutely either visiontek geforce 2 mx400 (but at least it did play cs 1.3 at the time) or bfg geforce 8400 gs pci. I thought i fried the slot as well as the card that was in it at the time (gainward geforce fx 5950 ultra that overheated and died) and i never had another agp card around to test it. Later on another s*** card was radeon hd 5550 ddr2, lol. Works for an htpc now pretty well though.









^relevant lol


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## Frick (Apr 28, 2017)

alucasa said:


> Does Intel's GMA count? One hell of sucking chipset.



Not all of them, but most of them. I mean yeah they did all suck, but for office PC's at the time they were enough.


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## CounterZeus (Apr 28, 2017)

I guess I have to say my XFX 9600GT. It was a version where the amount of shaders were reduced (48 vs 64). It was not advertised on the shop's website.
Didn't really matter that much though, was held back by the CPU (pentium D 830 with slight OC to 3.2GHz) anyway. Afterwards, I kept it alongside a 560Ti, to use extra monitors 

Second place is for a card that I both loved and hated, my mobile X1900. Card itself was superb (shader count was higher than desktop X1900, was based on X1950), but ati dropped support after less than half a year after the purchase.


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## Rowsol (Apr 28, 2017)

My first computer was bought used from an acquaintance for $200.  It ran WoW fine enough but the fan was broken and the computer would overheat so I used a desk fan and removed the side panel.  Good times.  No idea what model it was.  The next computer was new with a 7800gt which was far faster so there's a ballpark estimate.


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## phanbuey (Apr 28, 2017)

FordGT90Concept said:


> GeForce4 MX* 440
> 
> *Mortiferous eXperience


oh my god that card... it would crash my system, I thought my OC was unstable since I just started (again) in computers.  That thing was awful.

I bought it because I thought it could play half life 2... it was promptly replaced by a radeon 9550.


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## Readlight (Apr 28, 2017)

My first Nvidia gf 8400gs 256mb died whit visual artifacts 8years ago.


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## Komshija (Apr 28, 2017)

The most disappointing was Sapphire X1950Pro. Performance wise, it was very good. Aside from that, I had constant problems with this Sapphire, from overheating, PC refusing to start while GPU fans were spinning at 100% to system crashes under GPU load for no obvious reason. I RMA'd for another (new) Sapphire X1950Pro and got the same problems but to a lesser extent.


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## lZKoce (Apr 28, 2017)

For me it was Asus HD4870 . The card was a beast, but that "egg" cooler...ohh boy....jet engine is an understatement. And +1 for GeForce4 MX* 440. Actually that was my worst card ever.


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## Frick (Apr 28, 2017)

lZKoce said:


> For me it was Asus HD4870 . The card was a beast, but that "egg" cooler...ohh boy....jet engine is an understatement. And +1 for GeForce4 MX* 440. Actually that was my worst card ever.
> 
> View attachment 87124



Yeah, I bought a used one of those with a passive AC Accelero S1 on it. It worked as well as you'd expect. 

I've been thinking some more on this, and I honestly haven't had a bad GPU, not as such. I have had some _slow _GPU's, but nothing unexpected. And either I have gotten them for really cheap or for nothing at all. The GT530 2GB LP cost me about €15, and it got me through Warlords of Draenor (with an e8400). The TNT2 I don't even remember paying for at all (or a few tens of € at most) and that coupled with a P3 got me through Warcraft 3. The same CPU got me through BF1942 (when clocked from 400Mhz to 600+Mhz), but I don't remember what card I had. Anyway, it is also on that end of the scale overclocking gets interesting. Going from 50FPS at high settings to 55FPS is ... not very useful, but going from 26FPS to 33FPS is a _major _boost.

Wait, I seem to remember the Matrox Millenium 2 was not what I thought it would be, but back then I knew nothing (essentially), and I did not have it for long iirc.

As said, some Intel GMA chips are crap though. Can't even play Knights of the Old Republic on some of them.


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## Liviu Cojocaru (Apr 28, 2017)

For me it was this the Gigabyte 8600 GTS Silent Pipe3...very good in the winter time as a heater   .


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## uuuaaaaaa (Apr 28, 2017)

XFX GeForce FX5200!


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## P4-630 (Apr 28, 2017)

Komshija said:


> The most disappointing was Sapphire X1950Pro. Performance wise, it was very good. Aside from that, I had constant problems with this Sapphire, from overheating, PC refusing to start while GPU fans were spinning at 100% to system crashes under GPU load for no obvious reason. I RMA'd for another (new) Sapphire X1950Pro and got the same problems but to a lesser extent.



I have had a Powercolor x1950pro with great cooling and quiet! One of the best cards I've owned! If you'd only had bought this one....


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## chaosmassive (Apr 28, 2017)

I had a ASUS GT 220 like this for around 30 dollars in the past
performance wise,  great for its price, can run Crysis 2 with smooth gameplay
but just in 5 minutes the card jumped to 107 C and I unplugged PC electric socket from wall immediately
this cooler simply inadequate at all to cool GPU, and I forced to play games with underclocked GPU speed to avoid
burn out GPU


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## FreedomEclipse (Apr 28, 2017)

X1800XT -- ran hot and loud and was quickly superseded by the X1900 series and completely cast into obscurity


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## Toothless (Apr 28, 2017)

chaosmassive said:


> I had a ASUS GT 220 like this for around 30 dollars in the past
> performance wise,  great for its price, can run Crysis 2 with smooth gameplay
> but just in 5 minutes the card jumped to 107 C and I unplugged PC electric socket from wall immediately
> this cooler simply inadequate at all to cool GPU, and I forced to play games with underclocked GPU speed to avoid
> burn out GPU


I had a PNY 220 and it was amazing. Never ran hot cept' for when i caught the fan wire in the fan blade.


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## Kanan (Apr 28, 2017)

TheLostSwede said:


> Well, I was a bit disappointed with the fact that my first PC only had 256KB of graphics memory and I was unable to get hold of the memory upgrade chips to make it 512KB so I could get enough graphics memory for VGA resolution. As such, I could only play at MCGA. I think it was a Cirrus Logic chip, if I don't remember all wrong.
> 
> The third PC has onboard S3 graphics with 1MB of graphics memory, but the upgrade I bought to 2MB did't work, which was disappointing as well. S3 was pretty shit at anything that wasn't 2D though.
> 
> ...


Curious, which magazines?


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## Komshija (Apr 28, 2017)

P4-630 said:


> I have had a Powercolor x1950pro with great cooling and quiet! One of the best cards I've owned! If you'd only had bought this one....


 I remember that card, but it was very expensive and I was very short with the money at the time. In other words, Sapphire was and still is among the cheapest brands over here. Ironically, after Inno GeForce 2 Ti and Sapphire 9600XT, Sapphire X1950Pro (AGP version) was my first high-end GPU and the first one that disappointed me.


