PC Gamer Annual - UK (2022)

Nvidia GeForce 256

4

The first bearing the GeForce
name still in use today, the
GeForce 256 was also the
‘world’s first GPU’. “But what about the
Voodoos and the Rivas?” I hear you
ask. Clever marketing on Nvidia’s part
has the GeForce 256 stuck firmly in
everyone’s minds as the progenitor of
modern graphics cards, but it was
really just the name Nvidia gave its
single-chip solution: a graphics
processing unit, or GPU.
As you can probably tell, this sort of
grandiose name, a near-parallel to the
central processing unit (CPU) raking in
cash since the ’70s, was welcomed
across the industry.
That’s not to say the GeForce 256
wasn’t a worthy namesake, either.
Integrating acceleration for transform
and lighting into the newly-minted GPU,
alongside a 120MHz clock speed and
32MB of DDR memory (for the high-end
variant). It also fully-supported Direct3D
7, which would allow it to enjoy a long
lifetime powering some of the best
classic PC games released at that time.

INFO YEAR: 1999 / CORE CLOCK SPEED: 120MHZ / MEMORY:
32MB DDR / PROCESS NODE: TSMC 220NM

5

Once Nvidia rolled out the

GeForce 8800 GTX, there was

no looking back. Precursor to

ultra-high-end, enthusiast graphics

cards, such as the RTX 3090, if you

want to talk about a card that really got

peoples’ attention it’s the GeForce

8800 GTX. Launched back in 2006 to

much fanfare, the 8800 GTX was the

largest GPU ever built at the time. With

128 Tesla cores inside the G80 GPU,

and 768MB of GDDR3 memory, the

8800 isn’t an unfamiliar sight for a

modern GPU shopper. It bears the

marks of many a modern GPU – even if

it might be a little underpowered by

today’s standards. Despite a pre-launch

recall threatening to scupper the 8800

GTX launch plans, this graphics card

ruled over the GPU market at launch

and even stuck around for some time

afterwards thanks to a unified shader

model, which was introduced with the

architecture alongside Direct3D 10.

INFO YEAR: 2006 / CORE CLOCK SPEED: 575MHZ / MEMORY: 768MB GDDR3 / TRANSISTORS: 681 MILLION / PROCESS NODE: TSMC 90NM

Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX

Image credit: Hyins