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We
haven?t heard much from NVIDIA lately, though rumors about
NV30 seem to dominate hardware discussion boards.
Similarly, even the excitement surrounding nForce2 has
subsided in light of newfound graphics competition from
ATI. After patiently watching ATI tantalize the
mainstream, enthusiast, and mobile markets, NVIDIA has put
the finishing touches on a new driver package that
bolsters performance and enhances the functionality of its
entire graphics family. Will it be enough to divert
attention from the RADEON 9700 Pro? Not this time ? ATI
has established a sizeable performance advantage and it
will take a lot more than a driver update to close the
gap. Rather, NVIDIA claims that game enthusiasts will
enjoy a few extra frames per second with their GeForce4
cards, graphics professionals should enjoy faster
rendering on the Quadro and corporate users will have new
display features to increase productivity.
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Anisotropic Filtering |
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Finally, Direct3D
Support... |
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ATI?s
RADEON 8500 was lauded for its ability to handle
anisotropic filtering in both OpenGL and Direct3D. The
GeForce4 Ti 4600, on the other hand, took a tremendous
performance hit with the feature enabled. Even then,
the previous Detonator driver only offered the feature in
OpenGL. So, one of the most significant additions to the
Detonator 40 series is anisotropic filtering support in
Direct3D.
The new
Detonator 40.41 drivers deliver little more than a three
percent performance improvement in Quake III with
anisotropic filtering enabled. Even more interesting,
though, is the difference between anisotropic filtering in
OpenGL and Direct3D. Enabling 8x anisotropic filtering in
Quake III at 1600x1200 results in a 42 percent performance
loss, while similar settings in AquaNox (a DirectX 8
application) cause a 71 percent penalty. Either the games
themselves are to blame, or NVIDIA needs to spend time
optimizing the algorithm for anisotropic filtering in
Direct3D. We'll apparently have to wait for the NV3x
for faster filtering performance.
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nView |
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New Features For
Corporate Productivity |
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NVIDIA
has tacked a couple of new features onto the nView
multi-display technology. To begin, specific nView user
profiles can be assigned and locked using Administrative
access in Windows XP. Among the other improvements that
NVIDIA lists is a desktop manager capable of creating 32
unique desktops, enhanced ?zoom? performance, better
transparency performance, and a redesigned hotkey
assignment utility.
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NVRotate |
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90, 180, or 270
Degrees... |
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Many LCD
displays can be rotated to a vertical ?portrait? viewing
angle ? ideal for word processing and desktop publishing.
The NVRotate feature allows 2D, 3D and video acceleration
in any rotated configuration, be it 90, 180, or 270
degrees. According to NVIDIA, there is no performance
penalty for enabling NVRotate.
NVKeystone and Benchmarks...
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