A History of My PC GPU’s

Paul Brzeski
4 min readDec 1, 2020

I have owned a few graphics cards over the past 26 years so I thought it’d be fun to look back at what they looked like, what games I played and a bit about the computer they were installed in.

Cirrus Logic VLB CL-GD5424 (Compaq Presario CDS 524 PC)

Year purchased: 1994

Operating System: Windows 3.11 and Windows 95

Top 3 games:

  • Aladdin
  • Prince of Persia
  • Toonstruck
ATI Rage 128 (custom PC build)

Year purchased: 1998

Operating System: Windows 98 and Windows XP

Top 3 games:

  • Carmageddon
  • Deus Ex
  • Half Life
NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 Pro (custom PC build)

Year purchased: 1999

Operating System: Windows 98 and Windows XP

Top 3 games:

  • Half Life
  • Homeworld
  • Quake 3 Arena
NVIDIA Geforce 2 MX 400 (custom PC build)

Year purchased: 2002

Operating System: Windows XP

Top 3 games:

  • Black & White
  • Jedi Knight 2
  • Max Payne 1 & 2
NVIDIA Geforce 4 MX 440 (custom PC build)

Year purchased: 2003

Operating System: Windows XP

Top 3 games:

  • Prince of Persia Sands of Time
  • Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic
  • Unreal Tournament 2003 and 2004
Sapphire Radeon 9600 XT (custom PC build)

Year purchased: 2004

Operating System: Windows XP

Top 3 games:

  • Half Life 2
  • Homeworld 2
  • Unreal Tournament 3
NVIDIA GeForce 8600GS (Benq S41 V15 laptop)

Year purchased: 2007

Operating System: Windows Vista and Windows 7

Top 3 games:

  • Bioshock
  • Impossible Creatures
  • Ragnarok Online
Sapphire HD Radeon 3870 (custom PC build)

Year purchased: 2008

  • Operating System: Windows 7

Top 3 games:

  • C&C Generals: Zero Hour
  • Just Cause 2
  • Sins of a Solar Empire
NVIDIA GeForce 310M (Samsung NP-SF511-S02AU i5 Laptop)

Year purchased: 2010

Operating System: Windows 7 and Ubuntu

Top 3 games:

  • N/A as I used my PC for gaming
Gainward Phantom GeForce GTX 670 (custom PC build)

Year purchased: 2013

Top 3 games:

  • Bioshock Infinite
  • Far Cry 3 and 4
  • Skyrim

Operating System: Windows 7

NVIDIA GeForce GT 840M (ASUS Zenbook UX303LN Laptop)

Year purchased: 2015

Operating System: Windows 7, Windows 10 and Manjaro Linux

Top 3 games:

  • N/A as I used my PC with the GTX 670 for gaming
AMD Radeon R5 (Dell Latitude 3190 2 in 1 Laptop)

Year purchased: 2017

Operating System: Windows 10 and Ubuntu

Top 3 games:

  • N/A as I used my PC with the GTX 670 for gaming
NVIDIA GeForce 750 Ti (custom PC build)

Year borrowed: 2019

My GTX 670 is too old and starting to die so I borrowed this card to carry me over

Top 3 games:

  • EVE Online
  • Overwatch
  • The Witcher 3

Operating System: Windows 10

I’m currently tossing up between a GeForce 3070 or Radeon 6700 XT, although current pressures on my household budget with Christmas and stuff mean if I could satiate myself now with an AORUS GeForce 3070, only for the new Radeon’s to drop in January with a way better bang for buck. There’s still no word of an AORUS variant of the Radeon either, and it would be nice to crown my 2019 AORUS themed PC with a long overdue brand new graphics card.

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Paul Brzeski

Sharing my opinion and passions about the many things in life.