Iconic Hardware: The products that made a dent on the PC industry

Honestly, it while the 8800GTX was the flagship of the generation, the 8800GT is what really shined. It had performance rivaling the 8800GTX and blowing the first generation 8800GTSes out of the water, due to a new architecture. Even price gouged to 300 USD on launch, the 8800GT was an incredible price/performance card. It was so good, nVidia changed next to nothing for its successor, the 9800GT.

I even ran an 8800GT and 9800GT in SLI.
 
That brings back memories of my beloved Celeron 300A. The first PC I ever built used the 300A and I overclocked it to 450MHz where is ran happily all day ever day. I have never been able to part with that processor, I still have it today :)

The Razer Boomslang is the first bit of computer hardware I ever reviewed. At the time I ran a Command & Conquer website and Razor asked if I could write a few words about the mouse if they provided one. I agreed and since then never looked back.
 
Honestly, it while the 8800GTX was the flagship of the generation, the 8800GT is what really shined.
Agreed. Mainstream models generally garner the adulation of the user base, and the 8800 GT (and 8800 GTS 512 for that matter) were exceptional boards, but where the 8800 GT was the common sense option it didn't produce the outright shock and awe that the GTX did a year earlier. It is very seldom that a new product outperforms the reigning top dog by a factor of two or more- which the GTX achieved.
From my recollection, my personal experience with the 8800 GT (which I also owned) was tempered by the facts that it was hard to come by initially, and I wasn't sold on the single slot blower fan (replaced with Zalman VF1000's from memory) which would have repercussions for many until the airflow design was tweaked and Nvidia added to the fan blade count of the squirrel cage blower.

@Steve
Nothing like revisiting that nostalgia buzz! It was all I could do not to wax lyrical about the ThermoChill PA.120.3, Danger Den TDX, and Laing D4
 
I am surprised not to see any mention of mobile gpu's in this, there have been some significant advancements with them that have changed the mobile computing/ gaming circuit.

All in all a great article though, nice read.
 
Indeed, awesome piece that brings memorable times to mind. The first overclock, the GPU upgrades, and some of the peripherals that shaped PC gaming in one way or another.
 
Great trip down memory lane. Makes me feel mighty old to have seen all these advances. Wish I had kept that first Apple too.
 
The memories.

Ive realized lately that I greatly miss the PC cases of the early 2000s. dat nostalgia though.
 
I'd throw a few overseas items on here: The PC-98 comes to mind, given the list of companies that started developing games on that platform before they eventually moved to consoles (Enix, Square, Sega, Nihon Falcom, Bandai, HAL Labs, and Wolf Team, to name a few). The PC-98 basically created all the JRPG companies still in business today.
 
Those were the days when demand for CPU and memory had a meaning. Now it is just for sports. I have a desktop with 32GB of RAM, and I don't know why, since I barely ever use half of it. My CPU 4770K is idle most of the time also. We are too spoiled now.
 
Great list, except you missed the Antec 300/600/900 series from the cases section. If you've ever been to a LAN party, you'd know ...
 
Nice blast from the past. I'd have to toss in ergonomic keyboards into this mix. No one ever heard of "carpal tunnel," until people had to do 8 hours worth of typing on flat keyboards. Then the ergonomic boards showed up (also track balls) and now you never hear of carpal tunnel.
 
Very cool article, one thing I loved was the Intel Pentium II slot CPU. No matter what I still think that was one of the coolest and most fun designs for a CPU of all time, I just enjoyed staring at them and working on them (I still have one laying around somewhere).

The 8800GTX truly was a cool card and was the pinnacle of GPU's back in the day. I had a 8800GT in my Athlon 64 Rig back along time ago and it was so much fun playing BF 2142 with it. Ive had friends who ran Dual 9800GT's up until a couple years ago because of how well they did in games.

Very fun read.
 
This was a great article, one I read from start to finish without skipping a page. Looking back on all this old hardware really calls back the past. At work I was issued with the IBM Thinkpad back in the early 90's and I loved it. I often wondered what happened to it after I was issued with a newer model laptop from Dell which I never thought much of.
I still have a complete Apple IIe computer (1 button mouse, keyboard, screen & 5.25" floppy drives) packed in boxes and stashed away in my garage which I inherited from a deceased relative but have no idea if it will still work. I'll keep it and pass it on to someone eventually but I won't sell it.
I also still have my E6300 CPU stashed away which I used to overclock the hell out of, in fact I still have a lot of old computer parts lying around which I'll never use again.
Maybe if one of my descendants sells them in a 100 years from now they'll fetch a good price.
 
I'd add the Pro Audio Spectrum 16 (PAS 16) and the original Soundblaster soundcards. Computer sound was really, really bad before that.
 
Ah Memory lane, trying to mix and match video cards to get all these different games working... Voodoo, Stealth, Edge 3D, Rage, so many...
 
Thanks for the great article. What a great read... It's very nostalgic to see all this iconic hardware once again and it certainly does bring back some memories for me.

I remember how smitten I was with the HP Blackbird 002 case. It truly was amazing in it's time (and still holds up well). I remember when Maximum PC used this case for one of their dream machines. They even went as far as to have it chrome plated for an extra $5K.

At one point HP started selling the Blackbird 002 case as a standalone product, however it had to be special ordered and it was priced at a whopping $1K USD. If it would have been priced more reasonably I would have definitely picked one of them up.
 
Nice article but Athlon 64/Opteron is missing on CPU
why you say?, all modern x86 cpus now a days have amd64 code in them, how can that not be a big change in computer history?
 
Wow memories haha , I too had a 300A , I remember blanking out one of the pins to overclock mine though.. but yeah stable as! one of the greats :D
 
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