The oldest NVIDIA card, and the company's inaugural product featuring graphics capabilities, was the NV1, released in 1995.
NVIDIA's Pioneering Entry: The NV1
Founded in 1993, NVIDIA quickly moved to develop its first hardware product. The result was the NV1, a highly integrated multimedia accelerator chip released in 1995. While not solely a graphics card in the modern sense, it was a groundbreaking piece of technology for its time, designed to handle:
- 2D and 3D graphics acceleration: It offered curved surface rendering, a novel approach compared to the polygon rendering that later became standard.
- Audio processing: The chip included a sound card component.
- Joystick and Sega Saturn controller ports: It even featured ports for gaming peripherals, reflecting its comprehensive multimedia ambitions.
Marketed primarily by Diamond Multimedia as the Diamond Edge 3D, the NV1 represented NVIDIA's initial foray into the competitive PC hardware market, laying the groundwork for their future dominance in graphics processing.
The Dawn of the GPU: GeForce 256
While the NV1 was NVIDIA's first card, the GeForce 256, launched in August 1999, holds a distinct and monumental place in the company's history. This is because NVIDIA officially introduced it as the world's first Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). This marked a pivotal moment for both gaming and computing, as the GeForce 256 brought a revolutionary level of dedicated processing power for graphics tasks directly to the consumer market.
The GeForce 256 earned its "GPU" title by integrating key functionalities previously handled by the CPU, including:
- Hardware Transform and Lighting (T&L): This feature offloaded complex calculations for 3D object positioning and lighting effects from the main processor to the graphics chip, significantly improving performance and enabling more realistic visuals in real-time.
- High pixel fill rates: It could render more pixels per second, leading to smoother and more detailed graphics.
The innovation introduced with the GeForce 256 set the stage for future advancements, transforming the landscape of interactive entertainment and paving the way for the GPU's eventual role in areas beyond gaming, such as professional visualization, scientific computing, and artificial intelligence.
Key Milestones in NVIDIA's Early Graphics History
NVIDIA's journey from a startup to a graphics powerhouse involved several significant product releases before and after the GeForce 256. Here's a brief timeline of some early notable cards:
| Card Name | Release Year | Significance |
|---|---|---|
| NV1 | 1995 | NVIDIA's first product; integrated multimedia accelerator with 2D/3D graphics and sound. |
| Riva 128 | 1997 | First successful mainstream 3D accelerator from NVIDIA; gained significant market share. |
| Riva TNT | 1998 | Introduced "Twin Texel" architecture, enhancing texture performance. |
| Riva TNT2 | 1999 | Improved performance and clock speeds over TNT; precursor to the GeForce line. |
| GeForce 256 | 1999 | Introduced as the "world's first GPU" with integrated Transform and Lighting (T&L). |
