The NV1

January 1995: NV1 / STG2000

Launched in 1995, the NV1 and STG2000 were the first "complete" multimedia accelerators. The accelerators were otherwise identical except that the NV1 used high-performance VRAM while the STG2000 used DRAM. Although the NV1 was NVIDIA's first product, the chip was very advanced for its time. It featured a complete 2D/3D graphics core, a 350-MIPS audio playback engine, and an I/O processor. The most famous board that used this chip was the Diamond EDGE 3D.

Diamond EDGE 3D photo courtesy of Dave Baumann from Beyond3D

When the NV1 was produced, many of the 3D standards we now take for granted had not yet been decided. Since polygons had not yet become the standard for 3D gaming, NVIDIA chose to implement Quadratic Texture Maps, not polygons, as its graphics primitive. Whereas today's 3D cards must use many small polygons to replicate smoothness, the NV1 used the curved sides of polygons. This allowed the NV1 to display smoother looking 3D models with fewer calculations. Textures were stored in system RAM and pulled over the PCI or VESA Local Bus as needed - exactly what AGP promised a few years later.

NVIDIA's first product wasn't only about graphics. The NV1 also integrated a playback-only sound card, something quite popular at the time. With 32 concurrent audio channels of 16-bit CD-quality audio and hardware phase shifting for simplistic 3D sound, the NV1 was actually more impressive than many first generation PCI sound cards. The MIDI playback used a 6MB patch set stored in system RAM and was even Fat Labs certified.

Rather than featuring a traditional 15-pin game port, the NV1 featured direct support for Sega Saturn gamepads and joysticks that could be used in any DirectInput compliant games, including the hardware accelerated ports of Virtua Fighter, Virtua Cop, and Panzer Dragoon.

It didn't work

Although the NV1 was technologically superior to other chips of that era from a number of perspectives, the proprietary quadratic texture mapping of the NV1 was its death sentence. When Microsoft finalized Direct3D not too long after the NV1 had reached store shelves, polygons had been chosen as the standard primitive, and despite NVIDIA's and Diamond's best efforts, developers were no longer willing to develop for the NV1. Diamond tried to increase the user base by drastically cutting the price of the Edge 3D and bundling a Sega gamepad but found little success.

With Direct3D, Microsoft nearly killed NVIDIA. PC OEMs refused to produce boards with a non-Direct3D compliant chip, and NVIDIA's engineers knew they could not come up with a completely new polygonal 3D accelerator and bring it to market in time. The company retreated from the public interest and was forced to lay off several employees.

If only there was some way they could circumvent the need to support Microsoft's Direct3D and continue using quadratic surfaces...