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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)

#101

Post by SSLy »

opan wrote: post #91
Discordian93 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, AAA games started nosediving with the seventh generation 20 years ago and only recently have they started to tentatively show signs of recovery.

Do you have any examples in mind from each era? I thought Fallout 3 was quite good around back then. Today we've got stuff like Borderlands 4 (or whatever the newest one is) that barely run on anyone's PC, and general game install size has also shot up drastically so it's no longer really feasible to keep most of your games installed all the time and ready to play. I mostly play indie/retro/slightly-old games these d…

> Today we've got stuff like Borderlands 4 (or whatever the newest one is) that barely run on anyone's PC

Just like Crysis did 18 years ago?

>it's no longer really feasible to keep most of your games installed all the time and ready to play.

Crysis was around 5% of common HDD back then. Now, it'd be equivalent of around 80 GiB now. That would be just about what Elden Ring with the DLC takes.

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

#102

Post by estimator7292 »

Gigachad wrote: post #29
jakebasile wrote: post #2

I miss when gaming in general was less mainstream and more weird like this. Now the silicon manufacturers hate that they even have to sell us their scraps, let alone spend time on making unique designs for their boxes. I bought a small press book with a collection of this art and it was a fun little trip down memory lane, as I’ve owned some of the hardware (boxes) depicted in it. For anyone else interested: https://l…

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.

Just this year I finally replaced my 3rd gen I5 system. It was well over 10 years old and still just able to keep up with my workloads.

Now it's a node in my proxmox cluster running transcodes for jellyfin. The circle of life

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

#103

Post by zamadatix »

GauntletWizard wrote: post #44
cuu508 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most of that charm is gone after 20 years, nobody needs proving the dynamic lights are really dynamic anymore.

They're still some fun to interact with anyways, or just fun as a way to review what was hot shit at the time, but I couldn't get a few of the really old ones to run on Windows 10/11 this summer. A video is a lot better than just saying "well, I'm not going to build an old PC just to play this demo" and not seeing it at all.

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

#104

Post by zamadatix »

crote wrote: post #81
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.

On the other hand, you're also stuck with design mistakes for ages. The AM5 platform is quite lacking when it comes to PCIe lanes - especially once you take USB4 into account. I'm hoping my current setup from 2019 survives until AM6 - but it seems AMD wants to keep AM5 for another generation or two...

One person's "design mistake" is another person's "market segmentation".

x16 GPU + x4 NVMe + x4 USB = 24 direct CPU lanes covers 99% of the market, with add-ons behind the shared chipset bandwidth. The other 1% of the market are pushed to buy Threadripper/Epyc.

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

#105

Post by zamadatix »

Gigachad wrote: post #74
MaxikCZ wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its a double edge sword. Yes, back then 2 year old computer was old, but at the same time every 2 years a new generation of games came out that were like never seen before. Each generation was a massive step-up. Today, a layman couldnt chronologically sort CoD games from past 10 years from looks/play/feel, new Fifa and similar is _the_ same game but with new teams added to it, and virtually every game made is a "copy…

This is fine? Today’s games look beautiful and developers are hardly restricted by hardware. Games can innovate on content, stories, and experiences rather than on technology. Feels similar to how painting hasn’t had any revolution in new paints available.

It's not a one-or-the-other. One wouldn't want content, stories, and experiences to stagnate just because graphics were improving, so why would the opposite be assumed?

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

#106

Post by khedoros1 »

arethuza wrote: post #85
pjc50 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was planning on hanging on to my Win10 PC, which was perfectly fine except that Microsoft were both pestering me to upgrade and telling me it wasn't possible, but the death of its SSD after 7 years put paid to that.

I have a PC that is probably at least 10 years old but works perfectly well for browsing, spreadsheets and the occasional lightweight game but MS has decided, in its infinite wisdom, to say that it can't be upgraded to Windows 11. So I will probably install Linux (probably Debian) and move on and forget about those particular games... (~30 years since I first installed Linux on a PC!).

I've got a computer that I built in 2008 and upgraded in 2012. It's pretty solid for higher-requirement games up until about 2015, and can still handle lower-requirement indie stuff today.

I built its successor in 2020, using a GPU from 2017. The longevity of the PS4 has given that thing serious legs, and I haven't seen the need to upgrade yet. It still runs what I want to run. It's also the first post-DOS x86/64 machine I've owned that has never had Windows installed.

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

#107

Post by hoherd »

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...

That bubble demo was absolutely mind blowing. After seeing that I never looked back at 3dfx.

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

#109

Post by IlikeKitties »

opan wrote: post #93
IlikeKitties wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now the silicon manufacturers hate that they even have to sell us their scraps, let alone spend time on making unique designs for their boxes. I genuinely don't believe this to be true for AMD. I bought a 6600xt on Release Day and by the time I was able to build my complete PC, it had upstream linux kernel support. You can say what you will about AMD but any company that respects my freedoms enough to build a produ…

I agree with the spirit of your post, and that AMD is probably the lesser evil, but it's worth noting they "just" moved the proprietary bits into a firmware blob. It's still similarly proprietary but due to the kernel being pretty open to such blobs, it's a problem invisible to most users. You'd have to use linux-libre to get a feel for how bad things really are. You can't really use any modern GPUs with it.

That honestly makes little difference to me. There's no useful computer out there that isn't a bunch of proprietary blobs to interact with proprietary hardware. Wish there was, but if it's practically indistinguishable from just having those blobs burned into the hardware directly instead of being injected on boot it's not perfect but still a pretty good situation.

I remember when running linux on your computer at all was hit or miss, these days i can go to lenovo and buy a thinkpad with ubuntu preinstalled and know that it will just work.

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

#110

Post by IlikeKitties »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #77
IlikeKitties wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now the silicon manufacturers hate that they even have to sell us their scraps, let alone spend time on making unique designs for their boxes. I genuinely don't believe this to be true for AMD. I bought a 6600xt on Release Day and by the time I was able to build my complete PC, it had upstream linux kernel support. You can say what you will about AMD but any company that respects my freedoms enough to build a produ…

>I genuinely don't believe this to be true for AMD. I bought a 6600xt on Release Day That was 2021 though when AMD was still a relative underdog trying to claw market share from Nvidia from consumers. AMD of today has adjusted their prices and attitude to consumers to match their status as a CPU and GPU duopoly in the AI/datacenter space.

You can still buy their GPUs, they work perfectly fine on linux ootb and they even make stuff like the AI Max for local AI that is very end user and consumer friendly. Yes, GPUs got more expensive which is a result of increased demand for them. But for a hardware company, as long as their linux support is as good as it currently is, they are a-ok in my book.
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