The GeForce 256 is the original release in Nvidia's "GeForce" product line. Announced on August 31, 1999 and released on October 11, 1999, the GeForce 256 improves on its predecessor by increasing the number of fixed pixel pipelines, offloading host geometry calculations to a hardware transform and lighting (T&L) engine, and adding hardware motion compensation for MPEG-2 video. It offered a notable leap in 3D PC gaming performance and was the first fully Direct3D 7-compliant 3D accelerator.
In computing, overclocking is the practice of increasing the clock rate of a computer to exceed that certified by the manufacturer. Commonly, operating voltage is also increased to maintain a component's operational stability at accelerated speeds. Semiconductor devices operated at higher frequencies and voltages increase power consumption and heat. An overclocked device may be unreliable or fail completely if the additional heat load is not removed or power delivery components cannot meet increased power demands. Many device warranties state that overclocking or over-specification voids any warranty, but some manufacturers allow overclocking as long as it is done (relatively) safely.
A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit initially 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 computers, workstations, and game consoles. After their initial design, GPUs were found to be useful for non-graphic calculations involving embarrassingly parallel problems due to their parallel structure. Other non-graphical uses include the training of neural networks and cryptocurrency mining.
A free and open-source graphics device driver is a software stack which controls computer-graphics hardware and supports graphics-rendering application programming interfaces (APIs) and is released under a free and open-source software license. Graphics device drivers are written for specific hardware to work within a specific operating system kernel and to support a range of APIs used by applications to access the graphics hardware. They may also control output to the display if the display driver is part of the graphics hardware. Most free and open-source graphics device drivers are developed by the Mesa project. The driver is made up of a compiler, a rendering API, and software which manages access to the graphics hardware.
The Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) is a series of integrated graphics processors introduced in 2004 by Intel, replacing the earlier Intel Extreme Graphics series and being succeeded by the Intel HD and Iris Graphics series.
The Radeon R100 is the first generation of Radeon graphics chips from ATI Technologies. The line features 3D acceleration based upon Direct3D 7.0 and OpenGL 1.3, and all but the entry-level versions offloading host geometry calculations to a hardware transform and lighting (T&L) engine, a major improvement in features and performance compared to the preceding Rage design. The processors also include 2D GUI acceleration, video acceleration, and multiple display outputs. "R100" refers to the development codename of the initially released GPU of the generation. It is the basis for a variety of other succeeding products.
UNIGINE is a proprietary cross-platform game engine developed by UNIGINE Company used in simulators, virtual reality systems, serious games and visualization. It supports OpenGL 4, Vulkan and DirectX 12.
A system monitor is a hardware or software component used to monitor system resources and performance in a computer system.
AIDA64 is a system information, diagnostics, and auditing application developed by FinalWire Ltd that runs on Windows, Android, iOS, ChromeOS, Windows Phone, Sailfish OS, Ubuntu Touch and Tizen operating systems. It displays detailed information on the components of a computer. Information can be saved to file in formats such as HTML, CSV, or XML.
AMD Accelerated Processing Unit (APU), formerly known as Fusion, is a series of 64-bit microprocessors from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), combining a general-purpose AMD64 central processing unit (CPU) and 3D integrated graphics processing unit (IGPU) on a single die.
Adreno is a series of graphics processing unit (GPU) semiconductor intellectual property cores developed by Qualcomm and used in many of their SoCs.
In computing, performance per watt is a measure of the energy efficiency of a particular computer architecture or computer hardware. Literally, it measures the rate of computation that can be delivered by a computer for every watt of power consumed. This rate is typically measured by performance on the LINPACK benchmark when trying to compare between computing systems: an example using this is the Green500 list of supercomputers. Performance per watt has been suggested to be a more sustainable measure of computing than Moore's Law.
A mini PC is a small-sized, inexpensive, low-power, legacy-free desktop computer designed for basic tasks such as web browsing, accessing web-based applications, document processing, and audio/video playback.
Sony has used the Z model naming scheme for its high-end ultraportable notebook computers since 2000. Unlike other Sony models, the Z has always been manufactured in Japan or in the United States for some models. Sony stated that production of the Z series would cease at the end of 2012.
Rockchip is a Chinese fabless semiconductor company based in Fuzhou, Fujian province. Rockchip has been providing SoC products for tablets & PCs, streaming media TV boxes, AI audio & vision, IoT hardware since founded in 2001. It has offices in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Hong Kong. It designs system on a chip (SoC) products, using the ARM architecture licensed from ARM Holdings for the majority of its projects.
This glossary of computer hardware terms is a list of definitions of terms and concepts related to computer hardware, i.e. the physical and structural components of computers, architectural issues, and peripheral devices.
NBench, short for Native mode Benchmark and later known as BYTEmark, is a synthetic computing benchmark program developed in the mid-1990s by the now defunct BYTE magazine intended to measure a computer's CPU, FPU, and Memory System speed.
RenderScript is a deprecated component of the Android operating system for mobile devices that offers an API for acceleration that takes advantage of heterogeneous hardware. It allows developers to increase the performance of their applications at the cost of writing more complex (lower-level) code.
AnTuTu is a software benchmarking tool commonly used to benchmark smartphones and other devices. It is owned by Chinese company Cheetah Mobile.
Geekbench is a proprietary and freemium cross-platform utility for benchmarking the central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) of computers, laptops, tablets, and phones.
