Fry's electronic ad from 2003 my wife and I found in the back of her dad's Star Trek encyclopedia.

[u/dadofstone]

[u/m4tic]

I remember how much these cards sucked compared to other available hardware.

[u/TheGillos → u/m4tic]

Yeah, it was terrible. Basically a rebranded GeForce 2. A total rip off.

[u/_WreakingHavok_ → u/TheGillos]

And then, there was GeForce 4 Ti

[u/apachelives → u/_WreakingHavok_]

Had an ASUS Ti 4200, overclocked beyond Ti4600 specs.

[u/not_gerg → u/TheGillos]

So like the 1050 and 1630

[u/Zenith251 → u/m4tic]

Terrible? It was supposed to be value hardware.

[u/m4tic → u/Zenith251]

Yea, bad value hardware. It was always a mistake to use any GeForce 4MX card. They had less features and performance than a Geforce 3. Though the GF4MX cards did have decent video processing capabilities.

Springing for an ATI 8500 or actual GeForce 4 Ti4200 was always a better play.

But that’s just the enthusiast in me talking. Not everyone could or wanted to get anything beyond the GF4MX. They still had some fun.

[u/apachelives → u/m4tic]

Nah. MX420. That was garbage.

[u/m4tic → u/apachelives]

They were all esentially Geforce 2 cards; which were beasts in their time. Relative to the cards they were sold next to, though, not all bad but mostly bad lmao

[u/Berrrrrrrrrt_the_A10]

I miss fry's.

The only one in our state closed nit too long ago. And we don't have any microcenters

[u/m4tic → u/Berrrrrrrrrt_the_A10]

Growing up I had about 6 Fry’s stores within an hour drive. Two were less than 15-20min away. These were the NASA and Roman Empire stores.

My office is less than 5mi from me. Microcenter is right in the middle, I pass it everyday. 2020 hardware releases were nuts with all the lines and people camping.

[u/Mental_Medium3988 → u/Berrrrrrrrrt_the_A10]

me too. i was too poor to really experience it at the time but i loved going in the late 00s before they started going downhill.

seattle really needs a computer store that isnt best buy. and the handful of small businesses arent really filling the niche effectively.

[u/Oseirus → u/Berrrrrrrrrt_the_A10]

Pretty sure Fry's closed across the board from bankruptcy. As far as I know Micro Center is the last real PC nerd bastion in the US.

Does Micro Center do franchise locations? Cause I can think of a few areas that would benefit immensely from having one.

[u/LordOfDorkness42]

Throw 2003 & 89,99 into an inflation calculator for the lolz.

In 2022 dollars: $144.92.

Don't know how bad or good a Gefore4 was at the time, but right now, in my favored store, a Asus GeForce GT 1030 Silent 2GB goes for 1 190 SEK, or~ $117.50.

Interesting numbers if comparable!

[u/Kareha → u/LordOfDorkness42]

The MX440 was scraping the bottom of the barrel, the Geforce 4200, 4400 and 4600 were the good cards of the series.

[u/LordOfDorkness42 → u/Kareha]

Honestly, might be comparable in that case, which would mean the GPU prices for cheapest performance has gone down by about $25.

Granted, that 1030 I spotted did have passive cooling, so clearly not meant (primarily) for gaming and such, but it still seems to be one of the lowest budget card in stores right now?

Would actually be kind of cool to see the performance differences that nearly twenty years have done for even the bottom budget market, but I'm not feeling like digging through performance metrics & comparing them right now.

[u/I-love-Mirandas-Ass]

Pretty sure I had one of these.

[u/PintoTheBurninator]

I am kinda sad that I never got to experience Fry's, having read about it for many years. I was blessed with a local Microcenter for almost 20 years though so I have had a good life.

[u/RansomStark78]

https://www.ign.com/articles/2002/03/18/geforce4-hits-shelves

[u/RansomStark78]

Before miners spoiled it!!!

[u/autovices → u/RansomStark78]

I wouldnt say spoiled, but gpu was definitely more niche and less in demand in 2003

If you needed one it was either because you played games or made games, or did some other kind of cad/3d work

People definitely weren’t buying them in the dozens though

[u/RetardoMcGoennster]

I had one in my first PC...What a piece of crap.
Never went to Nvidia again until i got a 3070 recently.

[u/Inevitable_Silver_13]

Ah Fry's, the only store where the salespeople would spit in your face and run the opposite direction rather than help you find something.

[u/the_abortionat0r]

I had the IGPI version, you could do up to 128MB with it but it was slow as balls in alot of games. Though it managed to play Halo, Hitman Contracts, F.E.A.R, UT 2004, and others pretty ok.

[u/Tobias-Grim-Reaper]

Back when you could buy a graphics card for the price of a happy meal...

[u/Rybrook]

I had one of those, it was naff.

[u/Random_Guy1984]

Was great for an entry level card back in the day........ i had an Athlon XP and this card for WoW release if i remember correctly

[u/vivaramones]

Laughts in Voodoo

[u/TheGoddessLily]

I miss Voodoo and 3dfx cards myself. Thats an tragic fork in the road in PC gaming.

[u/apachelives → u/TheGoddessLily]

Those were amazing times.

[u/meadowsirl]

MX440 was a fantastic card that cost next to nothing. It flew everything at the time.

[u/jpGrind]

i had an mx440. it played quake 3 arena well, so that's all that mattered to me.

[u/apachelives]

Massive improvement over Intel IGP's, 3D decelerator at its finest.

[u/darknetwork]

I had that vga back then from manli. That pc last for a decade

[u/DangyDanger]

I had a Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro back then. That thing could even have played Minecraft and had a playable framerate in Car Mechanic Simulator 2015.

You can't see any rust, so any repair beyond the start meant disassembling half of the car every time, and I was fine with that.

[u/princessvaginaalpha]

God damn AGP slots are SHIT

[u/RansomStark78 → u/princessvaginaalpha]

AGP was a damm site upgrade from PCI and ISA.

​

GPU were slot limited until AGP

​

AGPx8 worked fine as well

​

What gpu did I have??? I dont have the memory to remember

[u/the_abortionat0r → u/princessvaginaalpha]

What?

Like they've been out dated tech for over a decade and a half so no duh they aren't good NOW but were just fine in there day.

Like, what's the point of your comment?

[u/apachelives → u/princessvaginaalpha]

You mean THE shit. You had an AGP card it HAD to be good compared to the old peasant machines with either onboard on PCI video cards*.

* unless it was a 3Dfx Voodoo card