NVIDIA Marks 20 Years of the GeForce 8800 GTX With a Free Path-Traced Steam Demo

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NVIDIA celebrated the GeForce 8800 GTX with a free Steam demo that recreates a 2006-era gaming room using path tracing.

Quick Report

NVIDIA is celebrating 20 years of the GeForce 8800 GTX with a free Steam demo called GeForce 8800 GTX - 20 Years of a Legend. Built with Unreal Engine and path tracing, the interactive showcase lets players unbox the original card, install it into a 2006-era PC tower, and explore a scene packed with GeForce-themed easter eggs.

The joke is that the original 8800 GTX cannot actually run the demo it inspired: Steam lists an RTX 4070 as the minimum requirement and an RTX 5080 as the recommended GPU, alongside 32 GB of system memory and 30 GB of storage. The 8800 GTX launched in 2006 with 768 MB of GDDR3 memory and a $599 launch price, which makes the modern hardware demands a sharp reminder of how much gaming technology has evolved in two decades.

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Source(s)

  • TPU