My gaming life with GPUs
I’ve owned 12 discrete graphics cards from 1999 to 2024. In those 25 years games have come a long way. So have I, growing from deluded young human to midlife crisis.
These devices and the many games they helped me play, have been a solace, especially when life got complicated. From Half Life to death. Marriage to Control. Inspired by all the stories I read in reply to a recent Reddit post I created, this is my life with GPUs.
GPU Nvidia GeForce 256 DDR
Year 1999
Key game Half Life
‘The World’s First GPU’ — I was buying a PC for web development, there was an option for a graphics card. What is this new devilry? I’d heard of 3Dfx but not witnessed it’s results, so I selected the Geforce 256 SDR, with no real idea what it was. The DDR version turned up instead. I got a copy of Half Life from a friend. The following weeks I had my 20 year old mind blown; playing late into the night at my office, I would drive home freaked out and amazed that a game could do that to me.
GPU Nvidia GeForce 2 MX400
Year 2000
Key game Unreal Tournament
After the 256 DDR this was a big disappointment. Looking back now, I realised that this is the point Nvidia had caught me in their trap. I was starting to master Flash animation and the web for my job. Unreal Tournament was hilarious and brutal, I had two PCs in my office, me and a colleague would play a death match pretty much every lunchtime for a few months.
GPU Nvidia GeForce 3 Ti200
Year 2002
Key game Half Life 2
By this time I wasn’t playing many PC games, I had a GameCube and a modded Xbox. I was 23, left home, distracted by drinking, clubs and erm, other fun things. Then Half Life 2 appeared. I realised I would need a new PC, thankfully my friend in my house had one. We went halves on the Geforce 3, then shat ourselves going to Ravenholm. I remember having to turn the PC off at the wall to stop the screaming zombies.
GPU ATI Radeon 9600 Pro
Year 2004
Key game World of Warcraft
A strange time. I was earning much more money, so I decided to build a custom, tiny PC. The aim was for it to be silent. I didn’t realise what a thermal war I would have on my hands. The 9600 Pro model I had was hot and noisy, it was also pretty unstable. I played a lot of WoW with it, then sold it to a friend. I hung up my PC gaming gloves for a long time after this experience.
GPU AMD Radeon HD 7970
Year 2014
Key game Farcry 3
Fast forward 10 years… I’m married without children and I’m playing Farcry 3 on my PS3. An amazing game, but the console was struggling. I just kept thinking ‘I bet this is amazing on PC’. I been waiting for the PS4, it was long overdue. So I thought, screw it, I’ll build a PS4!! That Christmas I bought a pre-made from Scan, it turned up with a 7950 in it (karma for the SDR/DDR swap maybe). Once that little issue was resolved, I played Far Cry 3 in glorious 1080p/60fps on my TV. The 7970 was also pretty unstable, I started to think about Team green…
GPU Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti
Year 2015
Key game Shadow of Mordor
I started to hear about Steam Machines. I was very into the idea of PCs becoming a console replacement in the living room. I modified my last build to be smaller, got my first AIO and slashed out on a 780 Ti. My word, it was everything I dreamed it could be. Then I got carried away… I bought a ROG Swift monitor, one of the first with GSYNC. I played so many hours of Shadow of Mordor on that set up. The graphics were insane. But, like a drug, I had to have more.
GPU Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 Ti
Year 2015
Key game Ultimate Street Fighter 4
As a side project, back in 2012 I designed a custom arcade unit that could hang on a wall and use home made SSD ‘cartridges’. In 2015 a carpenter friend built it with me. The 750 Ti was paired with an i3 4330, enough to run USF4 at high frame rate. This was a PC built for a purpose. It was quiet and tiny. It lived at my office for a while and the machine still lives on.
GPU Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan X
Year 2015
Key game Bioshock Infinite
Back to my GPU drug problem… due to a cooler issue I was able to return the 780 Ti and I upgraded it to a Titan X. It turned up at my office, on the day we had a CS GO LAN party. Everyone thought I’d gone mad. Maybe I had. It was overkill for everything I played on it. I had this crazed alter ego that just craved frames. I’m not sure I was really enjoying games. In hindsight, inside I was very unhappy. Bioshock Infinite’s broken world felt a lot like the inside of my head.
GPU Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti
Year 2016
Key game Fallout 4
The guilt kicked in about the Titan X and I realised I couldn’t really justify a £1000 GPU for gaming. Then the 980 Ti appeared with similar performance for £599. Luckily at the time the Titan X’s were in high demand and mine was only a few months old, so I sold it to an even more crazed soul who was going triple SLI. I remember meeting him and thinking ‘At least I look healthier than him’. The 980 Ti felt much more realistic. In mid 2017 my dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer. In 2018, in the middle of a huge house building project, my marriage fell apart. Fallout 4 was a slightly boring but brilliant escape from my broken life. Zelda BOTW on the Switch was a revelation that gave me hope.
GPU Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super
Year 2019
Key game Control
In early 2019 my dad left this world. I had had a crazy few years of unbelievable change, gaming had been my solace. A place where I could escape and be someone else. I had rebuilt my PC with a custom watercooled loop with EKB parts. It finally had a pretty much silent PC. After a year of sorting my old life and divorce out, meeting a new amazing person (that I love and now have a great life with), I sold my house and bought a car and a new GPU, the 2070 Super. I added it into my water loop and decided to give this RTX thing a go. Control was the perfect game for the time, mysterious and beautiful. I remembered again why I love PC gaming so much.
GPU Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070
Year 2021
Key game Hitman 3
Early 2020, the pandemic hit. By this point I was a master of change and I also got very lucky; stuck in a house with my lovely partner and my job, I thrived in a world of uncertainty. Gaming became a massive part of nearly everyone’s life. Animal Crossing took over my life for a while. In a moment of weakness and in the middle of a silicone shortage, I decided to sell my PC. I broke it down into parts and sold them at reasonable prices (no I didn’t become a scalper!). I was also tired of maintaining a waterloop. Very quickly I missed it, so I built a new one. A guy on eBay was having to sell his brand new NR200P case with motherboard, ram and Ryzen 5600x. I snapped it up and managed to get a 3070 at MSRP. Hitman 3 came with the card, it was great. I played all the Hitman levels I had missed.
I had a weird few years of not really gaming much. Nothing really hit like it used to. I think after all the years of change, I had switched off the part of my brain that enjoyed play. I needed to rediscover it. Also, I think BOTW spoiled me, it felt like no other game could compare.
GPU Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super
Year 2024
Key game Alan Wake 2
Late 2023 I had a bit of a breakdown. It was like the years of grief and sadness caught up with me. I decided to try to deal with a load of my trauma and started to really look after my mental and physical health better. I can now say that I feel much better. Going through a purge of stuff in my attic, I sold loads of old GameCube games and other tech. So, new life, new year, new GPU! Having got Alan Wake 2, my 3070 / 5600x was struggling. A gift to myself, a celebration of gaming and my life with it, I bought a 4070 Super and a 5800X3D.
Who knows what will happen this year and beyond. I’m sure it will be unpredictable. Gaming will always be there for me. I’m very lucky to have a job and life that allows me to upgrade and play. PCs are my hobby. GPUs are a way for me to escape in more wonderful ways. Wherever you are, whatever graphics card you have, enjoy the game called life!!
