Richard is the PC Hardware Lead at XDA and has been covering the technology industry for almost two decades. He’s been building PCs since young, and when not creating content, you can often find him inside a chassis somewhere.

Not only has the graphics card come a long way over the past two decades, but so too has GPU box art. In the early 2000s, we saw an avalanche of box art that seemed like whoever designed them was on quite the drug-infused journey — you could say they were unhinged. Typically, the graphics card inside the box wasn’t even displayed on the front cover. This was reserved for elves, wizards, druids, mech droids, demons, game characters, and strange oddities.

GPU makers have all abandoned this practice, which is a shame as it provided something different through box art alone. Now, we’re drowning in bland boxes and similar-looking graphics cards. Gazing at my passively cooled PowerColor HD6850 from the tail end of the 2000s, I’ll take you back to an age when box art meant everything. Full of specification badges, big text, bold imagery, and outright strange designs, here are some of my favorites from the late 90s and early 00s.

10

Hercules 3D Prophet Radeon 9500 Pro

I heard you liked seeing Joker on the front of your graphics card box. No? Well, tough! Hercules decided to send you into oblivion with the 3D Prophet 9500 Pro, rocking an ATI Radeon GPU. Imagine seeing ten boxes of this GPU at the store, each with this chap endlessly gazing at you.

9

Palit Radeon X700

This Palit Radeon X700 box is iconic, representing precisely what one would expect from this early 2000s era. There’s a scantily dressed lady in armor that barely covers her exposed body against attacks, countless specification highlights that mean absolutely nothing to the average buyer, and ATI’s classic logo plastered everywhere.

8

Matrox Mystique 220

“Take it, Georgie!” Who would have thought Pennywise would go so well on a GPU box? I can overlook the relation between Mystique and the jester, but it’s such a strange-looking design for a computer component. I love it!

7

Leadtek WinFast GeForce A6200TD

This is likely the most underwhelming box art in this collection, but the WinFast GeForce A6200TD brought your resident grandpa to life. The wizard is gearing up for quite the battle, but who this character is going up against is beyond us … literally. There’s not much in the way of marketing or specification highlights either. It’s a simple design that’s as whacky as the rest. This was one of the first GPUs I had inside my PC that didn’t require parental consent for a daily hour slot.

6

Asus GeForce 256 V6600

Little Jimmy begged and begged and begged his parents to buy him a new GPU for the family PC but they kept refusing. That was until the Asus GeForce 256 V6600 came around and the brand needed some marketing. Jimmy entered and managed to win the competition … now look at him! Okay, that story wasn’t true, but the kid seems as excited as box art. He likely picked up a copy of Thief 2 or Heretic 2.

5

Creative 3D Blaster Voodoo2

This guy is gazing into your very soul. I’m unsure what Creative aimed for with this graphics card, but the box art has plenty going on. The Voodoo2 was also a pretty good GPU, allowing you to enjoy countless hours in Unreal Tournament. The box art was meant to showcase what you could do with the product inside, but for this GPU, you were being sold the local tribe’s voodoo expert with the promise of “magical speed” … whatever that means.

4

PNY GeForce 6600 GT

The PNY GeForce 6600 GT was enclosed inside a box featuring a lovely lady with barely any clothes, angelic wings, and an interesting headpiece. It means very little aside from the Far Cry badge up top. The GeForce 6600 GT was a decent GPU for its time and this would have been the box art you would have been greeted with at the store or on Christmas Day.

3

PNY GeForce 6600 Verto

Here’s some nightmare fuel for you. PNY created this art for the GeForce 6600 Verto which resembles a Blumhouse horror movie promotion. It’s difficult to tell what’s happening here, but that’s a running theme with 2000s GPU box art. All I know is there was a GeForce 6600 GPU inside that could happily run the best games of the decade.

2

Palit GeForce GTS 250

What’s going on with this Palit GPU? I have no idea but there’s a giant mech frog in the background with what appears to be a stonks symbol because they always go up. This is FrogMech the Day Trader. Palit used this frog mascot on a few of its box arts, which were pretty tame compared to many other cards at the time.

1

Sapphire Radeon X550

I have no words. Neither did this alien who instead opted to seduce us all with what seems to be some form of TikTok dance “challenge.”

Modern GPU boxes aren’t as exciting

Even though many of the box arts of old made absolutely no sense, it was exciting to get hold of a box that looked otherworldly. Whether it was a scantily dressed person or some form of demonic presence threatening our very existence, ATI, Nvidia and their partners were able to have some fun. It doesn’t matter what’s on the box as the graphics card is what you’re potentially spending countless hundreds on for the best gaming experience. But it’s great to look at how things used to be in the earlier days of PC gaming with 3D graphics.