13 Years of Nvidia Graphics Cards

[cangelini]

Thanks for the feedback guys!

 

[shoota]

fanboys much?

 

[crockdaddy]

Wow ... 13 years. I have been an avid gamer since I was 18 (1993)to today 15 years. I recall being MEGA excited at the first Diamond Monster 3D. I paired it with my ATI Mach64. If I recall, I think one of the first games I played which made cool use of 3D was Jane's Longbow.

 

[snarfies1]

I remember, back in the mid-to-late 1990s, people on IRC waxing poetic about TNT and then TNT2. I didn't know from chipsets back then - I bought Diamond Multimedia cards and that was that. But those conversations were the first time that I ever heard of a chipset, so I must give Nvidia credit for bringing that sort of thing to my awareness. I never actually OWNED an Nvidia card until a few months ago though, lol.

 

[porksmuggler]

Might want to check the texture fillrate of the 8800GTX again, its 36800, not 18400.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units

 

[Guest]

Can anyone provide a list of all the games shown in the screenshots. Recognized most of them, but not all.

 

[nukemaster]

I have that Asus Geforce4 Ti 4200 pictured

Is there an ATI one on the way too?

 

[emp]

Nice recap...However I expect to see a similar ATI history recap in the near future as well...

 

[zerapio]

Alright, here's mine:
- Diamond Stealth 64 DRAM 2mb
- Diamond Voodoo 2
- Creative Riva TnT2 Ultra
- Hercules GeForce 3
- eVGA GeForce 6800GT
- Asus GeForce 7850GX2

Next: 4870 X2 or GTX 280? Drivers will tell

 

[asdasd123123]

Aww, I can't mention that the 4870x2 was reviewed four weeks ago by a bunch of other sites?

 

[chechak]

thanks for re-view the nvidia GPU cards ...i remembered my GeForce 2MX
my first nvidia card it was wonderfully

 

[nukemaster]

S3 Virge - P133
Rage2c - Celeron 466 - later TNT2
TNT2 - Duron 1000 - Later Geforce2 MX
Geforce4 TI(the Asus one pictured ) - XP 1800+ - Later 9800Pro
9800Pro - Athlon64 3200+ later X850pro Flashed XT
X1900XT - Core2 E6600 - Now has the 8800GTX
8800GTX - Core2 Quad - Later 4870

 

[Noya]

Don't you just how they refrain from mentioning that ATi's 4800-series has destroyed Nvidia's new GTX 200 series? I mean come'on, the GTX 260 went from $500+ down to $245 in like a month due to the ATi 4800 series. Not to mention the share losses. No wonder ATi doesn't send you sellout douches samples anymore.

 

[Guest]

Ahh, a nice trip down memory lane. ATi next?

 

[the_deek]

Wow, anyone else find it funny that they're running a rather large spread of nVidia's entire history right as they're entering what could be their last quarter (mobile and soon to be desktop part failures)?

Isn't it a bit early the Life-flashing-before-your-eyes-right-before-you-drop article?

 

[Guest]

Heum, 13 years, what is that?
Normally we talk about 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, 25 years, not 13!!
Nice article anyway.

 

[captaincharisma]

ahhh the good old days. i still remember my old PC that had a Diamond Viper TNT2 ultra with 32MB of vram. and my last computer had a Geforce FX card and had no issues with speed in games with it

 

[Chriscic]

Huh? I don't recall NV2 ever being considered for the Dreamcast. Sega had a contract with 3dfx to supply the graphic chips; they pulled out at the last minute and replaced it with the PowerVR. As I recall they ended up having to pay 3DFX $20MM for breaking the contract.

 

[tygrus]

Be nice to see a summary table of the best of each generation.
Ideas for embellishment:
Typical screen resolution & FPS changes overtime for game from start to finish. Headline game of each generation release (why you needed to update your graphics card). Sales initial pricing, 6/12?months later, sales figures (rise and fall of market share). Max power consumption. Estimate of square millimetres of silicon used by GPU&RAM and other large IC’s. Best gaming CPU at time of release. Trendline .. where have we been and we could it be in another 5-10 yrs.

 

[waarth]

"The spread between high-end and midrange cards (before the arrival of the GeForce 9600) is very wide for this generation, which causes problems for gamers."
Correction, the spread between the high end and midrange was wide before the arrival of the 8800 GT, along with the amd/ati 3800 series which lessoned the gap significantly in fall of 07, the 9600 series didn't appear until Q1 of 08. if you're going to recap a history at least get your facts straight, for shame getting something like that incorrect, especially when it happened all less than a year ago.

 

[Preytor]

I still use my GeForce 4 MX 440 AGP 8x in an old P3 rig, works great!
The TNT2 is still handy too.

 

[Ed Oscuro]

For the first time in all of nVidia's years I'm looking to ATI for an upgrade on the suggestion of the excellent comparisons here (and user feedback). Lucky Thirteen it ain't quite.

On to the article: I believe there's an error on the first page. The NV1 does use polygons, which seems fairly obvious (so does the Saturn). Reportedly it uses four-vertex polygons, and you achieve a triangle by putting two points at the same coordinate, nasty. Still a polygon, however.

The "quadratic texture mapping" mentioned is, to take a wild guess, simply a name for the NV1's texture mapping. Compare it with the nasty affine texturing on the original PlayStation where textures seem to fall in on themselves as depth information isn't taken into account, and you see the draw of a system that trades correct triangles for better texture rendering (and lower polygon usage and likely increased speed, since the rectangle, bane of mid-90s gamers, takes up two polygons when you're using triangles, instead of just one with the NV1). I don't know how the use of quads was thought produce better-looking texturing, but that seems to have been the assertion.

The Firing Squad covers this interesting period of nVidia's history in greater depth.

 

[neblogai]

Title of the graph on page 19 should probably be corrected, as the order in the title (G84, G86 and G94 (GeForce 8600 GT, GeForce 8400 GS and 9600 GT) does fit with the order in the Graph (G86, G84, G94)

 

[romulus47plus1]

And the winner is.... Intel?

 

[siliq]

[citation][nom]RMHurtz[/nom]Can anyone provide a list of all the games shown in the screenshots. Recognized most of them, but not all.[/citation]
I only know the "Age of Myth", since i am not a big fan of games. But I look forward if someone can provide a complete list of the games' names.