Asus is celebrating its 30 years in the graphics card business with a creator retrospective video and by offering the community a chance to win “epic prizes.” While the creator and influencer video contribution is a little shallow for our taste, as you'll see below, the chance for community members to win one of several Asus RTX 50 GPU bundles between now and October 7 is very welcome.
Beginning with the Asus 375 and S3 ViRGE/DX chipset
The first graphics card backed by the Asus name was the Asus 375 in 1996, targeting commercial users and employing an S3 ViRGE/DX chipset.
However, Asus only started to address “hardcore 3D gaming” from 1997, when it partnered with Nvidia to create and market the Asus AGP-V3000 (review link). This was based on the Nvidia Riva 128 chipset, with 4MB of SGRAM onboard, and was the first 2D/3D accelerator with full Microsoft Direct3D support. It was built to outmaneuver contemporary offerings from 3dfx, Matrox, and ATi.
In 2006, Asus formed the Republic of Gamers (ROG) and forged ahead with its plans to lead PC graphics card innovations with products such as the Asus ROG Mars GTX 295, which you can read more about below, as well as the ROG Poseidon series with hybrid liquid/air cooling.
Need we remind readers that, in 2025, probably some of the most boundary (and wallet) pushing Nvidia RTX 50 GPUs you can find are part of the ROG Astral series.
Having watched the nearly 10-minute Asus video clip, the most interesting contribution, with any sense of history, seems to be from Justin from J Custom. Justin recalled camping for hours outside a retailer in order to purchase an Asus ROG Mars GTX 295.
This legendary graphics card was created by Nvidia and Asus in 2009 by combining two full GTX 285 GPUs with 2GB of VRAM each. It was the first ROG dual-GPU on a single PCB product. Moreover, the Mars edition offered brand-new aesthetics, with dual-GPUs and a limited run of 1,000 units. It sold at three times the price of a ‘standard’ GTX 295 at launch.
RTX 4090 Evangelion build by Nay from Tech Tesseract was also a vision to behold, as it was submerged into the anime aesthetic so completely, across so many components.
Getting back to Asus history, and the dedicated 30-years celebration site (linked top) has a few mini-games where you can ride a Ferris wheel or rollercoaster through vistas filled with Asus graphics card milestones.
Competition and lucky draw prizes from now to October 7
Those more focused on the latest GPU products from Asus may be tempted to take part in the firm's new competition, which mixes a lucky draw and grand prizes.
Grand prizes revealed so far include the “ProArt GeForce RTX 5080, ROG Strix GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, and TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 5070, alongside the latest and greatest ASUS power supplies.” However, there are more prizes and raffles being teased, with much more ROG kit to be had.
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