Pretty much all 3D accelerators were flops until 3DFX released the Voodoo, before that 3D acceleration was seen as something only professionals needed (see SGI) or totally inadequate for playing games on.
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When the Gpu's prices will go down ?
- Thread starter sys6em
- Start date
In those days 3D engines were more like the Ray tracing Nvidia was blowing its trumpet about in the RTX20 series. Nice to have but utterly unusable.
Yes once 3Df. And directX had proper 3D engines there was no stopping it tbh
It’s a matter of technology becoming mainstream and compute power keeping up with it.
Yes once 3Df. And directX had proper 3D engines there was no stopping it tbh
It’s a matter of technology becoming mainstream and compute power keeping up with it.
Would be interested to know if everyone converting old card prices in today's money can find out what those cards were selling for a year or 18months after release.
I remember card gens turning over much more quickly back then and 2 year upgrades is what I did. These days 3-4 year old cards sell at or close to mssp.
I remember card gens turning over much more quickly back then and 2 year upgrades is what I did. These days 3-4 year old cards sell at or close to mssp.
I remember GPU gens being updated every 6-8 months at one point and in some cases even faster when one competitor steps on another's lead they suddenly release a faster card. The 2 year to 2 and a half year cycle is pretty recent in the time of graphics cards.
It was pretty funny and sad you would order a card and by the time you got it, it was not the fastest card at the time anymore
as it was such a niche market for some of the top end cards it took ages to get hold of one and in most cases they even sold as OEM in a brown box or envelope at the time as you could only buy some of them from system builders or OEM PC makers.I remember buying this card (hercules) and it came in a brown padded envelope in a brown box with the cable and manuals, never saw a retail version in UK.
Hercules Prophet 2 Ultra
The Hercules Prophet 2 Ultra follows the Nvidia reference design in terms of clock speed to the letter, running at 250MHz Core speed and 460 Memory, Unlike previous Hercules offerings this is the regular speed for the Ultra chipset, Earlier Hercules offerings such as the GTS2 2 64MB ran at over...
hexus.net
and a few months later (about 12 months) these came out and destroyed them by the time I got the hercules prophet 2 ultra in UK even.
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB
We've been waiting for this time since consumer graphics finally took off with the Voodoo. Since then, as PC's finally had the pixel pushing horsepower to render 3D at speed, games have been gaining in visual quality and complexity up to a point where larger framebuffers haven't just been a...
hexus.net
Before the hercules I had a matrox millennium g400 max.
Matrox Millennium G400 & G400MAX
Also maybe there was another card between the hercules and ati 9800 pro but can't remember but remember the hercules was replaced with the ati 9800 pro back then and remember wasn't that long between the upgrades for some reason and was annoyed and gave the hercules card as a gift to a friend back then too. Also I remember coming from the matrox card to the hercules nvidia card the 2D video quality was terrible compared to the matrox but 3D was faster and better so compromised and when I went back to ATI again video quality was so much better again and I promised myself to stay away from Nvidia back then.
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Soldato
The cpu cycle was quite frequent too. If you were into it, your machine was overhauled fast, but then we got the 15-20% era where for the money being spent it wasn't really worth it.
This is about Jensen's comments. Don't enter a conversation if you don't know the context or what I originally posted about.
Feel free to follow the quotes up.
Paying $500+ for a 63mm^2 in todays money is ridiculously expensive btw. I'd rather pay $1.6k for a >500mm^2 die.
Moore's law says you pack more transistors in the same die area, as the cost of transistors go down, doubling every X years. If you then increase the die area that increases costs.
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I'm not saying that nvidia were the only competitor. But they were the largest entrant at that time. ATI were actually one of the incumbents charging loads.
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I know it is, why can't you focus long enough to respond to what you're quoting, yet again. Look, I'll help you out, as you obviously have issues with maintaining attention on one thing for any period of time. Jensen claimed in a video that Nvidia brought 3d acceleration to the masses by making it affordable, i said that IMO he was trying to rewrite history because it was 3DFX who brought 3D acceleration to the masses, and then you waded in by spouting some nonsense about how you "don't get how people think hardware wasn't historically stupidly expensive (when converted to today's money)."
A point i refuted and had nothing to do with Jensen trying to rewrite history or 3DFX being the ones who brought 3D acceleration to the masses, and is entirely false for the reason i and others have pointed out to you.
You then decided to go off on one simply because i asked you to define what you meant by "stupidly expensive", a question you've still not even come close to answering because you've got yourself tied up in knots and decided to go off on one.
Also, that's not what Moore's law says.
Soldato
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- 14 Aug 2009
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- 3,080
Neah, they're hyping it too much
Even in their trailers doesn't look that good. For instance that grass has no shadow/AO.
The Bleeding-Edge Tech Powering Immortals of Aveum™
The developers at Ascendant Studios reveal what Unreal Engine 5.1 brings to the world of Aveum.
www.ea.com
Soldato
I was purely talking about the video earlier... that comment from the dev is comical though, to do what he's saying basically requires a small server farm, something every gamer has in their basement lol.Neah, they're hyping it too much
Even in their trailers doesn't look that good. For instance that grass has no shadow/AO.
The Bleeding-Edge Tech Powering Immortals of Aveum™
The developers at Ascendant Studios reveal what Unreal Engine 5.1 brings to the world of Aveum.
