Microsoft’s Direct3D workforce have lined a few of their workplace partitions with the tons of of graphics playing cards they’ve gathered whereas engaged on the 3D API. That’s 402 graphics playing cards spanning 35 years of technohistory. If you get misty-eyed on the sight of a Voodoo card, shed a tear for the Matrox Parhelia, marvel at graphics playing cards the dimensions of surfboards, or are nonetheless bitter that Direct3D beat many different APIs, you would possibly take pleasure in a look. It is a disgrace that they don’t have extra pictures and so they’re all so small, however I think about that received’t postpone the sort more likely to scream “OH MY GOD I FORGOT ABOUT BITBOYS.”
“When you are the team behind something like Direct3D, you need many different graphics cards to test on. And when you’ve been doing this for as long as we have, you’ll inevitably accumulate a LOT of cards left over from years gone by,” Microsoft defined in their blog post. “What to do with them all? One option would be to store boxes in someone’s office.”
Which they apparently did.
“But it occurred to us that a better solution would be to turn one of our office hallways into a museum of GPU history.”
Which they definitely did.
It is a disgrace that every one their pictures are so low-resolution. I’d very very similar to a more in-depth take a look at these. We’re not nonetheless on GeForce 256s; our GPUs can deal with increased resolutions. Not on dialup anymore both.
The museum nice and all, however I’m remembering how a lot blood I’ve misplaced to sharp edges on heatsinks and pins and issues over my years of rummaging in technoguts. Several of my PCs will need to have been powered extra by blood magic than electrons. Microsoft’s assortment should be about the identical, particularly in the event that they have been typically switching playing cards out and in. That’s a excessive focus of darkish power proper there.
