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Specifications
57
million transistors
0.15 micron manufacturing process
200MHz core clock
4 pixel pipelines, 2 textures per pixel
3.2 billion AA samples per second fill rate
7.36GB/sec memory bandwidth
Key
Features
nfiniteFX
Engine
NVIDIA's
programmable 3D graphics chip architecture which
allows programmable vertex shaders and pixel shaders.
Game developers can now really improve on the
visual quality of games and thus produce more
realistic images. These programmable shaders allows
developers to use their own programmable instructions
to create specialized vertex and pixel effects.
Vertex
Shaders
Vertex
shaders allow developers to create true-to-life
images in 3D. The vertex shader acts on the vertex
data and transforms it into a fully transformed
and lit vertex.
Pixel
Shaders
Pixel
shaders alter lighting and surface effects that
replace artificial and computerized looks.
Lightspeed
Memory Architecture
NVIDIA's
new technology in the GeForce3 which greatly improves
the memory bandwidth of the video card making
it perform better in games.
Crossbar
Memory Architecture
The
GeForce3 now uses 4 memory controllers each running
at 64-bit or 32-bit DDR against the single 256-bit
or 128-bit DDR pipeline of the previous video
cards. The independent 64-bit memory controllers
allow multiple individual access which makes it
faster than the traditional 128-bit DDR memory
controller.
High
Resolution Anti-Aliasing
NVIDIA's
new method of anti-aliasing which makes use of
the multi-sampling method instead of the older
super-sampling method. This new method of anti-aliasing
also introduces NVIDIA's new Quincunx Anti-Aliasing.
Quincunx
Anti-Aliasing
Quincunx
anti-aliasing gives overall better images than
4X AA but only at a small performance hit compared
to 4X AA. The visual quality of Quincunx anti-aliasing
is overall better than 4X AA. It takes 2 samples
from surrounding pixels in order to smooth out
the surfaces of the line.
Other
Features
Matrix Palette Skinning
Deformation of Surfaces
Vertex Morphing
Fisheye Lens
Large Numbers of Vertex Lights
Cube Environment Mapping
Setup for Dot-Product Bump Mapping
Layered Fog
Per-Pixel Reflection
Shiny Bumps
Multisample Rendering
Point Sprites or Particles
Same
as before, the GeForce3 still has the unified
driver architecture which makes it a bit more
convenient than individually making a set of drivers
for a specific chip only. The GeForce3 was made
for DX8 but right now, there aren't that much
games yet that could fully take advantage of the
features of the GeForce3. While we may not really
see the benefits of the card now, it's definitely
gonna last longer.
Test
System and Overclocking |
