This article is all about Nostalgic and fond memories of the past. If you have been a tech aficionado and a veteran of PC games since the early 90s, then you must be aware of the world’s first graphics card created by Nvidia back in 1999, the GeForce 256.
GeForce 256 was marketed as the world’s first GPU, or Graphics Processing Unit, a term Nvidia defined at the time as “a single-chip processor with integrated transform, lighting, triangle setup/clipping, and rendering engines that is capable of processing a minimum of 10 million polygons per second.” Fast forward to 2020, today we now have a LEGO version of this GPU.
This Lego creation was made by Twitter user @Bhaal_Spawn. Bhaal_Spawn, describes herself as “the weirdo who brought you the LEGO Sound Blaster card”.
Almost 20 years ago, Nvidia released the Geforce 256, a product which came to be known as the “world’s first GPU”. The term GPU, or graphics processing unit, actually did not exist before that. The Geforce 256 is nothing special by today’s standards, and this isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison either, since the technology is far advanced these days.
But the Geforce 256 offered 50 gigaflops of floating-point performance, and being a single chip design it was fabbed on the TSMC’s 220nm lithography process. The current modern day flagship GeForce RTX 2080 Ti GPU is built on a 12nm process and delivers 14.2 teraflops, and can also calculate over 20 billion triangles per second, along with having dedicated hardware for real-time ray tracing. Coming from a 220nm node tech, we have now reached an era where products are fabbed on 12nm and 7nm nodes.
Like said before this isn’t exactly an apples to apples comparison, but it highlights how far the PC and Tech market has progressed over these past two decades or so. The Nvidia GeForce 256 might surely be ancient and under powered by today’s standards, but it is an important card in the history of 3D graphics nonetheless.
Twitter user idspispopd has now recreated the card using LEGO blocks. She is also behind several other Lego creations inspired by classic PC hardware. We saw her 3Dfx Voodoo 3D accelerator card, submitted on LEGO Ideas website, in which fan made creations are turned into actual new Lego product. It’s currently 2,321 votes away from the 10,000 target, and there are still 517 days left to vote. She is also behind the Creative’s Sound Blaster Pro 2 soundcard.
The ‘world’s first GPU’, the Nvidia GeForce 256 (1999) is now available* in LEGO!
3D graphics have never been so blocky – in a good way.
(*😉 – I may have too much time on my hands)#retrogaming #pcgaming pic.twitter.com/V4aTRpGdeL
— 🌷☀️idspispopd🌙🥀 (@Bhaal_Spawn) June 16, 2020
“I can’t remember why I started making them. It felt like a fun idea at the time! I like drawing and making things and PC gaming has always been an inspiration since I first played Sim City in 1990,” idspispopd explained to PCGamer. “People keep asking me to make a motherboard to put them on. So we shall see!” idspispopd said.
Hello, my name is NICK Richardson. I’m an avid PC and tech fan since the good old days of RIVA TNT2, and 3DFX interactive “Voodoo” gaming cards. I love playing mostly First-person shooters, and I’m a die-hard fan of this FPS genre, since the good ‘old Doom and Wolfenstein days.
MUSIC has always been my passion/roots, but I started gaming “casually” when I was young on Nvidia’s GeForce3 series of cards. I’m by no means an avid or a hardcore gamer though, but I just love stuff related to the PC, Games, and technology in general. I’ve been involved with many indie Metal bands worldwide, and have helped them promote their albums in record labels. I’m a very broad-minded down to earth guy. MUSIC is my inner expression, and soul.
Contact: Email
Slow day,DSO.
I guess they ran out of guys who recreated single levels of older games in Unreal Engine
Unreal engine stories were kind of boring and repetitive after some time. This one is something different and fresh form the oven !
If they are what you say then you must be even slower in the brain and without what to do in your life reading their articles and checking their website eh?? No need to answer I just saw you up-voted your own comment so yeah…
Well said.
That bob guy is a long time idiot and Moron out here, Having some personal agenda against DSO staff. I”ve been observing this since past 3 years or so. Ignore this guy
I don’t normally go in for name calling but there are some people on gaming sites that just aren’t worth bothering with and I wish it weren’t true but Bob is one of them. He almost never contributes anything worth reading in the comments unfortunately.
Bob wanted to write articles for DSOG but John turned him down. Some people don’t handle rejection very well. Bob is pretty pitiful imo.
Shamelessly up voting your comments once again ! Good job.
It’s almost like he’s a blatant troll who should have been banned long ago. /s
KYS you trash
And upvoting your own comment! Wow! A Genius!
interesting and noice !
has the user submitted this on LEGO Ideas website as well ?
I’m not sure about that. You can ask her on Twitter though ?
