Saying Goodbye to an Old Friend

This week I lost a friend who has been with me for over six years. I would like to take a moment to honor the loss and recall some of my earliest memories of my friend.

After graduating from high school, I had a summer project before heading to college in the fall. I had been saving money from my part time job to built my Dream PC. My graduation money gave me enough to finally start ordering parts and to begin assembling. The pride and joy of my new machine was the cream of the crop video card at the time, the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. This week my 9800 Pro crunched its last pixel, rendered its final image and drew its last watt.

R.I.P.

The summer that I built my computer ATI was at the top of their game, while its main competitor, NVIDIA, was struggling badly. I remember the 9800’s predecessor the 9700 had been the previous graphics card leader for months. After months of hype, followed by delays, NVIDIA finally released their latest flagship graphics card in hopes of reclaiming the pixel pushing throne.

After all the benchmarking was done, that new card did in fact perform better, albeit slightly, than the 9700 did, but not without some serious deterrents. Not only did that card start at an outlandishly high price, but the main critical failure of this card was that it generated so much heat that it required a separate heating unit so large that the card took up two slots on the motherboard. None the less, the NVIDIA card was now the fastest graphics card available on the market. ATI took the crown from off the 9700’s head and handed it to NVIDIA, but why does ATI have such a smug look on their face.

The week after losing the top graphics card place to NVIDIA, ATI quietly revealed their newest flagship card, the 9800 Pro. It crushed the latest NVIDIA card in every area. The NVIDIA team must have completely demoralized by its appearance. The 9800 Pro was the new graphics card king and remained unchallenged for almost a year.

As I began planning the components for my Dream Machine, I had a pretty open attitude about what components I wanted in my machine. I began researching chipsets and motherboards with no bias towards Intel or AMD, for Asus or GigaByte, for Crucial or Corsair. The only piece of hardware I knew I wanted from the beginning was the Radeon 9800 Pro for my graphics card.

The week had come when I finalized all my computer specs and placed multiple orders to vendors around the web. The days were full of pent up anticipation while checking the my various packages’ UPS status. After all my hardware arrived I spent the next day bringing my creation to life. I still remember that sensation of seeing that first Windows icon while loading XP. The hardware was running smoothly and after a couple more hours of service pack and driver updates, my computer was finally finished.

The first thing I remember doing was running the graphics demo on the ATI driver disc. I sat in my broken, wooden chair watching a 3D rendering of a sports car spinning around in awe. The details were so crisp as the car’s paint color transitioned as the light source reflected around the vehicle.

I was so happy to be the wielder of such power. No game could slow it down. I got to spend the next year bragging about my frame rate to my friends. When they had to turn down their game settings to be able to play, I mocked them while I turning mine up. Their eyes would widen when they learned that I had the audacity to play games with shadows on.

Alas, the glory days are long gone and now I must find a replacement graphics card if I want to keep the old girl still ticking. So I went by Fry’s today and it pained me to find a graphics card that is better than my 9800 Pro was for $45 when I originally paid $450 for it. But that’s the price you pay for getting the latest technology; it’s obsolete in three months and in the bargain bin in six.

The 9800 Pro was my first and really my last piece of tech that I purchased that fits the geek stereotype of paying way too much for tech just to say you own the latest and greatest. Shortly after building that Dream Machine I was off to college and now married, so college bills and mortgage payments make it hard to justify these types of purchases now. I won’t lie though, being ostentatious with tech was a good feeling, and I miss it.