On this day in 2006, Nvidia released the legendary GeForce 8800 GTX and 8800 GTS graphics cards. Nvidia has decided to honor the flagship of the pair with its GeForce 8800 GTX - 20 Years of a Legend interactive demo, now free on Steam. However, the recommended specs to ‘play’ with this semi-interactive path-traced unboxing experience include a wallet-worrying RTX 5080. Or you could just watch the video, embedded below for your convenience.
The downloadable demo, which also requires 32GB of RAM and 30GB of free storage, was created by Dylan Browne, a senior special effects artist who frequently works with Unreal Engine, as in this case. This experience is said to deliver era-appropriate graphics, but requires the most advanced graphics tech available two decades after the 8800 GTX first hit the scene to work its graphical magic.
To run GeForce 8800 GTX - 20 Years of a Legend on a 2026 PC, you will need at least an RTX 4070 for acceptable performance, according to the Steam page. This software is stuffed with the latest graphics tech embraced by the green team. “DLSS 4.5 with Dynamic Multi Frame Generation, Ray Reconstruction, path tracing, and Mega Geometry” are all present, says Nvidia.
There’s a bit more to the interactive demo than looking around and poking a box with your mouse and then prodding it to fit the shiny new GPU into your “era-accurate PC tower.” An extra layer of fun is promised by the provision of hidden Easter eggs in this experience.
However, the demo appears to show Windows Vista on the PC in the gaming den, which launched at retail a few months after the 8800 GTX. Admittedly, this legendary GeForce card and Windows Vista OS would roam the Earth at the same time, with many folks buying the GeForce 8800 GTX and 8800 GTS to shove into their Vista PCs from 2007 onwards. Crysis launched on PCs in late 2007, a year after the G80 architecture cards debuted.
Nvidia launched the GeForce 8800 GTX (128 shader units) and 8800 GTS (96 shader units) at $599 and $449, respectively. These legendary Nvidia GPUs spearheaded the DirectX 10 era, accelerating existing PC titles and delivering next-gen visuals with new DX10 software. You can read more in our reviews from the time, like the 12-page review of the GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS from the launch week. Briefly, our reviewer thought these cards were “amazing” for their current performance and DX10 promise. They were also excited about the G80 architecture for bringing CUDA to consumers and the promise of making the GPU “something much more than a frame rendering device.” Some Luddite gamers may wish that had never happened.
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(Image credit: Future)
(Image credit: Future)
Nvidia driver support for the GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS would run out of road about a decade later. By that time, DirectX 11 hardware and games were mainstream, leaving older graphics hardware designs obsolete when it came to playing the latest AAA PC titles.
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Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
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