If you want to get a greater appreciation for the magic that happens inside the video card..
Great video on how GPU’s work
- Thread starter Raynet11
- Start date
Good video. I’m kind of a junkie when it comes to GPUs and hoarding PC parts like a Jawa does junk. I will say we might be reaching the end of just making GPUs more powerful without extreme amounts of wattage and pricing increases down the road. Today’s bad deals might start to look like good ones if this keeps up. Never sell your old GPUs. I still have a 980ti, 2080ti, letting a buddy use a 3080ti, a 4090 and waiting patiently for the 5090 with issues (mostly) resolved. You never know when China might tighten the vice grip on the metals we need to even make these chips. The only reason they have not yet is they need Taiwan to keep making them so they can have them also. And if anything at all even happens to Taiwan, like a blockade or an invasion. You can expect prices to soar and suddenly that old 980ti in your closet is worth a shit load of money. Same with CPUs. And unlike covid where you were just playing the waiting game due to demand, you would expect to see no inflow at all and the used market dry up and that’s it. You got what you got better take good care of it.
My son get's my refresh so for now the stuff is still in the house... 
But I do have old CPU's / Motherboards dating back over a decade or more... Somewhere I have Nvidia 400 series card up in the attic. Also have my old 2012 MacBook Pro and when my current MacBook Pro is due for a refresh I'm guessing it will hang around as well. Usually on a 5-6 year cycle on PC refreshes but depends on the games as well, I remember building a new PC for Half Life 2 back in the day, and then built one to play BF4.. I haven't had a "I need that !!" moment for a game driving a build in a long time though. Perhaps BF6 when it comes out but Dice / EA as of late I'm not holding my breath.
But I do have old CPU's / Motherboards dating back over a decade or more... Somewhere I have Nvidia 400 series card up in the attic. Also have my old 2012 MacBook Pro and when my current MacBook Pro is due for a refresh I'm guessing it will hang around as well. Usually on a 5-6 year cycle on PC refreshes but depends on the games as well, I remember building a new PC for Half Life 2 back in the day, and then built one to play BF4.. I haven't had a "I need that !!" moment for a game driving a build in a long time though. Perhaps BF6 when it comes out but Dice / EA as of late I'm not holding my breath.
Ya I recall the golden half life 2 era. Nothing touches it. Shit I remember mowing yards as a kid for a ATI 9800 pro that was like 500 bucks and the best you could buy at the time lol. It’s crazy how they went from being just a chip to a monster needing almost as much power as a freakin refrigerator. Most people will never even have a need for a higher end modern GPU as most people do not touch 4k gaming. What does suck is that frame gen tech will now allow developers to be lazy AF because they will not have to optimize their games. Most future AAA games will be using Unreal Engine witch kinda sucks because it’s demanding as hell and future lighting effects will demand raytracing, it’s not going to be a on or off option only a how much of it do you want option.
I leverage my GPU for creative work (it's actually a hobby not work) , photography (Affinity Photo / Designer) can and does leverage my GPU for workloads, and video editing (video encoding). But since I'm not doing this for dollars or paying someone else to do it sometimes I do the photo's / video's on my MacBook Pro (2020 M1 ). It's not as fast as my PC but it sips power and I'm still amazed that I can do cuts / edits on battery power .
When Half-Life 2 came out I remember thinking graphics don't need to get any better than this, I still sorta feel that way, the "it's good enough for me"
I play BF2042 and at 4K some maps look really good but some of the effects are total overkill and add nothing to the gameplay nor do you really stand around and admire them anyway all the while the heat coming off my PC radiator and GPU are kinda nuts just to make that pretty stuff move on the screen. BF4 final stand maps still look good to me with the high Rez packs
When Half-Life 2 came out I remember thinking graphics don't need to get any better than this, I still sorta feel that way, the "it's good enough for me"
I play BF2042 and at 4K some maps look really good but some of the effects are total overkill and add nothing to the gameplay nor do you really stand around and admire them anyway all the while the heat coming off my PC radiator and GPU are kinda nuts just to make that pretty stuff move on the screen. BF4 final stand maps still look good to me with the high Rez packs
Man a 9800 pro was a baller card, top shelf at Bestbuy
I remember drilling holes in the pcb to mount a little case fan to my bros ati 9200se so we could OC the shit out of it with ATITool, could go from 23 to 30 fps on bf2. I was the older brother so naturally I got the ati 9250 with a screaming 35 frames.
I can't remember what card I had between the 450 and 1080 , it was still a Nvidia 900 something... I remember it doing alright but the 1080 seemed beefy.. Was still running 1080/60 Hhz
My q6600/ati 4870 from uni was still running in mom's home media PC until last year, still heavily overclocked from 2008.
Remember the AMD awful Bulldozer CPU’s ? Still have one of those AMD black series the other I had was the 4Gig model… I bought it for cheap, used it, sold it to a work colleague for $50 and then received a check from that AMD class action lawsuit for $45 I think… I may have made money from the deal..
I do miss the days of being able to build a gaming rig for $1200.
I do miss the days of being able to build a gaming rig for $1200.