I know it is, why can't you focus long enough to respond to what you're quoting, yet again. Look, I'll help you out, as you obviously have issues with maintaining attention on one thing for any period of time. Jensen claimed in a video that Nvidia brought 3d acceleration to the masses by making it affordable, i said that IMO he was trying to rewrite history because it was 3DFX who brought 3D acceleration to the masses, and then you waded in by spouting some nonsense about how you "don't get how people think hardware wasn't historically stupidly expensive (when converted to today's money)."
A point i refuted and had nothing to do with Jensen trying to rewrite history or 3DFX being the ones who brought 3D acceleration to the masses, and is entirely false for the reason i and others have pointed out to you.
You then decided to go off on one simply because i asked you to define what you meant by "stupidly expensive", a question you've still not even come close to answering because you've got yourself tied up in knots and decided to go off on one.
Also, that's not what Moore's law says.
Cards were much more expensive in the early 90s as I've shown. Nvidia produced cards that were cheaper than those prices after they launched in 1993. Those prices adjusted for inflation would be $500+ today. Those prices on a per mm^2 basis today would be astronomical. Nvidia/AMD could easily produce cheap 100mm^2 dies and say they are delivering prices that are much cheaper than the 90s.
Computing is not more expensive than the 90s.
As for 3dfx, since we are talking about rewriting history
3dfx - Wikipedia
their first card was released in 1996, a year after nvidia. Their card releases were spotty, struggling to make sales and they quickly went out of business and had to be bought.
Fahrenheit (microarchitecture) - Wikipedia
Nostalgia and anti-nvidia bias is so strong here.
Here is an actual article on the issue from the time.
Nvidia buys out 3dfx graphics chip business
The graphics chipmaker buys out one-time rival 3dfx Interactive, another landmark in the consolidation of the graphics hardware industry.
www.cnet.com
Yeh this sounds like we have 3dfx to thank for the massive gaming market we have today.... It has been Nvidia and ATI reacting to competition.
There is also a separate question, on what was really the first consumer GPU, with a complete rasterisation pipeline. That one would also go in nvidia's favour.
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Wow. What a wall of text that I'm not going to read because it still doesn't answer what you think "stupidly expensive" is.
e: Although having looked through your post history i guess i shouldn't expect anything more as it seems you're a professional troll.
e: Although having looked through your post history i guess i shouldn't expect anything more as it seems you're a professional troll.
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Stupidly expensive is a 63mm^2 die costing ~$500 in today's money.
Or if we take something more like towards the end of the decade
NVIDIA GeForce 256 SDR Specs
NVIDIA NV10, 120 MHz, 4 Pixel Shaders, 0 Vertex Shaders, 4 TMUs, 4 ROPs, 32 MB SDR, 143 MHz, 64 bit
NVIDIA GeForce 256 DDR
A 139mm^2 die costing $450 in today's money.
My posts tend to give evidence for anything I say. Especially when asked. I've yet to see you say anything other than, "you are rewriting history" after missing the crux of the conversation at the beginning.
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Caporegime
The problem is aluminium was worth more than gold 100s of years ago,and Penicillin was ridiculously expensive 80+ years ago. Air travel was a luxury only the super rich could afford. Computers were the size of small houses and costed millions of quid 50+ years,and a modern smartphone probably has more processing power than the Apollo 11 flight computer(which was state of the art at the time),and is much more cheaper. Technology moves on.
Now look at the margin companies like Nvidia made today - they have skyrocketed over the last 10 years,and their gross margins are more than Apple. That shows you they are selling their products for far more than any production cost increase has done.
Now look at the margin companies like Nvidia made today - they have skyrocketed over the last 10 years,and their gross margins are more than Apple. That shows you they are selling their products for far more than any production cost increase has done.
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Caporegime
There is a reason Nvidia makes higher gross margins than Apple. People overestimate the costs. Oh noes! TSMC XYZ cOsTs MoRe ThAn Samsung XYZ. But if that means only $100 more for the die,but the other parts now cost $50 less,and then the price goes up by $200(for the GPU tier),then they are making far more bank.
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Soldato
Yep was my point but the response (in the other thread) showed they didn't understand the memo...
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So a 64mm^2 die costing ~$500 in today's money wouldn't be stupidly expensive?
Nope, it now seems 139mm^2 die costing $450 is also stupidly expensive! Does that now mean 140mm^2 die costing $450 is not?
ROFL.
Sure you post 'evidence', what of only you seem to know as you're making up arguments in your own head. I assume because you can't stay focused long enough to address the salient points of the posts you're replying too. I mean take this latests conversation, it's taken you days and multiple posts to even come close to an answer and even then you've struggled to define what "stupidly expensive" is because one moment it's "a 63mm^2 die costing ~$500 in today's money." and then the next it's "a 139mm^2 die costing $450 in today's money".If you can't define what you meant how on earth do you expect others to know?
Yeh of course it is expensive. That is my point.
Prices have come down loads. From the really high prices in the early 90s to last decade.
I'm not sure why I'm the one who has to defend the fact prices have come down.
It's easy to just criticise Jensen's statement without providing any evidence, like several people in this thread are doing.
If we had ATI prices from the early 90s, $1600 cards wouldn't be exceptional but the norm.
Prices have come down loads. From the really high prices in the early 90s to last decade.
I'm not sure why I'm the one who has to defend the fact prices have come down.
It's easy to just criticise Jensen's statement without providing any evidence, like several people in this thread are doing.
If we had ATI prices from the early 90s, $1600 cards wouldn't be exceptional but the norm.
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