Every GPU That Mattered • Hacker News Board

Re: Every GPU That Mattered

#91

Post by aruametello » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 1:31 PM UTC

whizzter wrote: post #63

mrweasel wrote: post #35

It's probably just me being out of touch, but I don't think the GeForce RTX 4000 or 5000 series really mattered/matters that much. At the same time I'd add the S3 ViRGE and the Matrox G200. Both mattered a lot at the time, but not long term.

Recency bias probably, Iirc I think the 3000 and 4000 series did make significant improvements on RTX performance so compared to the 2000 series it's far more useful today.

4000 certainly did, the "shader execution reordering" gave an meaningful uplift to tasks that "underutilized warp units due to scattered useful pixels".

it seems to have helped path tracing by a lot.

Re: Every GPU That Mattered

#92

Post by jeffbee » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 1:35 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #6

That mattered on the PC evolution, it misses many others e.g TMS34010. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMS34010

SGI IMPACT would be another

Re: Every GPU That Mattered

#93

Post by LoganDark » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 1:35 PM UTC

whizzter wrote: post #63

mrweasel wrote: post #35

It's probably just me being out of touch, but I don't think the GeForce RTX 4000 or 5000 series really mattered/matters that much. At the same time I'd add the S3 ViRGE and the Matrox G200. Both mattered a lot at the time, but not long term.

Recency bias probably, Iirc I think the 3000 and 4000 series did make significant improvements on RTX performance so compared to the 2000 series it's far more useful today.

I think their point is RTX is not useful.

Re: Every GPU That Mattered

#94

Post by schnitzelstoat » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 1:40 PM UTC

I remember having the Voodoo card to play Thief: The Dark Project. It felt incredible at the time.

Re: Every GPU That Mattered

#95

Post by DiffTheEnder » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 1:57 PM UTC

hchak wrote: post #78

I know sheets.works was made with an agent, however, still good taste on the design.

Do you think it was entirely AI? Surely some human involved to get this sort of layout..

Re: Every GPU That Mattered

#96

Post by silversmith » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 2:01 PM UTC

Missing the Rage Fury Maxx, finest welding job by the boffins at ATI, severely hampered by software support.

Re: Every GPU That Mattered

#97

Post by dahauns » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 2:04 PM UTC

chmod775 wrote: post #19

paavohtl wrote: post #12

I think pairing RX 5700 XT with Control as the "defining game" is an interesting choice, considering the facts 1. AMD cards were incapable of RT at the time and 2. Control was basically the first game with a good, comprehensive RT implementation that had a massive positive impact on the graphics.

> massive positive impacts on graphics I remember the main noticeable difference being ray traced reflections. However that was mostly on immovable objects in extremely simple scenes (office building). Old techniques could've gotten 90% there using cubemaps, screen space reflections, and/or rasterized overlays for dynamic objects like player characters. Or maybe just completely rasterize them, since the scenes are so…

The most impressive part of Control's RT (on PC at least) was that it very much applied to (most) dynamic objects - and it features a TON of dynamic destruction.

The "office building" setting meant resticted areas, sure, but it features TONS of reflections - especially transparent reflections (which are practically impossible to decently approximate with screen space techniques).

Oh, and: The Northlight Engine already did more than most other engines at the time to get "90% there" with a ton of hybrid techniques, not least being one of the pioneers regarding realtime software GI.

Re: Every GPU That Mattered

#98

Post by rayiner » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 2:07 PM UTC

Wow I stopped following hardware releases after the GeForce 2 and that was in 2004?

Re: Every GPU That Mattered

#99

Post by ananandreas » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 2:15 PM UTC

Interesting! Through the times

Re: Every GPU That Mattered

#100

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 2:17 PM UTC

mizzack wrote: post #68

mrweasel wrote: post #35

It's probably just me being out of touch, but I don't think the GeForce RTX 4000 or 5000 series really mattered/matters that much. At the same time I'd add the S3 ViRGE and the Matrox G200. Both mattered a lot at the time, but not long term.

Or the S3 Savage3D, which, while being inferior to the TNT2, pioneered texture compression. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S3_Texture_Compression

[deleted]