Computer Graphics cards sure have come a long way

[Hoodcom]

Pretty well every computer has a graphics card, that's what allows you to see everything on your monitor! So here's a nice comparison between a fairly modern NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Graphics card, with the old CGA graphics card (And dial-up modem) of my IBM 5150.

The IBM 5150 originally released August 12, 1981 and first came out with a monochrome graphics adapter, but a year or so later, the CGA came.

In this photo, the dial-up modem is right under the GeForce 8800, and below it, is the CGA card installed. Which was used for CGA monitors or your own TV due to the composite video output:



It's quite fascinating how far we've came in computer technology, even during the 90s to the 2000's.

Especially how real 3D acceleration came around with NVIDIA and 3DFX before DirectX ever became a standard.

Also, for those of you who are wondering, yes, I am obsessed with electronic things such as computers new and old.

*EDIT*

By the way, example of the graphics capability of the IBM 5150 with CGA:


Silpheed! Running on a 5150, but the game is at perfect framerate on a 386SX based machine.

[Haruka]

I still own a NVIDIA GeForce 256, it was my graphic card of my previous desktop computer that I used between 2000 and August 2007, with Windows ME OS.

Rayman 2: The Great Escape ran perfectly on it. Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc also, but with a minor lag.

[Hoodcom]

Very nice piece of history there!


Let's see... I have...

Monochrome card in my 5150
CGA card in my other 5150
Oak Technology VGA card ISAVesa
Cirrus Logic ISA (couple different ones)

Couple of S3 PCI cards

ATI Mach64 PCI
ATI Rage LT (if I remember correctly) PCI
ATI Rage 128 PCI
ATI All In Wonder 9600 AGP
ATI Radeon 2400 AGP
ATI Radeon HD 3870 PCI-E

3DFX Voodoo 1 PCI
3DFX Voodoo 2 PCI
3DFX Voodoo 5 5500 AGP

NVIDIA GeForce 7950GT PCI-E
NJVIDIA GeForce 8800 PCI-E
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 PCI-E

So I pretty well have a bit of older cards.

[Steo]

At this stage, they've come a long way since this thread was created. Not only do we have these monsters that can play in 4K, but AMD are now talking about new RDNA2 GPUs which are supposed to be coming out by the end of the year.

They claim that they will use half the power of their current ones to be able to do the same job, so this Nvidia vs AMD thing is going to get interesting. The only downside to AMD are the drivers of course, but Mesa on Linux is pretty nice.

At the moment, I'm using a GTX 970 after having to return two 5700 XTs, but I'm thinking of buying another in the hopes that "third time's the charm".

As for older GPUS, the oldest ones I seem to have are a GTX 670 and a Radeon 270X. They're not exactly old compared to what Hoodcom would have, but those are the oldest ones I have.