Unusual designs are still a thing in some markets (mainly china) - for example, a cat themed cooler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGGKaX1D9Zo and various anime themed backplates on cards are available from Yeston: https://yestonstore.com/collections/graphics-card
Look at how unhinged GPU box art was in the 2000s (2024)
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Re: Look at how unhinged GPU box art was in the 2000s (2024)
#12soul
Re: Look at how unhinged GPU box art was in the 2000s (2024)
#13As usual, when money is to be found the soulless bean counting serious mba types come along and kill all the fun. Not to mention all the pretending money-seekers who can't code their way out of a paper bag.
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Re: Look at how unhinged GPU box art was in the 2000s (2024)
#14I would guess part of the reason for this was box art used to matter because most of these cards were sold through dedicated electronics retailers like Fry's Electronics, Microcenter, and CompUSA. There was basically no such thing as online ordering for this sort of thing. People were physically browsing goods on shelves.
Re: Look at how unhinged GPU box art was in the 2000s (2024)
#15When people still bought Graphics Processing Units for processing graphics and not crypto mining or AI inferencing
Re: Look at how unhinged GPU box art was in the 2000s (2024)
#16I would guess part of the reason for this was box art used to matter because most of these cards were sold through dedicated electronics retailers like Fry's Electronics, Microcenter, and CompUSA. There was basically no such thing as online ordering for this sort of thing. People were physically browsing goods on shelves.
Just chiming in here, but at least two of the generations of cards there are from ~2005-2008 and we old farts definitely bought (or convinced our parents to buy) things from Newegg at the time!
Re: Look at how unhinged GPU box art was in the 2000s (2024)
#17I remember some of those.
Re: Look at how unhinged GPU box art was in the 2000s (2024)
#18oh god some of these just brought back memories long repressed
Re: Look at how unhinged GPU box art was in the 2000s (2024)
#19look at the evolution of the DirectX branding through the years as well. OGs remember the logo themed after the radioactive hazard symbol.
Link because I had to look it up to remember: https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/DirectX
Re: Look at how unhinged GPU box art was in the 2000s (2024)
#20As usual, when money is to be found the soulless bean counting serious mba types come along and kill all the fun. Not to mention all the pretending money-seekers who can't code their way out of a paper bag.
> As usual, when money is to be found the soulless bean counting serious mba types come along and kill all the fun.
A reminder: Even years after inventing CUDA, Nvidia, the top GPU manufacturer, was fighting for survival. I'm not sure what saved them - perhaps crypto.
If you ignore the money, they appeared quite strong. But they struggled financially. Intel famously considered buying them around 2010 because they knew they could buy them cheap - Nvidia might not survive and weren't in a position to negotiate). Thankfully, the Intel CEO killed the idea because he knew Jensen wouldn't work well with Intel.
Nvidia may not have been saved by "bean counters", but they do have a place in the world.