What just happened? Microsoft's Direct3D division has amassed quite the collection of GPUs over the years. Rather than relegate the cards to storage bins, the team decided to transform its office hallways into a GPU museum celebrating the past 35 years of graphics history.
You'll likely want to budget some extra time if you ever get the opportunity to take a stroll down the office halls of Microsoft's Direct3D division.
When you've been developing a graphics application programming interface (API) for as long as they have, you'll naturally accumulate a lot of hardware. In Microsoft's case, it's more than 400 different GPUs spanning 35 years of hardware history.
Rather than put the old graphics cards in storage, the team decided to transform its office hallways into a museum of GPU history. Fortunately for us, they've documented some of the history over on the Microsoft Developer blog.
There's some memorable hardware here including the GeForce 256 (the first graphics card I owned that required active cooling), an Xbox developer kit and a 3DFX Voodoo card. For some inexplicable reason, whoever was in charge of photography failed miserably (400 x 300 resolution in 2019? C'mon).
With any luck, Microsoft will read the comments and upload high-res versions for our enjoyment. Pretty please?