Posted on 05/19/2009 11:25:10 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
fyi
“Just how far has graphic cards come in the past 15 years? Enough so that we’ve seen the S3 ViRGE selling for as little as $0.45 in the second-hand market.”
Hell. I’ve got one I’ll GIVE away!
I’m out of the loop. I don’t play any of those games. I fly Microsoft Flight Simulator X, and it’ll pretty much smoke any video card out there. I wish FSX was the standard by which benchmarks were compared.
Shoot ‘em games don’t intrigue me at all.
My first 3d video card was a Voodoo II, circa 1998 or 1999 and used the, now-extinct, glide api. It was an “add-on” card and only did 3d graphics. You still had to have a separate 2D card for non-3D display. It only had 12MB of VRAM but was quite fast in it’s day. Worked like a charm with Need For Speed III.
HAHA reminded me of your AGP that your STILL using!
Great stuff though. Talked about a lot of technology that my generation missed out on...
Then there was the 5080 engineering workstation....each tube require a 2 drawer file cabinet sized box at the display to hold all of the circuitry connected to a unit at the CPU via coax....
I don't know if this aspect is covered in the article (I'll read it later), but the GPU architecture has been found to be so amenable to so many academic, defense, and industrial computational endeavors that at least two GPU manufacturers (nvidia and ati) are now developing (minor revisions of their exisitng) chips specifically for the scientific computation market.
Just another example of supposedly "useless technology" eventually bearing gifts thanks to the twin engines of genuine human progress: science and the free market!
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The IBM 2250 Display Unit was originally shipped with the IBM 1130 computer, introduced in 1965. The 2250 could also be attached to IBM 360-series mainframes, as ours was to the 360/91. Like most IBM terminals, attachment was via control unit (or in this case, direct channel) rather than communication port.
The 2250 was the "first commercially available graphics terminal" if you don't count the DEC PDP-1 display (1961). As late as 1971 there were only about 1000 interactive CRT graphic terminals installed in the USA, compared with 100,000 line printers, 50-100,000 Teletypes, and 70,000 "alphanumeric terminals" (such as the 2260) (CACM Vol.14 No.1, January 1971, p.60).
See the last page,...page 10... for comment by the head of Nvidia regarding that GPU’s were taking over from CPU’s....aimed at Intel.
It's interesting how frequently the circle comes back around in the computer industry. CPUs used to need floating-point co-processors to do much math. Then, they were integrated into the CPU. Now, we have GPUs which are essentially super-duper floating-point co-processors all over again.
While it can't hold a candle to ATI and nVidia's PCI-e offerings right now, I STILL don't have to rebuild my old system.
Picked up some new heat sinks for it today from New Egg. RAM and Proc. The old fans are getting noisy and I wanted to OC the DDR a bit to help it keep up.
Just one more year... ;-)
fyi
Are you going for a record?
My current GPU...
The HD 3850 AGP I'm replacing it with benchmarks pretty darn close to what it's PCI-e cousin does. I just don't feel like shelling out another $700-800 for a new mobo/RAM for my gamer box.
Here is I suspect the same or nearly so ..system....online:
Lenovo Desktop PC Powered by Intel Atom 230 Processor with Windows XP Home Edition
Price: $ 260.99
$50.00 Rebate
Detailed Description
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You going in for a LC case? If I had the buck I would
definitely liguid cool it. My work system is a twin xeon
dell precision 490 + Nv quadroFX 3500.
I could still use an upgrade though.
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