25 years ago, Nvidia changed PCs forever
In October 1999, Nvidia released the GeForce 256, which completely changed how we think about PC hardware and gaming forever.
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Twenty-five years ago, Nvidia released the GeForce 256 and changed the face of PCs forever. It wasn’t the first graphics card produced by Nvidia — it was actually the sixth — but it was the first that really put gaming at the center of Nvidia’s lineup with GeForce branding, and it’s the device that Nvidia coined the term “GPU” with.
Nvidia is celebrating the anniversary of the release, and rightfully so. We’ve come an unbelievable way from the GeForce 256 up to the RTX 4090, but Nvidia’s first GPU wasn’t met with much enthusiasm. The original release, which lines up with today’s date, was for the GeForce 256 SDR, or single data rate. Later in 1999, Nvidia followed up with the GeForce 256 DDR, or dual data rate.
Anandtech (rest in peace) is one of the few publications that still has a review of the GeForce 256 live, and it’s a fascinating looking back at the expectations in 1999. The author — founding member Anand Lal Shimpi — writes that Nvidia “cutely dubbed their GPU” when referring to the GeForce brand. Now, it’s hard to think of a PC hardware market without the term “GPU.”
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For as much that has changed in 25 years, some things have stayed the same. The review heavily criticizes Nvidia’s limited memory bandwidth on the original GeForce 256 — I’m looking at you, RTX 4060 Ti — and Nvidia’s high pricing for a “single peripheral.” At the time, the GeForce 256 started at $249. Those are still the criticisms Nvidia faces today with its graphics cards.
Although you shouldn’t look at the GeForce 256 through rose-tinted glasses, Nvidia deserves its flowers. Looking back at the review, Nvidia is the only company that has survived in the graphics space since 1999, with brands like 3dfx and Diamond being swallowed up. ATI is still around, technically, though in a much different form under the leadership of AMD.
There’s a strong chance PC gaming wouldn’t be where it is today without the GeForce 256 — be it for better or worse. As we all eagerly await the release of Nvidia’s next-gen RTX 50-series GPUs, rock your PC like it’s 1999 and boot up Quake III Arena or Unreal Tournament at 480p to see what gamers with the GeForce 256 experienced at release.
NvidiaThat’s certainly what Nvidia is doing. In celebration, the company says it’ll be posting mock ads styled like they were released in 1999, complete with sleeper PC build rocking an RTX 4080 Super, on social media. You can see a snippet of one Nvidia shared early above.
Jacob Roach is the lead reporter for PC hardware at Digital Trends. In addition to covering the latest PC components, from…
The RTX 5090 will reportedly require 600 watts of power
Rumors have been circulating about the RTX 5090 for a while, but we're finally getting a clearer picture of how Nvidia's flagship RTX 50-series GPU is shaping up. Well-known hardware leaker Kopite7kimi is claiming the RTX 5090, which seems destined to earn a spot among the best graphics cards, will come with an obscene power requirement of 600 watts.
The leaker shared specs for the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 on X (formerly Twitter). We've seen vague claims from Kopite7kimi in the past concerning RTX 50-series graphics cards, but this is the first time the leaker has shared full specs. According to the leak, the RTX 5090 will require 600W of power and come with a staggering 32GB of GDDR7 memory across a 512-bit bus.
Nvidia is reportedly sunsetting the RTX 4090
The RTX 4090 is undoubtedly the best graphics card you can buy right now from a performance standpoint, but Nvidia is reportedly discontinuing the flagship GPU. Reports from the Board Channel forums (shared by Wccftech) suggest Nvidia is preparing to end production of the RTX 4090 and the China-exclusive RTX 4090D starting next month in order to make way for next-gen RTX 50-series graphics cards.
It's not surprising that Nvidia would wind down production of the RTX 4090 as the next generation of graphics cards approaches. Flagship GPUs like the RTX 4090 don't have much of a shelf life after a new generation has released, which is something we saw in action with the RTX 3090. Although Nvidia could end production of the GPU in October (the company itself hasn't, and likely won't, confirm that detail publicly), the card won't immediately disappear from store shelves.
The viral ‘GPU purse’ costs $1,024 — but you can make your own for $40
I never thought the best graphics cards would become a fashion statement, much less some of the worst, but here we are. Over the weekend, a website called GPU Purse went live with a listing for a discarded Nvidia GT 730 GPU -- a $20 used GPU -- that had been turned into a handbag. You'll just need to shell out $1,024 for the bag, which, according to the product page, fits a phone and comes complete with a long or short chain.
One look at the website sets off alarm bells, especially for a product that's over $1,000, but it appears there's some legitimacy behind it. Financial Times reports that the GPU Purse is the brainchild of Tessa Barton, a New York Times alum and current pretraining engineer at Databricks. Barton reportedly set up a Shopify store in haste after a post on X (formerly Twitter) went viral last week with over 1.4 million impressions.
