NVIDIA today announced the launch of the GeForce 256, the world's first Graphics Processing Unit.

You get a 256-bit 3D processor, a geometry transform engine, dynamic lighting engine and the first four-pixel rendering pipeline. Best of all it's on a single chip.

According to the producers, the GeForce 256 is equivalent to the 256-bit processor a Cray T3D. Not bad. The new GPU is also capable of displaying 15 million sustained polygons and 480-million pixels per second. The technical specs go on and on...

The quick view is this: The GeForce 256 should offer much more realistic 3D environments than other chips but we're waiting to see it in action before we rush right out and by a batch for the office. Kevin Bachus, the group product manager for DirectX at Microsoft says that the chip offers: "blazingly fast performance, and consumer-friendly prices." We'll have to see about that last part, too.


Courtesy of IGN.com