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## Mussels (Apr 28, 2017)

Myself and my brother shared a bit of PC hardware as kids (hand-me-downs etc) so i'll give the top three:

1. Geforce FX 5200: slower than what we upgraded from and genuinely terrible.
2. Geforce 4 MX 440: Cost more than a Geforce 3 Ti, had no pixel shaders at all - couldnt play games i bought it specifically to play with!   (This was back when i relied on gaming magazines for hardware info... they lied a lot)
3. Some generic (Diamond multi media?) PCI graphics card. After my pentium 90 (with AGP) died and was 'upgraded' to a celeron 400A, i had to downgrade back to PCI... and got some total POS with no pixel or vertex shaders, and set my PC back about 5 years in performance and compatibility. Built my own PC's after that one.


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## Kanan (Apr 28, 2017)

Yea GeForce "4" MX 400 series was a great lie, it was not even a real GeForce 4. Those were the bad times with gruesome marketing tactics to trick buyers into buying outdated shit.


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## Nabarun (Apr 28, 2017)

XFX 8600GT. Some batches were defective. Got burnt and I had to go to the consumer court to get a RMA/refund. The local distributor was only willing to issue a "credit note" which is another term for a shitty discount. By the time they bowed, it was more than a year gone, and I had a new GPU. Got too lazy to pickup that shit which was pretty useless to me as I had a new system and I didn't want another system getting fried.


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## XSI (Apr 28, 2017)

biggest dissapointment for me are to these days all the rebranding of older generation. all that marketing bs and confusion to the customers. either you release new card and name it accordingly. i remembet 8800gtx price was halved with 8800gt 512MB and performance was almost similar. Now thats a proper rebrand. And now 10-20% increase in performance is almost called revolution, new generation etc.


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## Deleted member 67555 (Apr 28, 2017)

ATI HD2900 pro... Imo it was a limp dick
ATI HD2600 Romeo...dual HD2600 card... Played Half-Life 2 like a champ... But was never worth the price.


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## Kanan (Apr 28, 2017)

Yeah and yet people get angry about RX 580 just because AMD named it according to their upcoming Vega GPUs. I don't think it would be smart to sell Vega alongside one year old stuff. They did the right thing.


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## jboydgolfer (Apr 28, 2017)

I know what your thinking, this card has everything, tons of RAM, powerful GPU, and the mega powerful fan. But its not as good as it looks


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## Kanan (Apr 28, 2017)

jboydgolfer said:


> I know what your thinking, this card has everything, tons of RAM, powerful GPU, and the mega powerful fan. But its not as good as it looks


I give you my old MSI 7900 GT, that needs to be baked for it, if you want


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## AsRock (Apr 28, 2017)

Kursah said:


> I had an S3 Trio 64v+ 2MB PCI in the late 90's and that thing could barely handle anything accelerated. We had a hate-hate relationship in any 3D games where acceleration was an option or requirement. But it got me started, the 3Dfx VooDoo Banshee that came after made all the difference!



Think it might of been mine too, with the awesome 512KB upgrades haha, but all i wanted to play was Syndicate and Mega Race, although a Matrox card was close behind with it's memory modules. Although it was better than the card i had before that .

But as you said, life got a lot better once the 3DFX cards starting coming out.

But a card i hate the most was a 7900GTSCOC which had a chip on the back that was just over the top of the south bridge and got real hot. which coursed a year of problems before actually frying it self which was replaced with a 7900 512MB card which i still have oddly.

The 2900XT but i knew what i was getting in to with that with it's crappy ability to be able to deal with AA, and was not going pay nVidia Tax.


----------



## Kanan (Apr 28, 2017)

AsRock said:


> But a card i hate the most was a 7900GTSCOC which had a chip on the back that was just over the top of the south bridge and got real hot.


Was it a dram chip? I'm curious once more


----------



## TheLostSwede (Apr 28, 2017)

Kanan said:


> Curious, which magazines?



PCW in the UK. Long gone sadly.


----------



## wurschti (Apr 28, 2017)

In 2001 I got a new PC. It was an overall nice midrange machine with a Pentium IV 1.7GHz, 256MB RAM, 40GB HDD, but a shitty SiS with 32MB GPU. I exclusively told the seller I wanted a little better GPU, and they were offering the Geforce 2 at the time for $30 more. But the guy was like, no you don't need it, it's a good GPU etc etc. At the time, being 14-15 yo, I was not a PC guru and I thought, OK, it's gonna work if he says so. Took the PC home and played Harry Potter at that time. Bad framerate, 20-30 or so, but I just had a PS1 at the time, so it looked decent. Couple of months pass and I got Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2. I saw it at a friends of mine, at it looked amazing! I got to install it on my own PC, and the shitty GPU did not offer half of the visual effects. On top of that looked like a stripped PS1 game. I was pissed, but after some time my dad offered an upgrade for the PC for me, and I just wanted a new GPU ofc. He called a friend of his, and he said he wanted a graphics card with high rpm (he's not into PC stuff). That was funny to hear. But after a couple of days, I got the GPU. The Geforce 4200 Ti with 64MB of DDR memory!!! That was the shit! My shitty GPU story lasted only a year, but still hurts today.


----------



## EarthDog (Apr 28, 2017)

Never been disappointed. I do my research before buying.


----------



## jesdals (Apr 28, 2017)

I had a Sapphiretech AIW Radeon 8500 AGP card, it was the most expensive card to date - but also the most disapointing, think the game quality was over before the tv functionalitys ever where stable.


----------



## rtwjunkie (Apr 28, 2017)

For me, like the majority, it was the FX 5200.  Mine was a BFG.  It sucked on every level.





In fairness though, one of my fondest memories will always be the Ti 4200.  Stable, overclocker dream, cool.  I remember attaching heatsinks to the RAM chips. 
I think this is like one I had.


----------



## Vayra86 (Apr 28, 2017)

EVGA GTX 660 Superclocked

TIMES TWO

After five minutes of gaming, it was like jumbo jets were taking off, and FPS went all over the place. That moment you learn why midrange cards with a radial blower should not be placed in SLI.

Yeah that was once and never again


----------



## NeDix! (Apr 28, 2017)

well, since all my card had been used card, and do researcher before buy, i never had disappointing performance, but i can say 2 things...

1.- my 5850 has reference turbine cooler, i learned there, NEVER AGAIN turbine cooler, still was an awesome card and STILL WANT TO TEST A 5870
2.- i recommened to a friend a 960, he didnt want to buy used so, it was the only shit there, still its the worst x60 card from nvidia in the last few years (well since kepler)


----------



## AsRock (Apr 28, 2017)

Kanan said:


> Was it a dram chip? I'm curious once more



No, there is\was a small voltage chip on the rear of them which got real hot. Don't know if the information is still available after all these years but a bunch of people had issue's with it, some put heat sinks on it.

My bad it was a eVGA 7800GT OCSC.


----------



## nexus_a (Apr 28, 2017)

GTX465 by far. So noisy and hot, a year later the card stopped working. When I removed the heatsink there's a black mess there. It has melted!


