Look at how unhinged GPU box art was in the 2000s (2024) • Hacker News Board

Re: Look at how unhinged GPU box art was in the 2000s (2024)

#41

Post by jzwinck » Mon, Oct 20, 2025, 4:48 AM UTC

Sound cards too. The Hercules website still proudly shows all their boxes from back when sound cards were popular for gaming and more: https://support.hercules.com/en/cat-soundcards-en/

Several models don't even have pictures of the card, but every one of them shows the crazy box.

They also still list all their old GPUs. Compare the wild boxes at the top with the TV tuner boxes at the bottom: https://support.hercules.com/en/cat-videocards-en/

Re: Look at how unhinged GPU box art was in the 2000s (2024)

#42

Post by cuu508 » Mon, Oct 20, 2025, 4:53 AM UTC

edgineer wrote: post #40

Nvidia also had really cool demo programs you'd run with each generation to show off what your new card could do. [0] You'll have to use the Internet archive to see them all. [1] Several, like 'Dawn' for example, were quietly removed in 2020. [0] https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/community/demos/ [1] http://web.archive.org/web/2019/https://www.nvidia.com/en-us...

You can watch them on youtube also: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DfWSJvKFMPE

Re: Look at how unhinged GPU box art was in the 2000s (2024)

#43

Post by vinkelhake » Mon, Oct 20, 2025, 5:01 AM UTC

Besides the box art, I miss the days when 1) the graphics card didn't cost more than the rest of the components put together, 2) the graphics card got all of its damn power through the connector itself, and 3) MSRP meant something.

Re: Look at how unhinged GPU box art was in the 2000s (2024)

#44

Post by GauntletWizard » Mon, Oct 20, 2025, 5:18 AM UTC

cuu508 wrote: post #42

edgineer wrote: post #40

Nvidia also had really cool demo programs you'd run with each generation to show off what your new card could do. [0] You'll have to use the Internet archive to see them all. [1] Several, like 'Dawn' for example, were quietly removed in 2020. [0] https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/community/demos/ [1] http://web.archive.org/web/2019/https://www.nvidia.com/en-us...

You can watch them on youtube also: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DfWSJvKFMPE

That's nice, but they were interactive - You could move around the scene or change the camera angles. The fact that you could do this and prove it was realtime and not prerendered was part of the demo and most of the charm. Lacking that, it's just... lacking.

Re: Look at how unhinged GPU box art was in the 2000s (2024)

#45

Post by userbinator » Mon, Oct 20, 2025, 5:18 AM UTC

Crazy, outrageous graphics on a graphics accelerator box seems quite fitting. Of course these days they do far more than just render 3D graphics (and that which they do has become quite common), so perhaps that also reflects the shift away from this branding.

Re: Look at how unhinged GPU box art was in the 2000s (2024)

#46

Post by mmsc » Mon, Oct 20, 2025, 5:19 AM UTC

TFA calls it unhinged, I call it creative and exciting. Now all we get is rounded edges, solid colours, and "copies of reality" - boring; if I wanted reality I'd go outside and touch grass.

Re: Look at how unhinged GPU box art was in the 2000s (2024)

#47

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Oct 20, 2025, 5:37 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Look at how unhinged GPU box art was in the 2000s (2024)

#48

Post by Biganon » Mon, Oct 20, 2025, 5:49 AM UTC

vinkelhake wrote: post #43

Besides the box art, I miss the days when 1) the graphics card didn't cost more than the rest of the components put together, 2) the graphics card got all of its damn power through the connector itself, and 3) MSRP meant something.

4) scalpers only existed for sports and music venues

Re: Look at how unhinged GPU box art was in the 2000s (2024)

#49

Post by alex43578 » Mon, Oct 20, 2025, 5:55 AM UTC

vinkelhake wrote: post #43

Besides the box art, I miss the days when 1) the graphics card didn't cost more than the rest of the components put together, 2) the graphics card got all of its damn power through the connector itself, and 3) MSRP meant something.

I just bought a RTX 5090 at MSRP. While expensive, it's also a radically more complicated product that plays a more important role in a modern computer than old GPUs did years ago.

Compared to my CPU (9950X3D), it's got a massive monolithic die measuring 750mm2 with over 4x the transistor count of the entire 9950X3d package. Beyond the graphics, it's got tensor and RT cores, dedicated engines for video decode/encode, and 32GB of DDR7 on the board.

Even basic integrated GPUs these days have far surpassed GPUs like the RTX 970, so you can get a very cheap GPU that gets power through the CPU socket, at MSRP.

Re: Look at how unhinged GPU box art was in the 2000s (2024)

#50

Post by SkiFire13 » Mon, Oct 20, 2025, 6:01 AM UTC

brokenmachine wrote: post #39

Gigachad wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the plus side, PC gaming hardware seems to last ages now. I built my gaming desktop in 2020, I had a look lately at what a reasonable modern mid tier setup is and they are still recommending a lot of the parts I have. So I'll probably keep using it all for another 5 years then.

But your stuff from 2020 probably isn't AI "enhanced"!! Throw it in the garbage!

Sounds like a plus to me.