(I just read the OP and decided to add the games I played with these.)
The first GPU I was aware of was the Geforce 8800 GT, I believe. It was my introduction to what a GPU even was but I never got that one. I and my brother scrounged up birthday and Christmas money and in early 2008 we got an EVGA eGeforce 8500 GT. I still have it to this day, actually. I acquired a second one many years later from my grandfather who passed away and left some old office stuff and one of them had an 8500 in it. The EVGA I am pretty sure is fried, but the other one I use in certain builds to play old games. We upgraded to 2GB of RAM for the system along with the GPU. In 2008, that was pretty good.
8500: The games I remember enjoying on this system were mostly older but also included Battlefield 2, Rome Total War, Medieval II Total War (I install this on every computer I own), Far Cry demo, Call of Duty 4 Demo, Battle for Middle Earth 1 and 2 and Rise of the Witch-King, Empire at War, Age of Empires III, Empire Earth 2, Rise of Nations, Zoo Tycoon 2, GRID, and Medal of Honor Airborne. The last games I remember extensively with this card before the system became fritzy were Order of War and Men of War. I cannot say what specifically killed it off, but those are the ones I remember most with it near the end. GPUs seemed not to last very long to me at the time.
The next computer I received was an integrated Radeon system from HP. I could not say what the exact card was right now. The number 4200 is in there. It was actually a nice little compact but it developed problems to the point where Unreal Tournament played fine but it could not run Word at all and would eventually crash.
The main games I played on the 4200 system were: Unreal Tournament 1999 and 2004, STALKER: Call of Pripyat (lower settings), Quake II, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Halo: Combat Evolved, Stonghold Collection, Quake IV (I recall it playing fine on higher settings), and Mount & Blade (the original). M&B was actually the first game I played on this system and it was some of the most fun I had on a PC. This system's problem game was Mount & Blade, but that was a couple of years into owning it.
The next one I received was a birthday present after being lent down my first hand me down office computer. It possessed a Core 2 Quad (I think a 9300) and was what I played games like the Witcher 1 and 2 on. That card was the GTX 650 from MSI. It was a near game changer because I had not played many newer PC games until I got my GOG account in December 2013/early 2014.
Games on the 650 system: Witcher 1 & 2, Two Worlds II, Metro 2033 & Last Light, Stalker (SoC, Clear Sky, and CoP), Men of War (Assault Squad, Viet Nam, and Red Tide), Shadow Warrior 2013, World in Conflict, Forces of Corruption, Company of Heroes (v.1.00, it has not disc check), Supreme Commander, Far Cry 2, Sins of a Solar Empire (also v.1.00 which also has no disc check), Mount & Blade: With Fire & Sword, Call of Duty: World at War, Timeshift, Oblivion, Rise of the Triad 2013, Torchlight (first game installed on the system), Sacred 2, and King's Bountry Crossworlds. The 650 still works, I just replaced it so I could play the Witcher III.
The next one I managed was when I was later in college in time to play the Witcher 3 in 2017 (I waited for the GotY edition). That card is still my primary one to this day and it is a Gygabyte GTX 1050ti. This is just a great card at 900p, the native resolution of my monitor, and it is an absolute beauty. (This system originally had a 650 in it starting in early 2016. The processor is an i3 4170.)
Games on the 1050ti system: Cysis 1 & Warhead, Dead Space, Dragon Age Origins, Hard Reset Redux, Shadow Warrior 2, Witcher 3, Mount & Blade Viking Conquest, Grim Dawn, Titan Quest, Sudden Strike 3 and 4, Torchlight II, Vikings Wolves of Mithgarth, Bioshock (the Humble Bundle version), Singularity, and Victory at Sea.
Later my brothers and I contributed towards a more powerful PC in late 2019 and the card we put into it was a Gygabyte GTX 1070. That is a really nice card but my interests in playing games that take advantage of it is unfortunately low enough where I only use it for a few games. This system contains an i3 9100F.
Games I played on the 1070: Greedfall, Deserts of Kharak, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Metro Exodus, Steel Division II, Wargame: European Escalation, and Sleeping Dogs.
It occurred to me that I actually have a few other GPUs I can talk about. They are not "canon" if you will but here goes:
The nature of a relative's business changed so I got a few office computers with old i5 processors. I thought I would mess with them and threw a Radeon HD 7570 in there, or so I planned. I did not think about it when I ordered it but the case needed a low profile bracket thing (I do not know what it is called) for the GPU which it did not have. I have two of these cards and I could not tell you which one is which anymore, since I think I swapped the adapter at least once on them. Anyway, as you might have guessed, I bought a second one with the adapter because it was easier than just the adapter. These cards were pretty cheap in 2019, and I am using the word cheap intentionally. I know one of them went bust on me and not the system itself. But, no big deal, I just used the other one. Well then the system died but I think the card is fine... at least it's still in my desk. I have no real love for ATI Radeon or AMD cards after the poor experiences I have had with them across systems. These cards worked for such a brief time that the only game I recall with any fondness was Doom II, and I played that before I put them in.
So, later I was asked to get a graphics card for a family member and the only thing there that was affordable was a GT 710. Unfortunately, given the layout in the case the card actually did not fit and we upgraded other components to hopefully compensate performance. It seems fine, but I kept the 710 and replaced the red 8500 I was using in a build for older games. It works fine but, honestly, if it's better it's not perceptible. At least not enough to justify the price, if I was not stuck with it (the store also went out of business). That GPU has been largely used for older games like Medieval II Total War, Rome Total War, Men of War and Age of Empires III.
Post edited February 25, 2022 by AnimalMother117
