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 A
mere 4 months ago, we turned HotHardware readers on to
NVIDIA's "fall refresh" product, the GeForce3 Titanium.
A new set of drivers, higher clocks speeds and all new
branding of the GeForce3 product, was unleashed upon the
casual and hardcore gaming markets, as well as the
professional/desktop graphics space. NVIDIA, known for
blisteringly short product development cycles, rang the bell
for round two of the GeForce3 punishment being dealt to
their closes competitor, ATi. However this time, ATi
was ready and answered the bell with their
Radeon 8500
product line that finally gave the high end enthusiast
segment a real choice for high end 3D Graphics for the PC.
However, as we've seen so many times in the past, you can
almost set your watch to NVIDIA's product development cycles
and we knew true next generation technology would not be far
around the corner for the company, now known affectionately
as the "Chipzilla" of the PC Graphics Industry.
Like the
proverbial 1-2 punch, NVIDIA comes out swinging again with
two new graphics chips aimed at the value and performance
segments of the market. Today we're taking the wraps off the
GeForce4 Ti and GeForce4 MX GPUs from NVIDIA.
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Specifications and Features of the NVIDIA
GeForce4 Ti and MX |
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New boards with
two totally new GPUs |
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NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600
Graphics Engine
NVIDIA® GeForce4 Ti GPU @ 300MHz
Video Memory
128MB DDR Video Memory @ 650MHz DDR
Bus standard
AGP 4X / 2X / 1X
Connector
Dual VGA or DVI (with converter)
TV-out Connector (optional)
One S-VHS mini-DIN
NVIDIA Personal Cinema Ready (optional)
nView
Display technology provides the ultimate multiple
display flexibility and control
Accuview AA
Delivers high resolution, high frame rate, full
scene antialiasing
Lightspeed Memory Architecture TM (LMA) II
128- bit DDR interface, radically improves memory
efficiency
"Quad Cache" - Pixel, Texture, Primitive and Vertex -
On chip cache
Lossless 4:1 Compression of Z-Data
Second Generation Occlusion Culling
nfiniteFX II Engine
Drives complex
geometry and animation w/ Dual Vertex Shaders and
Faster Pixel Shaders
4.8Gsamples/sec
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NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 460
Graphics Engine
NVIDIA® GeForce4 MX GPU @ 300MHz
Video Memory
64MB DDR Video Memory @ 550MHz DDR
Bus standard
AGP 4X / 2X / 1X
Connector
One VGA and one DVI
TV-out Connector (optional)
One S-VHS mini-DIN
NVIDIA Personal Cinema Ready (optional)
nView
Display technology provides the ultimate multiple
display flexibility and control
Accuview AA
Delivers high resolution, high frame rate, full
scene antialiasing
Lightspeed Memory Architecture TM (LMA) II
128- bit DDR interface, radically improves memory
efficiency
"Quad Cache" - Pixel, Texture, Primitive and Vertex -
On chip cache
Lossless 4:1 Compression of Z-Data
Second Generation Occlusion Culling
Integrated TV encoder at 1024x768
resolution
Integrated full hardware MPEG- 2
decoder
Processes full frame rate, full screen MPEG- 2
video
Motion compensation and IDCT
Allows for DVD decoding with minimum CPU usage
HDTV ready
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New technology
enabling new features and performance levels:
Using TSMC's .15
micron wafer fab process, NVIDIA is able to drive core clock
speeds on both chips to 300MHz. In addition, next
generation DDR SDRAM is also running at speed bins of 650MHz
for the GeForce4 Ti and 550MHz for the GeForce4 MX.
Upon closer inspection of the board shots above, you'll
notice that the DDR SDRAM components are now in tiny little
BGA (ball grid array) packaging. Not only are these
higher density chips but these BGA packages typically have
better noise, power and grounding characteristics, which
allows higher clock speeds. In addition, it seems the
day has come that 128MB of Texture Memory on board is going
to be a standard feature in high end product offerings.
At the new level of performance NVIDIA is claiming the
GeForce4 is capable of, users will be able to run 1600X1200
resolutions at a full 4X Anti-Aliasing setting and at good
frame rates. With only 64MB of Texture Memory, 4X AA
sampling wouldn't fit at 1600X1200 resolutions. Now,
with 128MB of DDR RAM on board, new games with larger more
detailed textures should run smooth and clean with 4X AA, at
1600X1200.
An Electrical
Engineering friend of mine at
Lucent
is always talking about "speeds and feeds". That's
what the semiconductor game is all about for the most part.
In laymen's terms, what he is talking about is that sure,
you can have a CPU or GPU that is clocked at break-neck core
speeds. That will always help overall performance.
However, if you can't fill the I/O pipes to and from that
processor and fully utilize those extra clock cycles, you
can think of your part as a Nitrous Oxide driven Drag Racer
but stuck in Neutral. The engineers at NVIDIA are also
keenly aware of this and as a result, have incorporated
their all new "Quad Cache" architecture on both the GF4 Ti
and MX products. This additional on chip cache will
"feed" the high speed rendering pipelines of the GeForce4 Ti
and MX, with faster on die memory, versus off chip frame
buffer memory, increasing overall throughput.
What's probably more impressive is the fact that NVIDIA was
able to pull this new technology out of their collective
hats, in 100 days from initial "tape out" to full run
production volumes.
Lastly, NVIDIA
is also incorporating new and sleeker looking GPU cooling
techniques, with a new heat sink design that has a turbine
type fan that blows cool air not only across the sink but
the DDR SDRAM chips as well. The current reference
design does not have heat sinks on the RAM chips themselves
but we are fairly certain there will be a few OEMs that
bring boards to market with these installed. Another
fairly obvious variance is that NVIDIA is clearly pushing
flat panel displays, offering Dual DVI Connectors
(convertible to VGA with an included dongle) on the GF4 Ti
and one of each VGA and DVI connector, on the GF4 MX.
A
closer look inside the GeForce4 Ti and MX
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