FinalTidus
High Supremacy Member
- Joined
- Dec 8, 2004
- Messages
- 35,062
- Reaction score
- 1,154
I think you mistaken the cards. The TnL engine came with the revolutionary GeForce 256 card which came after the Riva TNT 2. This card coined the term GPU as it took the entire graphics processing from the CPU. Prior to this card, they were still being known as 3D accelerator cards as they merely accelerated 3d graphics with the bulk of the calculations still heavily depends on the CPU.The first ever chip from Nvidia that uses 32MB DDR ram with TnL engine onboard. I remember it used to cost $350 plus when it first came out. No one else dared to do anything different. A seminal architecture change that revolutionized the graphic industry until today. And ever since then, no one beside ATI with their 9800pro ever came close. If anyone wants to give away their old cards, let me know. I am a collector of classics like these.
The GeForce 3 then introduced programmable shaders which was another revolutionary card as this allowed game artists a much easier time to recreate their models and game environments without much restrictions.
And it was the ATI 9700 pro which introduced the first DX9 card and beat Nvidia for a good number of years as Nvidia launched the failure FX series cards. It wasn't until they released the GeForce 6800 then they caught up to ATI.
Haha still remember this as though it was yesterday.
