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 Virtually
all of the companies actively producing 3D chipsets today,
have been working toward one goal, to deliver a
product that can render interactive, cinematic quality 3D
images, in real-time on the desktop, at smooth, playable frame rates. One company in particular,
NVIDIA,
has been telling us their eventual goal is to bring "Toy
Story" quality graphics to PC games. Today, NVIDIA
is making strides towards that eventual goal with the
introduction of their GeForce FX GPU, formerly known as the
NV30. The GeForce FX is NVIDIA's DirectX 9 compliant
Graphics Processor targeted at ATi's flagship R300, which powers the
RADEON 9700 Pro. Bringing the GeForce FX to market
has been relatively strenuous endeavor for NVIDIA. It
has been almost a year since the company, who "popularized"
the 6-Month product cycle, introduced their GeForce 4 line
of GPUs. The NV30's introduction had been delayed
due to unforeseen difficulties resulting from the switch
to a .13u manufacturing process. From what we have
seen however, the wait will be well worth it. To put
it simply, the GeForce FX is a monster. We spent
every second of the live demo that NVIDIA gave us
yesterday, with our eyes glued to the
monitor, slack jawed. On the next few pages we have
some screenshots from the demos we saw running on the GeForce FX.
You'll see why we were so impressed when you get there.
But first, let's run down the hardware that is the GeForce
FX.
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Specifications & Features of the NVIDIA GeForce FX |
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At Least What We
Know So Far... |
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CLICK ANY IMAGE FOR AN
ENLARGED VIEW
GPU:
- .13u Manufacturing
Process
- 125 Million
Transistors ( 2X GeForce 4)
- 256-Bit GPU
- Flip-Chip BGA
Package with copper interconnects
- 8 Pixel Per Clock (8
Pixel Pipelines)
- 1 TMU Per Pipe (16
Textures per unit)
- > 500MHz Core Clock
(Will probably vary depending on model)
- 350 Million
Triangles per Second - 3x The Geometry
Performance of a GF4 Ti
- AGP8X (2.1GB/s
bandwidth)
Memory:
- Memory with >1GHz Data
Rate (500MHz DDR)
- 128-Bit "DDRII" Type
- 128MB & 256MB Memory
Capacity
-
3rd.
Generation Lightspeed Memory Architecture
-
48GB/s
Effective bandwidth through the use of compression
techniques. (16GB/s actual @ 500MHz)
Other:
- Full DX9 Compliance
(and more)
- 64-Bit
Floating-Point Color
- 128-Bit
Floating-Point Color
- 2 x 400MHz Internal
RAMDACs
- Long Program length
for Pixel and Vertex Shading
- Conditional
Execution for both Pixel and Vertex
- True Data-Dependant
at Vertex
- Unified Vertex and
Pixel Shading instruction set
- Unified Driver
Architecture
- nView 2.0 -
Multi-Display Technology
- Digital Vibrance
Control 3.0
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Unfortunately, we do not
have a complete list of features and specifications for
the GeForce FX, just yet. Listed above is information
we have taken directly from the NVIDIA technical briefs,
outlining some of the new GeForce's capabilities. We
also grabbed a few charts that compare the features of
NVIDIA's newest GPU to ATi's R300 and to the Microsoft
DirectX 8 specification.
CineFX - VERY HIGH COLOR
PRECISION
The GeForce FX is capable of
rendering images with 128-Bit floating point color
precision. This is the same level of color precision
used in movies today. As you can see in the above
chart, the GeForce FX's 128-Bit max precision is much
higher than the 96-Bit output of the R300, and far
surpasses the requirements for DX8. It's important
to note that having floating point precision throughout
the rendering pipeline will yield much smoother color
gradients, especially when darker colors are used.
PIXEL SHADER 2.0+
The ATi R300 strictly adheres
to Microsoft's DX9 Pixel Shader 2.0 specifications, which
are obviously superior to what we had with DirectX 8.
The GeForce FX however, takes things much further,
offering a maximum of 1,024 texture and color instructions
per shader, versus 32 and 64 instructions on the R300.
The GeForce FX also offers over 5X the temp storage of the
R300, and overall offers more pixel shader functionality.
VERTEX SHADER 2.0+
The GeForce FX can also handle
much more complex vertex shaders than the R300, and
surpass the DX9 specification. In fact, the GeForce FX can execute 64X the number of vertex shader
instructions than ATI's R300, has 4 more temporary
registers and maximum of 256 loops versus the R300's 4
loops.
NVIDIA's GPU also offers more vertex shader functionality.
To produce the kind of images used in movies like Toy
Story, or Final Fantasy, very complex pixel and vertex
shaders have to be used. With the GeForce FX, NVIDIA
gives developers the kind of power they need to replicate
that level of realism. To make it easier for
developers to utilize the GeForce FX's capabilities,
NVIDIA developed their Cg ("C" for graphics) language and
compilers. Cg is high level programming language,
that will reduce the amount a coding developers will have
to do considerably. For a deeper look into the inner
workings of Cg, take a look at our interview with David
Kirk,
right here.
A Peek At The
Hardware & Some
Screen Shots...
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Virtually
all of the companies actively producing 3D chipsets today,
have been working toward one goal, to deliver a
product that can render interactive, cinematic quality 3D
images, in real-time on the desktop, at smooth, playable frame rates. One company in particular,
