NVIDIA is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the GeForce 8800 GTX, which launched on November 8, 2006, with a free, path-traced tech demo on Steam. Titled *GeForce 8800 GTX - 20 Years of a Legend*, the semi-interactive experience was created by Unreal Engine artist Dylan Browne with NVIDIA support. It places players in a 2006-era gaming room to unbox, inspect, and install the iconic GPU in an authentic PC tower, complete with GeForce easter eggs.
The demo showcases advanced rendering features including DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction, Dynamic Multi Frame Generation, and RTX Mega Geometry. Available now on Steam, it will also arrive soon on GeForce NOW for Ultimate members. Ironically, the original 8800 GTX cannot run the demo—Steam requires an RTX 4070 minimum and recommends an RTX 5080, 32 GB RAM, and 30 GB storage.
The recommended card currently costs around $2,200, over 40 times the 8800 GTX’s 768 MB VRAM. The original launched at $599 with 128 unified stream processors, GDDR3 memory, DirectX 10 support, and was the first CUDA-capable GPU.
Source: TechPowerUp News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing