A software engineer spent 4 years building his own graphics card. Its FuryGPU manages a solid 60 FPS in the 28-year-old Quake.
Most graphics cards found in a gaming PC these days come from either AMD or Nvidia, which often require additional support due to their huge size.
A developer from the games industry can now claim to be able to do without a model from the two manufacturers.
Over a period of 4 years, software engineer Dylan Barrie built his own graphics card. Its FuryGPU delivers enough power to play Quake in 720p resolution at 60 FPS.
Manufacturer shows stylish case, gamers are thrilled: “Great design! Goes straight to my wish list”
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FuryGPU with enough power for 60 FPS in 720p resolution
What kind of graphics card is this? The FuryGPU is a fully functional graphics card from software engineer Dylan Barrie. He worked alone on his project for a total of 4 years and documents this on furygpu.com.
Like any other regular graphics card, the FuryGPU plugs into the PCIe slot of a computer. When removing the device, the same rules apply in order not to damage your hardware. A monitor can be connected to the pixel accelerator using an HDMI or DisplayPort connection.
The graphics card has enough power to display Quake in 720p resolution at 60 FPS. On his YouTube channel he presents the performance of his graphics card in the shooter from 1996 in a short video.
How did he go about it? Thanks to his professional work in the gaming industry, he already had experience with software rendering of 3D graphics using graphics card hardware. Through the project he wanted to learn more about how the hardware side is structured and works in detail.
He learned all the necessary knowledge through self-study. Once Barrie had all the components he needed, he was able to put his project into action.
Barrie used an FPGA for his own development. This “Field Programmable Gate Array” is a freely programmable digital component that contains several circuits. The logic gates (gate arrays) can be assigned various functions.
Were there any difficulties? He himself described the design and final layout of the graphics card as a Herculean task. It took him several months with KiCad (a program for developing printed circuit boards in electronics) just to create the layout and the associated problems.
According to him, the biggest challenge was programming appropriate Windows drivers so that the graphics card could be fully recognized and used by the operating system. However, he has to do without functions such as Nvidia’s DLSS, for example.
Barrie wants to make performance optimizations in the future. Make knowledge of your project available to the general public once legal issues are resolved.
60 FPS in Quake is an impressive performance for a self-made graphics card. That’s even more frames per second than with a gaming PC, which was significantly more expensive: player builds a gaming PC that costs 1,800 euros and only has a meager 6 FPS in games – but the solution is incredibly simple