TIL AMD almost bought Nvidia before settling with ATI in 2006

[u/AaronDotCom]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/briancaulfield/2012/02/22/amd-talked-with-nvidia-about-acquisition-before-grabbing-ati/?sh=7ced24a87a79

[u/oandakid718]

This is back in the days of nForce motherboards from Nvidia. If ATI bought Nvidia it would have led to the biggest hardware monopoly you’d ever seen

[u/MCA2142 → u/oandakid718]

I remember nforce chipsets being a requirement for using multiple 8800s in SLI.

Wow that was such a long time ago.

[u/illwill79 → u/MCA2142]

I had 2 of the bfg gtxs. I remember this vividly lol. I also remember the copium of thinking it was all worth it lmao. I was still rocking a crt at the time, 1920x1200 gang.

[u/Andrew_hl2 → u/MCA2142]

I remember nForce (soundstorm) being the first motherboard that had integrated audio that was good enough I didn't feel like I needed an extra sound blaster.

[u/[deleted] → u/Andrew_hl2]

RIP Aureal

[u/DuckCleaning → u/Andrew_hl2]

So glad that sound cards are a thing of the past

[u/IllustratorBoring448 → u/DuckCleaning]

Ha. Nforce 1 and 2 has dolby digital live. The only other solutions to this day are sound cards that have real time encoding.

I loved soundstorm so much I bought the first card ever to encode dd in real time, when nvidia didn't on nforce 3. Its called hda digital x mystique and I still use it to this day. I have yet to hear integrated sound that compares, or even comes close.

1 cable. 5.1 sound.

[u/[deleted] → u/DuckCleaning]

Aureal cards were so awsome tho.

[u/Andrew_hl2 → u/DuckCleaning]

Yeah I don't really have a lot of nostalgia for sound cards and their fidgety drivers...

[u/animeman59 → u/Andrew_hl2]

I remember Asus having one of the best sound cards years ago, because it's drivers didn't fuck with anything.

Sound card drivers are right up there with printer drivers as some of the most god awful software you can install.

[u/Berfs1 → u/animeman59]

With very high impedance headphones, you can tell the difference, especially in the bass with the DT 990 600ohm. On board audio without an on board amplifier would barely play any bass, but on another board whose on board audio had an amplifier, the bass was pretty deep. At the moment I am using a Maximus XI Gene, versus an X Hero previously, so I ended up getting a SupremeFX HiFi which fits in one of my 5.25" bays, and the audio is stupidly awesome for a 40$ DAC, and it even has a nice brushed aluminum volume dial!

[u/virtikle_two → u/MCA2142]

Lol, sure do! I remember speccing my dream machine out with dual 8800GTs and getting frustrated at the lack of main board choice due to this. That machine actually still runs! Q6600, 8 gigs of DDR2 and the dual 8800s sits under my dad's desk to this day. Paid in full with money from my first job.

Those 8800s slapped. Crysis with all the bells and whistles was beautiful. Ah, memories.

[u/animeman59 → u/virtikle_two]

You had my setup, except with 4GB of memory and one 8800GT. I paired it with an amazing 24-inch NEC CRT monitor and ran that screen for years until it finally died, and I switched to a 1080p IPS monitor.

I miss the 8800GT, too. I miss those powerful single slot cards.

[u/CarpeMofo → u/virtikle_two]

I had a Q6600 as the first CPU I bought with my own money after becoming an adult. I loved that chip. I was able to overclock mine to a full 3 ghz without raising voltage and it was stable as shit.

[u/thesteveyo → u/CarpeMofo]

Are you me? Curious to know what your first CPU was before the Q6600. I had some hand-me-down dual core Celeron.

[u/CarpeMofo → u/thesteveyo]

My first CPU was a 633 mhz Celeron. But that was just a cheap, off the shelf Dell. My first actual gaming machine was a 1.8 ghz Pentium 4 with a Geforce 4 ti4200.

[u/ChanceFray → u/virtikle_two]

I had gratuitous sex with a Gtx 9800

[u/RedTuesdayMusic → u/ChanceFray]

Good for you, my 9800GTX+ is the only graphics card I've ever had catch actual fire :(

Though it happened in a PvP stress test of the internal devs+family of devs alpha of Rift: Planes of Telara when there were a total of 300 players in the world with the game and 85% showed up to the same area.

[u/ChanceFray → u/RedTuesdayMusic]

With the amount of heat those things can make... I can't say I am suprised to hear that. Sorry for your loss

[u/RedTuesdayMusic → u/ChanceFray]

I was overdue an upgrade anyway and the rest of the system was fine. Got a GTX 470 as a replacement so basically skipped a generation and that upgrade felt like night and day

[u/oandakid718 → u/MCA2142]

Back in the day the 2 go to choices for mobo chipsets, I believe, were VIA and nForce

[u/Bloopyhead → u/oandakid718]

Via kt133 was complete and utter shit.

[u/The_Grungeican → u/oandakid718]

nforce was really pretty awesome. i had one of the early ones.

for those not in the know. in those days built in graphics chips were really awful. they were usually limited to 8MB of RAM, and most games were simply unplayable on them. they were generally fine for running Windows, and playing some older games.

when the nforce boards came out, they could use up to 32MB of RAM, and were pretty much the same as having a 32MB Geforce 2 MX card. they were a great stop gap. you could build a PC on that board, and be able to game on it, until you upgraded to a more proper dedicated card.

a nforce board was capable of running games like UT2004 or Quake 3 based games at 1024x768 resolution, no problem. games like HL2 or Doom 3 were a little too heavy for them.

also fun to note, the current Geforce Driver is on version 522 or something. the last driver for nforce boards (which used a unified driver), was something like 47 or so. to give some reference on how long ago that was.