The graphics card pictures in this article are based on my graphics card collection, but I also borrowed some of the pictures. I would like to express my sincere thanks! Now take a photo with an nVIDIA graphics card to conclude this article.

In September 2014, nVIDIA China learned that I was the person with the largest collection of nVIDIA graphics cards, and made a special trip to take this photo. I am also the person with the largest collection of graphics cards in the world, with more than 3,000 graphics cards, 1,000 of which are rare engineering samples. Twenty years of collecting experience has contributed to the publication of articles on the history of nVIDIA, ATi, Intel, and 3dfx graphics cards. I hope you will like them and promote the collection of graphics cards together.

yjfy wrote on 2021-09-15, 16:02:

The graphics card pictures in this article are based on my graphics card collection, but I also borrowed some of the pictures. I would like to express my sincere thanks! Now take a photo with an nVIDIA graphics card to conclude this article.

In September 2014, nVIDIA China learned that I was the person with the largest collection of nVIDIA graphics cards, and made a special trip to take this photo. I am also the person with the largest collection of graphics cards in the world, with more than 3,000 graphics cards, 1,000 of which are rare engineering samples. Twenty years of collecting experience has contributed to the publication of articles on the history of nVIDIA, ATi, Intel, and 3dfx graphics cards. I hope you will like them and promote the collection of graphics cards together.

You have a lot to be proud of there. What a photo!

I've always known you've had one of the largest videocard collections around!

Still, if I had but one bit of advice to you when writing articles like these, it's to be explicitly clear which images are from your collection and which images are not.

Congratulations @yjfy for your amazing collection. I am amazed, 3000 card and 1000 are rare and engineering sample. WoW Crazy nVidia picture.

Now I am thinking in my small collection based only on prototype, engineering sample, pre-production samples and reference boards from 3Dfx with only 150 samples. LoL

Keep up the good work.

Take care,
Oscar.

yjfy wrote on 2021-09-15, 16:02:

The graphics card pictures in this article are based on my graphics card collection, but I also borrowed some of the pictures. I would like to express my sincere thanks! Now take a photo with an nVIDIA graphics card to conclude this article.

yjfy.jpg
In September 2014, nVIDIA China learned that I was the person with the largest collection of nVIDIA graphics cards, and made a special trip to take this photo. I am also the person with the largest collection of graphics cards in the world, with more than 3,000 graphics cards, 1,000 of which are rare engineering samples. Twenty years of collecting experience has contributed to the publication of articles on the history of nVIDIA, ATi, Intel, and 3dfx graphics cards. I hope you will like them and promote the collection of graphics cards together.

That is an awesome photo... slightly concerned about the pooling water in the background there o.0? Hope everything is ok 😀

Whats the single card on the far left? NV1?

Awesome collection and picture yjfy, I enjoyed browsing through both of your posts.

Just a small suggestion, you have all this information neatly organized with chapters and subchapters, maybe it would be worth making it as a wiki or even simply a pdf? It's great that you share it with us on here but the navigation is not ideal, as you already have the structure done most of the hard work is behind you I think?

Whatever you do, again great work and thanks for sharing!

I didn't know yjfy (硬件风云) is an oldbie of VOGONS until now. 😮 What a spectacular collection! 👍

out of curiosity yjfy, are most of these 3000 gfx cards in working condition? In the case of the 1000 engineering samples in particular, I guess they range from early prototypes to release candidates, are they still mostly usable and recognized by regular drivers?

Surprised by the mention of XGI Volari, but no Kyro/Kyro II.

Interesting nVidia engineering samples there! 😁

paradigital wrote on 2021-09-18, 18:13:

Surprised by the mention of XGI Volari, but no Kyro/Kyro II.

Yeah, I'm also surprised about this now that you said it and their tile based rendering technology weren't mentioned at all. PowerVR (the company behind this brand had various names over the years) is really the underdog of the graphics hardware.

Guess that yjfy doesn't have them in his collection.

dormcat wrote on 2021-09-18, 17:21:

I didn't know yjfy (硬件风云) is an oldbie of VOGONS until now. 😮 What a spectacular collection! 👍

Uh, well, here on VOGONS, "Oldbie" is just a forum ranking based on postcount. You can be an oldbie too, just keep posting 😉

Stiletto wrote on 2021-09-19, 02:35:

Uh, well, here on VOGONS, "Oldbie" is just a forum ranking based on postcount. You can be an oldbie too, just keep posting 😉

I know; I chose that VOGONS-specific term instead of more common titles like "old regular" intentionally. 😉

@Stiletto: The pictures of my graphics card all have the website name and website LOGO, and the graphics card pictures quoted will all indicate the source. Thank you for your reminder.
@osckhar: You are the person with the largest collection of engineering samples of 3DFX graphics cards, envy!
@spiroyster: At that time, the pool water was drained, but it was raining a bit, and some graphics cards swam for a while. There are more than forty NV1s.
@Boohyaka: Your suggestions for making PDF documents are great! I have been on the agenda. I once damaged a Volari Duo V8 engineering sample in the 3dmark test, so I no longer test the engineering samples because they have more or less BUGs and are easily damaged or even burned out during the test.
@dormcat: I feel very cordial to see you, I hope you like hardware collection too.
@paradigital: GPU originally refers to the display chip that supports hardware T&L, Kyro/Kyro II does not support hardware T&L, so it is not listed as GPU.
@Gmlb256: Kyro/Kyro II graphics cards are also collected. http://www.yjfy.com/Museum/video/PowerVR.htm

yjfy wrote on 2021-09-19, 16:56:

GPU originally refers to the display chip that supports hardware T&L, Kyro/Kyro II does not support hardware T&L, so it is not listed as GPU.