----------



## jagjitnatt (Apr 28, 2017)

Since we are talking of disappointment, do any of the old timers remember SiS 6215C PCI ?
Even Road rash would not get 30 FPS on that card. An upgrade to NVidia RIVA TNT2 M64 felt like GOD.
The most surprising upgrade though was incidental. I ran a williamette P4 1.6 with SD RAM, wanted to upgrade to DDR, so got another motherboard with 845 chipset, the board had what looked like an AGP port, but it was not. It was a physical AGP, but only worked with special cards, it was called XGP port. My TNT2 could no longer work on it, so I had to use onboard Intel Extreme graphics, kid you not, it was actually much faster than the RIVA TNT2. Never underestimated onboard chips ever again.

Another disappointment for me was 9200SE I upgraded to from Intel extreme. I thought SE stood for Special edition, it was actually much worse than a regular 9200.

My favorite card ever was X1900GT though. The memory was clocked at 600 Mhz, but it was a 700Mhz RAM chip, so everyone could clock it to 700 at least, mine OC'ed to 918 Mhz. It was crazy, 50%+ oc on air cooling. I had the Accelero X2 slapped on it. Looked amazing. It was a blessing to have HDR and AA both enabled. NVidia could only do 1 at a time.


----------



## TheLostSwede (Apr 28, 2017)

jagjitnatt said:


> Since we are talking of disappointment, do any of the old timers remember SiS 6215C PCI ?



I hope you didn't pay money for that garbage. The only thing worse than SiS was PC Chips no-name stuff, which often was re-branded SiS...


----------



## DRDNA (Apr 28, 2017)

My worst was a ATI 9600 Pro or maybe it was the 9200....but yeah it looked like it would be wow but it was only jeewiz cant this thing do better? I need to OC this beotch!


----------



## Kanan (Apr 28, 2017)

TheLostSwede said:


> I hope you didn't pay money for that garbage. The only thing worse than SiS was PC Chips no-name stuff, which often was re-branded SiS...


My Rage II+ was worse, see my first post here for the fail description


----------



## jormungand (Apr 28, 2017)

XFX BLACK EDITION 9800gtx hottttt as hell. I got rid of it in less than a month. All the other ones i had i loved them.


----------



## Artas1984 (Apr 28, 2017)

TheLostSwede said:


> Well, I was a bit disappointed with the fact that my first PC only had 256KB of graphics memory and I was unable to get hold of the memory upgrade chips to make it 512KB so I could get enough graphics memory for VGA resolution. As such, I could only play at MCGA. I think it was a Cirrus Logic chip, if I don't remember all wrong.



WOW, you must be the owner of the oldest video chip that you bought yourself that i've read in the forums in a long time.



alucasa said:


> Does Intel's GMA count? One hell of sucking chipset.



Yes. I forgot about that shit. It was the second most disappointing thing, not only because it  sucked in performance, which i knew about, but because it did not even work with some 3D games - the games crashed on launch when that shit was being just present in the system (even with dedicated GPU on AGP lane). I had to sell my motherboard in order to get some P965 without integrated graphics.



Divide Overflow said:


> The only video card I really remember being a disappointment was my Matrox MGA Mystique.  The poor video quality and horribly slow 2D speeds were unexpected and unwelcome with such an expensive price tag for the time.  These were the early and uncertain times of accelerated graphics.  The real salt in the wound was the much better performing alternatives that were released soon after from ATI and Nvid



Wait, what? Slow 2D speeds? How does one interpret that? LOL. It could not run Heroes of Might and Magic II?



MxPhenom 216 said:


> HD5870. Swapped it for a gtx470 instead.



But why? HD5870 was on pair with GTX470 in performance.



Papahyooie said:


> Geforce 6200 BFG edition. Man, the box made it sound like it could play Crysis on Ultra, and Crysis wasn't even out yet... It was a turd, but it did run Oblivion, which was all I wanted at the time.



It's hilarious to read that a BFG attribute could be given to a low end card, as if it was ready for Doom 3.. Even GF 7600GT sucked in Doom 3.




Vya Domus said:


> The Nvidia G105M in my old laptop (8 CUDA cores , yeah single digit ). I knew it wasn't supposed to be anywhere near good , but holy crap...absolutely every even remotely modern game at the time that I have tried wasn't anywhere near playable , 800x600 and all that.



I used to repair laptops in the past, i know what are you talking about. The 105M is a nightmare in terms of performance, reliability, overheating. Worst case scenario - 105M in some Acme or Acer laptop - a developing cancer.



CounterZeus said:


> I guess I have to say my XFX 9600GT.



I had that card (overclocked XXX edition) and it was awesome. It bested HD2900XT and HD3870 in FEAR, Crysis and Doom 3.



lZKoce said:


> For me it was Asus HD4870 . The card was a beast, but that "egg" cooler...ohh boy....jet engine is an understatement. And +1 for GeForce4 MX* 440. Actually that was my worst card ever.



Aaa, nice memories.. Had that one too in some HD4800 series card! I can confirm it was unbelievably loud! Perhaps the loudest card i ever had.



Mussels said:


> 3. Some generic (Diamond multi media?) PCI graphics card. After my pentium 90 (with AGP) died and was 'upgraded' to a celeron 400A, i had to downgrade back to PCI... and got some total POS with no pixel or vertex shaders, and set my PC back about 5 years in performance and compatibility. Built my own PC's after that one.



That's horrible, but at least that Celeron had _some_ memory cache



jboydgolfer said:


> I know what your thinking, this card has everything, tons of RAM, powerful GPU, and the mega powerful fan. But its not as good as it looks



Looks like HD7400, which is probably adequate for HTCP? It even has HDMI?


----------



## rtwjunkie (Apr 28, 2017)

Artas1984 said:


> It's hilarious to read that a *BFG* attribute could be given to a low end card, as if it was ready for Doom 3.. Even GF 7600GT sucked in Doom 3.



BFG was a company that went out of business somewhere around 2005.  95% of their business was GPU's and the rest was specialized motherboards, such as the various NForce ones.


----------



## Artas1984 (Apr 28, 2017)

rtwjunkie said:


> BFG was a company that went out of business somewhere around 2005.  95% of their business was GPU's and the rest was specialized motherboards, such as the various NForce ones.



He said BFG edition, not BFG GeForce 6200. Of course i remember BFG video cards, i had some of them! At that time owning a BFG card was considered an awesome thing.


----------



## Bo$$ (Apr 28, 2017)

7300LE in SLI


----------



## r.h.p (Apr 28, 2017)

Ge force 7900 gt


----------



## Divide Overflow (Apr 28, 2017)

Artas1984 said:


> Wait, what? Slow 2D speeds? How does one interpret that? LOL. It could not run Heroes of Might and Magic II?


It had a problem processing and displaying DOS commands.  Which one still used from time to time.


----------



## jagjitnatt (Apr 28, 2017)

Bo$$ said:


> 7300LE in SLI


You sir are the man for even trying SLI on that thing cause $hit + $hit only equals more $hit


----------



## FilipM (Apr 28, 2017)

Worst card I've ever had in my PC, MX440 - thing was just poop.

