GeForce

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.

Contents 1 Name origin 2 Generations 3 Mobile chipsets 4 Product naming scheme 5 Next generation 6 List of manufacturers 7 See also 8 References 9 External links

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]

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 anticipated successor to the GeForce 8 series graphics products. The first product is expected to release in spring of 2008.^[3] No concrete information about the products was known except officials claiming the next generation products having close to 1 TFLOPS performance while the GPU cores being made on 65 nm process, and reports about NVIDIA downplaying the significance of DirectX 10.1. ^[4]

Mobile chipsets

Since the GeForce 2, NVIDIA has produced a number of graphics chipsets for notebook computers under the GeForce Go branding. Most of the features present in the desktop counterparts are present in the mobile ones. However these GPUs do not perform as well as their desktop counterpart. NVIDIA later rebranded their mobile chipset for the GeForce 8 based GPUs the GeForce 8M series.

Product naming scheme

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

Number range (steps of 50)	Category	Suffixes1	Price range (USD)	Shader amount²	Memory			Outputs	Example products
					Type	Width (bit)	Size (MiB)
000-450	Mainstream	LE, GS, GT	≤$100	≤25%	DDR2	64 or 128	≤512MB	VGA/DVI	GeForce 7300GS, GeForce 6200
500-750	Performance	LE, GS, GT, GTS	$100-$300	25%-50%	DDR2, GDDR3	128 or 256	256MB-512MB	VGA/DVI Two DVI	GeForce 6600GT, GeForce 8600GTS
800-950	Enthusiast	GS, GT, GTS, GTX, Ultra	≥$200	75%-100%	GDDR3 or GDDR4	≥256	≥256MB	VGA/DVI Two DVI DVI/HDMI	GeForce 8800 Ultra, GeForce 7900 GTX

• 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 or units in that particular model range to the highest model possible in the generation.

Next generation

As of July 2007, NVIDIA discussed in interviews the next generation GeForce products having the following features:

• Close to 1 TFLOPS operation^[5]
• 65 nm fabrication process ^[5]
• 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. ^[6]

List of manufacturers

Further information: List of NVIDIA video card manufacturers

See also

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

References

External links

• GeForce product page on NVIDIA's website

•  • e NVIDIA's technologies
Gaming GPUs	Early Chipsets Direct3D 5/6 Direct3D 7 Direct3D 8 Direct3D 9 Direct3D 10 NV1  • NV2 RIVA 128  • RIVA TNT  • RIVA TNT2 GeForce 256  • GeForce 2 GeForce 3  • GeForce 4 GeForce FX  • GeForce 6  • GeForce 7 GeForce 8  • GeForce 9
Workstation and HPC GPUs	Quadro  • Quadro Plex  • Tesla
Game Consoles GPUs	NV2A (Xbox) • RSX (PlayStation 3)
Consumer Electronics GPUs	GoForce
nForce Chipsets	nForce 220/415/420  • nForce2  • SoundStorm  • nForce3  • nForce4  • nForce 500  • nForce 600  • nForce 700
Graphics Card Technologies	TurboCache • SLI
Software	Gelato • Cg • PureVideo