Nvidia was originally founded in 1993 but it wasn’t until 1995 that the company released its first graphics product - the NV1.
Things have changed a lot since then and we’re now spoiled withray tracing,DLSSand other wonderful technologies that make our gaming experiences even more enjoyable.
We’re taking a look back through the history ofNvidia graphics cardsand what these devices have looked like over the years.
Nvidia NV1
The Nvidia NV1 launched in 1995 and was able to handle both 2D and 3D video. It was sold as the “Diamond Edge 3D” and even sported a Sega Saturn compatible joypad port.
Several Sega Saturn games were ported for PC including Panzer Dragoon and Virtua Fighter Remix. Those features alone weren’t enough to appeal to the market though as the Saturn was struggling to compete with the original PlayStation.
NV1 was off to a rough start that was made worse by the release ofMicrosoft DirectXwhich was incompatible with the GPU and many games would not run.
Nvidia RIVA 128
In 1997 Nvidia released the NV3 aka Riva 128, Riva stood for “Real-time Interactive Video and Animation”. This graphics card used both 2D and 3D acceleration along with polygon texture mapping.
At the time Nvidia’s rival 3dfx was dominating the market but the NV3 had a 100MHz core/memory clock and essentially doubled the spec of 3dfx’s Voodoo 1.
There were two variants of the NV3 in the form of the Riva 128 and the Riva 128ZX. The latter was more powerful with 8MB of VRAM and a 250MHz clock speed.
The NV3 was much more successful than the company’s first GPU and helped Nvidia get widespread popularity.
Nvidia NV4
In 1998, Nvidia unleashed NV4, aka Riva TNT. This graphics card improved over the previous models by including support for 32-bit True Colour. The NV4 also had more RAM with 16MB of SDR SDRAM which meant it offered greater performance too.
It was around this time that Nvidia started to make moves to regularly update graphics drivers to ensure good performance and compatibility for the end user, something the company is still doing to this day.
Nvidia’s Riva TNT was more affordable at the time than 3dfx’s Vodoo2 if a little slower in terms of performance. The driver support was key to NV4’s success.
Nvidia NV5
In 1999, Nvidia followed up NV4 with the RIVA TNT2. NV5, as it was codenamed, bought a number of updates including 32-bit Z-buffer/stencil support, up to 32MB of VRAM and 2048 x 2048 texture support.
More importantly, this graphics card had improved clock speeds (up to 150+ MHz) which gave it as much as a 17 per cent performance boost over the previous model.
This card was a direct competitor to the 3dfx Voodoo3 and both were incredibly popular.
Nvidia GeForce 256
Late in 1999, Nvidia released what it pitched as the “world’s first GPU” in the form of the Nvidia GeForce 256.
This was a clever marketing move from Nvidia and the beginning of a love affair with GeForce-branded graphics cards for years to come.
It improved upon previous RIVA cards by increasing the pixel pipelines but also offered a big leap in performance for PC gaming.
This card supported up to 64MB of DDR SDRAM and operated up to 166MHz. As such it was 50 per cent faster than the NV5.
More importantly, the GeForce 256 also fully supported Direct3D 7 which meant it could power many of the best PC games available at the time.
Shortly after this launch 3dfx went bankrupt and ATI became Nvidia’s main competitor.
Nvidia GeForce2
Nvidia followed up the world’s first GPU with the aptly named GeForce2.
This GPU came in several different variants including the Ti, Pro, GTS and Ultra models. These were essentially NV11, 15 and 16 cards. Increasing pipelines and higher clock rates followed throughout the 2000 and 2001 releases.
The thing that made GeForce2 interesting was the start of support for multi-monitor setups.
It was also around this time that Nvidia acquired 3dfx.
Nvidia GeForce3
Shortly after GeForce2 came GeForce3. Codenamed NV20, this series of graphics cards represented Nvidia’s first DirectX 8 compatible GPUs.
There were three versions - the GeForce3, GeForce3 Ti 200, and GeForce3 Ti 500. This next GeForce GPU added programmable pixel and vertex shaders, multisample anti-aliasing into the mix.
A version of GeForce3 referred to as NV2A was used in the original Xbox console.
Nvidia GeForce FX series
Leap forward a couple of generations and in 2003 we have the release of Nvidia’s GeForce FX series.
These were the fifth generation of the GeForce graphics cards and supported Direct3D 9 as well as a number of new memory technologies. Those included DDR2, GDDR2 and GDDR3 as well as Nvidia’s first attempt at a memory data bus wider than 128 bits.
Meanwhile, the GeForce FX 5800 made waves for being the first GPU to be equipped with a large cooler. One so big that it was often called the “dustbuster” because of the amount of fan noise it gave off.
Nvidia GeForce 6 series
Shortly after the release of the GeForce FX series came the 6 series (aka NV40). GeForce 6 was the start of Nvidia pushing SLI technology allowing people to combine more than one graphics card for more power.
The flagship of this range was the GeForce 6800 Ultra, a graphics card which boasted 222 million transistors, 16-pixel superscalar pipelines and six vertex shaders. It had Shader Model 3.0 support and was compliant with both Microsoft DirectX 9.0c and OpenGL 2.0.
The series also featured Nvidia PureVideo technology and was able to decode H.264, VC-1, WMV and MPEG-2 videos with reduced CPU use.
As a result of all this, the GeForce 6 series was highly successful.
Nvidia GeForce7 series
In 2005 came the GeForce7 series including the highlight thought of 7800 GTX.
That card alone was a real powerhouse for the time and with some clever cooling, Nvidia was able to push the clock speed to 550MHz. At the same time, the company also managed to reduce latency and increase the bus to 512 bit.
Interestingly a version of the 7 series was crafted as the RSX Reality Synthesizer which was the proprietary CPU co-created by Nvidia and Sony for thePlayStation 3.
