Nvidia Riva
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
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
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
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 |