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Screenshots |
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NVIDIA's Grace
Demo |
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We're back with
more NVIDIA "eye candy" in this segment. One of the
benefits of having seemingly unlimited resources like a
company NVIDIA's size, is that they can really dig in and
"evangelize" a new product or feature. Well, since
we're sipping a little NVIDIA Cool-Aid here so to speak,
let's have a look at some renderings of NVIDIA's "Grace"
Technology Demo on the VisionTek XTasy GeForce4 Ti4400. Here
is what NVIDIA has to say about their "Grace" Technology
Demo:
"The
dancer uses NVIDIA?s nfiniteFX II Engine to add motion to
her body, bumps to her face, sparkles to her dress, and
variation to the bubbles. Her body animates and bends using
Vertex Shaders, freeing the CPU to calculate the cloth and
bubble physics. The second-generation Pixel Shaders of
the nfiniteFX II Engine are used to add her reflective
engravings and give detailed bumps to her face. Point
sprites are used for the bubbles and 3D textures are used
for animating the sparkles on her dress."
Stunning visuals
for sure are shown here, courtesy of next generation 3D
Graphics Processors, like the VisionTek XTasy GeForce4 Ti
4400. To see this NVIDIA created dancer in motion on
your PC monitor, is really an impressive demonstration of
the technology. She moves as smoothly and fluidly as
she looks. It must be a great time to be a game
developer with tools like the GeForce4 Ti4400 at your
disposal.
2D Desktop Image Quality:
Just a quick
comment here on 2D desktop image quality. For a while
we were skipping this section in general because decent 2D
quality for desktop work is almost a given. However,
all cards are not created equal here. Components
selection especially with respect to filtering of video
signals, is essential for decent 2D output at high refresh
rates and resolutions. The VisionTek XTasy GeForce4
Ti4400 did not disappoint here and images were stable and
crisp all the way up to 1600X1200 on our 22" Mitsubishi test
monitor.
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Overclocking
The
VisionTek XTasy GeForce4 Ti 4400 |
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Ti 4600 speeds and
slightly beyond |
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In this section,
we intend to show you just what top end over-clocked speed
the VisionTek Ti 4400 board could hit, with good stability
an no visual artifacts.
With just a
simple adjustment of the clock slide in the NVIDIA "clock
frequencies" tab, when activated by the "coolbits" registry
tweak, we were suddenly at GeForce4 Ti 4600 performance
levels and even a little beyond, with full stability.
Again, our standard disclaimer applies here. Your
results may vary as all boards in production may not yield
identical results. This was just our personal
experience with the product.
Test
Setup, Quake 3 With and Without AA and Anisotropic Filtering
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