Computer video graphics cards definitely have evolved and today’s most powerful graphics cards offer performance that we’ve only dreamed about a couple of years back. Well, just a notice though, I’ll be tackling those that I’ve encountered and observed. I started with computers back when I was in grade school and there weren’t many popular video cards since full 3D gaming did not exist yet. I’ll start off with the voodoo era.
More than a decade ago, the 3D graphics scene started to flourish and people started to see different types of video cards. It was when the PC started to be able to display full 3D graphics and processors and platforms can handle the new technology. Before, 3D cards can not stand alone. Your PC must have a VGA 2D graphics card and if you decide to play 3D games, you’ll need a separate 3D accelerator. That is so much expensive. I remember I had to shell out $200+ to buy the powerful 3dfx voodoo 2 to play games at great speed. It was one of the most famous video cards in its time. It offered crisp graphics and stand-alone 3D processing power. Even its predecessor, the Voodoo was very very good.
Matrox and SiS had their famous offering as well. Matrox had its own 3D stand alone graphics card (Millennium) and SiS had a graphics card that can handle both 2D and 3D graphics. Well, it’s too bad that these 2 are not in the market anymore for 3D graphics. There may be a very few of them still circulating. Matrox has new cards though but they’re usually for desktop 2D applications.
Nvidia and ATi started to arrive around the year 2000 (or even earlier). Nvidia released the TNT line of video cards that offer both 2D and 3D graphics. ATi started off with ATi Rage. At around this time, the platform changed from PCI to AGP which offers faster and more efficient graphics processing power.
3Dfx followed up with the very famous and successful Voodoo 3. I also had one of these before and it was just great. However, the next cards in its line would be the last. The Voodoo 4 and 5 unfortunately, weren’t able to make the cut against the powerful cards of Nvidia and ATi.
Around the time of the Voodoo 3, Nvidia revealed the TNT2 which was another top card to beat. After the release of the TNT2, Nvidia released the all-new Geforce line (Geforce 256) of video cards and ATi started off with the Radeon series (7000 series). These 2 cards probably marked the beginning of the competition between the two remaining graphics cards manufacturers today. Hardware Transform and Lighting became the staple in 3D performance and these cards put more power in 3D processing and aimed at a gaming audience.
Even the low end card TNT2 M64 became a hit because of its low price and ability to still play games. Low resolutions are fine with most gamers. Again, the price tag is more convincing.
From here on, we started to see lots of variations in the graphics cards. The differences lied on the graphics core clock speeds, memory speeds, the amount of memory itself, and the technology (pixel shaders, Direct X support, etc) Then, the next generation card which is probably one of the most famous is the Geforce 2 GTS. Meanwhile, ATi moved on the 8000 series and the most powerful and famous of which is the 8500.
I admit though that I got really mad a bit since lots of variations popped out. Even now, you’ll probably have a hard time choosing a video card because of the tons of cards available. And mind you, they’re only from 2 companies. Also, the PCI express platform started to flourish and AGP offerings became much less frequent.
Let’s go back. After that, Nvidia’s next famous graphics line is the Geforce 3 and its Titanium series. This moved on to the Geforce 4 which had its top card (ti4600) on the top of benchmarks. The low and mid-range cards in the Geforce 4 MX series are also famous and well accepted. ATi had their answer as well and the 9000 series was released. Their top bet was their very powerful 9800 cards. They had good performance at mid-range as well with the 9500/9600 series.
The next line of cards did not really make a big scene unlike some of the powerful cards such as Nvidia 6900 series and the ATi x1950 xtx. Technology sure did improve and direct x support became really advanced. The Nvidia 7000 series was good as well especially the 7600 GTS. Then, the most famous in the next line of Nvidia cards was the 8800 GT which surprisingly can match up even to higher priced cards.
ATi had a few short blows somewhere in this timeline but with the release of the HD graphics line, ATi is now keeping up and still offers good performance over price. The quality is great as well and increasing AA and AF settings still hits the speed but not that much. The HD3000 series made a blast as well after the release of the HD2000 series of cards. The next powerful lines of cards and most notable would be the Nvidia 9800 and the GTX series and ATi’s HD4000 series.
Remember the Voodoo 2 times when you can use 2 cards to speed and juice up your video games? Well, now with Nvidia SLi and ATi crossfire you can even stack up to 3 or 4 video cards for unprecedented performance and of course, an almost unreal price tag.
Well, these are just based on my own views and opinions and these are just the cards that made it big in the industry and have been well accepted by the consumers. Well, currently, we have the Nvidia GTX line and the ATi HD4800 lines that offer the top performance but of course, more powerful cards will be released and more mid-stream and wallet-friendly graphics cards will be available for many. I’m looking to upgrade my PC and I plan to buy an Nvidia 8800 GT/GTS card. Well, hopefully next week the store still has my card.
