Recently we put together a "Top 5 Worst CPUs" feature as a fun side article and readers loved it. The requests came in for a similar article looking at graphics chips and so we're going to have a go at that today.
Top 5 Worst GPUs: Hall of Shame, Part Two
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Flebbert
I am just waiting for the insane comments to come. Getting popcorn and whisky
Worst mobile graphics solution in my opinion is Intel GMA 500 !
Bumped into that chip on a Mini Dell netbook. Drivers very limited and only for old windows.
Even Solitaire is a match for that chip...
Bumped into that chip on a Mini Dell netbook. Drivers very limited and only for old windows.
Even Solitaire is a match for that chip...
It sucked no doubt but that's way way older than the stuff we are targeting here.
Nobina
Posts: 4,499 +5,491
But you kinda expect Intel integrated graphics to be absolute ****. Their purpose is just to show you basic stuff on screen and that's it.
Theinsanegamer
Posts: 5,414 +10,152
I respectfully disagree. Kepler, by the time maxwell came out, was going on 2.5 years old (the 680 came out in march 2012, the 980 in september 2014) and they still work in newer titles. Kepler doesnt do tesselation as well, which is the reason it gets hammered in newer games, much like AMDs older stuff (the 7000s).
I only just replaced my 770 this year, not because the GPU was slow (it still works great for 1080p), but because it was running out of VRAM. If I had gotten the 4GB version, id still be running it. Just turn down tessellation like you would for an AMD card and kepler still works well.
VitalyT
Posts: 6,826 +8,106
Whisky with popcorn is already as insane as it gets. You don't need us.
And thank you for the article, telling me that my GTX 780 is the worst card ever. After nearly 4 years of its flawless performance, this is all I really needed to know.
Completely agree, the gtx780 came out before the R9 290 even not sure why why it's being compared to the 390 as mentioned in the article
No mention of the nvidia fx series? They had landmowers for fans, were ridiculously power hungry, and performed worse than AMDs offering at the time.
Rockstarrrr
Posts: 97 +72
Also, 780 was never the match for 290/290X - it was 780-Ti. But nevertheless, there are quite a few games that hammers Kepler heavily but also games that works as it should. People are making way too much fuss about it - folks who bought 780-Ti in 2013/2014 are now owning 1080-Ti or something, they couldnt care less.
I'm sorry, but my GTX 780 is about the same performance wise against a GTX 970 that I also own. They're both showing their age with the latest titles, and just a couple FPS away from each other in benchmark tests.
Thannos
Posts: 56 +71
My 780 Ti played the Destiny 2 beta at 72fps avg @1080p max settings, BF1 ~60fps avg @1080p max, so I think there is still a little life left in it. Obviously I'll upgrade to a 1080 Ti once the next gen comes out from Nvidia and the prices drop on those.
hahahanoobs
Posts: 5,218 +3,072
Last time I checked, the Radeon 390, GTX 970 and GTX 780Ti were still pretty even.
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Bluescreendeath
Posts: 397 +620
Author is way off about the Kepler series. And the GTX780 ti performs about the same as a Gtx970 (slightly worse than a gtx 1060). It is way better than a 1050ti.
That's recent ones. The GeForce 480 was worse than stuff here. The Radeon 6000 family wasn't that great either... Going farther back, the GeForce 4 MX Single–handedly kept gaming back from using shaders. Then there was the Matrox Mistake. Not to mention the ViRGE graphic decelerator. Ah, those were the days... But I agree these are too old to count.
Anyway, the Tonga chip (R9 285) had the best video encoding performance of all Radeon chips. I hope Vega beats it (haven't seen figures), but it was the first Radeon chip to support 4K encoding and was still faster in that than any Radeon RX chip. Just for that I can't name it a bad GPU (but I have a bias for video performance).
Anyway, the Tonga chip (R9 285) had the best video encoding performance of all Radeon chips. I hope Vega beats it (haven't seen figures), but it was the first Radeon chip to support 4K encoding and was still faster in that than any Radeon RX chip. Just for that I can't name it a bad GPU (but I have a bias for video performance).
J
Jamlad
IIRC it was an attempt at some political play that backfired. The boycotted some DX dev. meeting and got cut out off the specs leading to inferior performance.
SingularitE
Posts: 27 +12
What about the Titan Z with a price of $3K? I nominate it for: The queen of diminishing returns.
