Now then, our usual blurb: What are the major advantages of the Series 6 and 7 products? Well, feature wise we are looking pretty much at the same technology we have known for 14-15 months now. What you need to remember is that any Series 6 and 7 graphics card can achieve what a modern game expects from it. Obviously the keywords over the past couple of years has been "Shader technology." It really changed the way we look at games from a graphical "Point of View". It allows the game programmers to take games to a next level in both a visual and performance terms.

As always, that's the point where we land and quickly discuss on Shader Model 3.

Talking about Shader Model 3

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 to 3.0 was a small one and most Shader Model 2.0 games can easily be upgraded to Model 3.0, which can bring more performance to that gaming experience. DirectX 9 was recently updated and we are going to see more and more support for 3.0 Shaders.

Is SM 3.0 technology a huge visual advantage over 2.0? Nope, not even the slightest bit. Yet any technological advantage is always welcome and preferred over a previous generation's development. What you need to remember about Shaders 3.0 is that it can and will be used only in several critical places where it can give a performance boost and graphics cards are all about performance my friends. Both ATI and NVIDIA now offer Shader Model 3 support in their new products. GeForce Series 6 and newer models and for ATI their X1000 series and newer models.

Talking about HDR

Another big trendy implementation that will bring games closer to a movie like quality experience is HDR.

Both ATI and NVIDIA have been focusing extremely hard on HDR. They put a lot of money into their technology to support HDR in the best possible way and they should as it just is a fantastic effect that brings so much more to the your gameplay experience. HDR is something you all know from games like Far Cry. It's extremely bright lighting that brings a really cool cinematic effect to gaming. This effect is becoming extraordinarily popular.

Valve recently released a new HL2 level in the form of Half Life 2: Lost Coast. Go download it as it'll show and amaze you what HDR can do. The difference is obvious. HDR means High Dynamic Range. HDR facilitates the use of color values way beyond the normal range of the color palette in an effort to produce a more extreme form of lighting rendering. Typically this trick is used to contrast really dark scenery. Extreme sunlight, over-saturation or over exposure is a good example of what exactly is possible. The most simple way to describe it would be controlling the amount of light used present in a certain position in a 3D scene.