Jacob Roach / Digital Trends
When we think of thebest graphics cardsin this Clarence Day and age , GPUs like theRTX 4090or theRX 7900 XTXcome to mind . However , for these beastly wag to be able to run , some much older GPUs had to crawl , and then walk , to get us to where we are today .
take care back , the account of art calling card show us a few turning point GPUs that redefined graphics technology . lease ’s take a stumble back to 1996 and subsequent years to explore the graphics cards that made a difference of opinion , had an impingement , and were smash hits with enthusiasts all around the globe .
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends
3dfx Voodoo
The 3dfx Voodoo mark the sunrise of consumer 3-D graphics quickening . This computer graphic accelerator , fit with a modest 50MHz clock speed and 4/6 MB of memory , not to remark a 500 nm process node , may not sound like much . However , it unfold up gaming to a whole new grocery when it launched in 1996 .
The card was principally design to provide to gamers . Its ability to render complex 3D environments was groundbreaking at the metre , even if the specs sound laughable by today ’s touchstone . The championship that supported Voodoo ’s Glide API drive home an unmatched visual experience in 3D , at resolutions get through up to 800 x 600 , or 640 x 480 for the lower spec .
However , the 3dfx Voodoo ( often refer to as Voodoo 1 by and by on ) was not without fault . Since this was a 3D graphics particle accelerator , those who grease one’s palms it still had to grease one’s palms a separate 2D card . Without the 2D card , the 3dfx Voodoo would n’t be capable to show any video at all , so this was more of a solution for enthusiasts . Like most of the nontextual matter solutions of those time , it also struggled with heat .
Thanks to the launch of this throttle valve , Voodoo Graphics became a market leader for several years , although the ship’s company later become on to exhaust one of theworst GPUs of all fourth dimension , the 3dfx Voodoo Rush . Ultimately , while its innovations were monolithic and shaped the computer graphic landscape , 3dfx Interactive did n’t last the fickle GPU marketplace of the late 1990s and the early 2000s . Nvidia bought out most of its assets in late 2000 — mostly to secure the noetic belongings rights .
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
Just a few years later , in 2002 , ATI ’s Radeon 9700 Pro was the Martin Luther King of artwork for a while — and it certainly had much better specs than the 3dfx Voodoo . free-base on a 150 nm cognitive operation node , it had a core clock of 325MHz and 128 mebibyte of DDR memory across a 256 - bit user interface . It could support solving of up to 2,048 x 1,536 .
More importantly , it was the first graphic card to stomach DirectX 9.0 , but that ’s not all . This is the GPU that popularized anti - aliasing ( AA ) and anisotropic filtering ( AF ) . Prior to this add-in , those feature article were not really mainstream , but this GPU made it possible . It also surpass its competitors , such as Nvidia ’s GeForce4 Ti 4600 , by up to 100 % with AA and AF enable .
ATI ’s early adoption of DirectX 9 countenance it to stand out compare to Nvidia ’s GeForce4 Ti series , which did n’t offer hardware support for DX9 . This was a time period of prison term when ATI , later AMD , dominated Nvidia like never before , publish a generation of nontextual matter cards that shoot down Nvidia with ease . The Radeon 9700 Pro was keep up by the Radeon 9800 Pro , which was also a massive success among gamers andreviewersalike .
ATI went on to trade blows with Nvidia for a few more years , until it was acquired by AMD in 2006 . The ATI brand name was killed off in 2010 , but Radeon still remains in the name of AMD ’s graphic cards .
Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX
We ’re move on to 2006 , when the struggle between Nvidia and ATI ( later AMD ) was at its peak . This is when Nvidia set up the GeForce 8800 GTX , a monumental ( at the time ) nontextual matter card that spearheaded a key GPU computer architecture that ’s still in usage to this day . Launching as part of two flagship of the GeForce 8 series , the 8800 GTX was an enthusiast - level GPU with some violent gaming capabilities .
The entire card was pretty surpassing for its time , but the 8800 GTX is remembered as a freak flagship with some moderately intense spectacles . It clocked at 575MHz and featured 768 MB of GDDR3 VRAM across a 384 - bit memory bus . It could handle resolutions of up to 2,560 x 1,600 . More importantly , it introduced co-ordinated shader texture , impel the GPU into a Modern era of graphics capability with unparalleled performance for that time .
Prior to the GeForce 8 series , graphic cards used separate shaders for different eccentric of processing , such as vertex and pixel shaders . The unified computer architecture , which is still used in forward-looking GPUs , combined these into a single , more whippy grapevine . This opened up GPU resource and made for more efficient processing .
Moreover , the 8800 GTX was the first to use DirectX 10 , and that was a vast rising slope compared to the previous version . All in all , it was a hit upon release , and it get around for years even when new GPUs hit the market .
