Following up from my HD 3870 video — this time I picked up an untested HD 3850 from 2007 for $9.90. Cleaned it, repasted it and threw it at 6 games on a Core 2 Duo rig.
• GTA San Andreas
• CoD4 Modern Warfare
• Tomb Raider Underworld
• Just Cause 2
• NFS Most Wanted
• Crysis
Temps hit 106°C but it survived.

Haha fair enough, it's AI generated. The real card looked way less dramatic but way more dusty

Look,

I know everybody online says to make thumbnails like these, but at least here on Lemmy, thumbnails like these are a great way to push away a potential audience.

Fair point, I appreciate the honest feedback. Still figuring out what works best. What kind of thumbnail would you prefer for this type of content?

In my personal opinion, I would be more inclined to click on the video if the thumbnail at least looked like a still image from the video. But to be honest, I probably still wouldn't click on the video for a few reasons:

• It doesn't sound like there are any surprises and sounds like a generic premise, which in part is because you gave away what I'm assuming to be the ending in the thumbnail. Even if that's untrue and there's more to it, I would still scroll past it based on the assumptions I've made from your title and thumbnail alone.
• Even if you made the title, "Will this 20 year GPU still work?", I still wouldn't click it, because nerds like me (and are your target audience for this video) know the answer: yes, they typically do.

I'm also going to guess you've been using LLMs for advice on your videos, to which I say: don't bother, regardless of your feelings on them, because they offer advice for a very generic audience, and you're making videos that grandma is never going to click on, even if the algorithm shows it to her.

My most successful thumbnails either came straight from the video (but truthfully, that was mostly luck), or I spent a decent amount of time making something that I thought looked cool. That also has led to some "failures", though.

Good luck!

That's a fair point about the premise — but as a nerd myself, I'd still click out of curiosity. Not just 'does it work' but HOW does it work at 106°C? And what FPS does a Core 2 Duo at 3.8GHz actually push in 2026? That combo is what got me curious enough to test it.
Also, thanks for taking the time to give detailed feedback — genuinely helpful for improving future videos

No problem.

But you’re giving your video’s packaging far too much credit. People don’t sit and think that deeply about every thumbnail/title they see. Even nerds have gut reactions because there is so much content available, and my gut reaction to this would’ve been at worst, “AI slop” and at best, “boring”.