Worst card I've ever come across - FX5200 - thing was poop squared


----------



## Artas1984 (Apr 28, 2017)

EarthDog said:


> Never been disappointed. I do my research before buying.





Countryside said:


> To be honest in my many years i never had a disappointing GPU because i know what im buying and i know how to take care of my babies.





the54thvoid said:


> Never been disappointed as I always knew what to expect for what I spent.  It's the games that suck now.



Bla bla bla...

You can "research" all you want - it does not guarantee that you will get a faulty or buggy video card. I've researched enough to buy myself Asus GeFroce GTX560 Ti DirectCU II - it was supposed to be a cool and quiet card. It was nothing like that! It was one of the loudest cards i ever had. This thread is about sharing fun memories about unexpected video cards and their behaviors, and not for dull statements "do research before buying". It does not work this way in life guys.

This is what i am talking about:



Kanan said:


> Oh yes I had a disappointment I already had forgotten almost. Right before I got this 780 Ti used from a friend I had bought myself a R9 380 Armor from MSI. Card looked good, 2 nice fans and nice beefy pcb and all but it wasn't even functioning one single time. Straight fail


----------



## Kanan (Apr 28, 2017)

Oh yes I had a disappointment I already had forgotten almost. Right before I got this 780 Ti used from a friend I had bought myself a R9 380 Armor from MSI. Card looked good, 2 nice fans and nice beefy pcb and all but it wasn't even functioning one single time. Straight fail. I sent it back for a refund, asked my friend if he's still selling his 780 Ti and he quickly agreed with me to take it off eBay and sell it to me instead for a nice price. Best coincidence ever.


----------



## P4-630 (Apr 28, 2017)

Where is @Cvrk , I'm sure he wants to say something here.....


----------



## TheMailMan78 (Apr 28, 2017)

2900XT. 500 bucks I spent and I still haz a sad.

In contrast one of the best cards I had was a 5850. Thing was better than two 4850's in SLI.


----------



## silentbogo (Apr 28, 2017)

I had my share of bad cards too.
My worst card was an MX440, which I bought for my very first college PC.... 

Few years later I bought a pre-built PC with ATI X200 on board. All I needed is a good cheap workstation which can also do multimedia, and ended up with a piece of crap CompaQ which also had no PCIe or AGP slot in case I wanted to upgrade it.
So much for listening to the store rep...

The most disappointing though was the HD3870. I bought it on my birthday and then received an HD3850 as a present. 
At the time I was aware that the spec is almost the same, but I did not expect that HD3850 could overclock a higher than its older brother, without even a slightest bump in the voltage....
I know... luck of a draw... blah-blah... but still it was the most bitter memory about videocards - returning that HIS 3870 back to the store the next day, 'cause the cheaper option was better.
On the positive side - I've exchanged it for the exact same HD3850 to complete a nice overclocked xfire (second card also overclocked as good as the first one, and showed no problems whatsoever)!



TheMailMan78 said:


> 2900XT. 500 bucks I spent and I still haz a sad.


That's one helluva turbocharged paperweight. Had a Sapphire 2900XT for a short while.... that reference turbine almost made me deaf for the rest of my life.


----------



## jboydgolfer (Apr 28, 2017)

rtwjunkie said:


> BFG was a company that went out of business somewhere around 2005.  95% of their business was GPU's and the rest was specialized motherboards, such as the various NForce ones.



 I actually still had one of their posters or some kind of promotional advertisement they came in a video card box with the video card a year ago or so I was going through my old components & found it .there is also a do not disturb door knob hanger


----------



## ISI300 (Apr 28, 2017)

Here goes nothing (in the order of appearance):
1. Gainward FX 5200, shockingly bad, came with my first pre-built PC, low-end and based on Nvidia's notorious FX series. Two strikes you're out.
2. Geforce 4 MX-440. Maker unknown. 128-bit. faster than #1 in most cases but lacked vertex shaders. 
3. Inno3D 9600 GT. Not bad per-se, but had the worst cooler ever installed on any graphics card. 
4. EVGA GTX 460 External Exhaust. Terribly ineffective and noisy cooler, no VRM cooling meant that VRMs melted.

There's also been a ton of others that have been great.


----------



## yotano211 (Apr 28, 2017)

The one I hate the most was the Nvdia 8600m gt on my 1st laptop. I bought the laptop without searching anything, I found out that it had gddr2 memory when other laptops had gddr3 memory. It made it worst that 2 months later I could have bought a laptop with a 8800m gts for about $150 more which was over twice as fast. 
Had to stick with that laptop for 4 years since I cash poor. Today I can just upgrade every 2 years without worrying about money but I know research every laptop purchase.


----------



## GhostRyder (Apr 28, 2017)

Well, I have only had a few cards I would say disappointed me in some way.  I guess the one that really stuck out was the GTX 460m in my Asus laptop.  Got it on sale for a deal and thought it would be great for school and some light gaming even knowing it was a pretty low end card.  Man at that time though I was not expecting it to be as low as it was (Even though it was already a little over a generation old).  Could not get it to run anything decently on even the lowest settings.  Realized I should have read up a little more on where it sat in performance and just returned it.  Waited awhile longer on my old laptop and eventually got a laptop on special with a GTX 675m quite a few months later.  Probably the only time I did not do much research when buying a GPU and the last.


----------



## eidairaman1 (Apr 28, 2017)

Never had one personally.

My cards.

Hercules 3D Prophet II GTS Pro 64MB

ATI Radeon AIW 9700Pro/9800 Pro.

M18 (9800 256MB in Laptop)

HIS/Sapphire X1950 Pro 512MB AGP.

Sapphire R9 290 VaporX

My Brother had a GF MX4 (Worst Piece of $#1+). The GF control panel would freeze up on it, then BSOD randomly, it died.

My Grandpa's machine several years ago before he got an APU, had a Diamond ATi 2400, which died too. God bless his soul October 5, 1931-March 28, 2016.


----------



## dirtyferret (Apr 28, 2017)

Asus 9800GT w/ the glacier cooler (I think that's what they called it).  I actually owned the Asus 9600GT with the exact same cooler in another PC and it ran great.  This 9800GT card sounded like I shoved a dust buster on its last leg into my pc.  If I throttled the fan RPM down the GPU chip would shoot over 100c instantly.  I figured I received a bum card (maybe bad firmware) but I then looked at reviews on newegg and there was a whole slate of buyers having the exact same issue.  RMA for a MSI GTS250 as it had just launched. 



Bo$$ said:


> 7300LE in SLI



 I owned that card in an old Dell PC, played WoW on it sometimes too back in the day.  It was never intended to be a gaming card though.


