NV1
From Sega Retro
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| NV1 | ||||||||||
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| Made for: PC | ||||||||||
| Manufacturer: NVIDIA | ||||||||||
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The NV1 is a multimedia add-on card developed by NVIDIA and released in 1995. It was the first video card to be developed by the company, and largely failed to make a dent in the overcrowded PC video card market of the era. It also pre-dates standards such as DirectX.
The NV1 is comparable to the Sega Saturn video game console and shares much of its technology, such as rendering 3D geometry as quadrilaterals instead of triangles. With an extension, it is actually possible to input Sega Saturn controllers into the card. Many of Sega's PC endeavours of the era were optimised to make use of the NV1 hardware, and the unreleased successor to the NV1, the NV2, was pitched to Sega (and inevitably rejected) during the Sega Dreamcast development stage.
While NV1's 3D performance is acceptable for the time, it, along with the Saturn to which the card's technology was based on, didn't hold up to scrutiny due to its use of quadrilaterals instead of the industry-standard polygon rendering. Audio quality was also questionable, with the General MIDI quality receiving lukewarm responses at best (a critical component at the time).
As with subsequent hardware releases by the company, NVIDIA did not manufacture their own hardware, so the card was sold under various names by board partners.
Compatible games
- Battle Arena Toshinden
- Descent: Destination Saturn [1]
- NASCAR Racing [1]
- Panzer Dragoon [2]
- Virtua Fighter Remix [1]
- Virtua Cop [2]
Promotional material
Diamond Edge 3D - US print advert
