Wow, has it been 15 years since i broke the street date here with sli 7800 gtx 512 meg cards

Marcdaddy

2[H]4U
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Feb 21, 2003
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Thanks for the throwback thread! Selling hardware early wouldn't happen these days, now we have lines forming on launch days.
 
I remember when Kingpin first got his hands on one he was benching near or at 7800GTX 256MB SLI with a single 7800GTX 512MB. I'll try to find the thread later if it's still online.
 
Need to reupload those pics since Image Shack took the piss. Need to re-experience the event in its full glory.
 
Those cards were controversial on the forums I visited back then. Question: Do you still go to that microcenter?
 
7800GTX is responsible for one of my oldest Photoshop'd images I still have on my drive:
wheel.jpg
 
What was controversial about them?

Typical forum wars stuff between ATI and nV. Mostly going from memory here, the X1800XT had just come out and solidly beat the 7800gtx 256, then nV responded with this a month later, and this one guy named Rollo was gloating a bit too much about the nV counter-victory. People complained that nV didn't make enough cards, the prices were above MSRP and no one could afford them or even find them, some people were hoarding them, the power consumption was too high, and that nV and ATI were going too far with trying to gain the #1 spot. It ended up being almost irrelevant because the x1900 series came out a couple months later and retook the crown, then the 7900gtx was released a couple months after that and it was faster and used less power and more widely available and cheaper. So this card was a low-volume card that was only relevant for 2 maybe 4 months and its primary job was to look good in review site benchmark tables.

More exciting times, for sure, I remember this is when the evga step up program was actually useful because new cards came out so fast with big gains. I miss die shrinks
 
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Typical forum wars stuff between ATI and nV. Mostly going from memory here, the X1800XT had just come out and solidly beat the 7800gtx 256, then nV responded with this a month later, and this one guy named Rollo was gloating a bit too much about the nV counter-victory. People complained that nV didn't make enough cards, the prices were above MSRP and no one could afford them or even find them, some people were hoarding them, the power consumption was too high, and that nV and ATI were going too far with trying to gain the #1 spot. It ended up being almost irrelevant because the x1900 series came out a couple months later and retook the crown, then the 7900gtx was released a couple months after that and it was faster and used less power and more widely available and cheaper. So this card was a low-volume card that was only relevant for 2 maybe 4 months and its primary job was to look good in review site benchmark tables.

More exciting times, for sure, I remember this is when the evga step up program was actually useful because new cards came out so fast with big gains. I miss die shrinks
From what I recall Nvidia never really beat the X1900 series. In fact I remember 7900GTX being barely any faster than 7800GTX 512MB.
 
Nice throwback! I think that card is the reason I joined this forum as I was doing the CPU fan mod on the heatsink. I was upgrading from an ATI X850 XT PE. Funny thinking back to the early days.
 
Typical forum wars stuff between ATI and nV. Mostly going from memory here, the X1800XT had just come out and solidly beat the 7800gtx 256, then nV responded with this a month later, and this one guy named Rollo was gloating a bit too much about the nV counter-victory. People complained that nV didn't make enough cards, the prices were above MSRP and no one could afford them or even find them, some people were hoarding them, the power consumption was too high, and that nV and ATI were going too far with trying to gain the #1 spot. It ended up being almost irrelevant because the x1900 series came out a couple months later and retook the crown, then the 7900gtx was released a couple months after that and it was faster and used less power and more widely available and cheaper. So this card was a low-volume card that was only relevant for 2 maybe 4 months and its primary job was to look good in review site benchmark tables.

More exciting times, for sure, I remember this is when the evga step up program was actually useful because new cards came out so fast with big gains. I miss die shrinks
And then ATi responded yet again with the X1950 XTX. Less than 3 months later we got one of the best video cards of all time from NVIDIA, right up there with the 9700 PRO: the 8800 GTX. Things were going hard and heavy because ATi was actually able to, and more importantly, interested in competing with NVIDIA. The passion went straight out the window for some reason when AMD took over, but we got flashes of it back with Tahiti and Hawaii XT.
 
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