The first ever GeForce
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 ม.ค. 2025
- What was the very first GeForce like? Let me tell you all about it!
Cards Tested:
-Riva TNT2 Ultra 32MB (150MHz core; 183MHz memory)
-GeForce 256 32MB (120MHz core; 166MHz memory)
-GeForce 256 64MB (120MHz core; 166MHz memory)
-GeForce DDR 32MB (120MHz core; 300MHz memory)
-GeForce DDR 64MB (120MHz core; 300MHz memory)
-Radeon 64MB SDR (155MHz core/memory)
-Radeon 32MB DDR (166MHz core; 333MHz memory)
-Radeon 64MB DDR (183MHz core; 366MHz memory)
Platform specs:
Athlon 64 X2 4400+ @ 2.8GHz
2GB OCZ EL Gold Ed. PC4000 @ 510MHz
ASRock 939Dual-SATA2
Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS
Samsung 830 Series 128GB SSD
Windows XP Professional SP3
ATI: Catalyst 5.5
NVIDIA: Forceware 61.77
Intro Animation By Ken Gruca Jr - Inquire at kjgruca@gmail.com!
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Thanks to everyone that's been watching and enjoying this video! Just a heads up, I only now realized that on the Serious Sam: The Second Encounter performance graph at 12:11, the Radeon DDR 64MB should say 36.1 fps, not 31.6. I do strive for accuracy so this difference is important to me, and I feel the need to clear that up.
Don't forget you can check out our Pixel TALK Discord server for free, and chat with myself, Modzy from Cutting-Edge Retro, and Mike from F2FTech as well as hundreds of other members!
discord.gg/m6xyBeD
background music name?
The opening? It's the title music track to the 1997 Frogger remake by Hasbro Interactive
Main problem of benchmark is timeperiod. Literally, at time ATI Radeon came out, GeForce 256 was on it's way out.
GF2 ultra came out just days after Radeon 64MB DDR and did double or even triple FPS in the most important game of that period - Quake 3 Arena.
And just like today, 20 years ago fanboys from losing camps tried to bend reality.
Indeed. I mainly included them for fun.
@@PixelPipes when is your next vid coming out?
The Geforce 256 was my first 3D accelerater. I didn't realize back then just how historically important that card would be. I still have it and it is currently framed and on my wall for display
I had a 3dfx Voodoo passthrough card. I have no idea where that card is now.
i had tnt 2 but threw it away
My first 3D card was the Elsa Erazer TNT2 32 MB :D
nice
I had Riva 128 + Voodoo 1 and i wanted GF256 badly, but when i had finally the money, there was GF2 GTS already. Mine had the stupidest name ever, Creative Labs 3D Blaster Annihilator 2 :D
I was just thinking the other day "Ah man, I hope he didn't quit". Glad to see that was wrong.
Or worse...
@@Web720 ... that also
Welcome back bud. Whats it been? 10 months or so? Never mind, awesome to have you back, and with the OG Geforce and all. You da man👍
I remember my first 3D accelerator. It was a 3dfx Voodoo by Diamond put into an IBM Aptiva. My brother and I saved every penny from our summer job to buy it. That first upgrade began a lifelong journey in tech. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
Back when my older brother was buying our first PC in the late 90s, he got a defective Diamond-branded TNT for free. It didn't work with its dedicated drivers, only reference ones and while it almost didn't crash in Windows 98, in Windows Me it brought the system down so hard it caused file system corruption every single time. Still, getting a free GPU back when an up-to-date computer locally cost 8 months of wages meant you couldn't really complain.
Glad to see that you are back mate, I was worried that you were not coming back.
So happy you are back!
YESSSSS PIXEL PIPES WE MISSED YOU
Good to see you back in action.
we want crossover episode!!!
Hi, thanks for your video on the Geforce 256, you really do deserve more subs, there is some excellent material on your channel, keep them coming, the retro scene is growing all the time.
Although I've seen this before I came back to it as I recently nabbed a 256 DDR card off everyone's favourite auction site for pence (badly listed) and other than a good clean and get the fan working again it's been great fun to play with, my collection is getting quite extensive now (though obviously not anything like your own) but is mostly earlier stuff from 96-03 era(the best era....of course), need to concentrate more on the ATI stuff now as that is lagging behind, I'll probably sell some of the cards I've got more than one of to fund that exercise.
Thanks again, great retro channel.
