The Nvidia FX 5800 Ultra, launched in the early 2000s, became notorious for its excessive noise levels, earning it nicknames like "Dustbuster" and "leaf blower." This GPU, Nvidia's first DirectX 9-compliant card, was manufactured using TSMC's 130nm process and housed 125 million transistors, a significant advancement at the time.
Despite its cutting-edge specifications, including a clock speed of 500MHz and memory speeds reaching 1GHz with 128MB of GDDR2 across a 128-bit bus, the FX 5800 Ultra faced considerable backlash. Users complained not only about the noise but also about performance issues that were unrelated to sound.
A video titled "The Decibel Dilemma" features Nvidia executives discussing the card's infamous reputation and even humorously suggesting it could be marketed as the "Harley-Davidson of computer graphics." The video showcased the GPU being used as a hair dryer and a coffee grinder, highlighting its distinctive sound rather than addressing the underlying problems users encountered.