NV1

The NV1 was Nvidia's first graphics accelerator, introduced in May 1995 and released later that year as a multimedia PCI card. Manufactured by SGS-Thomson Microelectronics, sometimes under the model name STG2000, the chip was sold in retail by Diamond as the Diamond Edge 3D card. The NV1 stood out for its use of quadratic texture mapping, a departure from the triangular primitives favored by competitors. The use of quadratics made it possible to port games from the Sega Saturn; however, after the NV1 was introduced, Microsoft announced that DirectX would exclusively support triangle primitives. As a result, the NV1 failed to gain traction in the market. In addition to its 2D/3D graphics core and Video RAM or FPM DRAM memory, the NV1 card also integrated the functionality of a 32-channel playback-only sound card, and had a joystick port, along with ports for two Sega Saturn controllers. As such, it was marketed as a "multimedia card" that was a replacement for both a graphics card and a Sound Blaster-compatible audio card in IBM PC compatible systems. However, this made it more expensive, and with many computer owners owning a sound card, the all-in-one design further hurt its market appeal. The NV2 was a follow-up chip developed for Sega's Dreamcast, but was ultimately abandoned.…

The NV1 was Nvidia's first graphics accelerator, introduced in May 1995 and released later that year as a multimedia PCI card. Manufactured by SGS-Thomson Microelectronics, sometimes under the model name STG2000, the chip was sold in retail by Diamond as the Diamond Edge 3D card. The NV1 stood out for its use of quadratic texture mapping, a departure from the triangular primitives favored by competitors. The use of quadratics made it possible to port games from the Sega Saturn; however, after the NV1 was introduced, Microsoft announced that DirectX would exclusively support triangle primitives. As a result, the NV1 failed to gain traction in the market. In addition to its 2D/3D graphics core and Video RAM or FPM DRAM memory, the NV1 card also integrated the functionality of a 32-channel playback-only sound card, and had a joystick port, along with ports for two Sega Saturn controllers. As such, it was marketed as a "multimedia card" that was a replacement for both a graphics card and a Sound Blaster-compatible audio card in IBM PC compatible systems. However, this made it more expensive, and with many computer owners owning a sound card, the all-in-one design further hurt its market appeal. The NV2 was a follow-up chip developed for Sega's Dreamcast, but was ultimately abandoned. Nvidia shifted focus with its next product, the RIVA 128, which adopted triangle primitives and dropped the audio functionality. This alignment with Direct3D and a more streamlined design made the RIVA 128 a success. File:NVIDIA@500nm@Fixed-pipeline@NV1@STG2000X B A22FN9609 MALTA DSC05885 (27662108651).jpg|The NV1 File:NVIDIA@500nm@Fixed-pipeline@NV1@STG2000X B A22FN9609 MALTA Stack-DSC05980-DSC06005 - ZS-DMap (27671715841).jpg|Die shot of the NV1 ==NV2== NV2 was to be Nvidia's second PC 3D accelerator graphics chip, but it was cancelled before completion. It was planned to succeed the NV1. NV2 built upon its predecessor's unusual quadratic 3D-rendering architecture. It was initially considered for use in Sega's Dreamcast console, due to the relationship cultivated between Nvidia and Sega over the porting of Sega arcade and Saturn console titles over to the PC platform, where the similarity in NV1's and Saturn's 3D-rendering architecture aided in the porting process. (The NV1 graphics cards had 2 Sega Saturn gamepad ports integrated so that Saturn titles could be easily ported over to the NV1 cards and have an equal gameplay experience.) However, experience with both Saturn and NV1's 3D-rendering architecture in the Saturn ultimately led the company to abandon quadratic 3D-rendering architecture altogether, in favor of a more traditional architecture that operated on triangle primitives. Nvidia's strong desire to stick with their maturing quadratic forward texture mapping technology was a great cause of friction between Sega and Nvidia. One part of the equation was undoubtedly that Sega's PC games division. A quadratic 3D game engine would be very difficult to port over to just about any other contemporary 3D graphics hardware, all of which used triangle primitives and inverse-texture mapping. More importantly, although consumer 3D hardware was still in its infancy, there was general consensus within the industry that triangle primitives with inverse-texture mapping would be standard going forward. Sega ultimately selected NEC/VideoLogic's PowerVR2 to power the 3D graphics in the Dreamcast. Because the demand was not there from Sega, and the PC market had drastically changed direction away from QTM due to the popularity of the triangle polygon-based OpenGL and DirectX, NVIDIA abandoned further development of the NV2 and started on a new architecture, a.k.a. "NV3" or RIVA 128. ==Chipset table== ==References==

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