Every GPU That Mattered • Hacker News Board

Re: Every GPU That Mattered

#21

Post by cubefox » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 9:42 AM UTC

akashwadhwani35 wrote: post #20

cubefox wrote: post #14

> We build visual stories like this for companies Combined with the color scheme of this site, this might be a cleverly disguised Nvidia ad. Edit: Clicking through to their main page [1]: yeah, that's definitely an Nvidia ad. 1: https://sheets.works/data-viz/hire

I made this, and it's not an ad. Chose Nvidia colours, thinking that a GPU website should seem familiar

You seem to be affiliated with sheets.works, so it appears to be an ad for that site then.

Re: Every GPU That Mattered

#22

Post by skerit » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 9:44 AM UTC

bob1029 wrote: post #8

The 8800 GT is easily the most impactful GPU in my mind. The combination of that video card with valve's Orange Box was insane value proposition at the time. I'd put the 5700xt at #2 for being the longest lived GPU I've owned by a very wide margin. It's still in use today.

I retired my 5700 XT a few years ago. Wasn't there some kind of hardware problem with it? It kept locking up my Linux kernel.

Re: Every GPU That Mattered

#23

Post by vman81 » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 9:45 AM UTC

Honorable mention, the Rendition Vérité 1000 https://fabiensanglard.net/vquake/index.html

Released before the Voodoo 1 with glquake and gl support for Tomb Raider.

Re: Every GPU That Mattered

#24

Post by tetris11 » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 9:46 AM UTC

I really want to see TDP over time.

If I can at least tell myself that our technological achievements come with efficiency gains instead of just apeing power throughput, I can rest a little better

Re: Every GPU That Mattered

#25

Post by keyringlight » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 9:55 AM 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 other elephant in the room is the consoles, and even if they're capable of RT they also have to consider the performance capabilities versus visual payoff. As I see it the PC versions of games like Control from studios like Remedy are trailblazers, it's an early implementation (geforce 20 released in 2018, Control was 2019) as the ultra option to shakedown their implementation and start iteration early so future games will benefit, however the baseline is non-RT.

Re: Every GPU That Mattered

#26

Post by Chaosvex » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 9:59 AM UTC

cubefox wrote: post #21

akashwadhwani35 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made this, and it's not an ad. Chose Nvidia colours, thinking that a GPU website should seem familiar

You seem to be affiliated with sheets.works, so it appears to be an ad for that site then.

I noticed that the list seemed a little Nvidia heavy when there were absolutely other cards that deserved a mention in the earlier years.

Re: Every GPU That Mattered

#27

Post by forsalebypwner » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 9:59 AM UTC

cubefox wrote: post #14

> We build visual stories like this for companies Combined with the color scheme of this site, this might be a cleverly disguised Nvidia ad. Edit: Clicking through to their main page [1]: yeah, that's definitely an Nvidia ad. 1: https://sheets.works/data-viz/hire

I don't think there's strong evidence of this being an ad. I was surprised to see the Intel Arc A770, a GPU I've never heard of, included on this list. I think it's just that Nvidia has been the dominant force in consumer-level GPUs for a while now.

Re: Every GPU That Mattered

#28

Post by Chaosvex » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 10:00 AM UTC

charcircuit wrote: post #5

Why didn't datacenter GPUs make the list. AI trained with them is such a significant part of computing today.

Because consumers don't care about them, probably. They're never going to be remembered fondly like gaming cards.

Re: Every GPU That Mattered

#29

Post by BoredPositron » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 10:00 AM UTC

Missed the Voodoo 5 5000 which laid the ground work for nvlink

Re: Every GPU That Mattered

#30

Post by keyringlight » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 10:00 AM UTC

sakex wrote: post #4

Gaming GPUs only which are those we are all nostalgic about, but hardly the ones that matter now for Nvidia.

I see it as similar to virtual reality, it was born and grew up with gaming demands and influences, but other disciplines may be more attractive for a mature product