Nvidia Riva

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Riva 128

The Riva family is the first graphics chip family from graphics chip manufacturer Nvidia and the successor to the first NV1 chip . RIVA is a acronym for R eal-time I nteractive V ideo and A nimation accelerator .

family members

Canopus RIVA TNT AGP

The following graphics chips with the name Riva were sold:

  • Riva 128
  • Riva 128 ZX
  • Riva TNT
  • Riva TNT 2
  • Riva TNT 2 Pro
  • Riva TNT 2 Ultra
  • Riva TNT 2 M64

The abbreviation TNT stands for “ T wi N T exel” (in German roughly “two times Texel ”).

Largely identical to the Riva chips, there was also a low-cost version called Vanta :

  • Vanta
  • Vanta LT

The graphics cards of that time had either PCI or AGP interfaces . The memory expansion was 4, 8, 16 or 32 MB SD-RAM memory .

Historical meaning

At that time, the direct competitors of the Riva chips were products from 3dfx , ATI , Trident Microsystems and S3 Inc. Riva 128 was still inferior to the then market leader 3dfx and its Voodoo Graphics and Voodoo 2 graphics chips; But that changed with Riva TNT and especially Riva TNT2, at least as far as the feature set was concerned. In terms of performance, it should take up to Geforce2 to overtake 3dfx.

Nvidia gained press attention through aggressive marketing, and the new 32-bit rendering in particular was heavily promoted. Nvidia thus laid the foundation for the subsequent (marketing) success of the GeForce graphics chips.

Graphics chips

Various graphics chips are used within the Riva series, which differ mainly in their 3D capabilities and their render pipeline configuration

Overview of graphics chips from the Nvidia Riva series
Graphics
chip 		production Render
pipelines
(Pipes x TMU) 		DirectX /
OpenGL
version 		cutting
stelle
process transis-
tors 		The
surface
NV3 350 nm 3.5 million 1 × 1 5 / 1.0 AGP 1x
NV3ZX 350 nm 1 × 1 5 / 1.0 AGP 2x
NV4 350 nm 2 × 1 6 / 1.1 AGP 2x
NV5 250 nm 2 × 1 6 / 1.1 AGP 4x
NV6 220 nm 2 × 1 6 / 1.1 AGP 4x

Model data

Overview models of the Nvidia Riva series
model Launch Graphics processor (GPU) Graphics memory
Type Clock rate
(MHz) 		Fill rate
( MT / s) 		Size
( MB ) 		Clock rate
(MHz) 		Type Bandwidth
( GB / s)
Riva 128 1997 NV3 100 100 4th 100 128 bit SDR 1.6
Riva 128 ZX 1998 NV3ZX 100 100 8th 100 128 bit SDR 1.6
Riva TNT 1998 NV4 90 180 16 110 128 bit SDR 1.7
Vanta 1999 NV6 100 200 16 110 64 bit SDR 0.88
Vanta LT 1999 NV6 80 160 8th 100 64 bit SDR 0.8
Riva TNT2 M64 1999 NV5M64 120 240 32 125 64 bit SDR 1.0
Riva TNT2 1999 NV5 125 250 32 150 128 bit SDR 2.4
Riva TNT2 Pro 1999 NV5 143 286 32 166 128 bit SDR 2.7
Riva TNT2 Ultra 1999 NV5 150 300 32 183 128 bit SDR 2.9

See also