AMD

I remember being a kid and selling stuff to save up for a 9600XT, the infamous Half Life 2 bundle. Had to wait for the launch and that's how i met Steam

you mean a geforce 2 ....

I have had 9500 and softmoded it into 9700

9800 pro was my first gpu purchase and it blew my mind. was able to play half life 2 with MSAA and everything looked smooth instead of the jagged mess I was used to.

This was me, a poor high school teenager with the MX440 64MB trying to play Counter-Strike the best I could. All my rich friends had 9700 Pro’s or even 9800 Pro’s. The evening of my graduation open house, I took $200 of the money I got and went to Best Buy and bought an X700 Pro 256MB AGP. I finally had something that beat my rich friends, until they all got X850’s or 6800 Ultra’s.

My 9500 was a beast. Just a slightly cut down 9700. It was faster than my buddies 9600.

Second video card I ever owned. After my voodoo 3.

i was buying Radeon 9000 pro instead GF MX440, at least 9000pro have pixel shader

It was an HP PC without an agp slot, so I could only get a cheap pci card.

Noooooo! Shoulda went with the 9500 !

This was me too, except I had the mx440se. Trust Nvidia to make the special edition significantly worse than the normal model. My mates made the same mistake and we used to call it the "Shit Edition"

Managed to move to the 9600pro after saving my pennies all year, was a huge upgrade. Those were the days..

The 9800 Pro was the real best GPU, due to the dx9 bug fixes. I also think the list was mostly wrong. I'd say 9800 Pro, 1900XT, 390, Vega 56, 6700XT.

Other points: Radeon 9000, cheap FULL dx8. Nothing else came close. GCN 1 (7970) was crap for drivers, and did not support encoding or freesync. Polaris (480) was completely pointless for 390 users, Vega 56 was the real upgrade, especially if you bought on the fire sale prices. Vega outlasted Pascal. Has HBCC. The 480 was the late to the party card, and you didn't get the new features of Vega. It was ok, and a good price, not amazing.

For right now, we have the 7800 and 7900. But I wouldn't count top 5 for being new.

Nvidia: TnT2: You didn't need a Geforce, could completely skip them until dx8. 470 (best value) or 580 3GB: You could skip Kepler entirely with the 3GB. I wouldn't count anything else due to bad value or AMD having better alternatives for the money. This is why I don't count Pascal, because you needed a 1080TI for it to be worth it, and Vega 56 was better for the money. You can maybe count the 12GB 3060, but come on with the 1080p, that's too dated.