I had a 6800 vanilla and the value was pretty good (still crippled by that 128mb of VRAM). I'm going to have to say that the 8800GTX is the ultimate king of nvidia cards. Not only did it destroy the competition when it came out and more than doubled the frame rate of the previous high end card (7950 GT) but it has lasted so long that I'd still use one today. Infact I used an 8800Ultra for about 2 months at the start of the year due to a critical computer outage and it performed very well. It simply had it all, enough grunt, video memory and memory bandwidth to survive the test of time. Not only that but later it had Tri-SLi introduced which I know a lot of users have enjoyed. Personally I wish I owned one when they came out . It even destroyed ATi's late comer the 2900XT when it was well late.
BTW, Geforce 7 and Geforce 5 series cards belong no where near this list. They are permanently banned.
i hold the hwbot record for 2 6800 vanillas in SLI. they were leadtek 6800 vanillas with vantec coolers. I actually sold my 6800gs to get them. I remember they were as fast as a 7800gtx/7900gt in 3dmark05/06
Unfortunately HWBOT scores don't mean jack when it comes to gaming . When I put a 6800GT into my machine BF2 became a whole lot more playable.
Agreed. My 6600GT held its own until the 8800GT came out. For me it's either that or my current 470GTX. 8800GT was the ultimate price/performance card.
1st Geforce 256 2nd 8800 GTS 512MB (Best 8000 series IMO) 2nd (also) 460 Went from 2 8800GTS which I must of had for 3 years (ish) to a MSI Hawks and havent even bothered overclocking it yet because it has no probs playing any game really. I always seem to go for the GTS/460 level now days because they are solid at 60FPS performance level. When I jump to 3D I guess I will need to get a solid 120FPS card. Don't understand the 8800 Ultra worship, how much better then the GTS was it? then compare the price. Flipside worst cards from Nvidia???
Geforce 3 series NV20 (was pure 3 card series with no ****ty naming and lots of power) Geforce 6800 series NV40 (unlocking made this super hyper über) 16/6 love GTX 200 series (Skipped G80/G90 so it was über upgrade and loved it) GTX 400 series (possibility to unlock 465 made this 1 for me nice choise)
It was OK for its time, but nothing special coming between the great 6 and 8 series. I owned one and it didnt give me sort of the satisfaction I got from the 6 and 8 series. Initial batches were spotty as well with defective ram. Nvidia renamed it a few months later as the 7950 after sorting out the problem.
GeForce6 was nothing revolutionary....at least not from nVidia themselves. Their first dual-CPU card came from Gigabyte in the form of a dual-GPU 6600GT. GeForce 7 saw the first nVidia designed dual-GPU card in the form of the 7950GX2. http://www.guru3d.com/article/gigabyte-3d1-dual-gpu-6600gt/ http://www.anandtech.com/show/1583 nVidia had nothing to do with Gigabyte's dual-GPU 6600GT and offered no official support for the card. The card even supposedly required a special Gigabyte motherboard to function. Hell, nVidia actually fought innovation back when that card was released....lol. But, they learned from Gigabyte. Some of the vanilla 6800's could have pipelines unlocked....plus, most could OC far enough to keep up with the 6800GT before unlocking the disabled pipelines.
Best Nvidia card ever? My 8800GT without any doubt!!!:roll: It cost me 260€ when it was released and offers amazing performance for the price it was. It overclocks nicely and never gave me a single problem! And after 3 years it still plays every game released so far on 1680x1050 on high settings!!! This card is going to be very hard to be replaced...
I would say the 470 for today's game standards for price and awesome performance.2-3 years ago id say the 8800gt I had one and I got that card for about 170usd and the performance was the best at the time for the price.
Read all my posts first. The 6800 vanilla usually came with 128mb, and if you were like me with a 128mb version it became apparently clear when trying to run BF2 with high settings all round. When I swapped it for a GT with 256mb it was like night and day. And yes I unlocked the PP on my old vanilla, it was an awesome card for sure but that 128mb was a real killer in the end. I believe the 6 series was very important for nvidia, especially after the dismal failure that was the 5 series (yes I had one of those too). The 6800 Ultra had amazingly good competitive performance bringing shader model 3.0 and a massive increase in rendering quality (actually very noticable).
found this thread just now but i will say best was 6600GT AGP Oced it back then a lot and i mean a lot from 500/900 to 620/1200.
The GeForce 5 series cards were considerably more popular than people in these forums seem to think. My local retailers and small "mom and pop" shops couldn't keep the cards in stock. When I bought my FX5600XT, I had to actually order the damn card so it'd be there when I went to pick it up. They actually sold better in retail here...than any card seems to have done since. Hell, I kept my GeForce FX5700LE longer than I've kept any other card....and if I could go back to the day I got it, I'd do it all over again.
