Similar to the CPU industry's two major players, the graphics card industry is changing from a group of heroes to two giants. Let's take a look back at the history of graphics cards.
In fact, the original 2D accelerator cards did not exist on PCs. It was on consoles. The game in question is the Atari 2600 from Atari. The computer of the same period was the apple II. The graphics output of the apple II was done by the CPU. However, the Atari 2600 has an Antic chip for graphics output and a CTIA chip for audio processing. The designer of the Atari 2600 is J. Mainer. He was the designer of the Amiga, a computer with powerful graphics in the 1980s. The Antic chip is inside the Atari 2600. It is also considered to be the ancestor of the graphics card.
The Amiga was one of the most powerful computers in the 1980s in terms of graphics performance. Since it has a chip dedicated to graphics processing. This chip was also dominated by the aforementioned Jay McKenna. The denise chip inside the red circle is the one that was designed to handle graphics. The denise chip inside the red circle is dedicated to graphics. In addition to denise, Paula for I/O and audio and Agnus for animation are also key to its success. Although denise was not the first graphics card to be used on a PC, it was a true 2D accelerator. Since opposed to cards that "translated" graphics into signals that could be recognized by the display.
The Amiga made people realize the tremendous importance of graphics accelerators for computers, and the world's first 2D graphics accelerator card was neither NV nor ATI, nor 3dfx. The world's first 2D graphics accelerator card is not from NV or ATI, nor is it from 3dfx, but from a vendor we have forgotten about, S3. This chip is called S3 86C911, the 911 name is derived from the name of the Porsche 911 to highlight its speed. From then on, the era of 2D graphics accelerator cards began. NV and ATI were still small players at the time.
At the same time, the well-known NVIDIA was on the verge of bankruptcy. SEGA invested $7 million in NVIDIA to develop a third generation of chips, because of the failure of the NVIDIA Generation 1 and 2 chips. Otherwise, we might not have seen the NVIDIA we know today. It can be said that SEGA has contributed to NVIDIA's current success.
Now NVIDIA's graphics card industry is spread all over the world. Whether it is a notebook computer or a desktop host, Avida can be seen on it. GT series, GTX series, such as Asus Flying Fortress III with GTX1060, and GTX3090 on the host side.
The status of the graphics card in the computer is very high. It is highly sought after by all kinds of geeks and game lovers. Of course, it is also related to its difficult and rocky history. After all, it's been crawling for so many years.