Oh yeah, my first 3d accelerator was a Creative 3D Blaster PCI (Verite) which upgraded my Spackard Bell p100 system from the terrible Cirrus Logic on board graphics haha
Great Video! Love how you actually talk about the card and its specs rather than just comparing benchmarks and talking about those.
Whoa you're back! Nice to see you making videos again. A lot of us RETRO people deal with everything from ISA VGA to GTX 8800 series cards. Do you have plans on making 2D and early 3D (Riva 128/TNT/Geforce2) era content?
Nothing is off the table!
Dude the amount of effort it must have taken to do all these benchmarks on cards that no-one will ever use is a commendable labour of love. Keep it up!
ah my first ever graphics card, the TNT2..... happy days, still got it somewhere haha
Phil Underhill plenty of people still use older hardware for various purposes from low end desktop computing to retro gaming. I would say for most people using a TNT2 Ultra of GeForce 256 a lot would probably be a bad thing as they are rare to find in working condition and expensive these days. I don't have those specific cards in my own collection but I do have a Voodoo 2 12mb and a Voodoo 5 that I definitely will be using when I get to that specific build. For the proper Quake experience of course :-). I have various retro setups with complete era correct hardware that I play games on but usually I set one up and play it for a few weeks to scratch the itch of playing some specific game and then I move on to something else until the itch for a game from that specific era hits again.
@@noth606 That sounds cool! I'm hoping to put together a high end late 90s or year 2000 gaming PC build with a Voodoo 3 some day for some classic games that are kind of a pain to run on modern hardware and for that nostalgic feel
It was very exciting to see an update from you in my subscriptions and this video didn’t disappoint. I don’t know of anyone else who covers vintage pc gaming hardware with the style and quality that you do. Thank you for sharing.
I'm super glad, you're finally back! I really missed you!
BTW, I really enjoyed this video. One can clearly see, that you put a lot of effort into your videos.
Your videos are beyond awesome. You definitely deserve more subscribers.
I'm very pleased. Thank you sir!
Hey man, great to see you making a video again thx I look forward to more, your channel is awesome and pretty unique ! Take care
I watched quite few videos about the GeForce 256, but yours it's the best BY FAR. I'm so happy to discover this channel, subbed!
I love your videos, I always learn something new, and for an old guy like me these videos are pure gold. I bought my first computer in 1997, added a Monster 3D card a month later, and the rest is history. I upgraded video cards, and computers; but, eventually I could not play my old games on the newer hardware I had as by then had a high end computer running Windows 10. I could have used emulators; but, I wanted old hardware instead. I now have two Windows 98 PC's, and one Windows XP PC. I collected alot of games, on the Windows 98 machines I run a Geforce FX5200 card, on the other a Quadro FX1100, both utilize nGlide. I'm 63 now and I'll enjoy this hobby until the day I die! LOL :)
I mean hell, that's all it's really about! That's awesome that you're keeping it going
I just discovered your channel recently, and you punch well above your weight class for content quality and research. Looking forward to the day you have 100k subs and beyond!
Please, don’t stop making these incredible videos! Your work is awesome! Now I’d love to see a similar video talking about the first Radeon. Ok, you already showed us its performance, but I’d love to hear from you about the architecture like you did with GeForce here.
That was the first video I did under PixelPipes! It's a little cringy compared to my newer videos.
th-cam.com/video/HdIfcIAJLUg/w-d-xo.html
Great one man! Welcome back!
In terms of raw power Radeon win hands down. This performance gap was present even on later gpu. Only in 2006 with G80 nvidia takes the first place.
What a great trip down the memory lane. You earn a new sub.
Great video! I'm 37 and when I was a teen I worked at a local computer chain when these cards came out. As shown, the upgrade to a GeForce GPU was huge. Even better when the DDR option was released and we sold a TON of them. For the record, back in the day the TNT and TNT2 were great cards as well. My first GPU was a 3DFX VooDoo Banshee 16GB :-)
16GB? Lol I think you meant 16MB.
It is great to see you back to making videos! I love watching these show down type videos of older hardware, and what these old graphics cards can really do when they have more than enough CPU to back them :)
Makes you think if these can do so much more with a modern CPU imagine what a modern GPU could do with a CPU from 20y later in the future.
I just found you yesterday and today you upload a video for the first time in 10 months! Incredible timing!
I remember when I bought this card! You didn’t cover how a simple software mod allowed you to install Quadro drivers and you got a hefty bump in OpenGL performance.
thats nuts you were still able to find the cards and all the info on those cards good Job!
