Graphics cards box art hall of shame (and fame!)

[Raging Capybara]

Post your favorites, ironically and unironically.

 

[(not) y2k compliant]

I always loved graphics card boxes. Even at the time they were current I still found them baffling. I mean, look at this cool ass frog, why the fuck is he a cyborg frog? No way the 9600 GT could even push those polygons, that shit is prerendered.

But I always did enjoy the over the top sinister look of the Voodoo 3 boxes. Had a one of these for the 2000 PCI version laying around for years.

 

[FreakyFredsTrannyGranny]

 

[Agarathium1066]

Unironically a big fan of the interpretive dance alien render. Jank as hell.

 

[Pickle Inspector]

 

[Irrelevant]

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I think these two are influenced by Creative's Voodoo 2 box which I feel was pushed harder than any other brand at the time and is pretty nostalgic for me even though I owned a different brand.

 

[Too Many Catgirls]

Mommy Ruby.

 

[Xenomorph]

All these are amazing and if you dont think so, please commit self die.

 

[Denmark Mafia]

 

[TheShedCollector]

I had a 9800 pro back in the day. The single worst graphics card I've ever owned. It never once worked a full day without crashing. It lasted 2 months before I could afford to replace it. Worthless piece of shit. But the box was at least quality

 

[Irrelevant]

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I had a 9800 pro back in the day. The single worst graphics card I've ever owned. It never once worked a full day without crashing. It lasted 2 months before I could afford to replace it. Worthless piece of shit. But the box was at least quality

Wasn't this the ATI generation that had some many cards fail QA they would repurpose them as 9500s and if you were lucky you could flash your 9500 to an 9800 and it'd work at full speed?

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

All modern GPU box art belongs in the hall of shame. It's so dull.

Bring back the tacky box art. It's funnier.

 

[(not) y2k compliant]

All modern GPU box art belongs in the hall of shame. It's so dull.
View attachment 1403463
Bring back the tacky box art. It's funnier.

I think part of the reason that boxes don't have crazy prerendered art anymore on them is that you just don't simply buy videocards from brick and mortar stores anymore, there is no need to visually stand out with your box since 99% of people buy computer parts online.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Wasn't this the ATI generation that had some many cards fail QA they would repurpose them as 9500s and if you were lucky you could flash your 9500 to an 9800 and it'd work at full speed?

That was the hack that turned a cheap graphics card into the 9700 PRO which was the fastest card on the market. Good times.

I think these two are influenced by Creative's Voodoo 2 box which I feel was pushed harder than any other brand at the time and is pretty nostalgic for me even though I owned a different brand.

View attachment 1402961

Creative showed restraint with their Geforce 256 card.

Diamond was the main competition with Orchid on the first 3dfx cards and they had a similar style, but it was in 96/97 before the really weird stuff like Evil Commando became common. I don't really remember why Orchid was considered the best Voodoo 1 card.

Matrox was relatively early with awful box art. (notice how the card have no display output)

One of my favorites just because of its name:

It's hard to read but the 9 T2R in the upper left is part of the name, the full name is "Number 9 Ticket 2 Ride Revolution 3D" and it used a graphics chip designed by Number 9. There were so many graphics chips back then. John Carmack wrote the OpenGL wrapper for Quake and let the developers themselves develop drivers for it instead of supporting all the weird APIs that were around at the time. To compare it with another game, Unreal 1 shipped with 4 selectable APIs, Direct3D was not one of them and I think OpenGL was patched in shortly thereafter and didn't work right for a long time, or maybe it was the other way around. Point is, things were pretty weird.
When Unreal launched the selectable APIs were 3dfx, S3 Metal, PowerVR SGL, maybe Rendition/Vérité or something and the insanely impressive software rendering.

Direct3D was complete garbage at the time, for a while S3 was the king of Direct3D benchmarks because driver support for the mess that was D3D 6 was so shitty that no one supported dual textures(sampling and combining two texels, like a texture and a lightmap, at the same time, doubling performance) and S3 had a relatively fast single texture card making them the fastest one legged sprinter for a hot minute.

From the back of the Number 9 box, something you don't see these days.

 

[Kosher Dill]

(notice how the card have no display output)

Obviously it was for mining '90s cryptocurrencies

 

[Dom Cruise]

Wow these are amazing.

 

[Pissmaster]

Every single character on these boxes could make for a great avatar

 

[Cast Iron Pan]

I like the one with the busty 3D woman on it.

 

[Spasticus Autisticus]

 

[FAQnews Correspondent]

I like the one with the busty 3D woman on it.

And she's bald.