For me, it would have to be the ATi Radeon 9700. I wasn't around when it first launched, but I've got some fond memories of finding a great deal on eBay for a 9700 TX (Dell's branding of the Non-Pro) during late 2019, just before everything went south the following year. Originally, that went into a Pentium III workstation I was upgrading for retro gaming, and it was then used for some good first time experiences with Doom and Half-Life.
Some months later, I then flashed its BIOS to a Radeon 9700 Pro Mac Edition, where it then served up until now in both a Power Mac G5 and Power Mac G4 for general tasks. I'm now considering flashing it back to its original TX BIOS though, as I think both the core and VRAM chips are generating too much heat under the Pro BIOS - because with increased heat comes increased chance of component failure, as you know.
Right now, I've also got a Radeon 9800 in a Pentium 4 machine that I picked up and refurbished recently that was intended for similar purposes, with some additional CAD and 3D modeling on the side. It's been great so far with every title of the era I've thrown at it, and its own heat output (plus video quality) was also much improved once the original Pro BIOS was flashed to the Non-Pro equivalent. And the heatsinks I added to its VRAM chips certainly helped as well.
Anyway, given that the R300 series was primarily developed by the same engineers from ArtX (themselves being direct imports from Silicon Graphics' N64 division) that were responsible for the Flipper GPU in the Nintendo GameCube, I personally see it as a PC version of sorts of the same high performance graphics architecture that was behind some of the best visuals that early 2000's console gaming had to offer. Moreover, its revolutionary impact on the PC gaming industry was a nice bonus too.
With that said, how about you?
Some months later, I then flashed its BIOS to a Radeon 9700 Pro Mac Edition, where it then served up until now in both a Power Mac G5 and Power Mac G4 for general tasks. I'm now considering flashing it back to its original TX BIOS though, as I think both the core and VRAM chips are generating too much heat under the Pro BIOS - because with increased heat comes increased chance of component failure, as you know.
Right now, I've also got a Radeon 9800 in a Pentium 4 machine that I picked up and refurbished recently that was intended for similar purposes, with some additional CAD and 3D modeling on the side. It's been great so far with every title of the era I've thrown at it, and its own heat output (plus video quality) was also much improved once the original Pro BIOS was flashed to the Non-Pro equivalent. And the heatsinks I added to its VRAM chips certainly helped as well.
Anyway, given that the R300 series was primarily developed by the same engineers from ArtX (themselves being direct imports from Silicon Graphics' N64 division) that were responsible for the Flipper GPU in the Nintendo GameCube, I personally see it as a PC version of sorts of the same high performance graphics architecture that was behind some of the best visuals that early 2000's console gaming had to offer. Moreover, its revolutionary impact on the PC gaming industry was a nice bonus too.
With that said, how about you?
