And NVIDIA has put 256MB of it on a GeForce 6600. In addition to the new memory, the GeForce 6600 DDR2 reference specifications call for a 350MHz core, and 400MHz memory (DDR 800MHz).

Now, two and a half decades later, Nvidia is celebrating the GeForce 256's 25th birthday with a video and green popcorn. Here, we look back on what made a true modern classic of the PC era tick.

Nvidia 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 ...

However, the GeForce 256 was a different beast because it had 23 million transistors in the same range as the best CPUs during that time, such as AMD's Athlon chips and Intel's Pentium III CPUs.

The first of five framed-and-signed graphics cards is the GeForce 256 from 1999. By Michael Crider. Staff Writer, PCWorld Jan 2, 2025 8:02 am PST. Image: Nvidia.