These views are owned by SYS. The V$ views are actually public synonyms for corresponding SYS.V_$ views.
To list all the V$ views on your system look in V$FIXED_VIEW_DEFINITION,
or
Select name from V$FIXED_TABLE where name like 'V$%';
To use these views, ensure that timed_statistics is set in the init.ora file (TIMED_STATISTICS=TRUE). This has minimal effect on performance.
GV$ views are dynamic performance views in a parallel server environment. There is a GV$ view for almost every V$ view. These have an additional column INST_ID (instance number)
This document was originally based on Oracle 9i.