----------



## eidairaman1 (Apr 28, 2017)

dirtyferret said:


> Asus 9800GT w/ the glacier cooler (I think that's what they called it).  I actually owned the Asus 9600GT with the exact same cooler in another PC and it ran great.  This 9800GT card sounded like I shoved a dust buster on its last leg into my pc.  If I throttled the fan RPM down the GPU chip would shoot over 100c instantly.  I figured I received a bum card (maybe bad firmware) but I then looked at reviews on newegg and there was a whole slate of buyers having the exact same issue.  RMA for a MSI GTS250 as it had just launched.



That just means Asus used a cooler that was truly meant for the 9600 lol.

At that time custom coolers were all the craze, now they are slim to none...


----------



## biffzinker (Apr 28, 2017)

Most disappointing graphics card purchase for me would have to be the Voodoo Rush.


----------



## Frag_Maniac (Apr 28, 2017)

I've had...

Ti 4200 - $150
X800XT - $540
X1950 Pro -$190
GTS 250 - $70
7970 - $330

Worst ones were the X800XT and X1950 Pro, mostly due to ATI's crappy stuttering drivers. I'm definitely going back to Nvidia next time.


----------



## techtard (Apr 28, 2017)

Worst gpu I ever owned was a pair of Radeon HD 3870 in crossfire. I had just gotten back into the pc scene and was out of the loop when it came to what was current and good. A good buddy of mine (who is a super AMD fanboy) talked up the new AMD Phenom platform and the new ATI 3870 and how they would go toe to toe with Intels and Nvidias high-end parts. Boy was he wrong.

One of the best was my trusty reference Radeon 5850, that thing overclocked like a beast. Ran it on the stock cooler for years, and upgraded to a Gelid icy vision cooler when the ref cooler died. Kept that for 4+ years with a heavy overclock from day 1.

Also had a used GTX 260 c215 that I was using in a linux machine. That was also a damn fine card.


----------



## AntDeek (Apr 28, 2017)

Funny how the FX 5200 seems to be equally shitty across everyone who owned one in this thread.


----------



## KainXS (Apr 28, 2017)

I remember upgrading from a Geforce 3 to a Geforce 4 MX and remember taking back the MX the next day after. Kept that for a while and then upgraded from the Geforce 3 to the 5200 and it was terrible but I needed a card with better DX support so I kept it. So I'm gonna have to go with the 5200, the one I had was a piece of sh*t. It actually made me stop buying Nvidia cards for myself(not for others though) until I got a XFX 7950GT AGP and unfortunately the bridge chips on them failed frequently.


----------



## eidairaman1 (Apr 28, 2017)

KainXS said:


> I remember upgrading from a Geforce 3 to a Geforce 4 MX and remember taking back the MX the next day after. Kept that for a while and then upgraded from the Geforce 3 to the 5200 and it was terrible but I needed a card with better DX support so I kept it. So I'm gonna have to go with the 5200, the one I had was a piece of sh*t. It actually made me stop buying Nvidia cards for myself(not for others though) until I got a XFX 7950GT AGP and unfortunately the bridge chips on them failed frequently.




I heard a hs or hsf on em fixed them, same with the 1950s lol.

The gf5200 was just a low budget card to begin with.

It could play NFSU at low settings fine but in compare to a 9700 Pro which could crank to max detail and resolution it made most want a 9700 Pro then.


----------



## Frag_Maniac (Apr 29, 2017)

I'm trying really hard to not be superstitious since the 4k TV and Blu ray player I'm considering both have X800 in their model number like my X800XT, which I paid way too much for.


----------



## jboydgolfer (Apr 29, 2017)

i loved NFSU. good times.  GTX210


----------



## INSTG8R (Apr 29, 2017)

I had an FX5200 I think it was for like an hour. Returned it for a 9600XT been red team ever since. My 2900XT would be my most disappointing ATI/AMD card


----------



## AsRock (Apr 29, 2017)

AsRock said:


> No, there is\was a small voltage chip on the rear of them which got real hot. Don't know if the information is still available after all these years but a bunch of people had issue's with it, some put heat sinks on it.
> 
> My bad it was a eVGA 7800GT OCSC.



@Kanan
Did a little digging, been a while but i believe it was this chip







jboydgolfer said:


> i loved NFSU. good times.  GTX210



For me it would have to be NFS PU and Sports Car GT,  there was some time with the Original Superbikes too.


----------



## Cvrk (Apr 29, 2017)

P4-630 said:


> Where is @Cvrk , I'm sure he wants to say something here.....


----------



## Countryside (Apr 29, 2017)

Artas1984 said:


> Bla bla bla...
> 
> You can "research" all you want - it does not guarantee that you will get a faulty or buggy video card. I've researched enough to buy myself Asus GeFroce GTX560 Ti DirectCU II - it was supposed to be a cool and quiet card. It was nothing like that! It was one of the loudest cards i ever had. This thread is about sharing fun memories about unexpected video cards and their behaviors, and not for dull statements "do research before buying". It does not work this way in life guys.
> 
> This is what i am talking about:



My answer remains unchanged.


----------



## Frick (Apr 29, 2017)

Artas1984 said:


> Bla bla bla...
> 
> You can "research" all you want - it does not guarantee that you will get a faulty or buggy video card. I've researched enough to buy myself Asus GeFroce GTX560 Ti DirectCU II - it was supposed to be a cool and quiet card. It was nothing like that! It was one of the loudest cards i ever had. This thread is about sharing fun memories about unexpected video cards and their behaviors, and not for dull statements "do research before buying". It does not work this way in life guys.
> 
> This is what i am talking about:



Faulty cards is not part of the question, since they are faulty. Buggy cards can be, if it turns out it's a CQ problem, or problem with a line of cards.

EDIT: BTW, this is what w1z says about that 560ti:



> Idle fan noise of the ASUS GTX 560 Direct CU II is well optimized. Unfortunately the fan noise under load is not acceptable in my opinion - the reference design is much quieter.


----------



## Kanan (Apr 29, 2017)

AntDeek said:


> Funny how the FX 5200 seems to be equally shitty across everyone who owned one in this thread.


That and the MX440, I think I counted it 5x now in this thread.   afaik it was a GF2 rebranded as GF4. Talking about *really* bad marketing tactics, always remember that.


----------



## FordGT90Concept (Apr 29, 2017)

MX440 was a unique chip (NV17, 150 nm) but it takes after GeForce 2 MX400 (180 nm) more so than any GeForce 3 or GeForce 4 Ti chip.  It had no DirectX 8 support and they sold a lot of them through pre-built machines.  Computer store sales people were all over the fact it was a GeForce but always neglected to mention that "MX" means it's shit.

It was like people buying Celerons (Durons) expecting them to run like Pentiums (Athlons).  At least FX 5200 was clear that it was slower than the rest of the line.


----------



## Kanan (Apr 29, 2017)

Yes, but the first gens of GeForce MX were quite nice budget cards, based on latest tech - the GF "4" MX440 was maybe the first one that was utter garbage with deceiving marketing tactics on top. First and last? I don't know of any MX GPUs after that.


