My 4850 was great. The HD4000 series was a strong move in the right direction with ATI's 2nd fastest card on release almost double the performance of their fastest single card from the previous generation (4850 vs 3870). Still enjoying every minute of my HD4890. Because I still game at 1680x1050, I have no reason to upgrade to anything else.
I used 9600XT from The company called GE CUBE I think they closed now. Then I went to Sapphire X800XL, The card died and took my Mobo and ram with it. I cried a bucket as I was a student back then and all of my investment just washed away in front of my eye. It was a shock circuit in my house so my pc got burnt. Ow well , In my opinion 1. 9800XT the king 2. X 1950 XTX DDR4 if i remember correctly it was competing against 7900GTX but also some times equal to the 7950 GX2. 3. The 5870/5850 The best of the best. Just wish they fix the Driver support better for AA and Tessellation.
ATi Radeon 9700 Pro , the card that owned 2 generations of nVidia lineup, the GeForce 4Ti series and the GeForce FX 5800 series (even owned the 5900 series when it comes to true DX9 games)
This x2. I was hoping we would have seen an HD5890, but I believe because Nvidia took so long to release Fermi and with the progression of the HD6000's release so soon, there was no point really. An HD4890@1Ghz+ is as fast or faster than GTX285 and is in 5850 territory in many games. The X1950XTX was a monster for its time. By far the fastest single cards solution of that generation. In most games it trounced the 7900GTX.
My first was the 9600XT, back when I knew nothing about computers lol. Ran HL2 nicely though and that was good enough for me d=) X1950XT was awesome, still alive and kicking in my Dad's machine. My fav has to be my Sapphire 4870X2 though, I've had it for 27 months or something and still going strong, still maxes out almost any brand new game, Metro 2033 high settings 1080p, Crysis high too (just not very high), will still last me another year of cranked up graphics I'd guess.
I would have to say they 9800Pro. Before that I had purchased the FX5900xt, not a bad card but decided to do trade-in and got instead the 9800Pro, it costed me a fortune in 2003, around 600 dollars... but lasted me for a good three years at maximum settings. The card was ahead of its time, no doubt about it.
nVidia worst card series in history belong to FX, i owned once FX5500 and traded for 9550, R9550 was LIGHT YEARS owning the 5500 ass, i remember it in FEAR game where the difference rose up so much.
i went from a fx5700le and sold it and got a 9600xt and played doom 3 on almost max n everyone was jealous
my 9800 pro was pretty good, I flashed it to a XT and stuck a AMD xp cooler on it. in out 5mins after I opened the box. ran like that for years. The card I got now is the first ATI card I had in years. got it to replace a 9800GTX that died. I don't do much gaming anymore so a got this for $75(wanted something cheap and just as powerful as the 9800gtx) and It's not a bad little card for being cheap as hell. I really never tried overclocking it much. I just stuck it at 750 because that's what a 4870 runs at and 1100 because my old 9800gtx ram speed was that. The thing runs cool and stable as a rock.
9500 NP on a red PCB and l-shaped memory chips. Soft modded to 9700 np. Just as along as you got lucky and didn't have any pipes cut. I was fortunate there and loved having a card, when overclocked, that was considered near the fastest at the time. I still have a 1900XT operating in my girlfriend's machine. She only play's WoW and runs just fine for that. That card ran great in my A64 days. Well during R&D for the HD2900, it was designed to be the king and kill the 8800GTX, or so ATI thought. Even had a high price tag of $499. Then once it was discovered that a single 2900 couldn't compete with the 8800gtx, ATI changed their position and pitted it against the 8800gts and dropped the price. As other posters have mentioned, in Crossfire, they were unbeatable in the benchmarks. I would call the HD2900 series just a partial failure. Even though it initially didn't have a good first showing, it did as others have mentioned, pave the way for the newer cards based off that technology and has turned ATI/AMD completely around.
at the time my voodoo 5500 owned. nvidia needs to sell that name off to someone and bring is back asap but i think the best cards hands down is the ATI 5870s crossfire. a year old and its still keeping up with the 480s lol. it goes to show that this time around ati takes the cake from all the other cards in the past(maybe get a new driver suppot team)
