Fall 1997: The RIVA 128

Back on the scene

During the development of the NV3, or RIVA 128, NVIDIA was able to bring back some of the employees who had been laid off earlier as well as new talent such as David Kirk, who had been the Chief Scientist at Crystal Dynamics.

When the RIVA 128 was first announced, many thought it would be vaporware. With the NV2 development done in secret, no one had heard from the company since the NV1. Now NVIDIA was claiming to have produced a chip with a 128-bit memory bus, and a fill rate of 100Mpixel/sec, performance that was better than the 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics, the reigning 3D champion.

If that wasn't enough, the RIVA 128 also promised to be one of the first graphics chips to support AGP (although an incomplete implementation) and incorporate a full hardware triangle setup engine.

Diamond 330, RIVA 128

The RIVA 128 did come out on schedule, and though the RIVA 128 lacked the same 3D image quality features as the 3dfx Voodoo Graphics chip, the low cost and high performance 2D/3D acceleration made it a popular choice for OEMs. By the end of 1997, Dell, Gateway, and Micron were using RIVA 128 cards. Retail boards were available from companies such as Diamond, STB, ASUS, ELSA, and Canopus.

Six Months Later…

The "spring refresh" came in...late winter. In late February of 1998, the RIVA 128ZX was the upgraded version of the original RIVA 128. The chip extended the maximum frame buffer to 8MB instead of 4MB, and with the popularity of OpenGL in gaming, NVIDIA had a full OpenGL ICD ready at launch.

Although the RIVA 128ZX wasn't a significant improvement to the original RIVA 128, it still showed that NVIDIA was capable of its six-month product cycle. The RIVA 128ZX also marked the establishment of NVIDIA's partnership with Taiwanese foundry TSMC. They have been NVIDIA's primary foundry ever since.

3dfx's single chip 2D/3D solution, the Voodoo Banshee, experienced heavy delays, and wasn't released until late September of 1998.