Match a few of these with an i7-6950X, and some fancy parts (PCI-E SSDs, 10TB+ HDDs, 90+ PSU, etc) to make a truly royal setup.
The naming scheme is hillarious with Ti editions not possible so until now they were Black/Z/X/X/Xp.
Worst GPU Series: Radeon 300
Turned out most GPUs to be rebrands, all but the high end cards with 4 GB HBM GPUs, while the 390s were updated with 8 GB GDDR5 and the rest with 2-4 GB GDDR5. Talk about innovative series.
Lesson: Release Vega separately of the RX 500.
Worst Aging GPU Series: Radeon HD 5000/6000
Officially Crimson 16.x and higher is only for GCN so driver support ended after 5-6 years.
For comparison GeForce 400/500 series of the same age recently have received update for DirectX 12 and GeForce drivers usually are updated for up to a decade.
Worst Reference Design: Radeon RX 480
Cooling issues as usual with the added bonus of mainboard-frying under powered PCI-E power connector.
The irony is that unofficially the 6 pin PCI-E power connector supports 2/3 power of the bigger 8 pin connector with 2x separate 12V lines vs 3x. That is 100W vs 150W and with the 75W PCI-E slot there is enough power from both for the 165W max RX 480.
Match a few of these with an i7-6950X, and some fancy parts (PCI-E SSDs, 10TB+ HDDs, 90+ PSU, etc) to make a truly royal setup.
The naming scheme is hillarious with Ti editions not possible so until now they were Black/Z/X/X/Xp.
Worst GPU Series: Radeon 300
Turned out most GPUs to be rebrands, all but the high end cards with 4 GB HBM GPUs, while the 390s were updated with 8 GB GDDR5 and the rest with 2-4 GB GDDR5. Talk about innovative series.
Lesson: Release Vega separately of the RX 500.
Worst Aging GPU Series: Radeon HD 5000/6000
Officially Crimson 16.x and higher is only for GCN so driver support ended after 5-6 years.
For comparison GeForce 400/500 series of the same age recently have received update for DirectX 12 and GeForce drivers usually are updated for up to a decade.
Worst Reference Design: Radeon RX 480
Cooling issues as usual with the added bonus of mainboard-frying under powered PCI-E power connector.
The irony is that unofficially the 6 pin PCI-E power connector supports 2/3 power of the bigger 8 pin connector with 2x separate 12V lines vs 3x. That is 100W vs 150W and with the 75W PCI-E slot there is enough power from both for the 165W max RX 480.
veLa
Posts: 1,243 +985
Hmm, a great list no doubt, but I can't help but feeling as though some of these parts are far too new. Whatever happened to the pathetic GeForce FX 5xxx series? Remember how much the Radeon 9800 Pro/XT rocked those days?
Hard to believe the reference GTX 480 isn't on this list. It was definitely at least as bad as reference 290x, if not worse.
antiproduct
Posts: 308 +438
What, no mention of the GeForce G84/G86 chips, or is that too old? The chip so bad and was known for so many failures. Here's a little flashback: https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1028703/all-nvidia-g84-g86s-bad
Ok, so it may be from the previous decade, but still somewhat relevant when talking about the worst GPUs I think. At least I'm not bringing up any Trident cards or anything...
Ok, so it may be from the previous decade, but still somewhat relevant when talking about the worst GPUs I think. At least I'm not bringing up any Trident cards or anything...
DynamoNED
Posts: 19 +7
While I've heard many complaints against the Kepler GPU's, my GTX 770 served me well until I upgraded to an XFX RX 480. It's now in my brother's PC, and I've not heard any complaints. That said, Kepler's problems with tessellation are well documented, and this article is all in good fun, so I can't really argue too much.
Too recent selection...
GeForceFX!!!
Also maybe Fermi should get a look in? Although maybe it wasn't a bad product per se just got outdone on price/efficiency/performance by the leaner meaner Radeon 4870/4850.
GeForceFX!!!
Also maybe Fermi should get a look in? Although maybe it wasn't a bad product per se just got outdone on price/efficiency/performance by the leaner meaner Radeon 4870/4850.
HafizNafes89
Posts: 70 +41
thats because the 390 is practically the same card just with a different name, even if you were to compare with the 7970ghz the gtx 780 now performs equally with it although it was once 40% faster.
HafizNafes89
Posts: 70 +41
I have both a gtx 780ti and a 980. I can see a huge performance difference in the newer games favoring the 980 while the 780ti outperformed it in older games.
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