Hi all, I want to put up a display case or two in my study and am racking my brains on what to put in it. Then it hit me - why not display some of the most influential pieces of technology? I'm thinking mainly of PC hardware, but other suggestions would be appreciated! So far I intend to get the following: Permedia 2 8MB GPU: The first GPU I ever owned. 3DFX Voodoo 2: The card that bought SLI to the table (ORDERED!) NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2: The first dual GPU Nvidia card (well, the 7900 GX2 was, but no one has one and the 7950 is essentially the same thing) Geforce 8800 GTX: Ushered in a new era of extraordinary GPU performance and marked the beginning of good looking reference coolers. I'll pick up a BFG edition. (ORDERED!) Geforce 480 GTX: An example of how technology progressed but was let down by large heat and power requirements. Plus the reference cooler was pretty! Geforce Titan GTX: For the first time showed what a GPU could do when a manufacturer really 'went' for it. 8800GT: The beginning of the upper-midrange market for GPUs. (ARRIVED) i7 920: A sudden leap forward in multi-core CPU technology that combined hyperthreading and extraordinary overclocking potential. (ARRIVED) First generation iPad: Like it or not, Apple did change the way people thought about mobile devices. First generation iPhone: As above. Still fetches a high price First generation Blackberry: As above. I'm hoping to pick these up on the cheap on eBay, though some of them (e.g. the Titan) may take a while to acquire! Please let me know what you think would be good. Remember I'm not just after the good - I'm interested in bits that were notorious for being bad for whatever reason as well! I'm not experienced with AMD/ATI stuff, so am certainly interested in recommendations for that.
I'd have either a Core 2 Duo E6400 or a 2500k as my CPU - I mean, both of those really stood alone, whereas the i5 750 really undercut the value/power proposition of the 920.
AMD Athlon 64 (K8) single core - first consumer-grade x86_64 CPU. Or maybe an X2 - I think it was the first multi-core consumer grade CPU? Or a PowerPC 970, which was the first consumer grade 64 bit CPU, but it was in Apple G5's, which were fairly niche at the time (2003).
Or even the good Athlon XPs. Perhaps also the first Core Duo CPUs - they marked the death knell for AMD.
If you are including iPad/iPhone, you should include a Blackberry as well. It played its role in making the mobile a multifunction device. Other disruptive tech things to consider would be a Game Boy and Atari console, and a Pebble smartwatch.
3Dfx Voodoo 4MB. Where it all began. CLAP (Creative Labs Annihilator Pro - Geforce 256 DDR 32MB). The first quantum leap (and the card I had when I started playing Counterstrike. Happy days. ).
I think an original Gameboy is a very good shout. Changed the face of mobile gaming. You could have a timeline of storage devices, tape, 5.25" floppy, 3.5" floppy, cartridges, cd, dvd etc
Generations of storage media is a really good idea, seeing them side by side and observing the shrinking physical sizes is cool. The BFGTech 8800 GTX is a must. It's still unrivalled for just how long it sat on top of the market unchallenged. BFG isn't relevant to that fact, but they were a glorious company and they pushed the industry focus onto high-end aftermarket coolers. Plus they don't exist any more, so their cards have innate museum appeal. Even now, I toy with the idea of buying one on ebay just for display, because as a kid I lusted after them and I never got to own one. edit - and the 8800GT, on the other end of the scale, was remarkable because it broke into the midrange market - hell, it practically invented the midrange market. Before it came out the graphics card world was divided into hideously overpriced cards that could run Crysis, and all the other cards that normal people could afford that couldn't. The 8800 GT came out and it could run it competently and was affordable - much better value for money than anything else out there, and occupying a price point that they'd previously ignored and which is now their big earner. The 8800 GT coming out felt like the Berlin Wall coming down (in this metaphor, ironically, Crysis - a German game - is the Berlin Wall. Kinda tasteless, I know.) We have a Pentium 4 3.8GHz sat in the box at work that would be an interesting one just because (as far as I know) it represents the peak of the clock frequency race; immediately after that the paradigm shifted towards multiple cores, and there was never any reason to go so high again. Well, until recently, facilitated by advances in thermal efficiency. At the time, a factory 3.8GHz chip was a concorde moment.
I think I'll have to alter the first post to keep track! I see what you're getting at, but they didn't significantly beat the i7 920 in terms of power and sheer OC potential. I still have my original PC at home with a Pentium II 300MHz inside (though my family had a couple of PCs before it). I think I'll take it and remove the rest. Good shout - AMD were first with a multi-core CPU. Maybe I should hunt down the first CPU with hyperthreading as well? Parge recommend that as well - a good shout as IIRC Intel's first attempt at multi-core was awful compared to AMD, then they suddenly delivered a game-changer, as you say. I'll be happy to take it off your hands! Which was the first dual GPU card though? Was it one of the 3DFX cards? I hate Blackberries but you make a good point! An original Gameboy is a fantastic idea. I may have one kicking around at the folks' place. I was thinking about this but was worried they'd be stupidly expensive as a collector's item. Having looked them up, they're not bad, so I'll add it to the list. I like that! I wonder if I can pick up a ZIP drive - that 100MB was colossal at the time! BFG! Good shout! I was wondering about the 8800GT as well, so you've convinced me - I remember a friend buying it (the one who actually got me into building PCs in the first place) and I was a bit miffed at the time as it offered nigh-on GTX performance at about half price or less!
possibly one of the early nokias? 3310? or 3210 cant remember the exact numbers. Also maybe the first colour phone? I think that was a nokia 7210 or 7250
Great idea, I've got a bookcase with glass doors in my study. Apart from books, I've used 1 shelf to display camera gear. I've not thought about using it to display computer technology. *throws away the meerkat toys sitting in there* ah the BFG 8800GTX, I had one, it was a masterpiece. Shame I don't have it anymore +1 I'll be putting my Pikachu bright yellow (in its days) Gameboy Colour in my bookcase.
There was a 7900GX2, but IIRC it was a bit of a flop. The 7950GX2 is the more well-known one. I imagine others here probably know better than me, I picked up mine second-hand a few years after it came out.
I don't know if it was released before the multi-GPU Voodoos (which were pretty rare), but the ATi Rage Fury MAXX was definitely around quite some time before the Nvidia GX2 cards. I was working as a PC tech at the time and I remember taking the side off one faulty computer that a customer had brought in and seeing a MAXX inside. I might have wee'd a bit. Edit: that's the one, in Mrbungle's post.
i would add a 166mhz mmx cpu and the celeron a 300 mhz.. that thing over clock to over 500mhz! (can't remember the actual number) and spat all over the pentium
I would display very vintage things like those below: Vaccum tube logic circuits Computer punch cards Mechanical calculators I do love very very old technologies and try to understand how they work.
Oh mechanical computers are ****-hot, I want one but I wouldn't know what to do with it. Somehow I still find them more mind-bending than modern computers. Going forward a bit in time, you can still occasionally find old 80s tech like the cassette-tape-fed BBC and Amigas and floppy-based Acorns and Ataris in out-of-the-way charity shops. I got an Atari 5200 with a ton of games for like £25 in a charity shop a few years ago; they had a BBC too with loads of cassettes too, but I honestly couldn't think what I'd do with it. Display cabinets weren't a concept for me back then!
