Anyone noticed that AMD & nVIDIA reference designs are extremely boring now?

[hex4]

Take a look at some AMD/nVIDIA older gen cards from other vendors (reference)

 

Some looks astonishingly awesome!

 

 

 

 

 

Since the GTX 600 series no one does anything with the reference cards any more and this is a bigger reason i won't ever touch a reference card, they look like plain jane ass.

 

Examples.

 

 

And well since GTX 700 series it's been the exact same cooler...

 

 

 

 

AMD have also seemingly done away with it too ending at the Radeon 7k series.

[Arty]

Cleaner*** not boring.

[hex4]

1 minute ago, Arty said:

Cleaner*** not boring.

Cleaner is boring though, this aint your used dishes.

[Aytex]

2 minutes ago, hex4 said:

Take a look at some AMD/nVIDIA older gen cards from other vendors (reference)

 

Some looks astonishingly awesome!

 

this shit looks like shrek lol

[hex4]

1 minute ago, Aytex said:

this shit looks like shrek lol

You need glasses i think mate. o.0

[givegomezthegun]

I thought the older gpu's were disgusting, and I was glad when they did away with those designs and opted for cleaner, more sophisticated looking coolers.

[Joegeddon]

I think the older cards look like shit to be honest. The older radeons look okay. (Radeon 5000 series)

[l__T__l]

Reference coolers look really nice now, I'm guessing it's because you can cover every bit of the card except for the fan in a blower design so it's easier for it to look clean. As far as old reference cards go I like the 5XXX series cards.

[DarkBlade2117]

EW, Blahhhhh.

Those fucking things look like dirty dishes, happy we've moved to a simplistic design. I love the RX 480 reference cooler, the 1070/80 looks like it games straight from Toys R Us though.

[hex4]

2 minutes ago, DarkBlade2117 said:

EW, Blahhhhh.

Those fucking things look like dirty dishes, happy we've moved to a simplistic design. I love the RX 480 reference cooler, the 1070/80 looks like it games straight from Toys R Us though.

I agree with this and approve it, but the AMD reference designs are far closer to older "dirty dish" themes than nVIDIA are, every reference card is just silver... boring as feck.

[Kaleshi]

I miss the artwork that GPU vendors made, but at the same time i also like AMD's new simple design reference cooler. Nvidia's one is just shit.

 

[Big-G]

Too busy, especially for open builds...

[Bhav]

GTX 480 was hideous.

 

The only decent looking reference coolers were the ones on 5770 / 5850 / 5870.

[Accursed Entity]

Ew... such ugly cards. I prefer the more cleaner and serious looks of today.

[Briggsy]

I always though the reference cards with a sticker on them were cheap looking.

[Mira Yurizaki]

The examples OP gave were the other card manufacturers slapping a decal on the reference cooler. It was just for branding.

 

Now they have their own cooler designs and brought the gaudiness with them

 

[NumLock21]

100% all of those are stickers. I was working on a system with a GTX 280 and the box art sticker was peeling off. Under it was the original Nvidia logo.

I still like my HD2900XT. No sticker, it's etched right into the clear shroud.