Page 3 - The Feature set
New Features
I already stated that from a feature point of view nothing has shifted incredibly except performance. Hey, games are moving out of the cave and into the forest, we need more performance to display these nifty rendered and incredibly complex scenes. So, you still have your Shader Model 3 and not 3.0a (which doesn't even exist).
Next to that we see small improvements that of course have been made to what we can consider standard NVIDIA technology these days in the form of CineFX 4.0 engine, Intellisample 4.0 Technology.
Let's quickly browse through the most dull page of this article, GeForce 7800 GPUs specifications.
NVIDIA® CineFX 4.0 Shading Architecture
- Vertex 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
° Accelerated texture access
° 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
- NVIDIA® Intellisample 4.0 Technology
Advanced 16x anisotropic filtering (with up to 128 Taps)
Blistering- fast antialiasing and compression performance
Gamma-adjusted rotated- grid antialiasing removes jagged edges for incredible image
quality
Transparent multisampling and transparent supersampling modes boost antialiasing
quality to new levels
Support for normal map compression
Support for advanced lossless compression algorithms for color, texture, and z-data at
even higher resolutions and frame rates
Fast z-clear
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NVIDIA® UltraShadow II Technology
- Designed to enhance the performance of shadow-intensive games
- NVIDIA® SLI Technology
Patented hardware and software technology allows two GPUs to run in parallel to scale
performance
Scales performance on over 60 top PC games and applications
- NVIDIA® PureVideo Technology
Adaptable programmable video processor
High-definition MPEG-2 and WMV9 hardware acceleration
Spatial-temporal de- interlacing
Inverse 2:2 and 3:2 pull-down (Inverse Telecine)
4-tap horizontal, 5-tap vertical scaling
Overlay color temperature correction
Microsoft® Video Mixing Renderer (VMR) supports multiple video windows with full
video quality and features in each window
Integrated HDTV output
- Composited Desktop Hardware Engine
Video post-processing
Real Time desktop compositing
Accelerated antialiased text rendering
Pixel shader driven special effects and animation
Advanced Display Functionality
Dual integrated 400MHz RAMDACs for display resolutions up to and including
2048x1536 at 85Hz
Dual DVO ports for interfacing to externa l TMDS transmitters and external TV
encoders
Full NVIDIA® nView® multi-display technology capability
- API Support
Complete DirectX support, including the latest version of Microsoft DirectX 9.0 Shader
Model 3.0
Full OpenGL support, including OpenGL 2.0
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On the next page we have a look at a couple of these features. But not before I show an actual photo of the GeForce 7800 GTX to satisfy your gaming urge.
Live in action, the GeForce 7800 GTX
