Last month, NVIDIA announced their new line of graphics cards, which are hyped to be some of NVIDIA's best graphics cards to date. Two key features NVIDIA are trying to promote are "Beyond Gaming" and "Gaming Beyond,"- trying to appeal to gamers and non-gamers alike. Among the advertised features include an improved architecture, up to 240 processing cores, 3-way SLI mode, and faster video conversion. When fancy catch phrases and wishful thinking are set aside, there are actually some promising stats that the GTX 200 series may deliver some heavy-duty performance.
Gaming Beyond
NVIDIA must always appeal to their target audience of gaming enthusiasts. The GTX 200 series will emphasize on detail on the environments and characters, global effects, realistic physics, and multiple levels of lighting, such as shadows, illumination, and reflection. High-Definition improvements include a 50-100% increase in frames-per-second while still showing off high resolution features that can be reached above 2560 x 1600. There are more improvements listed in their technical guide, but it basically sums up to "this series improves every aspect of all the other NVIDIA series." But it can't be backed up without proof of hardware strength.
NVIDIA's scalable processor array (SPA) architecture increased the number of threads and processor cores in the GeForce 8 and 9 series. The GTX 200 series will almost double that number of cores, from 128 to 240 streaming processors. This increase allows for enhanced detail, shader, and texture processing above that of the Geforce 8 series. The Register File has also been doubled as a result of games' demand for realism and due to stress of swapping memory. Current GTX 200 cards support a 512-bit interface as well as memory capacities from 896MB to 1GB. 3-way SLI mode can increase performance heavily, though the guide does not specifically state how much performance will increase beyond two graphics cards.
Medusa Demo
Beyond Gaming
Apart from PC gaming, another consumer demand comes from PC users wanting a better performance out of their computer for other reasons. In addition to the specs listed already, the GTX 200 series will promote more efficient power consumption when a PC is under different conditions. Four modes of power include Idle/2D (25W), Blu-Ray playback (35W), high performance 3D (up to 236W), and HybridPower (0W). HybridPower, which is capable on specified nForce motherboards, shuts off the graphics card when it is not under low-demand conditions and the output is powered directly from the motherboard.
Pipeline enhancements between the driver and GPU permit a higher data transfer and are optimized to provide quicker communication and fewer pipelines stalls. Instructions and data can be passed with greater efficiency, allowing for less slowdown between the graphics card and the driver. This contains potential for rapidly converting video, which NVIDIA claims will take about one-tenth the amount of time as previous video cards. The high data communication will also please users of photo and imaging applications, where demand for data is great.
3-Way SLI
Beyond Hype
After all the technical jargon has been identified and explained, the GTX 200 series looks to be a strong contender for performance in the next few months. Though their technical guide claimed that the GTX 200 series had double the performance in most areas, many of those comparisons were placed against the Geforce 8 series, not the 9 series. Furthermore, 3-Way SLI was not elaborated on in regards to performance comparisons with a single card or 2-way SLI. Given the fact that hardware enthusiasts will have to spend some serious cash to get 3-Way SLI, it would be nice to see what the increase in performance is and whether or not it's worth it to throw down the money. Eventual user reviews of the GTX 200's will define its true capabilities, even if NVIDIA does not.
NVIDIA's full overview of the GTX 200 series can be found at www.nvidia.com.
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