What is your most fondly remembered GPU that you have previously owned?

[AGTDenton]

I remember most of mine...

The Fondly list is:

Matrox Millennium I & II
nVidia Riva 128, Riva TNT 2 Ultra
Geforce 256 (Creative Labs Annihilator Pro), 4400Ti, 6800GS, 8800GT, 285, 680, 980Ti, GT 1030, 1080Ti

The not so fondly list:
Gigabyte Geforce 7600GT
Gigabyte Radeon HD4850 passive x2 Crossfire - scarily my friend still had these up until a couple of months ago when it transpired it doesn't work fully with Windows 10, so we updated him to a RX 580 for £150 and gotta say mightily impressed!

I know I had another single card Radeon but for the life of me can't remember what it was, I just wasn't impressed with ATi at the time and have not considered them again until now!

[stubbadub]

Another voodoo 2 mention here. Also playing UT 2004 on my PNY Verto Ti4200 gets an honourable mention

[towell]

The first GPU I bought and installed myself was a Radeon HD 7850. It was an MSI one - loved it because I could finally run games at reasonable framerates. ALthouigh I do remember the screw threads on the plastic fan shroud breaking and the whole thing, fan and all, fell off the heatsink. Oh well, dad fixed it with some zipties! I think its still running in a spare PC in the study at my parents house.

[JamesP91]

I've kept my EVGA GTX960 SCC 2GB going for over 5 years now and judging by the likely lack of supply for the 6800XT could be going for another few months yet!

[SilentSnake]

I most fondly remember my VooDoo Graphics because it was both the first GPU to be created and my first one, too.

We used to call GPUs "3DFX" cards back then. The first game I played using hardware acceleration was Croc: Legend of the Gobbos. Made such an impression on me I remember it to this day.

[bowepa]

Voodoo 3D, that will stay in memory forever.

[moshpit]

My first real 3D setup with Diamond Stealth PCI and Diamond Monster Voodoo Graphics, affectionately named my "stealth monster" gaming machine.

My replacement setup for the Stealth Monster, an ATI Expert@play for 2D and a pair of STB Blackmagic Voodoo 2 12mb cards in SLI, later replaced the 2D card with a Guillimot Phoenix Voodoo Banshee 16mb card and Glide Switched to Voodoo 2 SLI for all 3D stuff.

Lots happened after that, went through a bunch, but the next memorable set came along with R300/R350/R360 series GPUs from ATI. The first of which I owned was a Radeon 9700 Pro All In Wonder, followed up with a 9800 Pro, and later even a 9800XT, all of which were amazing gaming experiences.

Went through a bunch more before getting to the Radeon 5870 and getting a pair of them setup in Crossfire. Ton of good times there.

My EVGA GTX 680 was the longest lasting GPU I have ever owned, 6 years. When it eventually got replaced during the 1080 Ti custom cards launch, it had served well for more years than any other component I've ever owned in fact. The 1080 Ti came in a close second place for longevity, though is still running in somebody else's rig now, so may well live just as long easily, but I got a good 4 years out of that before replacing it with a RTX 3090.

I suspect the RTX 3090 will end up earning it's own place in my GPU history for memorability. It's already given out amazing wow factor for the 2 months I've owned it, more so than I remember any GPU since Voodoo Graphics impressing me from the get go of owning it. 2 months in with it and counting!

Now, if I'm being SUPER technical about the post title, ALL of my video cards since the first PC I owned are memorable in their own ways, if not overly exciting.

