The History Of Nvidia GPUs (Archive)

[IInuyasha74]

From the NV1 in 1995 to Pascal in 2016, we look at the evolution of Nvidia's GPUs.

The History Of Nvidia GPUs : Read more

 

[adamovera]

Archived comments are found here: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-3189256/history-nvidia-gpus.html

 

[CRO5513Y]

Noticed a typo in the first sentence of slide 19 "Nviidia".

Other than that a good brief read-up on Nvidia's history. Especially loved the backgrounds being games released around the time of the card to show the visual advancements following the Graphics Cards. Should have done for all of the slides! 😉

 

[Zee eeZ]

Please consider putting a option to print the full article (all text and photos)
for offline reading...
(this goes to all other articles of your site of course)

 

[Jim90]

Nice write-up! brings back some good memories.

 

[xophaser]

3dfx was the king from what I remembered. But my first computer I got in college was tnt2 from nvidia for playing diablo and heroes of might and magic and it still struggle until i got a sound card. Mostly been nvidia since since I prefer to by laptops. One workstation laptop was ati, but all other were nvidia. Companies leapfrog either other, but nvidia usually has the top card when I buy, like now.

 

[David_719]

The TNT was the epitome of a card with paper features that had no practical purpose. Enabling 32-bit color meant unplayable frame rates, and if you owned a computer you already had 2D graphics so having both on one card made no difference for gamers. Putting 2D and 3D on one card gave Nvidia a major advantage in the OEM market though.

 

[dalauder]

Cool article, but I must mention a typo/geometry error.

On page 2, the article states, in reverence to the NV3: Riva 128, "It switched from using quadrilaterals as the most basic geometric primitive to the far more common polygon."

I have two issues:
1: Quadrilaterals are polygons.
2: The NV1 use quadratic surfaces, not quadrilaterals, which is stated correctly on the first page. That means, areas that are solutions to quadratic equations: spheres, planes, ellipses, hyperboloids, and paraboloids.

So we're talking about moving from the NV1 generating ACTUAL curves (I think it was actually a approximation, ironically enough) to generating, effectively, triangles. It's almost too bad, because it would've saved us that decade of using hexagons as spheres.

Reference: https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/401930/alternate-universe-cuda-and-quadratic-surfaces/

 

[mapesdhs]

No specific mention of the 8800GT and 9800GT is a bit odd, certainly the former was incredibly popular. Also, a more detailed explanation about the change in core design after the 500 series would have been welcome, since it often confuses many who based judgement on shader count alone, especially when for CUDA the 580 beats the entire 600 series and all the 700s except the 780 Ti and Titan. Btw, the GF256 was based on SGI's tech, a mass market respin of IR which SGI should but stupidly didn't do.

 

[davidgirgis]

Picture 19 of 30:
All 100 series GPUs were re-branded variants of the 9000 series with minor [strike]alternations[/strike] to clock speed and card design.

Should be:
All 100 series GPUs were re-branded variants of the 9000 series with minor alterations to clock speed and card design.


Picture 29 of 30:
It is able to outperform the Titan X, however, as it has a higher boost clock speed of 1,582MHz, and its [strike]12GB[/strike] of GDDR5X RAM is clocked higher at 11Gb/s.

Should be:
It is able to outperform the Titan X, however, as it has a higher boost clock speed of 1,582MHz, and its 11GB of GDDR5X RAM is clocked higher at 11Gb/s.

 

[AgentLozen]

I like reading about the history of various significant tech things at Tomshardware.
Someone said this earlier, but having the game pictures as the background was a really nice touch. It puts the video cards into perspective. What they were meant to do at the time.

 

[beliberdah]

This nice write-up has a flaw that significatly lowers its usefulness.
After first few slides you stop mentioning the year a product comes out.
You call it a history, but what kind of history without dates is it?

 

[dalauder]

No specific mention of the 8800GT and 9800GT is a bit odd, certainly the former was incredibly popular. Also, a more detailed explanation about the change in core design after the 500 series would have been welcome, since it often confuses many who based judgement on shader count alone, especially when for CUDA the 580 beats the entire 600 series and all the 700s except the 780 Ti and Titan. Btw, the GF256 was based on SGI's tech, a mass market respin of IR which SGI should but stupidly didn't do.

+1

This nice write-up has a flaw that significatly lowers its usefulness.
After first few slides you stop mentioning the year a product comes out.
You call it a history, but what kind of history without dates is it?

+1

Again, I love the article.

 

[Jonathanese]

I don't remember there ever being a 9800GTX+ with 1GB of memory. I totally would have bought that one instead. That was the main disadvantage where the 8800GTX and Ultra would pull ahead, since they had 768MB.

It's still unbelievably weird to think about how quickly things have changed since I started with graphics cards. Like, my first GPU had 8MB of memory and that was a "huge boost". I didn't upgrade until the "massive" 128MB of the MX4000. My current GPU has 8GB. Un-fricken-real. You always think they couldn't possibly go farther, but they do.

 

[EarbudsRobot]

Awesome slideshow showing the history of GPU's. I'm looking for the best affordable graphics card and by comparing this and this: https://www.bestpickers.com/best-budget-graphics-card/
Î've found that what I need is the GTX 1060 lol.

 

[dalauder]

Awesome slideshow showing the history of GPU's. I'm looking for the best affordable graphics card and by comparing this and this: https://www.bestpickers.com/best-budget-graphics-card/
Î've found that what I need is the GTX 1060 lol.

The GTX 1060 and 8GB RX 480 are similarly performing (especially with new games), but the RX 480 is generally cheaper.

Don't get the 3GB or 4GB versions though.