Production quality through the roof. Welcome back.
Saab ❤
Nice you are back! I love your gpu videos.
I had one. Chagned out a Riva TNT. Brings back wonderful memories
Amazing return to the channel mate, well done!
Great to see you back. I was really surprised by the notification. The video was a fun romp down memory lane too.
So glad to see you are back! Your videos are extremely entertaining and make me feel like a little kid again, perusing all the different tech and gaming magazines and reading about all the cool stuff that is about to come out. The Geforce 256 was actually the first real GPU (haha) I got for myself. Even though I actually wanted a Voodoo all the time, my local shop talked me into it as he said it was "the future"; guess he was right!
I just discovered you and was a bit disheartened that I saw you weren't still making videos. I am extremely delighted to be wrong about that now. Absolutely love your content! Keep at it man!
3Dfx blew my mind. I bought a Matrox Mystique which was fine, but when I saw my classmate play Quake on a 3Dfx card, it just blew my mind. Everything was running butter smooth, even more so compared to my Matrox. I stuck with my first 3Dfx for quite a while, then finally upgrading to a 3Dfx Banshee which did not require a 2D card at all. Amazing :p I honestly cannot remember my first Geforce card, but it was probably the 256.
Great documentary about the history/start of the GPU! Good work, keep it coming!
That credits beat though :) Love your channel. My very first graphics card was a rage128! Then I got a Geforce 2 MX200. Its been ATi since then.
Finally, TH-cam recommendations for once worked an delivered me this gem. Subbed!
That parallax effect of display settings on top of the Windows background at 8:21. 🤌
I just find your channel, great content!
I'm a big fan of this type of channels (like LGR, Druaga1, etc); and I see your followers are happy of you coming back.
Lucky me I ended here on this video ~
Loved the video! Provides context and a bit of history to this card, and the suite of benchmarks includes some great titles from that era. Also, gotta say, I'm surprised to see that Radeon DDR 64MB doing so well in the tests.
Love the Radeon, but unfortunately its competition in 2000 was the GeForce2 GTS, and against that it was handily outmatched.
@@PixelPipes Yeah, noticed that after looking it up and stumbling upon an older video of yours.
Surprised to see a new video from you. Welcome back!
Awesome video. Love your content.
I don't remember it that way. The first "3D" games were essentially grid based dungeon crawler/mazes with line drawings from the 4 cardinal directions, where you moved in discrete steps (e.g. wizardry 1). Then came 3D line drawings with free look (e.g. Elite), while dungeon crawlers moved on to texturing the fixed perspective mazes. Then came untextured polygon 3D graphics; e.g. stunt car 3d, hunter, star glider, space rogue. Then came proper textured 3D with games like ultima underworld; while action games like wolfenstein 3D moved to the 2.5D you mentioned for speed.
But wolfenstein 3D was inspired to use textures by an early ultima underworld demo; carmack thought he could do it much faster with a simple raycasting and column scaling engine by skipping elevation differences, slopes, off-angle walls, level-over-level geometry, ceiling textures, floor textures, looking upwards and downwards, jumping, falling, swimming, sloped walls etc. that were all in Ultima underworld and yes he could do that, and it was the right choice for a shooter, but he was not first.
What ultima underworld lacked however was a proper perspective correct texturing routine. That was too expensive for a 386 because of the texture divide. It first used a tile based system to do high level culling. After culling it generated all the polygons and transformed their vertices into view space. For each polygon being drawn they chose on the fly an algorithm based on distance and normal direction, an iffy approximations like affine texture mapping.
First of all, awesome video. Late 90s/early 2000s really was the golden age of PC gaming. Also I actually just started playing slavezero. Had no idea there was a benchmark!
The "benchmark" is just letting the intro of the game run while recording the fps with FRAPS or MSI Afterburner. Works quite well! (aside from the 1% lows being misread)
so well explained man!!! thnx for your hard work
The Geforce DDR was only released two months after the Geforce 256, and the Radeon 7000 a mere 6 months after the GF256. It's amazing how fast technology progressed at the time.
No kidding, we just got a voodoo 3 maybe been a year and my brother told me about the geforce. When I got to the store geforce 2 was out.
thanks for the informative video! i was curious about the beginning of gpu era!
