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It's incredible how much the prices have fallen and that's how it should be. Sure, I bought the 960 close to launch but still the difference is staggering.
The 960 Evo still chugs along albeit it's a new one because a few months after I bought it, I had to RMA it. I guess that's what happens when you are an early adopter. I lost a few hours of work when the original 960 Evo decided to stop working but it also taught me to be more paranoia with backups.
Then ya got the 8800GTX in 2006, with a MSRP at a cool FIVE HUNDRED NINETY NINE US DOLLARS, or 900USD in now-money.
Granted, that was an outlier at the time, but still!
I opted for 2x7900GT cards in SLI in my first self-built monster machine, for Crysis. 330USD each. That thing was a monster. Ran Crysis at 40-50FPS!
…bought an Athlon 64x2 4400+ for some 460USD… it dropped to like 200 just a month or so later when Intel’s Core series was a smash hit.
I bought the 8800GTX because it was the first DX10 compatible GPU available, and that thing was an amazing powerhouse. No need to fiddle with SLI profiles, just raw graphical power.
SLI was a nightmare!