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Celsius (microarchitecture)

Celsius is the codename for a GPU microarchitecture developed by Nvidia, and released in 1999. It was named with reference to Anders Celsius and used with the GeForce 256 and GeForce 2 series.

Last revised
Jul 18, 2026
Read time
≈ 3 min
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592 w
Citations
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Source
Wikipedia ↗
Nvidia Celsius
Release date1999-2005 1999
ArchitectureCelsius
Fabrication process220 nm, 180nm, 150 nm
API support
Direct3D7.0
OpenGL1.2 (1.5)
History
PredecessorFahrenheit
SuccessorKelvin
Support status
Unsupported

Celsius1 is the codename for a GPU microarchitecture developed by Nvidia, and released in 1999. It was named with reference to Anders Celsius and used with the GeForce 256 and GeForce 2 series.

Naming convention

While Celsius was not used as a marketing name at the time of the GeForce 256's launch in 1999, the public name was first used by the nouveau Linux driver, and much later on the Nvidia website.234

The company's naming convention using famous scientists for its microarchitectures only became standard practice starting with the Tesla/Fermi generations.5

Graphics features

Feature

  • The transform and lighting hardware

API

Memory

  • Max VRAM size bumped to 128MB

Chips

GeForce 256

  • NV10, 17 million transistor8

GeForce 2 series

  • NV11, 20 million transistor9
  • NV15, 25 million transistor10
  • NV17, 29 million transistor11
  • NV18, 29 million transistor
  • Crush11, 20 million transistor12
  • Crush17, 29 million transistor13

GPU list

GeForce 256

Model Launch Code name Fab (nm) Bus interface Core clock (MHz) Memory clock (MHz) Core config1 Fillrate Memory Processing power (GFLOPS)
MOperations/s MPixels/s MTexels/s MVertices/s Size (MB) Bandwidth (GB/s) Bus type Bus width (bit) Single precision
GeForce 256 SDR 11 October 1999 NV10 TSMC 220 nm AGP 4×

PCI

120 166 4:4:4 480 480 480 0 32

64

2.656 SDR 128 50
GeForce 256 DDR 13 December 1999 150 4.8 DDR

GeForce 2 series

Model Launch Code name Fab (nm) Bus interface Core clock (MHz) Memory clock (MHz) Core config1 Fillrate Memory
MOperations/s MPixels/s MTexels/s MVertices/s Size (MB) Bandwidth (GB/s) Bus type Bus width (bit)
GeForce2 MX IGP + nForce 220/420 4 June 2001 NV1A (IGP) / NV11 (MX) TSMC 180 nm FSB 175 133 2:4:2 350 350 700 0 Up to 32 system RAM 2.128

4.256

DDR 64

128

GeForce2 MX200 3 March 2001 AGP 4×

PCI

166 32

64

1.328 SDR 64
GeForce2 MX 28 June 2000 2.656 128
GeForce2 MX400 3 March 2001 200 166,200 (SDR)

166 (DDR)

400 400 800 2.656, 3.200 SDR

DDR

128 (SDR)

64 (DDR)

GeForce2 GTS 26 April 2000 NV15 AGP 4× 166 4:8:4 800 800 1600 5.312 DDR 128
GeForce2 Pro 5 December 2000 200 6.4
GeForce2 Ti 1 October 2001 TSMC 150 nm 250 1000 1000 2000
GeForce2 Ultra 14 August 2000 NV16 TSMC 180 nm 230 64 7.36
Model Launch Code name Fab (nm) Bus interface Core clock (MHz) Memory clock (MHz) Core config1 MOperations/s MPixels/s MTexels/s MVertices/s Size (MB) Bandwidth (GB/s) Bus type Bus width (bit)
Fillrate Memory
See also

See also

References

References

  1. "NVIDIA Technologies & Architectures". NVIDIA. Retrieved 21 December 2025.
  2. "NVIDIA Technologies & Architectures". NVIDIA. Archived from the original on 1 December 2022. Retrieved 21 December 2025.
  3. "NVIDIA Technologies & Architectures". NVIDIA. Archived from the original on 2 December 2024. Retrieved 21 December 2025.
  4. Halfhill, Tom R. (2009). "NVIDIA's Next-Generation CUDA Compute and Graphics Architecture, Code-Named Fermi, Adds Muscle for Parallel Processing" (PDF). In-Stat.
  5. "NVIDIA nextgen Kepler and Maxwell architectures codenames unveiled". Retrieved 21 December 2025.
  6. "GPU chips — envytools git documentation". envytools.readthedocs.io. Retrieved 15 February 2021.
  7. "TechPowerUp". TechPowerUp. Retrieved 15 February 2021.
  8. "NVIDIA GeForce 256 DDR Specs". TechPowerUp. Retrieved 15 February 2021.
  9. "NVIDIA NV11 GPU Specs". TechPowerUp. Retrieved 15 February 2021.
  10. "NVIDIA NV15 GPU Specs". TechPowerUp. Retrieved 15 February 2021.
  11. "NVIDIA NV17 GPU Specs". TechPowerUp. Retrieved 15 February 2021.
  12. "NVIDIA GeForce2 MX + nForce 220 Specs". TechPowerUp. Retrieved 15 February 2021.
  13. "NVIDIA GeForce4 MX + nForce2 Specs". TechPowerUp. Retrieved 15 February 2021.
External links