QOTW: What was the first graphics card you purchased?

[CameronWiseOwl]

An ATI Radeon 128mb... I think, can't remember the exact model. Although technically my dad bought it so I could finally play some PC games, fond memories!

[=assassin=]

Not counting stuff pre-installed in pre-built systems, the first actual discrete graphics I bought was a Leadtek 128MB 6600GT. I loved that card, and remember it came with a couple of free games, one was Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, which looked great, but I wasn't very good at.

It was such a great feeling to finally play some games, as I had previously been making do with a rubbish and very dated 32MB TNT2 that was literally soldered onto the motherboard of the pre-built Time PC I had previously used.

I remember one of the first few games I played was Deus Ex: Invisible War, sadly a game not fondly remembered compared to the excellent first game, but I still enjoyed playing it, despite its faults. I still don't think I was able to put everything on max, as it was quite demanding, but not far off anyway.

The card cost around £130 when I got it around March 2005, and it was part of a complete new system with an Athlon 64 3200+ and 1GB RAM. I chose the Leadtek after reading quite a few reviews that compared the different brands on cooling+heatsink quality. I think the heatsink/fan on the Leadtek wasn't the best mounting system, as it was quite flimsy, but it ran cool enough, and not too loud... the stock AMD CPU fan drowned out everything else when it ramped up to full speed. The PCB was just a boring green one, but I liked the design of the fan/heatsink.

After a couple of years, the PC itself was used for LAN gaming only up until around 2018 when it finally failed, but the Leadtek 6600GT was replaced around 2010-2011 ish after it started getting artifacts. It's successor/replacement was a Palit GT 220, which is still used today in a PC also only used for LAN gaming with my Dad.

[SylvanSagacious]

Nvidia MX 440

cheap dirt, but it worked

[IT Troll]

First was 2D, then added dedicated 3D, then a combined 2D/3D card.

1995 Diamond Stealth64 Video VRAM PCI (S3 Vision 968 2MB VRAM)
1997 Diamond Multimedia Monster 3D (3Dfx Voodoo1 4MB EDO)
1998 Matrox Millennium G200 (8MB SGRAM)

[NatoR]

Diamond Moster 3D 4MB (3Dfx Voodoo 1).

[galapogos]

Some Cirrus Logic 1MB card, though I really wanted the S3 Vision 968 which I couldn't afford then.

[lumireleon]

S3 trio 4mb sram running on P2 233mhz with MMX tech

[Kayteesdad]

Matrox Mystique

[apeman556]

My first pc build included the first generation of a 3DFX Voodoo card.

[Fabula]

Can´t remember exacly what was the oldest. Chronology from back then is starting to fail me. Def had
S3 Virge DX
Voodoo banshee
Diamond stealth

at some point. After a TNT2 and maybe a geforce4200 I had a voodoo 5500 which was huge, though probably not up to titan size.

[SpeedyJDK]

Picasso IV with 4MB Ram for Amiga Zorro3. Best card ever made and still is.

[slizerdk]

Dont laugh ppl.
That was a 8087 coprocessor for my 8086 so elite would run smoother when drawing triangles in the ´80s.

[sventz]

my first was an ATI rage pro and then on the second setup i jumped on an Nvidia 4200

[Shephi]

My first Card was (please do not laugh ) A Tseng ET 3000 ISA BUS 386SX. OS was DOS. This card was in my first pc i had.

[nbaker]

Diamond Stealth 64

[malculator]

Hercules Prophet II MX Dual GPU (GeForce MX2). Back then, I hadn't figured the MX variants were budget cards and was quite unimpressed with my new card's performance in Deus Ex.