Nvidia has a new interactive demo out on Steam
It offers a virtual unboxing of a GeForce 8800 GTX…
…but you need an RTX 4070 to run it, and the recommended GPU is an RTX 5080
Some gamers feel that it’s a ‘slap in the face’ for several reasons
Can’t afford a new GPU thanks to the ever-worsening RAM crisis ? Well, Nvidia wants to take you back to the days when a graphics card didn’t destroy your bank balance, courtesy of a new demo on Steam where you get to unbox and install a GeForce GPU from 2006. The Verge spotted the interactive demo entitled ‘GeForce 8800 GTX — 20 Years of a Legend’ which can be grabbed for free on Steam . It was developed by Dylan Browne, an Unreal Engine artist who was commissioned by Nvidia, and the demo is rendered in Unreal Engine (unsurprisingly). The idea is that you can: "Step into a 2006-era PC gaming room, unbox the GeForce 8800 GTX, inspect it up close, and install it in an era-accurate PC tower." On the face of it, that’s a rather fun idea — and it’s smartly implemented to be fair, including revisiting Windows Vista on a CRT monitor — but if you start to think about it more deeply, this exercise seems more than a little tone deaf in the current PC components climate. Have a watch of Nvidia’s illustrative clip below first off, before we move on to discuss this one. Analysis: ragebait, greed, and a lot of other accusations from gamers
One of the most obvious sticking points here is the requirements to run this demo. What Nvidia GPU will you need to take part in a virtual unboxing? Here’s a clue: it certainly won’t run on a GeForce 8800 GTX. In fact you’ll need an RTX 4070 at the minimum, and the recommended GPU as per the Steam specs is a… wait for it… RTX 5080. (You must have 32GB of RAM, as well, at minimum)…