GeForce graphics processor
The GeForce logo used since 2007
Invented By:	NVIDIA

GeForce is a brand of PC graphics chipsets designed by NVIDIA. The first GeForce products were designed and marketed for the high-margin computer gamer community, but later the product's releases expanded the product line to cover all tiers of the graphics market, from low-end to high-end. As of 2007, there have been eight iterations of the design. It is the direct rival of ATI's Radeon series for the graphics processing chips market. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) (pronounced IPA: ) is a U.S. corporation specializing in the manufacture of graphics processor technologies for workstations, desktop computers, and handhelds. ... For other uses, see Brand (disambiguation). ... Early graphics chips were simple video adapters for generating text and computer graphics on a video computer display found in early computers and graphics cards. ... NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) (pronounced IPA: ) is a U.S. corporation specializing in the manufacture of graphics processor technologies for workstations, desktop computers, and handhelds. ... This article is about the machine. ... This article is about gamers - people who play games. ... 2007 is a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar. ... ATI redirects here. ... ATI Radeon is a brand of graphics processing units (GPU) that has been manufactured by ATI Technologies since 2000 and the successor to their Rage line. ...

Name origin

The "GeForce" name originated from a contest held by NVIDIA in early 1999. Called "Name That Chip", the contest called out to the public to name the successor to the RIVA TNT2 line of graphics boards. There were over 12,000 entries received and 7 winners received a RIVA TNT2 Ultra graphics board as a reward. ^[1][2] The RIVA TNT2 was a 3D graphics chip manufactured by NVIDIA starting in early 1999. ...

Generations

GeForce 256 

Launched on August 31, 1999, the GeForce 256 (NV10) was the first PC graphics chip with hardware transform, lighting, and shading although 3D games utilizing this feature did not appear until later. Initial GeForce256 boards shipped with SDRAM memory, and later boards shipped with faster DDR memory.

GeForce 2 

Launched in April 2000, the first GeForce2 (NV15) was another high-performance graphics chip. NVIDIA moved to a twin texture processor per pipeline (4x2) design, doubling texture fillrate per clock compared to GeForce 256. Later, NVIDIA released the GeForce2 MX (NV11), which offered performance similar to the GeForce 256 but at a fraction of the cost. The MX was a compelling value in the low/mid-range market segments and was popular with OEM PC manufacturers and users alike.

GeForce 3 

Launched in February 2001, the GeForce3 (NV20) introduced DirectX 8.0 programmable pixel shaders to the GeForce family. It had good overall performance and shader support, making it popular with enthusiasts although it never hit the midrange price point. A derivative of the GeForce3, NV2A, was developed for the Microsoft Xbox game console.

GeForce 4 

Launched in February 2002, the high-end GeForce4 Ti (NV25) was mostly a refinement to the GeForce3. The biggest advancements included enhancements to anti-aliasing capabilities, an improved memory controller, a second vertex shader, and a manufacturing process size reduction to increase clock speeds. Another "family member," the budget GeForce4 MX, was based off the GeForce2, with a few additions from the new GeForce4 Ti line. It targeted the value segment of the market.

GeForce FX 

Officially launched in November 2002, the GeForce FX (NV30) was a huge change in architecture compared to its predecessors. The GPU was designed not only to support the new Shader Model 2 specification but also to perform well on older DirectX 7 and 8 titles. However, initial models suffered from weak floating point shader performance and excessive heat which required two-slot cooling solutions. Products in this series carry the 5000 model number, as it is the fifth iteration of the GeForce, though NVIDIA marketed the cards as GeForce FX instead of GeForce 5 to show off "the dawn of cinematic rendering".

GeForce 6 

Launched in April 2004, the GeForce 6 (NV40) added Shader Model 3.0 support to the GeForce family, while correcting the weak floating point shader performance of its predecessor. It also implemented high dynamic range imaging and introduced SLI (Scalable Link Interface) and PureVideo capability.

GeForce 7 

The 7th generation GeForce (G70/NV47) was launched in June 2005. The design was a refined version of GeForce 6, with the major improvements being a widened pipeline and an increase in clock speed. The GeForce 7 also offers new transparency supersampling and transparency multisampling anti-aliasing modes (TSAA and TMAA). These new anti-aliasing modes were later enabled for the GeForce 6 series as well.

A modified version of GeForce 7800GTX called the RSX 'Reality Synthesizer' is used as the main GPU in the PlayStation 3 from Sony.

