List of GPUs

This is a list of all models of Nvidia GPUs. Although the focus of this wiki is on older models (approximately those released between 1995 and 2000), all GPUs manufactured by Nvidia are provided here for the purposes of reference. GPUs are sorted by architectural revision, not branding, since Nvidia (especially in the 2000s) sometimes made dozens of mdoels for a particular "series" and the list would be full of hundreds of almost identical SKUs.

Quadratic texture mappers

NV0

Main article: NV0

Not actually a GPU, but a series of VxD drivers under Windows 3.x to emulate the NV1 environment before it was ready.

Features:

• Unknown

NV1

Main article: NV1

The first GPU (or as it was dubbed by Nvidia at the time, "Multimedia Accelerator") designed by Nvidia and manufactured by SGS-Thomson Microelectronics (now STMicroelectronics), designed starting in 1993 and ending with its release in 1995. Its name is a contraction of "GX Next Version" (GXNV), as the GPU was designed by the same person, Curtis Priem, who designed the Sun GX for graphics workstations; Huang mandated the rename to NV1 for legal reasons. Unlike all later released Nvidia graphics cards, it does not render using triangles as the fundamental basis of graphical rendering but instead by using quad patching to implement quadratic texture mapped (QTM)'d curves. This has advantages for certain applications, such as computer-aided design and smooth curved surfaces, but is much more cumbersome for programming and game engine development, which was the intended market. There are also many other unique features, as Nvidia's strategy at this time was to attempt to monopolise all of the I/O on the graphical hardware. Ultimately it failed, due to its high cost, poor VGA functionality, and poor Direct3D (which was based on graphical hardware), and was discontinued in Q1 of 1996, not long after its launch. Apparently, at least 250,000 chips were sold, but most of them were returned without ever being put into cards due to poor sales; the poor sales also appear to have led to the cancellation of a 350 nm die shrink.

The original text (barring some minor redactions) of the "Strategic Collaboration Agreement" to develop the Nvidia NV1, RIVA 128 (NV3) and RIVA 128 ZX (NV3T) with SGS-Thomson can be found in a 1998 SEC filing, as it was an agreement that materially affected investors scoping out the company for potential investment during the IPO process.

Features:

• 2D acceleration supporting BitBlit (both src/dst and pattern), clipping rectangles, points, lines, lins (lines without their starting and ending pixels), hardware-accelerated cursors, and image upload (from various sources) with a maximum resolution of 1600x1200 and a maximum colour depth of 32-bit
• Hardware accelerated alpha-testing (chroma key), plane mask and clipping rectangle with double buffering and page flipping support
• 3D quadratic texture mapping (QTM) for perfect curved surface rendering with bilinear filtering support
• 3D Quadrilateral and Triangle rendering (however much slower than QTMs and not the primary focus)
• Two-cache Gray-code indexed FIFO (one with a size of one; another with 32 total entries) for graphical command ("object" submission)
• Hash table for further object caching
• Pseudo-C++ object system for total lunacy in design
• Notification functionality via DMA into driver memory for GPU to driver communication
• 1 to 4 MB of video memory, which can either be DRAM or VRAM
• External RAMDAC (`NVDAC`), manufactured and, for some DACs, designed by SGS-Thomson, for CRT control and image generation from the data sent to the GPU

This particular model of graphics card has many unique features that are not shared by any other model of Nvidia graphics card.

• Non-Sound Blaster compatible sound card with MIDI playback on-die (in some models)
• Sega Saturn game port support (in the external DAC)
• Partial VGA compatibility, largely emulated in software
• EEPROM for storage of chip ID
• Unused hardware-implemented encryption and digital rights management functionality
• VESA Local Bus support, as well as PCI (seemingly only PCI versions were released as VLB was relatively short-lived)
• Proprietary NVLIB API to avoid direct hardware programming

NV2

Main article: NV2

The NV2 was a GPU designed under contract from Sega for the "Saturn V08", the first version of the project that became the Sega Dreamcast, starting in May 1995 around the time of the announcement of the NV1. It was cancelled, at some point around early to mid 1996, due to internal pressure from Sega (especially their AM2 division) to move to a triangle-based model, combined with possible intransigence on Nvidia's part. SEGA still paid (loaned then forgave) NVIDIA 5 million dollars, which prevented the company from going bankrupt immediately. Most information on the technical implementation of the NV2 comes from Don Goddard, who was the main employee tasked with programming the NV2 (via a software emulator on the NV1) - which he described as "hella confusing", and with no debugging - at Sega of America.

Features:

• Proto-shader microcode similar to the Nintendo 64 Reality Coprocessor & Reality Signal Processor GPU to handle texture compression, lighting, positions, and texture U/V coordinates
• Possibly hardware-accelerated lighting
• Cartridge DMA (yes, cartridge) via the PCART subsystem
• No VGA compatibility, as it was a game console GPU

NV3 (Quadratic Texture Mapped version)

Main article: NV3 (QTM)

Before David Kirk was hired at Nvidia, Nvidia were planning to launch a QTM-based "NV3" (entirely separate to the product launched as the Riva 128), a 100% functional superset of NV1 for PCs. It was announced around March 1996 for volume production in October of 1996, and was apparently going to be used in a home theater system by Lexicon, as the audio chip, provide an integrated RAMDAC and be generally much faster. It was most likely cancelled extremely quickly after its announcement, owing to Nvidia's new direction of developing triangle-based graphics accelerators. Very little else is known about it (other than the fact it would apparently be able to process 500,000 50-pixel triangles per second) and the original press release, published on 22 January 1996, does not mention the NV3, but also calls the NV1 NVIDIA's "first generation" product. However, it does not seem to be a typo on the part of Microprocessor Report since it is repeated many times

Rubin architecture (still in development)

This is Nvidia's 2026 architecture for GPUs.