Look at how unhinged GPU box art was in the 2000s
37 comments
·October 20, 2025jakebasile
Gigachad
On the plus side, PC gaming hardware seems to last ages now. I built my gaming desktop in 2020, I had a look lately at what a reasonable modern mid tier setup is and they are still recommending a lot of the parts I have. So I'll probably keep using it all for another 5 years then.
m-hodges
Woah, that book is cool; and so much more from this publisher!
soupfordummies
You ain't kidding! What a treasure trove of a publisher. Never heard of them before, great rec
makeitdouble
On nowadays gaming related unhinged designs, I raise the CoolMaster Shark X PC case to your attention:
abtinf
I would guess part of the reason for this was box art used to matter because most of these cards were sold through dedicated electronics retailers like Fry's Electronics, Microcenter, and CompUSA. There was basically no such thing as online ordering for this sort of thing. People were physically browsing goods on shelves.
zdw
Unusual designs are still a thing in some markets (mainly china) - for example, a cat themed cooler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGGKaX1D9Zo and various anime themed backplates on cards are available from Yeston: https://yestonstore.com/collections/graphics-card
makeitdouble
Thanks, Japan is in the same boat.
From full cases [0] including the CPU cooler in general, to themed components[1], when it comes to gaming makers are going beyond and above to create cool visuals.
numpad0
[delayed]
dlivingston
That's fantastic. I recently bought a Lofree mechanical keyboard (they're a Chinese brand) and they definitely have the most unusual hardware designs I've ever seen.
Here's one of their mice: https://www.lofree.co/products/lofree-petal-mouse
Larrikin
It's nice to see, but the design feels like it's meant to go into a clear case so that it can be streamed for the world to see.
rpcope1
I loved the weird boxes back in the 90s and 2000s. I remember dad would always take us to computer trade shows and ham events, and occasionally you'd see someone from ATi or Nvidia (or one of the integrators) demoing their wares with all sorts of bizarre and funny demo software and renders. I don't know if it was just me or what, but they always sent real nice sales or marketing people and it was fun to talk to them about the GPUs as a kid. I think they were as mystified (I recall several of them laughing about it) about the box art as everyone else was.
bee_rider
I think what happened is, at the time those were literally more or less examples of the best scenes the cards could render. Nowadays, putting together an example of the best scene the card could render requires a whole art department and a couple months of design. Nobody’s going to spend months on box art, so we get bland rectangles or whatever.
dlcarrier
It's nothing that complicated. Nvidia started micromanaging their distributors, and removed all the fun, and AMD just copies what they do.
gdulli
Or it was just a fad when the scene was novel and it ran its course as fads and design elements do. This explanation doesn't require there to be an enemy to demonize but sometimes there just isn't, as much as we might want there to be.
Gigachad
What the best scene you could render is a bit fuzzy. In blender you could render anything at all. But in a game, at what resolution, and what framerate, are the shadows dynamic or baked in?
aunty_helen
Ahhh reminded me of my sapphire 3870 toxic edition. Cool box art and one of the coldest running cards I’ve owned with the Vapor x chamber.
Mawr
Please stop reminding me of how soulless and watered down everything has become :(
Games are no different, in Morrowind gods ripped each other's penises off and used them as spears; in Skyrim you fight dragons.
bee_rider
For sure, games have gotten bland and lame. But in an era of quirky games Morrowind was still extra quirky.
null
kristianp
The Voodoo range had some cool boxes: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/yp5qzo/3dfx_v...
lethologica
This is a blast from the past! I remember being really young and buying a GPU based solely on what art was on the box (and yes, it was a scantily clad woman) and getting really, really luckily that it actually worked with my components but it was my intro to upgrading PCs!
g-b-r
When you'd first get a 3d accelerator you'd enter in a completely new world, the graphics and speed you'd get were on a different planet with what your computer could do without them.
I think that the boxes initially reflected that.
My first accelerator (rather late) was that 3D Blaster Voodoo 2; the graphics of the box contributed to the emotion of holding it, they looked better than in the picture.
I was mindblown when I saw what the card could do, and I believe to have thought that the graphics did reflect well its capabilities.
I sure kept the box for many years.
I imagine that then the manufacturers felt compelled to keep making boxes which would stand out; and in part, yes, they tried to attract some purchases from people who didn't originally mean to get a new graphics card.
I miss when gaming in general was less mainstream and more weird like this. Now the silicon manufacturers hate that they even have to sell us their scraps, let alone spend time on making unique designs for their boxes.
I bought a small press book with a collection of this art and it was a fun little trip down memory lane, as I’ve owned some of the hardware (boxes) depicted in it.
For anyone else interested: https://lockbooks.net/pages/overclocked-launch