NEW!! PNY Slim RTX 5070, 5070 TI, and 5080 are here!

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XCVGVCX@reddit

I know it's all relative, but man, it still feels bizarre to see the epithet "slim" applied to an overheight, dual-slot graphics card.

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Strazdas1@reddit

Dual slot was considered slim for a long time though, no?

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XCVGVCX@reddit

It depends on how you define "a long time".

Dual slot cards only started to get more common around the mid-2000s, but even then I'd say they were a high-end thing until the early 2010s. Triple slot GPUs were around from maybe the late 2000s, but were basically only flagship halo products until the late 2010s or even early 2020s- RTX 3000 is the first generation I remember more mainstream triple slot coolers being a thing, though it might have actually started one generation prior.

So by my reckoning (which is vibes and gut feeling as much as anything), dual slot could be considered slim from the beginning of the 2020s, would be considered normal in the 2010s, and would be considered wide before then.

Interestingly, pro cards are still in a space much more like the 2010s or even 2000s- the RTX Pro 4000 (Blackwell) is somewhere between a 5070 and 5070 Ti and it's crammed into a single slot formfactor.

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Strazdas1@reddit

Id say "since mid-2000s" is a pretty long time. In fact, its majority of the time GPUs were around. I know for a fact that my doual slot card was considered slim in 2016.

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XCVGVCX@reddit

Mid-2000s is when dual-slot cards became common, not triple-slot cards. So the transition was from single slot being the norm and dual slot being weird wide cards to dual slot being the norm and single slot being unusually narrow. Only once triple-slot cards go beyond rare, extreme overclocking curiosities could dual-slot coolers be considered slim by comparison.

I don't doubt that you recall having a dual slot card and thinking it was slim in 2016, but that doesn't seem to reflect where the industry was at the point. I had a GTX 1080 around that time, and it was dual slot (and a blower, which was less common by then but not unheard of). From memory and a cursory Google search, the majority of 1080 designs were dual slot coolers- in fact, the only triple slot design I can find is the ROG Strix. There's a few more 1080 Tis and the R9 Fury, but those are halo cards. One review of the latter points out that it's "thicker than a standard dual-slot design". You could also, at this point, buy a single slot GTX 1070, though it was very rare and very loud.

All that being said, the inflection point probably wasn't long after 2016. There are a lot more triple-slot (and overheight, for that matter) RTX 2080 models, though you can still get dual slot cards (and even blowers). With the 3080 the balance of designs has shifted toward triple-slot, overheight, or both, and by the 4080 even the reference design takes up three slots.

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Method__Man@reddit (OP)

Gonna do that inna short probably

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