Indeed, most people doesn't really have any idea about the GPU term anymore. I see it being applied to an entire video card regardless of the capabilities. I believe paradigital mentioned it due to being released around 2000-2001 timeframe.

yjfy wrote on 2021-09-19, 16:56:

Kyro/Kyro II graphics cards are also collected. http://www.yjfy.com/Museum/video/PowerVR.htm

I see, didn't know about it. Never checked your site until now tbh.

yjfy wrote on 2021-09-19, 16:56:

@paradigital: GPU originally refers to the display chip that supports hardware T&L, Kyro/Kyro II does not support hardware T&L, so it is not listed as GPU.

I’m well aware what makes a GPU a GPU, however you included the Voodoo 5…

With TBR the Kyro easily surpassed nVidia’s own made up throughput figures that made a GPU a GPU, add the emulated hardware TnL and you have a card that was technically more than capable of being in your comparison list.

Kyro's emulated TnL came very late in the driver development (post-DX9) though, and saving on overdraw won't save on the CPU crunching those verts.

paradigital wrote on 2021-09-19, 19:19:

yjfy wrote on 2021-09-19, 16:56:

@paradigital: GPU originally refers to the display chip that supports hardware T&L, Kyro/Kyro II does not support hardware T&L, so it is not listed as GPU.

I’m well aware what makes a GPU a GPU, however you included the Voodoo 5…

With TBR the Kyro easily surpassed nVidia’s own made up throughput figures that made a GPU a GPU, add the emulated hardware TnL and you have a card that was technically more than capable of being in your comparison list.

I have already joined the PowerVR content, and also specially spent 700 dollars to buy a 3D Prophet 4800 graphics card.

@yifi,

thank you very much for your insightful report!
In particular, I found very interesting what you wrote about the AGP bridge chips of the early Nvidia AGP cards.

One card I missed in your photo collection is the Quadro NVS280. It has been made in three variants: AGP, PCI and PCI-E.
Their weak point is their abysmal cooling. They get hot!

This is (or was) my PCI-E NVS280. It died when the cooler became loose.
It got so hot that when I curiously touched its back side after I wondered why the screen became dark and the smell of magic smoke began to emanate, some soldering and a SMD component stuck at my finger, and other components moved by the mere touch. (look at the components in the third photo)

NVS280 PCI-E (with passive cooler)

NVS280 PCI-E GPU and bridge chip (post mortem)

Components touched and moved after solder became liquid

I got a replacement that seemed to have a more durable cooling concept:

On the Leadtek GeForce PCX 5750, the bridge chip has its own passive cooler, in addition to the actively-cooled GPU.

What confuses me a bit with both of these GPUs is that their type/generation seems to differ in various sources.
I have read NV 34, NV36 and NV39.
Whatever, in the 81.98 driver .INF files, they are all NV30 with identical capabilities.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2021-09-19, 17:14:

yjfy wrote on 2021-09-19, 16:56:

GPU originally refers to the display chip that supports hardware T&L, Kyro/Kyro II does not support hardware T&L, so it is not listed as GPU.

Indeed, most people doesn't really have any idea about the GPU term anymore. I see it being applied to an entire video card regardless of the capabilities. I believe paradigital mentioned it due to being released around 2000-2001 timeframe.

that's just not true though, even if nvidia often wants to rewrite history and take possession of the term by proclaiming to have released the "world's first GPU" :p

the term GPU as "graphics processor unit" has been coined in the 70s already for chips dedicated for calculating graphics and you can find multiple mentions of it in computer magazines of the 70s and 80s already.

and I don't see any issue calling graphics/video cards "GPUs" as it's clear what is meant, a card with a GPU on it.

imi wrote on 2021-11-01, 13:15:

that's just not true though, even if nvidia often wants to rewrite history and take possession of the term by proclaiming to have released the "world's first GPU" :p

the term GPU as "graphics processor unit" has been coined in the 70s already for chips dedicated for calculating graphics and you can find multiple mentions of it in computer magazines of the 70s and 80s already.

and I don't see any issue calling graphics/video cards "GPUs" as it's clear what is meant, a card with a GPU on it.

I never claimed that nVidia invented the GPU term or hardware T&L, they just made them popular with consumers. You'll also see that ATI/AMD initially used the VPU (Visual Processing Unit) term for their chips but it didn't stuck for long.

I'm just saying nvidia doesn't get to redefine the term GPU to be just a graphics processor with hardware T&L if the term had already been long established before ^^

and even then, there have been graphics processors with hardware T&L before the GeForce 256 even if not for PC consumers.

I just wish the "the first GPU" and "GPU is defined by having X by nvidia" wouldn't stick as much, this is more important than wether we call a graphics card GPU or not imho.