----------



## Artas1984 (Apr 29, 2017)

Divide Overflow said:


> It had a problem processing and displaying DOS commands.  Which one still used from time to time.



OMG, if there is any worst case scenario in the history of PC performance, it must be this. Are you kidding me? It sounds so horribly that it's actually funny...




FordGT90Concept said:


> MX440 was a unique chip (NV17, 150 nm) but it takes after GeForce 2 MX400 (180 nm) more so than any GeForce 3 or GeForce 4 Ti chip.  It had no DirectX 8 support and they sold a lot of them through pre-built machines.  Computer store sales people were all over the fact it was a GeForce but always neglected to mention that "MX" means it's shit.
> 
> It was like people buying Celerons (Durons) expecting them to run like Pentiums (Athlons).  At least FX 5200 was clear that it was slower than the rest of the line.



Never really dug into it, so non of the GeForce 4 MX series had any vertex pipelines at all, non of them supported DX8 API and non supported Open GL 1.3 API and the other specs of GeForce 4 MX cards were twice slower than the lowest GeForce 4 Ti 4200! It seems even GeForce 3 Ti 200 was better than the best GeForce 4 MX460 card. Lucky me i never had one. Back in 2001 my friend bought GeForce 2 MX400 specifically to play Quake II, and he was hugely disappointed. My other friend had a GeForce 3 Ti 200 card and i remember them comparing those in Quake 2 with GeForce 3 Ti 200 being so much superior and cursing his MX!


----------



## neatfeatguy (Apr 29, 2017)

FX 5500 - what a POS.


----------



## eidairaman1 (Apr 29, 2017)

FordGT90Concept said:


> MX440 was a unique chip (NV17, 150 nm) but it takes after GeForce 2 MX400 (180 nm) more so than any GeForce 3 or GeForce 4 Ti chip.  It had no DirectX 8 support and they sold a lot of them through pre-built machines.  Computer store sales people were all over the fact it was a GeForce but always neglected to mention that "MX" means it's shit.
> 
> It was like people buying Celerons (Durons) expecting them to run like Pentiums (Athlons).  At least FX 5200 was clear that it was slower than the rest of the line.



The durons were mean overclockers, but lets keep this on junk video cards lol


----------



## INSTG8R (Apr 29, 2017)

rtwjunkie said:


> For me, like the majority, it was the FX 5200.  Mine was a BFG.  It sucked on every level.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I can't help but laugh it was a FX 5200 I was upgrading from a Ti 4200. The 4200 was a better card....Owned the 5200 for an hour...


----------



## eidairaman1 (Apr 29, 2017)

INSTG8R said:


> I can't help but laugh it was a FX 5200 I was upgrading from a Ti 4200. The 4200 was a better card....Owned the 5200 for an hour...



Just like how a GF2 GTS 64MB was better than a MX...


----------



## rtwjunkie (Apr 29, 2017)

INSTG8R said:


> I can't help but laugh it was a FX 5200 I was upgrading from a Ti 4200. The 4200 was a better card....Owned the 5200 for an hour...


I literally went back to the Ti 4200 and overclocked the hell out of it until it's limited VRAM became an issue.

The 5200?  It is still sitting boxed in my garage.  I sold all my AGP cards, but never could bring myself to sell or even give that card to my worst enemy. 
So it sits, one day ready for some museum dedicated to pristine classic cards.


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## Kanan (Apr 29, 2017)

MX was later replaced by cards such as the 8600 GT, high clock speeds and shader counts crippled by 128bit bus and still slower than my 7800GT I had before. Luckily it was just a temp. replacement card and replaced by the 7900GT after (yes the one on the screenshot i posted). Still that 8600 GT was lightyears ahead compared to the "performance" the MX440 had. It was a passively cooled "Fatal1ty" XFX.


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## Sempron Guy (Apr 29, 2017)

I couldn't remember being disappointed with any card I've purchase for the last 11 years or so in terms of performance that is. Two cards however popped up in my mind in terms of me having one hell of an experience. The EVGA GTX 460 Boost Edition which died on me after first month of use. And the XFX HD7950 DD which has the worst/loudest cooler on the span of cards I've owned.


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## Naito (Apr 29, 2017)

P4-630 said:


> I have had a Powercolor x1950pro with great cooling and quiet! One of the best cards I've owned! If you'd only had bought this one....



I had an AGP version of that card. That was my first and last ATI/AMD GPU. It got very hot - particularly the AGP bridge chip, it was noisy, the drivers were buggy and to top it off, it was slower than the 6600GT it replaced in quite a few titles. It ended up artifacting to the max, possibly due to the heat slowly degrading components. I may have been unlucky with a dodgy card, but a few people I know, who had a X1950Pro, had similar issues. I did love the arctic cooling heatsink, though.

The card burnt me so much (literally and figuratively), that I haven't been able to even entertain the thought of purchasing an AMD GPU (aside from the one residing in my Xbox) - that's even after knowing they have improved immensely in the 10+ year since (thus my concerns are unfounded). Don't get me wrong, AMD does interest me, and I want them to do well, but it would take something quite brilliant from them to pull me away from Nvidia. Unless Nvidia tripped up, of course.


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## Totally (Apr 29, 2017)

An XFX 6970, first time buying a card that expensive only to find out later that it was one of the most cheaply build cards when it died a few months later, the pcb which had a nice curve to it out of the box was a nice tell to send it back straight away but ignored. It didn't  clock that well either.


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## eidairaman1 (Apr 29, 2017)

Naito said:


> I had an AGP version of that card. That was my first and last ATI/AMD GPU. It got very hot - particularly the AGP bridge chip, it was noisy, the drivers were buggy and to top it off, it was slower than the 6600GT it replaced in quite a few titles. It ended up artifacting to the max, possibly due to the heat slowly degrading components. I may have been unlucky with a dodgy card, but a few people I know, who had a X1950Pro, had similar issues. I did love the arctic cooling heatsink, though.
> 
> The card burnt me so much (literally and figuratively), that I haven't been able to even entertain the thought of purchasing an AMD GPU (aside from the one residing in my Xbox) - that's even after knowing they have improved immensely in the 10+ year since (thus my concerns are unfounded). Don't get me wrong, AMD does interest me, and I want them to do well, but it would take something quite brilliant from them to pull me away from Nvidia. Unless Nvidia tripped up, of course.



I had an HIS and sapphire AGP 512, never failed.


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## jagjitnatt (Apr 29, 2017)

TheLostSwede said:


> I hope you didn't pay money for that garbage. The only thing worse than SiS was PC Chips no-name stuff, which often was re-branded SiS...



It was a pretty expensive machine back in the day if I remember it correctly. Pentium 133 Mhz, 16 MB SDRAM, 1MB SiS 6215C, 24X CDROM, and a MASSIVE 1 GB HDD  running Win 95.


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## 64K (Apr 29, 2017)

My first graphics experience was with an Apple II in high school. 





I have been well pleased with the progress we've had and the GPUs over the years and haven't been corn-holed by a GPU so far. I try to do my research. Maybe I'm lucky.