So then, list of ALL video cards I can remember, seeing as that qualifies as "memorable"
1. Hercules 512Kb VLB
2. Diamond Stealth 2mb PCI
3. Diamond Stealth 4mb PCI + Diamond Monster Voodoo Graphics 4mb PCI
4. ATI Expert@Play 4mb AGP + STB Blackmagic 12mb PCI Voodoo 2 x2 in SLI
5. Guillimot Phoenix 16mb AGP Voodoo Banshee (still kept V2 SLI running alongside)
6. 3dfx Voodoo 3 3000 16mb AGP
7. 3dfx Voodoo 3 3500 16mb AGP (TV Tuner included)
8. ATI Radeon (original) ViVo 64mb AGP
9. Asus V8200 Geforce 3 64mb AGP
10. MSI Geforce 4 Ti 4400 128mb AGP
11. ATI Radeon 9700 All in Wonder 128mb AGP
12. ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256mb AGP (R360 core, flashed to XT)
13. ATI Radeon 9800 XT 256mb AGP (actual retail XT)
14. XFX Geforce 6800GT 128mb PCIe
15. BFG Geforce 7800GT 256mb PCIe
16. EVGA Geforce 7950GT 512mb PCIe
17. EVGA Geforce 8800GTS 320mb PCIe
18. EVGA Geforce 8800GTS 640mb PCIe
19. BFG Geforce 9800GT 512mb PCIe
20. ATI Radeon 4870 512mb PCIe
21. ATI Radeon 5870 1024mb PCIe x2 in Crossfire
22. EVGA Geforce GTX 580 Black Ops Ed. 1.5Gb PCIe
23. EVGA Geforce GTX 680 2Gb PCIe
24. EVGA Geforce GTX 660 Ti PCIe (temp card, 2 months)
25. Gigabyte Aorus GTX 1080 Ti 11Gb PCIe
26. PNY RTX 3090 24Gb XLR8 Epic-X
Leaves out a bunch of junk pile GPUs that I inhereted from upgrading people's computers.

[bowepa]

VOODOO 3D , that was a monster card.... Playing first 3D games was so cool

[FosterCB]

My 550 ti

My first GPU so probably why! I got it for mainly photography and then got sucked into gaming. I thought it handled everything I threw at it fairly well! Fond memories of sniping on BF4

[OhMyGodzilla]

I would say the GTX 970 as it was part of the first build that I did solo. It didn't skip a beat on all the games I wanted to play and still doesn't really but I recently upgraded to a widescreen 34" 1440p monitor and I want higher FPS along with better graphics quality so I'm reluctantly having to upgrade.

[Homecook]

NVIDIA Geforce

[CPGP]

Yet another 3DFX user here.

Choosing the graphics API when launching a game (Unreal Tournament stands out in my memory) was certainly more "interesting" years ago. Software, 3DFX, DirectX, OpenGL...

Some games let you choose between DirectX11, DirectX 12 or Vulkan, so perhaps the practice is making a return.

[Norkay]

A Gainward Golden Sample GeForce 8800GT - my first, owned, liquid-cooled graphics card. It was beautiful with the stock cooler, and it got beastly with a waterblock on it. Never felt a need for the GTS version.

[goldstar0011]

The First card I bought myself so the fondest was Diamond Monster Fusion, had no idea what I was doing but I remember the guy selling to me was helpful

[lee_evo]

I remember going to the local pc shop, pre-internet days before the dawn of online shopping to buy my 3DFX Voodoo 2

First real 3D game I purchased was Star wars Rogue Squadron... It blew me away ..

Good times

[Pob255]

My first real 3D setup with Diamond Stealth PCI

Interesting I've had a very similar path to yours
lets see if I can remember all of them

Diamond Stealth 2000 3D 1mb
some generic S3 card 4mb
Geforce 2 MX
geforce fx5200
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro 128mb AGP (which died when it cooked it's own memory)
Leadtek Winfast A400 nVidia GeForce 6800 LE 128mb agp (flashed to unlock all the shader&vertex pipes but couldn't do 6800ultra speeds)
xfx 7900gs XXX 256mb pci-e (all cards after this are pci-e, the XXX was just xfx's highly overclocked card)
Leadtek 9800gtx+ 512mb
two 9800gtx+ in sli
evga gtx 280 or gtx 260 not sure which
asus gtx560Ti 1gb
evga gtx970 SuperClocked 4gb

Might be missing a couple, there might of been another early ati card, my 9700Pro cooking it's ram put me off ati/amd cards and made me paranoid over cooling.
one of the reasons I got the Leadtek 6800LE was the beefy cooler it was a larger double sided copper cooler, same as they used on the 6800ultra model only difference was a slightly smaller fan, I was really pleased that it unlocked fully as well, so I ended up with a card only slightly slower than the ultra for half the cost.
The first thing I did to my 7900gs was replace the basic xfx cooler and put one on that was basically the 7900gtx cooler

The card that's lasted the longest is the gtx560ti in fact it's still going strong in my other half's pc, not that she games.