Editing GeForce 256 (section)

==Product comparisons==
Compared to previous high-end 3D game accelerators, such as [[Voodoo3|3dfx Voodoo3 3500]] and [[RIVA TNT2|Nvidia RIVA TNT2 Ultra]], GeForce provided up to a 50% or greater improvement in frame rate in some games (ones specifically written to take advantage of the hardware T&L) when coupled with a very-low-budget CPU. The later release and widespread adoption of GeForce&nbsp;2 MX/4 MX cards with the same feature set meant unusually long support for the GeForce&nbsp;256, until approximately 2006, in games such as [[Star Wars: Empire at War]] or [[Half-Life&nbsp;2]], the latter of which featured a Direct3D&nbsp;7-compatible path, using a subset of Direct3D&nbsp;9 to target the fixed-function pipeline of these GPUs.

Without broad application support at the time, critics pointed out that the T&L technology had little real-world value. Initially, it was only somewhat beneficial in certain situations in a few OpenGL-based 3D [[first-person shooter]]s, most notably ''[[Quake III Arena]]''. Benchmarks using low-budget CPUs like the Celeron&nbsp;300A would give favourable results for the GeForce&nbsp;256, but benchmarks done with some CPUs such as the Pentium&nbsp;II 300 would give better results with some older graphics cards like the [[Voodoo2|3dfx Voodoo&nbsp;2]]. [[3dfx]] and other competing graphics-card companies pointed out that a fast CPU could more than make up for the lack of a T&L unit. Software support for hardware T&L was not commonplace until several years after the release of the first GeForce. Early drivers were buggy and slow, while 3dfx cards enjoyed efficient, high-speed, mature [[Glide API]] and/or [[MiniGL]] support for the majority of games. Only after the GeForce&nbsp;256 was replaced by the [[GeForce 2 Series|GeForce&nbsp;2]], and ATI's T&L-equipped [[Radeon R100|Radeon]] was also on the market, did hardware T&L become a widely utilized feature in games.

The GeForce 256 was also quite expensive for the time and didn't offer tangible advantages over competitors' products outside of 3D acceleration. For example, its GUI and video playback acceleration were not significantly better than that offered by competition or even older Nvidia products. Additionally, some GeForce cards were plagued with poor analog signal circuitry, which caused display output to be blurry.{{Citation needed|date=August 2010}}

As CPUs became faster, the GeForce&nbsp;256 demonstrated that the disadvantage of hardware T&L is that, if a CPU is fast enough, it can perform T&L functions faster than the GPU, thus making the GPU a hindrance to rendering performance. This changed the way the graphics market functioned, encouraging shorter graphics-card lifetimes and placing less emphasis on the CPU for gaming.

===Motion compensation===
The GeForce 256 introduced<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.activewin.com/reviews/hardware/graphics/nvidia/gf4ti4600/gf3.shtml|title=ActiveWin.Com: NVIDIA GeForce 4 Ti 4600 – Review|website=www.activewin.com|access-date=July 2, 2013|archive-date=May 21, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130521142750/http://www.activewin.com/reviews/hardware/graphics/nvidia/gf4ti4600/gf3.shtml|url-status=dead}}</ref> [[motion compensation]] as a functional unit of the NV10 chip,<ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.orpheuscomputing.com/downloads2/GeForce_HDVP_brief.pdf|title= Technology brief|website=www.orpheuscomputing.com |access-date=2020-09-21}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.techspot.com/article/653-history-of-the-gpu-part-2/|title=History of the Modern Graphics Processor, Part 2|website=TechSpot}}</ref> this first-generation unit would be succeeded by Nvidia's HDVP (High-Definition Video Processor) in GeForce&nbsp;2 GTS.