GeForce 8 

Released on November 8, 2006, the 8th generation GeForce (G80) is the first ever GPU to fully support DirectX 10. Built on a brand new architecture, it has a fully unified shader architecture. Benchmark testing has produced strong results against top-of-the-line GPUs from competitor ATI. It is the latest GPU line released thus far from the company.

GeForce 9 

The GeForce 9 series will be introduced in February 2008. The first launch will include the high end D9E gpu which takes advantage of 65 nm technology. It is also expected to support DirectX 10.1 and Shader Model 4.1. A more affordable midrange GPU (the D9P) is expected to be released in June and takes advantage of 55 nm technology.

The GeForce 256 (codenamed NV10), often known simply as the GeForce, was the first of NVIDIAs GeForce product-line. ... is the 243rd day of the year (244th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... This article is about the year. ... Transform and Lighting is a computing term used in computer graphics, generally used in the context of hardware acceleration (Hardware T&L). Transform refers to the task of converting coordinates in space, which in this case involves moving 3D objects in a virtual world and converting 3D coordinates to a... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... SDRAM means synchronous dynamic random access memory which is a type of solid state computer memory. ... The GeForce 2 (codenamed NV15) was the second generation of GeForce graphics cards by NVIDIA Corporation. ... The GeForce 3 (codenamed NV20) was NVIDIAs third-generation GeForce chip. ... Vertex and pixel (or fragment) shaders are shaders that run on a graphics card, executed once for every vertex or pixel in a specified 3D mesh. ... Microsoft Corporation, (NASDAQ: MSFT, HKSE: 4338) is a multinational computer technology corporation with global annual revenue of US$44. ... The Xbox is a sixth generation era video game console produced by Microsoft Corporation. ... A GeForce 4 (codenames below) is a fourth-generation graphics processing unit (GPU) manufactured by NVIDIA which forms the basis of many computer graphics cards. ... NVIDIA GeForce FX logo The famous Dawn demo was released by NVIDIA to showcase pixel and vertex shaders effects of the GeForce FX Series The GeForce FX (codenamed NV30) is a graphics card in the GeForce line, from the manufacturer NVIDIA. // Overview NVIDIAs GeForce FX series is the fifth... The GeForce 6 Series (codenamed NV40) is NVIDIAs sixth generation of GeForce graphics chipsets. ... An example of a rendering of a high dynamic range image into an 8-bit JPEG image (for display on a typical low dynamic-range computer screen). ... For other uses, see SLI. NVIDIA SLI Logo Scalable Link Interface (SLI) is a brand name for a multi-GPU solution developed by NVIDIA for linking two (or more) video cards together to produce a single output. ... NVIDIAs PureVideo is an MPEG-2 decoder designed to offload MPEG-2 decoding work from the CPU and software to NVIDIAs GPU series GeForce 6, GeForce 7, and enthusiast-class GeForce 8. ... The GeForce 7 Series is the seventh generation of NVIDIAs GeForce graphics cards. ... Supersampling is an antialiasing technique, the process of eliminating jagged and pixelated edges (aliasing). ... The RSX Reality Synthesizer graphics processing unit is a graphics chip design co-developed by NVIDIA and Sony for the PlayStation 3 computer console. ... The PlayStation 3 , trademarked PLAYSTATION®3,[3] commonly abbreviated PS3) is the third home video game console produced by Sony Computer Entertainment; successor to the PlayStation 2. ... Sony Corporation ) is a Japanese multinational corporation and one of the worlds largest media conglomerates with revenue of $66. ... 8 Series, or G80, will be the eighth generation of NVIDIAs GeForce graphics cards. ... is the 312th day of the year (313th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Microsoft Direct eXtension (almost always called DirectX) is a collection of application programming interfaces for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. ... ATI redirects here. ... The GeForce logo used since 2007 GeForce is a brand of PC graphics chipsets designed by NVIDIA. The first GeForce products were designed and marketed for the high-margin computer gamer community, but later the products releases expanded the product line to cover all tiers of the graphics market...

Mobile chipsets

Since the GeForce 2, NVIDIA has produced a number of counterpart designs for notebook computers, such as the GeForce Go, a notebook graphics processing unit (GPU).

In most cases, the GeForce Go products are very similar in feature set and performance to their desktop counterparts. Currently, models range from the lower end GeForce 7300 to the high-end performance GeForce 7900 GS and 7950 GTX (However, these cards are only available from certain manufacturers on select models).

