PC Gamer’s first issue landed at a salient moment in PC gaming’s history. Its very existence as a magazine dedicated to gaming on a personal computer speaks volumes for the importance of those years for our hobby. Less than 70 issues in, it had covered the rise of 3D graphics, physics, LAN parties and online gaming.
But the mag also arrived just in time to capture the rise of the hardware that made it all possible. Namely, the graphics card. In the same year PC Gamer published its first words, Nvidia was founded, intent on creating a 3D accelerator to beat the rest. It would have its work cut out for it trying to dispatch 3dfx, which rose to prominence with the creation of the Voodoo Graphics card in 1996. From the beginnings of GeForce in 1999 through the 2000s, corporate consolidation would pit Nvidia against AMD for graphical dominance in a fiery battle still simmering today.