Thanks for the nostalgic journey!
dude love your content... so much nostalgia and cool trivia about something I obsessed about as a kid
something I just recently found out
the Reality Co-Processor(GPU) in the N64 does Transformation and Lighting.
crazy right
I found your content about a month ago, and was bummed to see no recent videos. Great to see you are back!
Happy you’re back! Please keep the fantastic content coming!
Good to see you back man, I was getting a bit worried that you out of the youtube space! Keep em coming!
Very cool video. Brings back memories.. Good memories! This was the glory days of PC building and tweaking for sure. I had a TNT2 Ultra, then a GeForce DDR, Then a GeForce2 GTS.. I went ATi for a while after that, and back to nVidia. I am back to AMD graphics again. Ah good times. Thanks for the effort, great way to spend 15 mins!
First time watcher here, I love the way you presented this video and how well put together it is. Also nice graphics card collection!
Cool vid! I still remember my first discreet card, the Geforce4 MX 440!
So glad you’re back! Hope you’re well and doing okay.
This channel deserves soooooooo many more subscribers, it's only a matter of time!
Dude, 73K views!! Congrats, it's well deserved! :D
Thanks man!
104 226 at the end of 17 May :)
very very well done video. i remember buying my geforce256 and being blown away. i still have it. always wondered what set it apart!
Good to see you back Nathan.
You’re back! 💪🏻😁 Man your content is real high quality. It’s like a time machine back to my childhood 😅 Keep up this awesome content, everything is perfect, voice, video editing and so on, hope to see more content next days 😄
“None choked harder than the TNT2 Ultra, which screamed the entire time for the sweet release of death.” 12:40
Smashed that sub button 😂
Just the way I remembered it all. Fun video!
Fascinating video! Thanks for making it!
Whoah just noticed this your first video in a while. Binged watched most of your content, i hope you make more. Cheers!
Sir your content is very important and you take great effort and time in ur videos, one of the best
The fun part about the GeForce 256 cards is the later drivers tried to detect your CPU and speed and would disable hardware T&L if it determined your CPU would handle it faster. This was reported by nVidia, not discovered. It did this mostly because if you pushed the Texture Units and T&L engine hard the card would overheat. It would lie to the programs saying that you were still using hardware T&L.
Apparently this did not work with some CPUs at there are people saying that the herdware T&L is holding back performance on their Pentium 4 CPUs. The solution to this was to install 3D-Analyze 2.36, which would do the same thing the driver was supposed to be doing. Basically, the CPUs coming out at the same times at the GeForce 256 were fast enough to process everything and the T&L faster than the onboard T&L could transform polygons. The GeForce 2 didn't have the overheating problem, and had a much more efficient T&L engine.
Interesting. I haven't heard about this.
It's good to see you back, great review !
Its been a while old friend. glad to finally see the 256 video in the flesh. It was really good. although now im guessing prices of the Radeon DDR 64mb may sky rocket now :(
I remember this card coming out at a time people were still clinging onto their Voodoo2's (often SLI) and Voodoo3's and it was pretty much the signal that Nvidia were going to be the way to go in the future.
Many had already ditched the 3dfx cards for a TNT2Ultra since they came in AGP flavour and the Geforce 256 was definitely the card to suddenly own if you could afford yet another upgrade - felt like we did nothing but upgrade in the late 90s!
I clung onto the TNT2Ultra until the Geforce2 GTS came out, it was a big jump in performance.
I remember walking into a Maximum PC sometime around 2000-2001, And Voodoo3 cards where stacked on the wall, but the Nvidia stuff was behind glass, with the newest card (I recall it being the Geforce 2, not sure which version exactly) being set up high like it was some sort of shrine. Mom quipped that she bet it was expensive, to which I confirmed that it was worth more then the IBM Aptiva I had at the time, monitor, keyboard, *working* zip drive and all.
i went from a voodoo2, to voodoo2 sli (when my brother bought his geforce2 gts) then geforce 2 gts. honestly, the pair of voodoo 2s were still more than adequate at the time. all i played was unreal tournament and even a single voodoo2 ran that great paired with my 700mhz atlhon, only in 16 bits and 640x480. the pair of voodoos allowed me to go to 800x600 (even 1024x768, but that had some image quality degradation that i can't remember exactly but i prefered 800x600 because of it) and the geforce let me get 1280x960
GeForce 256 was a joke for how much they cost plus they ran unstable on Super Socket 7 platforms by my experience. You also could not play any Glide-only game.