As for the latest 8 series, the mobile parts carry a suffix "M", instead of using the previous GeForce Go branding.

Currently, the most powerful GeForce branded mobile graphics card is the GeForce 8800m GTX

Product naming scheme

The company has followed a naming scheme that relates each product to a market segment.

• This scheme is only applicable to the GeForce FX and above series video cards, however GeForce 4 and earlier cards follow a similar pattern.
• ¹: Suffixes indicate its performance layer, and those listed are in order from weakest to most powerful
• ²: Shader amount compares the number of shaders pipelines in that particular model range to the highest model possible in the generation.

When a new generation comes out, the video cards in the previous generation usually degrade in their standing. That is, when the GeForce 8800 GTX (a current high-end card) was released, the GeForce 7900 GTX (the previous high-end card) could be considered a midrange card. But in a lot of cases, the degradation doesn't happen dramatically. For example, the GeForce 7950 GX2 can still be considered high end compared to the GeForce 8800 GTX. USD redirects here. ... This article is about the unit of information. ... A mebibyte (a contraction of mega binary byte) is a unit of information or computer storage, abbreviated MiB. 1 MiB = 220 bytes = 1,048,576 bytes = 1,024 kibibytes 1 MiB = 1024 (= 210) kibibytes (KiB), and 1024 MiB equal one gibibyte (GiB). ... VGA Connector There are at least four versions of VGA connector, the three-row 15 pin DE-15 (also called mini sub D15) in originaland DDC2pinouts, and a less featureful and far less common 9-pin VGA, plus a Mini-VGA used for laptops. ... DVI redirects here. ... VGA Connector There are at least four versions of VGA connector, the three-row 15 pin DE-15 (also called mini sub D15) in originaland DDC2pinouts, and a less featureful and far less common 9-pin VGA, plus a Mini-VGA used for laptops. ... DVI redirects here. ... DVI redirects here. ... VGA Connector There are at least four versions of VGA connector, the three-row 15 pin DE-15 (also called mini sub D15) in originaland DDC2pinouts, and a less featureful and far less common 9-pin VGA, plus a Mini-VGA used for laptops. ... DVI redirects here. ... DVI redirects here. ... The High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is a licensable audio/video connector interface for transmitting uncompressed, encrypted digital streams. ...

Next generation

As of July 2007, NVIDIA discussed in interviews the next generation GeForce products having the following features: July 2007 is the seventh month of that year. ...

• Close to 1 TFLOPS operation^[3]
• 65 nm fabrication process ^[3]
• The double precision arithmetics hardware support, announced in the NVIDIA CUDA 0.8 release notes, will mostly be exclusively available to the Tesla and Quadro brands. ^[4]

tera- (symbol: T) is a prefix in the SI system of units denoting 1012, or 1 000 000 000 000. ... For other uses, see Flop. ... The 65 nanometer (65 nm) process is (as of 2007) the most advanced lithographic node used in volume CMOS semiconductor fabrication. ... In computing, double precision is a computer numbering format that occupies two storage locations in computer memory at address and address+1. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... The Tesla GPU is NVIDIAs third brand of GPUs. ... For a definition of the word quadro, see the Wiktionary entry quadro. ...

List of manufacturers

Further information: List of NVIDIA video card manufacturers

NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) (pronounced IPA: ) is a U.S. corporation specializing in the manufacture of graphics processor technologies for workstations, desktop computers, and handhelds. ...

See also

• Comparison of NVIDIA Graphics Processing Units
• Graphics card
• Graphics processing unit
• Radeon

This table contains general information about NVIDIAs GPUs and videocards based on official NVIDIA specifications. ... A graphics/video/display card/board/adapter is a computer component designed to convert the logical representation of visual information into a signal that can be used as input for a display medium. ... “GPU” redirects here. ... ATI Radeon is a brand of graphics processing units (GPU) that has been manufactured by ATI Technologies since 2000 and the successor to their Rage line. ...

References

NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) (pronounced IPA: ) is a U.S. corporation specializing in the manufacture of graphics processor technologies for workstations, desktop computers, and handhelds. ... Year 2000 (MM) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display full 2000 Gregorian calendar). ... is the 159th day of the year (160th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... is the 148th day of the year (149th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... This article is about the year. ... is the 107th day of the year (108th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Tweakers. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... is the 148th day of the year (149th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

External links

• GeForce product page on NVIDIA's website