AMD Radeon R9 290
When AMD set up the Radeon R9 290 in 2013 , the nontextual matter landscape painting was already vastly different from what we saw in the late 1990s and the early 2000s . It featured a clock speed of up to 947MHz and 4 GB of GDDR5 memory across a 512 - bit bus . For comparability , Nvidia has a version of the RTX 3050 that also sports 4 GB of VRAM ( and a 128 - spot port ) , although that ’s GDDR6 . The R9 290 could also care resolving power of up to 4 yard , so it ’s a batch closer to the top GPUs we ’re seeing these days than any of the previous wag on this tilt .
Thanks to the spacious 512 - chip retentiveness interface , the R9 290 could supply eminent memory bandwidth , and that unlocked high - end gaming . It also patronise AMD ’s Mantle API , which was an early attempt at make a low - layer graphics API that later on influenced the development of Vulkan . Some also claim that DirectX 12 was also influenced by Mantle in some way . The Radeon R9 290 was also one of the first times we ’ve seen dedicated audio frequency processing computer hardware on the GPU side .
The legacy of the AMD R9 290 lies not just in raw features , but in the birth of AMD ’s performance - per - dollar approach . It was a graphic card capable of delivering high - remainder performance at a much more affordable price ( $ 400 ) than enthusiasts were used to at the time . As said in thisAnandtech critique , the R9 290 was able-bodied to have 106 % of the public presentation extend by the Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 — and at $ 100 less . Let ’s not forget that it was almost as sinewy as the R9 290X , all the while being $ 150 meretricious .
The high - ending gaming GPU mart was never cheap , although these days , it ’s pricier than ever . But with the R9 290 , AMD present the flock that it ’s entirely possible to make a bounty GPU and price it in a path that had Nvidia scrambling to offer discount . Let ’s have more of that in 2024 , please .
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
Ah , the GTX 1080 Ti — the cherry on top of Nvidia ’s excellent Pascal architecture . That entire generation of GPUs aged so well that they still rank high in the monthly Steam Hardware Survey , and I in person only got disembarrass of my GTX 1060 just a few months ago . And yes , I do play AAA games .
Nvidia ’s flagship , set up in 2017 , came with a maximal clock of 1,582MHz and a monolithic ( at the time , and even today ) 11 GB of GDDR5X memory across a 352 - turn omnibus . With 3,584 CUDA burden and keep for up to 8 K resolution , this GPU still holds up well to this day , easily surpass former budget graphics cards .
To this day , I cerebrate that the GTX 1080 Ti was one of Nvidia ’s greatest achievements . At just 250 James Watt , the GPU wipe the base with the Titan X Pascal . That ’s not all — when Nvidia launched the Titan Xp sometime later , it was only a few percent quicker than the GTX 1080 Ti . At $ 1,200 for the Titan and $ 700 for the 1080 Ti , it was an obvious choice as to which poster to pick .
At its peak , the GTX 1080 Ti was every gamer ’s destination , and using two of them via Nvidia ’s SLI was the dreaming that some enthusiasts fling on . While SLI is pretty much dead now , and using two 1080 Ti GPUs was never deserving it , the card was a fireball that redefined the idea of eminent - end play . If only we could get that kind of relative carrying out for just $ 700 these Clarence Day . Of of course , the $ 700 stung more in 2017 , when GPUs were generally cheaper .
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti
Nvidia ’s RTX 3060 Ti is no longer one of the best graphics cards . It ’s largely been replace by theRTX 40 - serial , or , on the budget side of things , by AMD ’s RX 7000 series . However , it ’s such a good GPU that I ’d still recommend it over many current - gen offerings — provided you’re able to find a just deal on it .
The RTX 3060 Ti marks one of the first cards that offered reasonableray tracingperformance at a mainstream price . price at $ 400 at launching , the GPU has a max clock pep pill of 1,665MHz , 8 GB of GDDR6 memory , a 256 - bit bus , and 4,864 CUDA cores . liken to the disappointingRTX 4060 Ti , the RTX 3060 Ti is sometimes faster than its replacement , and even when it ’s not , it proceed up . Considering that the RTX 4060 Ti arrived two and a half years later on , it speak volumes about the potential and capabilities of the RTX 3060 Ti .
This was also one of the first GPU release where upgrading from the GTX 1080 Ti even made any sense . It ’s a testament to the power of Pascal that the RTX 3060 Ti is only about 15 % faster than the 1080 Ti — but it offers access to all of Nvidia ’s RTX software stack , including theever - impressive DLSS .
The impact of the RTX 3060 Ti may seem pocket-size now that we eff that Nvidia afterwards on introducedDLSS 3 , available only on RTX 40 - serial cards , which smash DLSS 2 . However , even if the RTX 3060 Ti did n’t acquaint any standout feature all on its own , it was a watershed GPU for its coevals , extend approach to AAA gaming on a budget during a time when the GPU shortfall ravage the intact market . To this day , it ’s the fifth - most popular graphics identity card in theSteam Hardware Survey , and it ’s still an option that makes sense to bribe for a budget microcomputer anatomy . That ’s enunciate a lot for a GPU that was set up at the last of 2020 .
