Nvidia is about to launch a new generation of graphics cards based on the Ampere architecture, and if the rumors are correct, the GeForce RTX 3080 and 3090 will be absolute beasts. Maybe one day they will be treated by LEGO. Until then, this LEGO GeForce 256 graphics card is a return to one of the GPUs that started it all.

The term "GPU," or graphics processing unit, actually did not exist until the GeForce 256 was introduced in 1999. This led Nvidia to claim to have invented the "world's first GPU" Nvidia's definition of a GPU is "a single-chip processor with integrated transform, lighting, triangle setup/clipping, and rendering engines, capable of processing a capable of processing a minimum of 10 million polygons," but there were graphics accelerators that came before the GeForce 256.

Since then, the situation has changed considerably, making like-for-like comparisons tricky. That said, the GeForce 256 was built on a 220nm manufacturing process and was capable of 50 gigaflops of floating point operations, while today's GeForce RTX 2080 Ti is built on a 12nm process and is capable of 14.2 teraflops. It also has dedicated hardware for real-time ray tracing, capable of computing a little over 20 billion triangles per second (by some measurements).

Thus, while the GeForce 256 is old and underpowered by comparison in the modern era, it is an important card in the history of 3D graphics. So Twitter user @Bhaal_Spawn recreated this card with LEGO blocks.

This is not @Bhaal_Spawn's first PC game-inspired LEGO project. A few months ago we featured @Bhaal_Spawn's 3Dfx Voodoo work, as well as other projects like the LEGO Soundblaster Pro 2 and a vintage Adlib sound card from the 1980s.

I spoke with @Bhaal_Spawn about the inspiration behind these projects, which began about a year ago.

"I don't remember why I started making them. At the time it seemed like a fun idea! I like drawing and building things, and PC games have always been my inspiration since I first played 'SimCity' in 1990," @Bhaal_Spawn explained.

There was no specific reason for creating the GeForce256, it just "felt like the next iconic card. As for what's next, @Bhaal_Spawn is a question often asked.

"People keep asking me to make motherboards to put them on. So let's see!" @Bhaal_Spawn said.