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NVIDIA GeForce 256

In Germany, NVIDIA presented the the sucessor of the TNT2, the GeForce 256 (former codename NV10) at the Internationale Funkaustellung (IFA) in Berlin. The heart of the new chip is the so called GPU (Graphics Processing Unit). This also gives the name for the chip: Ge, stands for Geometry.

Today the system CPU is responsible fot the Transformation setup. This is the positioning of 3D objects like game characters and walls in a game. The CPU draws a raw version of the scene and transfers that data to the graphics card. The card now draws the scene, puts textures on polygons, fitlers the images etc.

Now with GeForce 256 this is done by up to 90% by the GPU on the graphics card. Until today the System CPU was the factor that told how fast a game ran on PC. This has changed now or will change soon. NVIDIA presented a 32MB GeForce card not with a top CPU. It ran on a Pentium III 500MHz. Michael Hara (NVIDIA) answered to the question of the CPU that is in the demonstration system that it would run nearly as fast on a Pentium II 300 system.

To use the GPU of the new chip you need DirectX 7 that will be released by Microsoft soon or an OpenGL game that supports T&L. But with that new power we won´t have to wait very long to see games that will use T&L. Scenes with 100.000 polygons in 32Bit colors are no problem for the GeForce. NVIDIA demonstrated that on model of a Porsche Boxter. Even details like the nuts of the wheel rim and profile of the tires were modelled by polygons.

Now game developers can create new effects with such a large amount of polygons like particle effects or real time object transformations - But those effects have to be calculated by the system CPU....

You can see how complex the Porsche model is in this photo. In the left part of the image: Michael Hara.

More about these GPU features when a card is available.

GFX features

Besides of the GPU there are a lot other new features included in the GeForce 256. The main thing is the rendering of 4 pixels per clock (TNT2: two pixel per clock (TwiN Texel). This will increase the fillrate a lot compared to TNT2.

Also very interresting is a featrue called 'Cube Environment Mapping'. This allows to use real reflections on objects. It is now possible to render a character like the T1000 in Terminator II in real time!

The two images on the right show the change of the reflection after changing the angle of view. This looks very impressive when the sphere is morphing.... you must see it animated!

Lights: The GeForce supports up to 8 lights in hardware. We´ll have to see how game developers use this feature. Today they use pre-colored textures, the so called lightmaps. We´ll see a combination of lightmaps and colored lights in future for lightning effects or sunsets etc.

The chip

The GeForce is manufactured in 0.22 Micron.The clockrate is unknown yet. Michael Hara answered to that question that clockrates are no longer an indicator for the power of a graphics card. GeForce will be something similar to TNT2 in clockrates. This is enough to render 32Bit resolutions in high res. with 60fps - even with the 4 pixel per clock power. Much more important than that is the amount of polygons that can be handeled by the card.

The chip contains more than 23 Milion transistors - double the amont of a Pentium III processor. It also offers up to 64MB memory onboard, AGP 4x with Fast Writes and a 350MHz RAMDAC.

Summary

This is only a quick overview. We´ll have to wait a bit to see what GeForce can do in games. The potential is very powerfull. The CPU won´t be as important in future as it is today. Important Game developers snnounced support for T&L. Cards will be available at October/September - so let´s wait and see!

More information can be found at ther NVIDIA GeForce Homepage. A review of a GeForce card will be available here soon!