Nvidia did sell these as quadros, and this was benchmarked by HUB. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alguJBl-R3I
People also modded them with 16GB. Well, it’d be nice if there was a market for this, because people would still buy them.
All Vega support HBCC. You can just turn HBCC on and tell games you have more VRAM, which does provide a performance boost in games that actually need it. If you don’t need it, it does nothing.
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.
There’s only two I’d recommend, Steam Deck, and AYN Odin 2. The windows handhelds are worthless battery hogs, and a terrible OS for handheld. The android handhelds are garbage with anything less than snapdragon. There’s some acceptable dimensity 1200 ones, but the Odin 2 is a gen2 and cheaper. I’m not even sure if Steam Deck is worth OLED, no hall effect or freesync, and the power savings are cheating. The original Deck used more power than the limit, while OLED uses the exact limit, so they’re lying through omission. OLED is also a cost saving edition with some things made cheaper, while “improved” in other ways, so it’s not a total win, and the power savings are a numbers game, but you DO get a bigger battery, which was rather small on the original. I found 45 FPS to be a reasonable compromise on the original. Meanwhile, there’s linux support on ARM, with x86 emulation, which if done right, could be a steam deck on ARM. That said, the actual Deck has superior support and controls, can slap on a battery pack. Also, if you go tablet, there’s a tablet that does 3D like the 3DS. Lots of choices, not like the old days of nothing good. Nintendo has hacked switch mods, switch 2 could come out 2024, while you can emulate switch on the odin2. shrug