NVIDIA is taking us back in time with the GeForce 256, which was launched by the Greens in October 1999 and is none other than the world’s ‘first GPU’. It was well worth a look back at a graphics card that ultimately changed the course of history. For those who remember, it was the time of Quake III Arena. This GeForce 256 sold 1 million units in its first year.
Technically, the NV10 GPU that equipped this GeForce 256 had 23 million transistors, which was huge, but ultimately very little compared to what an RTX 4090 card offers today, with its 76.3 billion transistors. In terms of memory, the GeForce 256 had 32 MB, whereas an RTX 4090 now has 24 GB. A quick calculation will show you that this is quite simply 768 times more!
Before there were CUDA cores, there were popcorn cores. pic.twitter.com/L8B5oLTzFj
— Manuel Guzman (@ManuelGuzman) October 10, 2024
NVIDIA wanted to mark the occasion with a number of tweets, including one from Manuel Guzman, in which he celebrates the 25th anniversary of the card with a box of green popcorn, to remind us of NVIDIA’s green colour. A video tracing the evolution of graphics technology is also available, and is well worth watching.