You know that friend who always name-drops their "high-end gaming rig"? Yeah, they casually mention having "something 580" and you're immediately picturing them rendering 4K gameplay at 144fps with ray tracing maxed out. Plot twist: they're flexing an Intel ARC B580 (Intel's adorable attempt at discrete GPUs), but you're thinking they've got an AMD RX 580—a respectable mid-range card from 2017 that can still hold its own in 1080p gaming. Reality check? They're actually running a GTX 580 from 2010, a card so ancient it predates the first Avengers movie. That's Fermi architecture, folks. The thing probably doubles as a space heater. The beauty here is how GPU naming schemes have created the perfect storm of confusion. Three different manufacturers, three wildly different performance tiers, same number. It's like saying you drive "a 2024" and leaving everyone guessing whether it's a Ferrari or a golf cart.

So you discover that in 16-bit real mode, the BIOS handles hardware directly and your OS doesn't need device drivers. Sweet! Freedom from driver hell, right? Then you learn about 16-bit memory segmentation and suddenly that smile disappears faster than your will to live. For the uninitiated: in real mode, memory addresses are calculated using segment:offset pairs, and because both are 16-bit values, segments can overlap in the most cursed ways possible. You can have multiple segment:offset combinations pointing to the same physical address. It's like having 5 different street addresses for the same house, except the mailman is your CPU and it's having an existential crisis. Suddenly writing device drivers doesn't seem so bad anymore. At least those make logical sense. Overlapping segments? That's just sadism with extra steps.