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The GeForce FX has a 4 pin
power connector on the back edge of the card, as you can see
in this shot. Obviously, like ATi's Radeon 9700/9500
series cards, the new GeForce FX violates the AGP 3.0
specification, in terms of power consumption. At a 125
million transistors strong, it's no wonder the die on this
GPU, as well as the ATi R300, need a supplemental power
source to run properly across various motherboard and power
supply configurations. When you consider a Pentium 4
is around 60 million transistors, it gives you an idea of
die size on a modern Graphics Processor like the GeForce FX.
If die size and clock speed equate to power consumption,
imagine what a 2GHz GPU would draw.
The Quadro FX:
We thought we
would show you a quick glimpse of the forthcoming NVIDIA
Quadro FX board. This product, just like prior
releases of NVIDIA Quadro products, is based on the same
basic GPU core as the consumer GeForce FX variants, with
specific enhancements tailored to the Professional CAD
environment.
What is
perhaps more interesting to you, in this shot of the Quadro
FX, is the heatsink NVIDIA has designed for it. It's
great to see this more compact, elegant design and we're
hopeful that future revisions of OEM GeForce FX boards
employ a similar design. Clock speeds of the Quadro FX
haven't been confirmed to us as of yet, but we're hopeful
that this cooler, like its massive consumer grade
counterpart, can also do the job at 500MHz.
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New
Eye Candy |
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A Vision of
Gaming's Future. |
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The
screenshots below were taken from NVIDIA's "Dawn" technology
demo. Dawn is a completely computer rendered and
animated "Pixie", set in an enchanted forest environment
with movement in real-time. Along with new 3D Graphics
Card product launches, a multitude of technology demos
always seem to follow, in an effort to show off a card's
full capabilities, since current game engines may not be
able to truly show off the product. Dawn is easily the
most impressive effort of this type we've seen to date, from
either ATi of NVIDIA.
"Skeletal"
and "Blend" Shaders allow her body to move with fluid,
natural human motion. Skin Shaders allow color
and texture maps to cover the base model frame with
beautiful life-like skin surfaces. These shaders even
apply a natural oily sheen to the skin, as well as
sub-surface lighting for realistic blood flow beneath the
skin. If this type of life-like animation is any
indication of things to come in future generation game
engines, jaw dropping graphics are in store for all of us.
Drivers, Features and Functionality
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