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Every GPU That Mattered

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Re: Every GPU That Mattered

#121

Post by flohofwoe »

Shalomboy wrote: post #90

This is a wonderful-looking infographic, but I truly don't think there are 49 GPUs that mattered in the PC gaming hardware space - let alone all of computer graphics. Call it recency bias, but after the Pascal cards it feels like maybe one or two more entrants actually mattered?

Pascal is already too late to matter (2016) IMHO.

With the release of D3D9 in 2002, GPUs of different vendors didn't really stand out anymore since they all implemented the same feature set anyway (and that's a good thing).

Re: Every GPU That Mattered

#122

Post by giobox »

formerly_proven wrote: post #71
arjie wrote: post #2

Absolute nostalgia fever. About a month ago, I dug up an old desktop in the corner, took the drives out and gave away the machine. It felt like putting a racehorse to pasture: i7-4790k, 1080 Ti. It was my dream machine when I got it. Dual-boot (as we did back in the old days when Proton wasn't here) to Ubuntu, then Elementary, then Arch. By the time I gave it away it wasn't worth the power cost. And that brought to m…

I used my 1080 Ti for about eight years. The successor GPU is in some ways way faster (raytracing, AI features etc.), but in others really quite stagnant considering the huge stretch of time that passed between them. ~10 years for 2-3x performance in GPUs at higher nominal and real price points shows how slow silicon advances have been compared to the 90s and 2000s. The same period from 2000 to 2010 would've seen 100…

My 1080ti is still working away in my kid's PC. If you connect a 1080p monitor, it will still hit 60fps in mostly everything.

The only thing that holds this card back now is a handful of titles that will not run unless ray-tracing support present on card - Indiana Jones and The Great Circle springs to mind etc.

I am very likely going to get a decade of use out of it across three different builds, one of the best technology investments I've ever made.

Re: Every GPU That Mattered

#124

Post by gcr »

__alexs wrote: post #10

A lot of GPUs in this list are basically just previous GPU but faster or more RAM. I kind of thought it was going to focus on interesting new architecture innovations.

does anyone have pointers to similar articles that talk about GPU history?

One example is "No graphics API" by Sebastian Aaltonen shared here 3 months ago, which is a great tour de force of graphics stack innovations through contrasting the history of OpenGL/Vulkan and WebGPU/Metal development: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46293062 Because it requires an in-depth understanding of the shader pipeline, the article touches on significant graphics cards of the era. I'd love to see more about that!

Re: Every GPU That Mattered

#125

Post by fabioborellini »

kllrnohj wrote: post #118
Lwrless wrote: post #56

I don't see my first GPU on there, it was the humble GeForce4 MX440. It could run almost any game I cared about for a surprisingly long time, even if it's not a true modern card. These days almost all my machines are on iGPUs baked into the CPU. There's way less fun for me, but they are a lot more compact at least.

The GeForce 4 generation as a whole, while being solid enough cards, were historically not interesting. They were just basic spec bumps over the GeForce 3. No new features or similar. And, critically, the 9700 Pro released the same year as the GeForce 4 and absolutely smoked the living shit out of it.

And the 4 MX versions were GeForce 2 MX based IIRC. 3 was expensive.

Re: Every GPU That Mattered

#127

Post by uncivilized »

kllrnohj wrote: post #118
Lwrless wrote: post #56

I don't see my first GPU on there, it was the humble GeForce4 MX440. It could run almost any game I cared about for a surprisingly long time, even if it's not a true modern card. These days almost all my machines are on iGPUs baked into the CPU. There's way less fun for me, but they are a lot more compact at least.

The GeForce 4 generation as a whole, while being solid enough cards, were historically not interesting. They were just basic spec bumps over the GeForce 3. No new features or similar. And, critically, the 9700 Pro released the same year as the GeForce 4 and absolutely smoked the living shit out of it.

The MX440 allowed players that were playing games on id Tech 3 to finally play at high frame rates. I remember this card being all the rage back then in pro gaming circles for this reason.

Re: Every GPU That Mattered

#128

Post by tbyehl »

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.

For a moment, a Matrox G400 DualHead was THE card to have for a multi-monitor setup.

Re: Every GPU That Mattered

#129

Post by bee_rider »

flohofwoe wrote: post #121
Shalomboy wrote: post #90

This is a wonderful-looking infographic, but I truly don't think there are 49 GPUs that mattered in the PC gaming hardware space - let alone all of computer graphics. Call it recency bias, but after the Pascal cards it feels like maybe one or two more entrants actually mattered?

Pascal is already too late to matter (2016) IMHO. With the release of D3D9 in 2002, GPUs of different vendors didn't really stand out anymore since they all implemented the same feature set anyway (and that's a good thing).

IMO there’s room for something more recent, maybe a Titan or something, to stand in as an avatar for making GPUs as compute accelerators a thing. I know that’s been going on forever, but at some point it went from some niche hacky thing to a primary use-case for the cards.

But yeah this list has a on of incremental bumps on it. Maybe there was some mixing of cards that mattered historically and cards that mattered to the author.

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