NVIDIA NV15 - GeForce 2 GTS
Itīs 26.04.2000, 4.00AM passed and Iīm on my way to munich :-) Now itīs here. The successor of the NVIDIA GeForce 256 - The GeForce 2GTS. The new chip is made on a 0.18 micron process. This results in a higher core clockrate and a less power consumption. The chip is running at 200MHz (GeForce: 125MHz). Like GeForce, the GTS is equiped with 4 render pipelines. But it now can render two pixel (Multi-Texturing) per pipe. NVIDIA speaks of HyperTexel here. The Texelfillrate (rendered pixels) is about 1,6GTexel/sec. The MPixel fillrate is 800Mpixel/sec. This is much higher than the 480MPixel/sec of GeForce and about 20% higher than the 3dfx Voodoo5 5500. Other improvements can be found in the T&L unit. NVIDIA says that the so called GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) is 80% faster than the GPU of GeForce. Thatīs is more than only a increase through higher clockrates (60% higher clockrate). The rendering performance doubled from 15M Triangles per second (GeForce) to 30M Triangles/sec. In the memory sector NVIDIA still sets on DDR-RAM modules. The memclock of GeForce 2GTS cards will be about 333-366MHz. This results in a memory bandwith of 5,3GB+/sec - not much higher than the 4,8GB/sec of an actual GeForce 256 DDR card. Image quality is another factor where NVIDIA wants to score. Anti Aliasing is implemented in the new drivers. A new feature is per-pixel shading. This allows a new quality of rendered surfaces in games. This pixel shader will be implemented in DirectX 8. BTW: Anti Aliasing will work better/faster than on GeForce with 5.xx drivers.
Here are the specs of the new GeForce 2GTS:
Besides of the GeForce2 GTS there will also come an Ultra like version called GL. Thereīs not much to say about this version yet like with NV11 which is a Budget solution. I hope I can tell you more about that after the pressconference of ELSA on wednessday and NVIDIA on thursday in munich. Thereīs much more to say about the new GeForce 2GTS but more about that later... I must go to munich now.... Interview with Alain Tiquet
NVIDIAīs Alain Tiquet (Marketing Director Europe) answered RIVA Station a couple of questions regarding NV15 alias GeForce 2GTS: RIVA Station (RS): GeForce 256 allowed NVIDIA to position itself at the top of the 3D entertainment market. How does NVIDIA see itself compared to its competitors today? Alain Tiquet (AT): Unlike competition The GeForce 2 GTS will be available on the shelves of all retailers early May. On Power Point paper we position The GeForce 2GTS well ahead of our competitors, however best is to take board off the shelves, this is where our customers need them. RS: With NV11 and NV15 NVIDIA is going to introduce two new types. What exactly characterizes NV11? Are there going to be several versions of NV15 as it was the case with TNT2? AT: The NV11 is not announced yet. At fall time we introduce a new architecture, at spring time we improve this architecture, work on the process and stretch it across full range of products. This what we did with the TNT and what we'll do with the GeForce architecture. RS: Is NV15 also useful/worthwhile for owners of a GeForce DDR board? In what areas does NV15 excel NV10? AT: The GeForce 2 GTS core runs at 200Mhz with 333Mhz DDR RAM. The GeForce2GTS has 2 textures per pixel, HW FSAA, per pixel shading, new Video processor, integrated DTMS and support PCI &AGP. And power consumption is 8W only RS: The design of the NV10/11/15 reference boards has been worked out by Creative. Does NVIDIA have any plans to also take over a card producer (board vendor) like it was done by S3 or 3Dfx? AT: The design of the reference boards are done by NVIDIA, anyone can manufacture them for us as far as quality of manufacturing, fast turn around and cost are OK. They are more than 15 board manufacturers offering NVIDIA based boards on the market place. This means a very strong dynamic in terms of cost, features and availability for the end users. No one has such a product synergy. The NVIDIA expertise is the design of 3D graphics chips, and we concentrate on it. Chip manufacturing is handled by TMSC and Wafertech, board manufacturing and channels are managed by more than 15 experts in these domains. I do not feel we can improve by moving to single source of board products. RS: Concerning its new Voodoo boards 3Dfx intensively relies on picture quality. NVIDIA uses T&L to concentrate on the possibility of calculating more complex scenes. Unfortunately, T&L games have been rather rare so far. How is NVIDIA going to convince game producers to create games relying on T&L? AT: The game developers are convinced, please read the list provided in our presentation. They understand the value of Nvidia support by following 3 factors: 1- The T&L architecture is going to be available across a full range of products at NVIDIA (as above) this means high volume opportunity. 2- Our colleagues from ATI and other support T&L too now. 3- The Xbox will integrate NVIDIA architecture. Clearly the commitment is there, it's a question of time. RS: By delivering the chip for Microsoft 's X-Box, NVIDIA is providing the "heart" of its gaming console. Doesn't NVIDIA create its own competitor by doing this? AT: For NVIDIA this is the unique opportunity to expand our business beyond the PC market, and push the 3D technology in all products having a display. This means tremendous volume potential far above best estimate of PC centric market. First GeForce 2GTS products On of the first manufacturers that showed us his new GeForce 2GTS cards is Guillemot alias Hercules:
More information on GeForce 2GTS and the new cards soon. |
|
|||||||||||||
| Copyright: 26.04.200 -
RIVA
Station 2000 - Lars Weinand URL of this Article: www.rivastation.com/geforce2gts_1_e.htm - If you want to link to it, please use this URL! :-) |
