Date: November 16th, 2004
Article by: Nathan Glentworth (Owner, Head Editor & Hardware Reviewer)
Product was donated by: Nvidia
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PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS & FEATURES

At A Glance

-Graphics Core: 256-bit
-Memory Interface: 256-bit
-Memory Bandwidth: 35.2 GB/sec.
-Fill Rate: 6.4 billion texels/sec.
-Vertices per Second: 600 Million
-Memory Data Rate: 1100 MHz
-Pixels per Clock: (peak) 16
-Textures per Pixel*: 16
-RAMDACs: 400 MHz

CineFX 3.0 Shading Architecture

Vertec Shaders

-Support for Microsoft DirectX 9.0 Vertex Shader 3.0
-Displacement mapping
-Geometry instancing
-Infinite length vertex programs

Pixel Shaders

-Support for DirectX 9.0 Pixel Shader 3.0
-Full pixel branching support
-Support for Multiple Render Targets (MRTs)
-Infinite length pixel programs

Next-Generation Texture Engine

-Up to 16 textures per rendering pass
-Support for 16-bit floating point format and 32-bit floating point format
-Support for non-power of two textures
-Support for sRGB texture format for gamma textures
-DirectX and S3TC texture compression
-Full 128-bit studio-quality floating point precision through the entire rendering pipeline with native hardware support for 32bpp, 64bpp, and 128bpp rendering modes

64-Bit Texture Filtering and Blending

-Full floating point support throughout entire pipeline
-Floating point filtering improves the quality of images in motion
-Floating point texturing drives new levels of clarity and image detail
-Floating point frame buffer blending gives detail to special effects like motion blur and explosions

Intellisample 3.0 Technology

-Advanced 16x anisotropic filtering
-Blistering-fast antialiasing and compression performance
-New rotated-grid antialiasing removes jagged edges for incredible edge quality
-Support for advanced lossless compression algorithms for color, texture, and z-data at even higher resolutions and frame rates
-Fast z-clear
-High-resolution compression technology (HCT) increases performance at higher resolutions through advances in compression technology

UltraShadow II Technology

-Designed to enhance the performance of shadow-intensive games, like id Software's Doom 3

Advanced Video and Display Functionality

-Dedicated on-chip video processor
-MPEG video encode and decode
-WMV9 decode acceleration
-Advanced adaptive de-interlacing
-High-quality video scaling and filtering
-DVD and HDTV-ready MPEG-2 decoding up to 1920x1080i resolutions
-Dual integrated 400 MHz RAMDACs for display resolutions up to and including 2048 × 1536 at 85Hz
-Dual DVO ports for interfacing to external TMDS transmitters and external TV encoders
-Microsoft® Video Mixing Renderer (VMR) supports multiple video windows with full video quality and features in each window
-Full NVIDIA® nView™ multi-display technology capability

Advanced Display Functionality

-Dual integrated 400MHz RAMDACs for display resolutions up to and including 2048x1536 at 85hz
-Dual DVO ports for interfacing to external TMDS transmitters and external TV encoders
-Full NVIDIA® nView™ multi-display technology capability

Advanced Engineering

-Designed for PCI Express x16
-Support for AGP 8X including Fast Writes and sideband addressing
-Designed for high-speed GDDR3 memory
-Advanced thermal management and thermal monitoring

NVIDIA® Digital Vibrance Control™ (DVC) 3.0

-DVC color controls
-DVC image sharpening controls

Operating Systems

-Windows XP
-Windows ME
-Windows 2000
-Windows 9X
-Macintosh OS, including OS X
-Linux

API Support

-Complete DirectX support, including the latest version of Microsoft DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 3.0
-Full OpenGL support, including OpenGL 1.5

Features (From Nvidia)

NVIDIA® CineFX™ 3.0 Technology

Powers the next generation of cinematic realism. Full support for Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 enables stunning and complex special effects. Next-generation shader architecture delivers faster and smoother gameplay.

NVIDIA® UltraShadow™ II Technology

Enhances the performance of bleeding-edge games, like id Software's Doom III, that feature complex scenes with multiple light sources and objects. Second-generation technology delivers more than 4× the shadow processing power over the previous generation.

Superscalar 16-pipe GPU Architecture

Delivers 8× the shading power of previous generation products for screaming gaming performance.

64-Bit Texture Filtering and Blending

Based on the OpenEXR technology from Industrial Light & Magic, NVIDIA's 64-bit texture implementation sets new standards for image clarity and quality through floating point capabilities in shading, filtering, texturing, and blending.