NV4x Video Architecture
Next to being a gaming card, starting with the GeForce Series 6 some high-quality video options become available also. First off, Series 6 is a fully programmable video processor; you can actually use it in paint programs or software like Adobe After Effects. And hey, this has the first ever on-chip GPU video encoder. Among the features are motion adaptive interlacing, integrated TV-Encoder, HDTV support (720p. 1080i, 480p, CGMS). We so need HDTV support here in Europe. Not only that but the NV40 now also can Decode and... Encode MPEG 1/2 and 4; as well as offer real-time DivX Decode/Encode.
Shaders Model 3.0
If you program or play computer games or even recently attempted to purchase a video card, then you will have no doubt heard the terms "Vertex Shader" and "Pixel Shader". The step from 2.0 towards 3.0 is a small one and most Shader Model 2.0 games can easily be upgraded towards Model 3.0. When DirectX 9 is updated officially we are going to see some decent support for 3.0 Shaders. Is it a huge visual advantage over 2.0? No not at all. But any technological advantage is always welcome and preferred over a previous generation's development. The general consensus for developers is to use as low a shader version as possible. Shaders 3.0 will be used only in several critical places where it gives a performance boost or significantly boosts image quality. Far Cry is a good example, you've seen the reviews and it can definitely make a diffference.
Since I've started to ramble on about Shader technology I just realized that some of you do not even have a clue what I'm talking about. Sorry, that happens when you get a bit excited. Let's do a quick shader course.
What do we need to render a three dimensional object as 2D on your monitor? We start off by building some sort of structure that has a surface, that surface is built from triangles. Why triangles? They are quick to calculate. How's each triangle being processed? Each triangle has to be transformed according to its relative position and orientation to the viewer. Each of the three vertices that the triangle is made up of is transformed to its proper view space position. The next step is to light the triangle by taking the transformed vertices and applying a lighting calculation for every light defined in the scene. And lastly the triangle needs to be projected to the screen in order to rasterize it. During rasterization the triangle will be shaded and textured.
Graphic processors like the GeForce series are able to perform a certain amount of these tasks. The first generation was able to draw shaded and textured triangles in hardware. The CPU still had the burden to feed the graphics processor with transformed and lit vertices, triangle gradients for shading and texturing, etc. Integrating the triangle setup into the chip logic was the next step and finally even transformation and lighting (TnL) was possible in hardware, reducing the CPU load considerably (GeForce 256). The big disadvantage was that a game programmer had no direct (i.e. program driven) control over transformation, lighting and pixel rendering because all the calculation models were fixed on the chip. And now we finally get to the stage where we can explain Shaders. Vertex and Pixel shaders allow developers to code customized transformation and lighting calculations as well as pixel coloring functionality. Each shader is basically nothing more than a relatively small program executed on the graphics processor to control either vertex or pixel processing.
Far Cry
Shader Model 3.0 titles that we can expect soon: Lord of the rings; Battle for Middle-Earth, Stalker, Vampire; Bloodlines, Splinter Cell X, Driver 3, Grafan, Painkiller, Far Cry and more...
Lord of the Rings - The Battle for Middle Earth - it will support Shader model 3.0 all the way.
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