Seriously until GeForce 2 you were much better of with 3dfx hardware in practice. GeForce 2 you could say was on par with V5 in regards to that.
3dfx's next gen would've had T&L also, so Nvidia being "the future" was not clear at all. Only the death of Glide was for sure since D3D became good enough.
great work! Definitely earned my sub!
I actually had one of these. I also fired up the GeForce demo suite (on my Athlon200GE, for grins) I had downloaded MANY years ago.
I have no idea where this card is now. It probably went to Goodwill about 12 years ago in one of my old computers. I do still have my system with my VooDoo Rush and AWE32 (ISA slot, no less) in a storage shed in my hometown. That one uses a mouse and keyboard that predates PS/2.
Brings back memories.
I remember when GPU meant Geometry Processing Unit not just as a general term for a 'Graphics Card' I was saying to a friend a while back how the terms use had changed but couldn't find much online about it at the time (I didn't exactly deep dive lol), nice to see a vid confirming I'm not totally crazy haha
I love how you used UT 2004 as the stress tester! That was the actual game that forced me to upgrade my Elsa Erazor x2, which I still have thank gawd!
A great game, tech wise at least, that is the link between the TCL era and the shading era. You could run it on a maxed out slot A machine.
Got a new PC late 1999, with the fastest consumer graphics card ever, Riva TNT 2 Ultra.
A few weeks later Geforce 256 released, and soon after the DDR version.
While there is really never a perfect time to buy new PC-hardware, some times sure are better than others.
I missed this way too much! Glad you're back brother
Glad to see you uploading again.
TH-cam removed my like for the second time so i've readded it again
Had one, not only made a big difference in games but in softwares as 3dsmax and softimage
Geforce SDR was the 1st graphic card I bought. I remember overclocking my Gigabyte variant to 150mhz (GPU) & 200mhz (VRam). Great card which I eventually replaced with a Radeon 8500 64mb 2 years later.
Love the fact you used Frogger: He's Back music for the intro. 😁
Holy shit he is back! Great job as always!
Great video! I actually had bought one of the earliest GeForce 256 with SD-RAM made by LeadTek. I remember running Q3A in SMP mode on a dual Celeron 400a (overclocked to 500MHz) system and Creative's SB Live for the sound. It was a dream to play games on that computer back in 2000. Also the machine was pretty good with my MATLAB work :p
As a kid, GeForce cards were mythical animals here in my country, you couldn't find one anywhere. When I finally found one (a Geforce2 MX, oh man!) I was so excited to get it, only to learn the hard way about bottlenecking. In those days I had a K6-2 450Mhz and the performance I got from that card wasnt better than the performance I got from my old Trident Blade 3D. But that only happened on Direct3D games, because openGL games like Quake 2 or MDK 2 saw a massive boost, even allowing me to use antialiasing, another magic trick that could get rid of pixels (ok, you gotta understand, it was the 90s, everything was new and impressive those days).
10 months of waiting
Welcome back, great video!
Great Retro :-) My first GeForce was the 3 Titanium200 and man, that was lovely!!! Lasted a long time gaming for years.
I had a couple of these. It was pretty awesome back then.
Good to see you back!!!
Remember seeing the Nvidia Geforce 256 on a magazine in 2000 and I was drooling over its claimed power, coming from a Riva TNT user myself.. Oh what happy days of old indeed..
And I'm still playing Star Wars Episode I: Racer in 2020 in Linux.. oh what joy..
Love your content mate. Genuinely interesting and awesomely nostalgic.
Definitely keep this up Nathan. Very good quality video, hope to see more as you go through the history up to today's cards?
I love that Android Assault music in the title card and elsewhere. Content was great too. Instant sub.
Wow! I remember that time very well. This card was a monster. I had Voodoo Banshee 16Mb 3dfx 🙂
Nice to have you back
Absolutely love your content and channel, glad to see your back in action. I found you channel a while back and loved it but then I realised you weren't posting anymore. I do similar content on my new channel as well as game lets play. Good to see your back :)
Welcome back Mr.Pipes, glad to see you back in these trubling times
A professional 80s/90s game coder could make games on current hardware, that we are likely to see in times of the Playstation 7 with current developers' qualities.
FINALLY someone explained to me, what a GPU actually means and what the big deal about the GeForce 256 was really about. I bought it back in the day, but until today I didn't really know that it was taking pressure off the CPU. Thank you man. Great video.