Hi guys. If you have been at this game for a while now I think it would be nice for us to know your best and worst GPU purchases and why. Me. Worst: GT8800/320Mb This card was reviewed as being the sweet spot for games at the time but killer app Colin McRea Dirt made the card dead money. Radeon RX480 4GB. Again this card was described as the sweet spot for gaming but badly optimised killer apps at the time like: Dirt4, resident evil7 and Rise of the tomb raider hammered it, making it unsatisfactory. Best: 6800 GT Ultra. Radeon 4870 1GB. GTX660 2GB and GTX1070 8GB. Could play anything at the time giving good service.
A laptop with go5700 - ran hot and broke in 11 months. Couldn't play games (2004) without degrading settings a lot. Now my recent GTX 680 laptop is showing its age (4 -5 years) but still manages to play many games decently and it's quite quiet. Waiting for GTX 1080 laptop which should play anything on 1080p.
Worst was probably SLI TITAN SC. Best is the 1080 TI of course. GTX 1080 laptops have been out for a year.
>>GTX 1080 laptops have been out for a year. Yes, but the next generation is not evident. My desired brand is in short supply.
Best - My R9 280 - It has good performance for its price still after 5-6 years Worst - HD4870 x2 - Thing ran hotter than the sun and was so heavy I had to lie my case on its side or it would have broken the motherboard LOL Forgot to add I only kept the 4870 for a week, paid 373 pounds for it through the place I worked at, sold it to a customer for 250 pounds and went for a gtx 275
Worst - maybe GTX 260, expected more, didnt really deliver @ 1920 x 1200, bought a 4870 X2 about a month later, has to be my shortish length of time to own a card. Best - HD7970 or the 980 TI Quite liked my 4870 X2, but yea, one of the hottest things to be created, HD5870 gets a honorable mention, if i remember correctly, for me, it just needed more vram, would of prob kept it for longer.
Worst: 7950 HD, overclocked the snot out of it and it shat the bed 2 months in. It was probably a miner card. Not to mention driver woes. Best: nVidia GTX 970 Superb performance, quiet as ever and never came short to the task.
Worst? Has to be ASUS STRIX 980 Ti, serious design flaw in the cooler. Reached temps so high it was close to FUBARing itself in SLI.
I am easy to please, and I have fond memories of my video cards, all in all I don't have a best or a worst one, I had what I had and I don't regret buying one or another.
Worst: GeForce FX5600 - Worked ok until Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 came out. Had to quickly upgrade to a 6800GT so I could play on anything higher than medium settings. Best: Either the Nvidia 8800GT or GTX980ti.
Worst card ATI 9600Se the worst descision that I have ever made because I thought the card would perform well for my needs but nope got an FX 5700 Ultra to replace that crap. Tried to play Starwars Knights of the Old Republic at the time. Best: Geforce 6800 because it ran Doom3 like a champ and it was a huge upgrade over the 5700 Ultra GTS 250 ran everything that I threw at it even though it was a rebranded 9800 or something like that. 560 Ti Got me through the rest of my C2Q Q6600 DDR3's life cycle. R9 290 While I had issue early in the Card's life (black Screen lockups) but that was easily fixed once I knew what the problem was and it ran Tomb Raider 2013 like a champ and any other game I threw at it. Plus got free games with it. GTX 1070 Runs every game I throw at it @1080p or Upscaled to 4K via DSR very well and it OC's like a champ compared to the R9 290 which I couldn't get any decent OC out of it.
My worse GPU purchase would probably be the ATI R9 290 since i couldn't play my games at Ultra settings on a 1080p 60hz monitor. My best GPU purchase is the GTX 1070 which allowed me to play any game i throw at it with Ultra settings to run beyond 60fps on a 1080p 60hz monitor.
I bought an Evga GTX 670 FTW in September 2013. I had wanted to buy a GTX 780 or something. But it was out of stock. There were a few shops selling them where I live but they did not accept credit cards. I was not satisfied with its performance but used it anyway. Best purchase: 1080Ti. Because of its performance.
Worst was FX5200, part of the first PC I built for myself, I was short on cash and well... instant regret. Went ahead and got the 9800Pro very soon after - which was one of the best cards I ever had along with my BFG (RIP) 8800 Ultra. From more modern times it has to be my 2 x MSI GTX 680 Lightnings, too bad they got vram starved within a year and a half. Best price/performance ratio, as weird as this may sound, has to be my current 1080Ti, which I got at launch and still amazes me what numbers it can pull off no matter what I throw at it.
Not really my "worst" but probably my least researched, GTX680 and in particular, SLi scaling. I bought a second GTX680 for an SLi setup, yet the scaling was terrible and I found seeing that I play games on low, it was an utter waste of money. So while the hardware was fine, it was my worst purchase in the sense that it was redundant.
My best was probably 8800 gtx in 2 way sli - i added another later for 3 way sli, but that was kinda a mistake... but the 2 way sli setup was amazing, ran the original crysis like a boss My worst purchase is kinda hard to say, but its probably gtx 295 quad sli, or 780 ti sli... i was having issues with vram limit from the moment i got both setups (due to running high res), except in the few odd games that had very low vram reqruirements (witcher 3 for instance), but the gtx 295 quad sli setup also had horrible scaling in most games, with a few exceptions (far cry 2 for instance). In both cases i would have benefitted greatly from having gotten double vram edition gpu's in 2 way sli instead. Luckily vram hasn't been an issue on my current 1080's in 2 way sli eventhough i use 4k, but there are several games where it's right on the limit - rise of the tomb raider for instance.
Worst FX5600 needless to say NV really messed up on the Geforce 5 range. Best 9700 pro was really something when it launched.