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## johnspack (Apr 29, 2017)

Matrox Millenium II,  then a TNT2 that wasn't what it was advertised to be..  then oh god the fx5200 with a 64 bit bus.  My next card after the 5200 was a 7600gt,  and it was stupid faster.....
But then on to a 7950gt...  which lasted like 2 months because the 8 series came out...  oh god....


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## R00kie (Apr 30, 2017)

Welcome thee, for thy has been shit since it came out... the GeForce 2 MX400





another horrible choice of mine back in 2007... Can't believe that I actually managed to overclock this... until it sizzled and died of course 

EDIT: this is an X1600 Pro btw...


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## Kanan (Apr 30, 2017)

gdallsk said:


> another horrible choice of mine back in 2007... Can't believe that I actually managed to overclock this... until it sizzled and died of course


Did it "die" straight away, or..?  The design looks strange to say the least.


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## R00kie (Apr 30, 2017)

Kanan said:


> Did it "die" straight away, or..?  The design looks strange to say the least.


nah, it kept going for about a year that way, until it finally packed up.





this is the other side of it.


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## biffzinker (Apr 30, 2017)

gdallsk said:


> sizzled


The card managed to sizzle?



> to make a hissing sound in or as if in burning or frying


 - This?


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## johnspack (Apr 30, 2017)

Yeah,  forgot,  had a geforce2 mx400 as well.  So many crap cards......


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## R00kie (Apr 30, 2017)

biffzinker said:


> The card managed to sizzle?
> 
> - This?







A virtual sizzle


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## Kanan (Apr 30, 2017)

gdallsk said:


> A virtual sizzle


Ouch. I guess your overclocks were a bit too much for a passively cooled GPU.


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## biffzinker (Apr 30, 2017)

Interesting way of creating what some might call art though.


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## jboydgolfer (Apr 30, 2017)

64K said:


> My first graphics experience was with an Apple II in high school.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



 I remember using those (or the 2e)in summer school "computer programming" + 420 . It's a wonder I ever made it to college at all . I think we ended up basic programming a cow taking a poop , as a matter of fact I'm certain of it ,it was my summer project . Expectations were not high in those classrooms,everything else was


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## 64K (Apr 30, 2017)

jboydgolfer said:


> I remember using those (or the 2e)in summer school "computer programming" + 420 . It's a wonder I ever made it to college at all . I think we ended up basic programming a cow taking a poop , as a matter of fact I'm certain of it ,it was my summer project . Expectations were not high in those classrooms,everything else was



 I only remember a game on the Apple II that was a aggravating as all hell game. You got to go through a maze and guards would give you a map but they might be lying or they might be telling the truth. I failed all over the place.

The real prize, for me, was a much older computer that took up a whole table in one of the rooms and had for a user interface a typewriter/printer that could save a Basic program on punch tape. That was fun to program for me.


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## Bo$$ (May 1, 2017)

jagjitnatt said:


> You sir are the man for even trying SLI on that thing cause $hit + $hit only equals more $hit


I didn't know they were LE cards, I thought there were the GT version so i was going to unlock the shaders... worst purchase ever!


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## m0nt3 (May 1, 2017)

GeForce 4 MX 420 PCI (the last nvidia card I would ever purchase). in the year 2000/2001 with an HP Pavilion we had that had the AGP slot removed, although the pinout was still there as well as BIOS options. I needed something to play Unreal Tournament and it did nicely with that. Built my first computer for Unreal Tournament 2003 /HL2/Doom 3. Athlon XP 2700+ and radeon 9800 non-pro. I really miss those days, spent a lot of time on the AMD forums.


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## Vario (May 1, 2017)

Worst card I ever owned was a ATI Radeon 9600 SE.  Suck Edition.  My dad bought this for me in high school.  64 bit memory interface ensured it was slower than our Geforce 2 Pro.  It took about 5 minutes to load a BF 1942 game when the Geforce 2 Pro system loaded it in about 1 minute.  By the time the map loaded the game was halfway done.  The gameplay was always choppy and the best frame rate it could manage might be high 20s.  The 9600 was pulled and the Geforce 2 pro reinstalled.  I think the 9600 SE ended up in the old computer.  I actually sold the 9600 a year ago for about $30.


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## Apocalypsee (May 9, 2017)

I've owned so many GeForce 4 MX440 and FX 5200, from 64-bit to 128-bit, passive or active cooled cards. If I'm not mistaken, about 5 MX440s and 4 FX5200. Thing is, back then it's very hard to get good info about these cards and review about them is scarce, some mag don't really tell the complete picture like online review nowadays, with AIB making so much variant out of it (Low profile, full height, BGA memory, 64MB or 128MB memory etc.) doesn't help either. 

The GeForce 4 MX was indeed based on old GeForce 2 MX but with some GeForce 4 Ti feature like LMAII bandwidth saving tech and Accuview AA but lacked the important DirectX 8 compliant vertex and pixel shader (it have software vertex shader that run off CPU) that requires to run new games, without it some game refuses to run and some that did run looks bland. I still remember playing CnC Generals with MX440 with no shining reflection on water surfaces. The FX5200 is the same GPU with DirectX 9 compliant vertex and pixel shader but it too slow to run it, mainly because the FX architecture.

It isn't a good performer but I'm able to run Doom3 with MX440 (with a lot of tweaking to make it playable) and UT2003/2004 on FX5200 (low res to make it playable). Somehow it teaches me how to tweak the game, making me learn how things works and also learn GPU overclocking, what does TSOP vs BGA differences etc.


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## tugrul_SIMD (May 9, 2017)

R7870 Hawk (pitcairn GPU)

After I used it for 3 years, I overclocked, but it didn't break. Sometimes even tried 1475MHz on GPU and it silently continued running. 

Tried furmark, many hours of gaming, opencl computing for hours with too many heat-cycles, it survived.

In the end I used it 2 years more!

I could have bought a R9 series(much more performance) if it had failed but it didn't so I continued with it until I sold it for 75$.

Its only bad side was undefined limits. I didn't know the limits of it. It could destroy the power supply unit if I continued to oc above 1475MHz (with 1515MHz memory)


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## jboydgolfer (May 9, 2017)

i think thats the opposite of disappointing. unless poor performance, short life, and little OC were your goal OFC.


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## Robert Bourgoin (May 9, 2017)

For me it was the Vodoo 2 SLI, the second card was just for SLI and could not be used as a primary card. The performance was just ok but allot of expense to run it.


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## Outback Bronze (May 9, 2017)

XFX 7800 GT, wasn't much better than my old X800 pro flashed XT PE.

The only benefit was pixel shader 3.

A recent card that gave me the shits was a GTX 980 Strix. You couldn't clock it for shit coz it was voltage locked.

I reckon that's pretty piss poor for a high end card in todays scheme of GPU's...


