With the launch of the Ti200/500 and the Detonator XP, NVIDIA is also introducing a few new features:

Shadow Buffer

Der Aufbau des GeForce 3 Chips. Shadwo Buffers unten rechts.

The GF3 can use shadow buffers to create realistic shadows adapted to the lightsource. The transitions within these shadows (especially around the edges) can be made to look very smooth, thanks to the 256 shades of grey available to the shadow buffer. Other texture filters can be applied to the shadows as well.

3D Textures

3D textures allow for a whole new range of effects in computer games. Examples are deformable fog, flames, etc. The GeForce 3 increases the quality of these 3D texture effects through a kind of 3D Mip Mapping. None of the currently available games support 3D textures, but the upcoming Team Fortress 2 will be among the first to do so.

Marketing

NVIDIA’s lead over its strongest competitor – ATi – has shrunken noticeably, as the performance of the RADEON 7500 bears out. The PR departments are trying to obscure this fact (the phrase damage control comes to mind) with important sounding announcements and new performance claims. One of these claims is that the new Detonator XP is optimized for Microsoft’s next OS, Windows XP. While this may be true (within certain limits), the way this claim is presented implies that the card should run faster in Windows XP than in other Operating systems. As the benchmarks prove, this is only true for Q3, which probably benefits from the improved memory management in Windows XP.

In all other benchmarks, the scores are markedly lower than those achieved in Win9x. This is especially obvious in DirectX 7 game! So beware, the combination of Windows XP and Detonator XP is by no means faster than Win98 – quite the contrary, the opposite is true!!!

My other gripe concerns the "new" 3D features. The only thing truly new about these features is the fact that they are being marketed. The "old" GeForce 3 already supported 3D textures and shadow buffering. Exception: Some early A3 samples have trouble with 3D textures.

Now let’s get to the interesting part – performance. NVIDIA has already shipped a few GeForce 3 Ti500 samples.

Copyright: 01.10.2001 -   RIVA Station 2001 - Lars Weinand
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