The only bit that really confused me was a sentence towards the end of the article:
Although Nvidia claims to have invented the first GPU with the GeForce 256…
I have never heard this claim before.
The GeForce 256 came out in 1999, years after cards from makers like 3DFX, Matrox, S3, etc. I’d figure something like the S3 ViRGE (Video and Rendering Graphics Engine) would hold the claim. That 2D/3D card came out in 1995.
That really depends on how you consider a GPU. Is it a card that can handle both 2d and 3d acceleration on board (like the S3 virge or the voodoo banshee) or a single chip that can handle both 2d and 3d acceleration (just like the 256)? The latter definition makes the GeForce 256, the very first “GPU”, but not the first card that does both 2d and 3d. That can be attributed to a myriad of cards including the ATI rage series, the banshee, the S3 virge and savage, Nvidia’s own riva TNT and TNT2, and even matrox g200 series.
The only bit that really confused me was a sentence towards the end of the article:
Although Nvidia claims to have invented the first GPU with the GeForce 256…
That really depends on how you consider a GPU. Is it a card that can handle both 2d and 3d acceleration on board (like the S3 virge or the voodoo banshee) or a single chip that can handle both 2d and 3d acceleration (just like the 256)? The latter definition makes the GeForce 256, the very first “GPU”, but not the first card that does both 2d and 3d. That can be attributed to a myriad of cards including the ATI rage series, the banshee, the S3 virge and savage, Nvidia’s own riva TNT and TNT2, and even matrox g200 series.