Still more powerful than the Intel GPUs.
wtf, lego PC bricks are actually a thing?
“the world’s first graphics card created by Nvidia back in 1999, the GeForce 256.“
It was not. The TNT and TNT 2 preceded it.
Before TNT we have Riva 128 – first 3D card from Nvidia
No. Even if it was preceded by TNT, those were NOT labeled officially as Graphics card. You didn’t get the point.
The GeForce 256 was the first graphics card to use the term “GPU”.The term GPU, or graphics processing unit, actually did not exist before that.
GeForce 256 was marketed as “the world’s first ‘GPU’, or Graphics Processing Unit”, a term Nvidia defined at the time as “a single-chip processor with integrated transform, lighting, triangle setup/clipping, and rendering engines that is capable of processing a minimum of 10 million polygons per second.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_256
Nvidia great story:
Riva 128 – first 3D card from Nvidia (graphic card + fast rasterization)
GeForce 256 – added transform & lighting
GeForce 2 GTS – giga texel speed (first GPU above 1 GT)
GeForce 3 – first card with pixel shaders (Nvidia Cg)
GeForce 4 – first card supporting DX9 with cross platform shaders in MS HLSL
GeForce Fx (5) – first card with included technology from aquired 3Dfx (16-bit ops at twice speed in 32-bit registers of GPU)
…
GeForce 8 – first GPU with DX10 support – unified shaders
…
GeForce RTX – first GPU with raytracing
We all see what you did there, Sp4ctr0 Spencer.
Hey, who the hell is Sp4ctr0 Spencer.??
He thinks that i’m son of Phil Spencer because I write a lot about DirectX Devs, Windows, Xbox
BTW. I you want read great article about VRS google for DirectX DevBlogs “Iterating on Variable Rate Shading in Gears Tactics”. Really nice in depth description with great pictures from engine showing internal maps how VRS works.
If you like understand how some new GPU features works this is article for you
Well John99 aka TXOMIN aka Sp4ctro is known as a Microsoft human billboard.
If you want to have an overview
http://disq.us/p/29bgn50
http://disq.us/p/2978i1v
http://disq.us/p/296g6o9
Indeed. Every long-time member here knows it. But apparently his incessant spamming of pro-Microsoft nonsense doesn’t fall within the site’s chosen narrow definition of what spamming is. So he’s allowed to continue with it. Laughable.
Well that’s the disadvantage of the “unrestrained policy”, this idiot can’t be banned nevertheless it’s still funny to see him coming with a new account hoping that we will not spot who is behind.
Except the current policy as last voted for by the site membership is not “unrestrained”. That was voting option 1. The winning vote was voting option 2 which was “unrestrained plus banning spammers”.
A moronic Microsoft fanboy who’s been banned from several sites for his incessant shilling and spamming of pro-Microsoft drivel. His original account username was Sp4ctr0. We nicknamed him Sp4ctr0 Spencer after Xbox boss Phil Spencer. After that account was banned he created a new one. Then after that new account was banned he created his current John99 account.
He’s now up to his old tricks again by having already posted numerous comments on this PC gaming site about the next Xbox console and how he believes that it’ll be better than Sony’s next PlayStation console.
The whole point of his above comment, thinly disguised as being about Nvidia, was to shill for Microsoft with those five references to Microsoft products and services. He then managed to shill again by referencing a further four Microsoft products in his follow-up comment while trying to sucker you with some other BS to fool you into believing his intentions were innocent.
Just ban him already.
Lol, idk who this guy really is. Btw, we can’t ban anyone here on DSOG. John has made this VERY clear to me when he appointed me as a Mod.
You already know the “unrestrained policy” which the readers have voted last year. As per those rules we are NOT allowed to ban any reader or forum poster here on DSOG.
John can ban spammers though, but this guy’s comments don’t actually directly fall under the “Spam” category, despite he being shilling for MS as you say.
Just block or Ignore him, if you don’t like reading his comments.
They hate that I post stuff directly from DirectX developers like James Stanard (co-creator of DXR) or from DirectX Developer blog(like VRS above)
No hate my dear, it’s quite funny to prove that you are wrong and dishonest.
After a hard day at work, your posts are oftenly a good laugh.
Lol, if i remember correctly i was the one who nicknamed him Sp4ctr0 Spencer.
https://i.imgur.com/xyyOrGq.jpg
Your comment just inadvertently reminded us of yet another of his past accounts to have been banned!
Indeed. Interesting breakdown, but I think the first DX9 video card from nVidia was the GeForce FX series which was released back in 2003.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_FX_series
Funny! Thanks Metal Messiah
I still have one! But without the fan bec it broke xD