This isn't going to cover every single graphics card used in the whole world as there are so many. But we are going to be covering the one company that almost run the whole production and lead the market with a storm. Side note for the Nvidia side the cards I have added are all the main board cards from Nvidia themselves and not custom boards like which MSI and Asus make.
Nvidia NV1 (1995)
Nvidia started making graphics cards all the back in 1993. But they didn't release any card to the public until 1995. The first-ever graphics card they made was called the Nvidia NV1.
Card Information:
When this card was released it's market price was $299
This graphics card was used within the Sega Saturn a great console for its time
The NV1 had a PCI interface and could be used with most motherboards that had PCI slots in
This card supported DirectX 1.0
Die area of 90 mm² and 1 million transistors
Power draw was rated at 2 W maximum
Card Specs:
2 MB of EDO Memory
480.0 MB/s Bandwidth
75 MHz GPU Clock
60 MHz Memory Clock
1x VGA Output
Nvidia Riva 128 (1997)
The next card to be released by Nvidia was the NV3 (NVIDIA Riva 128) They started to make The NV2 as the successor of the NV1, but as Nvidia had a few issues with Sega. And so they when on there own path and two years later after the NV1 they released the NV3 in 1997.
Card Specs:
4 MB of SDR Memory
1.600 GB/s Bandwidth
128 bit Memory Bus
100 MHz GPU Clock
100 MHz Memory Clock
1x VGA Output, 1x DB13W3 Output
Nvidia Riva TNT (1998)
After a single year, 1998, Nvidia released the NV4 (NVIDIA Riva TNT). This card was a very well known card since the specs were insane for its time.
Card Specs:
16 MB of SDR Memory
1.76 GB/s Bandwidth
128 bit Memory Bus
90 MHz GPU Clock
1x VGA Output
Nvidia Riva TNT2 (1999)
In 1999, Nvidia released the NV5. (NVIDIA Riva TNT)(NVIDIA Riva TNT2). They wanted to keep on top of all the competitors. This card was made with the AGP port & no longer used the PCI Port.
Card Specs:
16 MB of SDR Memory
1.144 GB/s Bandwidth
64 bit Memory Bus
125 MHz GPU Clock
143 MHz Memory Clock
1x VGA Output
Nvidia GeForce 256 DDR (2000)
After all those cards they finally believed they had cracked the whole video card deal and started to call these video cards graphics cards. And so followed the Nvidia NV10 (NVIDIA GeForce 256 DDR). This graphic card was released on February the 1st, 2000. This card had two versions. (There is a 3rd but Quadro cards will not be on this list). The DDR version, and the SDR. The SDR came out a bit earlier than the main card in the late 1999's.
Nvidia GeForce2 Chips (2001)
With another year gone by, in 2001, came the GeForce2 Chips (NV11, NV15 and NV16). These cards were pretty much the same as NV10 but with larger amounts of ram, and cores. They also started to use the PCI slot once again.
Nvidia GeForce3 (2001)
The same year (2001) they also released the NV20 (GeForce3). They also went back to the AGP x4 port. This card was the one of the first to use DirectX 8.
Nvidia GeForce4 (2002)
Moving to 2002 they started to release GeForce4. These cards were mostly copies of previous cards but with smaller boards and better cooling for the lower end cards. There was a lot of cards using this chipset and they made so many I couldn't list them all.
Nvidia GeForce 6800 (2003)
The Nvidia GeForce 6800 (NV48) was released in 2003. This card was a bomb, honestly, because they bumped up the specs massively.
Nvidia GeForce 6600 (2004)
Since the success of the 6800 a year later they wanted to touch the whole market. So they released the 6600 a mid-range card that was cheaper than the 6800. This card was released in the middle of 2004.
Nvidia Geforce 7800 (2005)
Then in 2005, they replaced the 6800 with the all-new Geforce 7800. This card came in a few versions. The GT, GT Dual, and the GTX.
Nvidia GeForce 8000 (2006)
Next came the GeForce 8000 Series. This card style was used for multiple GPUs that followed after its release.
Nvidia Geforce 9000 (2008)
Now we move to the Geforce 9000 Series. This card was pretty much the same as the 8000 series but with shrunk down chip sets.
Nvidia GeForce 280 GTX (2008)
The 9000 series was re-branded as the 100 series. The 200 series was released in 2008. All these cards were improved from the 9000 series and mainly had higher memory.
Nvidia GeForce 480 GTX (2010)
The 400 series was released in 2010. This new card was based on the Fermi architecture.
Nvidia GeForce 580 GTX (2010)
The 500 series was released late 2010. This new card was based on the Fermi architecture once again. These cards were pretty much the same as the 400 series but took less power to run and were a little faster.
Nvidia GeForce 680 GTX (2012)
The 600 series was released 2012. This new card was based on the Kepler architecture. These new cards were almost ahead of there time as they doubled and tripled most stats that other cards had at the time.
Nvidia GeForce 780 GTX (2013)
The 700 series was released 2013. Kepler architecture was used once again. Once again Nvidia bought these cards based off there 600 series, but they were able to boost the speeds really well. Sadly the price wasn't very consumer-friendly at the time.
Nvidia GeForce 980 GTX (2014)
The 900 series was released in late 2014. I have skipped the 800 series as it was dedicated for mobile chip sets. these new cards were based on the Maxwell architecture. This architecture was based on power consumption.
Nvidia GeForce 1080 GTX (2016)
The 1000 series was released in late 2016. This time Nvidia didn't use the same architecture but used a new one called Pascal.
Nvidia GeForce 1080 GTX (2018)
The 2000 series was released in late 2018. Nvidia took their own path and brought in ray tracing and took it by storm at the start since these cards were the first for consumers. Once again the price was not the greatest even for the lower end cards. Later down the line in 2019 Nvidia updated the cards and added the word Super to the end of each model, these models were once again the same cards but with a little better clocking speeds and power draw. These RTX cards are based on Turing architecture.
Card Information:
Market price was around $699
This card supported OpenGL 4.6
This card supported DirectX 12.0
Power draw was 215 W
Built on the 12 nm process size
Port interface PCIe 3.0 x16
Card Specs:
8 GB of GDDR6 Memory
448 GB/s Bandwidth
1515 MHz GPU Clock
256 bit Memory Bus
1x HDMI, 3x DisplayPort, 1x USB Type-C
1750 to 14000 MHz Memory Clock
1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin