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## jboydgolfer (May 9, 2017)

Outback Bronze said:


> A recent card that gave me the shits


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## Assimilator (May 9, 2017)

My first PC with 3D capabilities had an SiS 6326 4MB AGP card (and by AGP, I mean "it had a PCI-to-AGP bridge chip"). That card was a PoS, but not as bad as the PC I upgraded to, which had S3 ProSavageDDR integrated.

In my defence, I was a student at the time and money was nonexistent, and the new PC was an Athlon XP 2000+ compared to a Pentium III 450MHz, so for the workloads (software development) I was doing it was fine. I remember running UT2003 on that thing... everything had to be on the lowest details (so it was fugly as sin) and it was still slow as balls.


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## WhiteNoise (May 9, 2017)

The one card that I regretted buying was the only video card I ever bought that was DOA. 
*AMD Radeon R9 290X*

Pulled it out of the box, installed it and received a black screen. Returned it and bought a GTX 780.


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## eidairaman1 (May 10, 2017)

Apocalypsee said:


> I've owned so many GeForce 4 MX440 and FX 5200, from 64-bit to 128-bit, passive or active cooled cards. If I'm not mistaken, about 5 MX440s and 4 FX5200. Thing is, back then it's very hard to get good info about these cards and review about them is scarce, some mag don't really tell the complete picture like online review nowadays, with AIB making so much variant out of it (Low profile, full height, BGA memory, 64MB or 128MB memory etc.) doesn't help either.
> 
> The GeForce 4 MX was indeed based on old GeForce 2 MX but with some GeForce 4 Ti feature like LMAII bandwidth saving tech and Accuview AA but lacked the important DirectX 8 compliant vertex and pixel shader (it have software vertex shader that run off CPU) that requires to run new games, without it some game refuses to run and some that did run looks bland. I still remember playing CnC Generals with MX440 with no shining reflection on water surfaces. The FX5200 is the same GPU with DirectX 9 compliant vertex and pixel shader but it too slow to run it, mainly because the FX architecture.
> 
> It isn't a good performer but I'm able to run Doom3 with MX440 (with a lot of tweaking to make it playable) and UT2003/2004 on FX5200 (low res to make it playable). Somehow it teaches me how to tweak the game, making me learn how things works and also learn GPU overclocking, what does TSOP vs BGA differences etc.



Those features on that mx didn't mean diddly squat considering how slow and unreliable the series was




Assimilator said:


> My first PC with 3D capabilities had an SiS 6326 4MB AGP card (and by AGP, I mean "it had a PCI-to-AGP bridge chip"). That card was a PoS, but not as bad as the PC I upgraded to, which had S3 ProSavageDDR integrated.
> 
> 
> In my defence, I was a student at the time and money was nonexistent, and the new PC was an Athlon XP 2000+ compared to a Pentium III 450MHz, so for the workloads (software development) I was doing it was fine. I remember running UT2003 on that thing... everything had to be on the lowest details (so it was fugly sin) and it was still slow as balls.




6326 was an IGP on AT boards even.
It ran 3D games, just not well, it was MCM 2 that told me I needed an upgrade from a Celeron 333 and 256/512MB SDRAM


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## stefanels (May 11, 2017)

I think it was the 4870X2... running noisy/hot, pc crashes/resets, i had it for 2 weeks (sold it) and got a nice gtx 560ti instead...


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## yogurt_21 (May 12, 2017)

I was racking my brain to find one I was actually disappointed with...

The best I could come up with was the X1950XT but that was mostly expectation. I had an X1800XT at the time and with triple the shaders I was expecting more than just a slight bump...well that didn't work out. 

Alot of people were disappointed with the Rage but I liked it. The Radeon 9000 because it was slower than the gpu it was based on (the 8500) but I loved that card.

Like the OP I loved my HD 2900XT as I did its replacement the 9600GT Sonic. The GTX 480 was a market flop but I ran 2 in sli and loved it.

Even the disappointment with the X1950XT wore off as it was still a kick ass card.

idk. I've had far more CPU's I've been disappointed in than GPUs.


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## Lionheart (May 12, 2017)

FX 5200 128mb Vram back in 2003, I was still learning about PC hardware & was unaware of this monstrosity, I upgraded from a ATI All In Wonder Radeon 7500 64mb card, only got a slight improvement in performance & saw pixel shading for the first time as well but the performance bump was terrible lol


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## eidairaman1 (May 12, 2017)

yogurt_21 said:


> I was racking my brain to find one I was actually disappointed with...
> 
> The best I could come up with was the X1950XT but that was mostly expectation. I had an X1800XT at the time and with triple the shaders I was expecting more than just a slight bump...well that didn't work out.
> 
> ...




1950 pro was a pretty good bump over a 9800 Pro- 4x the ram at that, my AXP rig ran COD4 with that Card just fine despite IW trying to force users onto SSE2 or something like that...

X1950 PRO, X1950XT HD3850, HD4670, Last of the Fast AGP cards available.


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## fusseli (May 12, 2017)

my gen1 - fx5600 256mb was a let down, never that fast (couldn't run Doom 3 on ultra ), but a big leg up from the geforce 2 Ti it replaced.

my gen2 - X1400 mobile was junk, but the gtx 7800go I swapped it with was great.

my gen 3 - ATI 3870 was the "worst" card I ever had, supposedly mid-high end at $250 in 2007.  It was just the shrink and OC version of the 2900XT.  It never kept up with anything at the time,  managed cod4 on high but not >60fps.  Couldn't even handle L4D2 maxed out.  I upgraded to a 4870 and it was a massive step up.  Funny, now they recommend waiting 2-3 generations before a gpu upgrade, back then the single gen upgrade was BIG.

my gen 4 - gtx670 and then two in SLI.  Good cards but not enough vram for the horsepower.  A single gtx970 was an upgrade even at 1080P.


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## Kanan (May 12, 2017)

yogurt_21 said:


> idk. I've had far more CPU's I've been disappointed in than GPUs.


Maybe we should open a thread for that as well.


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## crazyeyesreaper (May 12, 2017)

ASUS Radeon HD 7970 DirecCu II TOP

Where to start? 
1# First the card was advertised with voltage control but it never actually featured that ability aka false marketing
2# Was a shit overclocker
3# 4 RMAs
4# Final working card from RMA had LN2 Bios flashed to it so ran 3D clocks 24/7 eventually another forum member volt modded it and got voltage control working.

over a year of headaches will NEVER buy an ASUS product again. The amount of bullshit they put me through was insane to finally get a working card that still didn't technically WORK.


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## Outback Bronze (May 12, 2017)

crazyeyesreaper said:


> over a year of headaches will NEVER buy an ASUS product again



Yeah I'm kinda in the same boat with Asus GPU's. The 980 Strix I bought was voltage locked. Sucks balls hey.


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## dcf-joe (May 12, 2017)

I once had two MSI GTX 570s in SLI, the ones with whatever their fancy cooling solution is called. I was very disappointed when a month or two after using them, one of them died. I was so underwhelmed by this that I have since never purchased another MSI video card again.


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