The GeForce 200 series is a series of
Tesla-based
GeForce graphics processing unit
A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics, being present either as a discrete video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal ...
s developed by
Nvidia
Nvidia Corporation ( ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. Founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang (president and CEO), Chris Malachowsky, and Curti ...
.
Architecture
The GeForce 200 series introduced Nvidia's second generation of the Tesla microarchitecture, Nvidia's
unified shader architecture; the first major update to it since introduced with the
GeForce 8 series.
The GeForce GTX 280 and GTX 260 are based on the same processor core. During the manufacturing process, GTX chips were binned and separated through defect testing of the core's logic functionality. Those that failed to meet the GTX 280 hardware specification were re-tested and binned as GTX 260 (which is specified with fewer stream processors, fewer
ROPs and a narrower memory bus).
In late 2008, Nvidia re-released the GTX 260 with 216 stream processors, up from 192. Effectively, there were two GTX 260 cards in production with non-trivial performance differences.
The GeForce 200 series GPUs (GT200a/b GPU), excluding GeForce GTS 250, GTS 240 GPUs (these are older G92b GPUs), have
double precision
Double-precision floating-point format (sometimes called FP64 or float64) is a floating-point arithmetic, floating-point computer number format, number format, usually occupying 64 Bit, bits in computer memory; it represents a wide range of numeri ...
support for use in
GPGPU
General-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU, or less often GPGP) is the use of a graphics processing unit (GPU), which typically handles computation only for computer graphics, to perform computation in applications traditiona ...
applications. GT200 GPUs also have improved performance in
geometry shading.
, the GT200 is the seventh largest commercial GPU ever constructed, consisting of 1.4 billion transistors covering a 576 mm
2 die surface area built on a
65 nm process. It is the fifth largest
CMOS
Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS, pronounced "sea-moss
", , ) is a type of MOSFET, metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) semiconductor device fabrication, fabrication process that uses complementary an ...
-logic chip that has been fabricated at the
TSMC foundry. The
GeForce 400 series have since superseded the GT200 chips in transistor count, but the original GT200 dies still exceed the GF100 die size. It is larger than even the
Kepler
Johannes Kepler (27 December 1571 – 15 November 1630) was a German astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, natural philosopher and writer on music. He is a key figure in the 17th-century Scientific Revolution, best known for his laws of p ...
-based GK210 GPU used in the Tesla K80, which has 7.1 billion transistors on a 561 mm
2 die manufactured in
28 nm. The Ampere GA100 is currently the largest commercial GPU ever fabricated at 826 mm
2 with 54.2 billion transistors.
Nvidia officially announced and released the retail version of the previously OEM only GeForce 210 (GT218 GPU) and GeForce GT 220 (GT216 GPU) on October 12, 2009. Nvidia officially announced and released the GeForce GT 240 (GT215 GPU) on November 17, 2009. The new
40nm GPUs feature the new
PureVideo HD VP4 decoder hardware in them, as the older GeForce 8 and 9 GPUs only have PureVideo HD VP2 or VP3 (G98). They also support Compute Capability 1.2, whereas older GeForce 8 and 9 GPUs only supported Compute Capability 1.1. All GT21x GPUs also contain an audio processor inside and support eight-channel
LPCM output through
HDMI
High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is a proprietary digital interface used to transmit high-quality video and audio signals between devices. It is commonly used to connect devices such as televisions, computer monitors, projectors, gam ...
.
Chipset table
GeForce 200 series
All models support Coverage Sample Anti-Aliasing, Angle-Independent Anisotropic Filtering, 240-bit OpenEXR HDR.
*
1 Unified Shaders :
Texture mapping units :
Render output units
File:NVIDIA GeForce GTX285 G200b(Tesla) Stack-DSC03478-DSC03520 - ZS-PMax (23417560993).jpg, GeForce GTX 295 die (GT200-350-B3)
Features
Compute Capability: 1.1 (G92
TS250GPU)
Compute Capability: 1.2 (GT215, GT216, GT218 GPUs)
Compute Capability: 1.3 has
double precision
Double-precision floating-point format (sometimes called FP64 or float64) is a floating-point arithmetic, floating-point computer number format, number format, usually occupying 64 Bit, bits in computer memory; it represents a wide range of numeri ...
support for use in
GPGPU
General-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU, or less often GPGP) is the use of a graphics processing unit (GPU), which typically handles computation only for computer graphics, to perform computation in applications traditiona ...
applications. (GT200a/b GPUs only)
GeForce 200M (2xxM) Series
The GeForce 200M Series is a graphics processor architecture for notebooks.
*
1 Unified Shaders :
Texture mapping units :
Render output units
Discontinued support
Nvidia ceased driver support for GeForce 200 series on April 1, 2016.
EOL driver support for legacy products
/ref>
* Windows XP 32-bit & Media Center Edition: version 340.52 released on July 29, 2014
Download
* Windows XP 64-bit: version 340.52 released on July 29, 2014
Download
* Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 32-bit: version 342.01 (WHQL) released on December 14, 2016
Download
* Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 64-bit: version 342.01 (WHQL) released on December 14, 2016
Download
* Windows 10, 32-bit: version 342.01 (WHQL) released on December 14, 2016
Download
* Windows 10, 64-bit: version 342.01 (WHQL) released on December 14, 2016
Download
* Linux, 64-bit: version 340.108 released on December 23, 2019
Download
Gallery
File:NVIDIA GeForce GTX285 G200b(Tesla) DSC01195 (23417563943).jpg, Nvidia GeForce GTX 285, displaying PCB, die and de-lidded heat-spreader
File:Gtx260.jpg, Nvidia GeForce GTX 260, manufactured by NVIDIA board-partner XFX
File:Carte graphique Asus nVidia GTX280.jpg, Nvidia GeForce GTX 280, manufactured by NVIDIA board-partner ASUS
File:Inno3D GeForce GT240.JPG, Nvidia GeForce GT 240, manufactured by NVIDIA board-partner Inno3D
File:Grafikkarte N260GTX IMGP6200 wp.jpg, Nvidia GeForce GTX 260, manufactured by NVIDIA board-partner MSI
File:PNY GeForce 210 1 GB (GF210LP1GESB).jpg, Nvidia GeForce 210, manufactured by NVIDIA board-partner PNY
File:MSI GeForce 210.jpg, A half-height 210 by MSI
See also
* GeForce 8 series
* GeForce 9 series
* GeForce 100 series
* GeForce 300 series
* GeForce 400 series
* GeForce 500 series
* GeForce 600 series
* GeForce 700 series
* GeForce 800M series
* GeForce 900 series
* GeForce 10 series
* Nvidia Quadro
* Nvidia Tesla
* List of Nvidia graphics processing units
This list contains general information about graphics processing units (GPUs) and video cards from Nvidia, based on official specifications. In addition some Comparison of Nvidia nForce chipsets, Nvidia motherboards come with integrated onboard GP ...
References
External links
GeForce GTX 295
GeForce GTX 295
Nvidia Nsight
{{DEFAULTSORT:Geforce 200 Series
200 series
Graphics cards
Computer-related introductions in 2008