this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2024
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While I don't know much about video cards, the IBM Monochrome Display Adapter (MDA) is often called the first video card and had a couple of contenders for first that were either designed earlier or released at almost the same time in 1981 and were all for displaying text only. The first GPU card sold to the public was the GeForce 256 in 1999. I'm assuming there's some in between that were not really used by the public that would have been used in movies and whatnot.
The reason why nobody was selling GPUs before Quake was because quake was THE first 3D game. Doom and other games before Quake were 2.5D and didn't have 3D models only sprites. Games before Quake essentially mimicked 3D while Quake IS 3D
3dfx cards like the Voodoo and Voodoo2 were 3d accelerators that predated nVidia's offerings.
And even from nVidia themselves, the Riva TNT was a GPU released before the GeForce models.
Ohhhh! I think the Riva TNT (or Riva TNT 2?) was my first 3D accelerated graphics card! What a time to be alive was that.
The first PC that I bought myself has a TNT2 with 8mb of memory. I upgraded it some time later with a GeForce 2 and the difference was shocking.
I remember having a GeForce 2 as well. Yes, I was really into graphics at that time. :) Ever since Wolfenstein 3D, or DooM, to be honest.
Colored lighting in Unreal for the first time!
Did you have dreams of DooM back then? I remember opening doors in DooM with that iconic sound in my dreams, lol.
The term GPU wasn't used yet. It got applied as something of a marketing term to cards that had hardware transform and lighting, and that was indeed the GeForce 256. Before then, they were "3d accelerators".
You can see this on the Wiki page for the GeForce: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_256#Architecture
So it kinda depends on perspective. If you take Nvidia's marketing at face value, then the GeForce 256 was, indeed, the first GPU. You could retroactively apply it to earlier 3d accelerators, including the SNES Super FX chip, but none of them used the term at the time.
At that point, what even is the purpose of defining it? It's such a specific term that was designed to only apply to their hardware. It's like creating a new word for a car because you added air conditioning to it.
Sure, they had the first GPU because they coined a term that only applied to one specific product.
No it wasn't. Rendition had the Verite back in 1996 that was true 3D and 2D on the same single video card. At the same time as the Verite was the 3DFX Voodoo (released 1995), but it was 3D only and needed a second card for 2D. Rendition was also the only 3D accelerator natively supported by Quake.
Nvidia did indeed market it as the first GPU at the time. You can retroactively apply the term, but it didn't exist before then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_processing_unit
Sony coined the term GPU in 1994 for what was in the Playstation.
Nvidia might have marketed it as the first GPU, but other companies had combined 2D/3D processors on a single chip marketed to consumers well before the GeForce, including Nvidia themselves with the Riva 128. The GeForce was the first product from Nvidia marketed as a GPU, but that doesn't mean it was the first product to market that was either called a GPU or not called that but still was one. It WAS the first to market with a T&L system (though Rendition had T&L on a chip first it never made it to market).