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NVIDIA's GeForce FX series (codenamed NV30) is the fifth generation in the GeForce line. With GeForce 3, NVIDIA introduced programmable shader units into their 3D rendering capabilities, in line with the release of Microsoft's DirectX 8.0 release, and the GeForce 4 Ti was an optimized version of the GeForce 3. With real-time 3D graphics technology continually advancing, the release of DirectX 9.0 ushered in a further refinement of programmable pipeline technology with the arrival of Shader Model 2.0. The GeForce FX series brings to the table NVIDIA's first generation of Shader Model 2 hardware support.
The FX features DDR, DDR2 or GDDR-3 memory, a 130 nm fabrication process, and Shader Model 2.0/2.0A compliant vertex and pixel shaders. The FX series is fully compliant and compatible with DirectX 9.0b. The GeForce FX also included an improved VPE (Video Processing Engine), which was first deployed in the GeForce4 MX. Its main upgrade was per pixel video-deinterlacing — a feature first offered in ATI's Radeon, but seeing little use until the maturation of Microsoft's DirectX-VA and VMR (video mixing renderer) APIs. Among other features was an improved anisotropic filtering algorithm which was not angle-dependent (unlike its competitor, the Radeon 9700/9800 series) and offered better quality, but affected performance somewhat. Though NVIDIA reduced the filtering quality in the drivers for a while, the company eventually got the quality up again, and this feature remains one of the highest points of the GeForce FX family to date (However, this method of anisotropic filtering was dropped by NVIDIA with the GeForce 6 series for performance reasons).
Hardware enthusiasts saw the GeForce FX series as a disappointment as it did not live up to expectations. NVIDIA had aggressively hyped the card up throughout the summer and autumn of 2002, to combat ATI Technologies' autumn release of the powerful Radeon 9700. ATI's very successful Shader Model 2 card had arrived several months earlier than NVIDIA's first NV30 board, the GeForce FX 5800.
When the FX 5800 finally launched, it was discovered after testing and research on the part of hardware analysts that the NV30 was not a match for Radeon 9700's R300 core. This was especially true when pixel shading was involved. Additionally, the 5800 had roughly a 30% memory bandwidth deficit caused by the use of a comparatively narrow 128-bit memory bus (ATI and other companies moved to 256-bit). NVIDIA planned to use the new, state-of-the-art GDDR-2 instead because of its support for much higher clock rates. It couldn't clock high enough to make up for the bandwidth of a 256-bit bus, however.
While the NV30's direct competitor, the R300 core, was capable of 8 pixels per clock with its 8 pipelines, the NV30 architecture was unable to render 8 color + Z pixels per clock. It was thus actually more easily categorized as a 4 × 2 design capable of 8 Z pixels, 8 stencil operations, 8 textures, and 8 shader operations per clock. This limited its pixel fill-rate in the majority of 3D applications. However, in games with heavy use of stencil shadows, such as those based on the Doom3 engine, NV30 did benefit from its 8 pixels/operations per clock capabilities, because the engine does a Z-only pass. This was not a typical rendering scenario, however.
The initial version of the GeForce FX (the 5800) was one of the first cards to come equipped with a large dual-slot cooling solution. Called "Flow FX", the cooler was stunningly apparent in comparison to ATI's small cooler on the 9700 series. Not only that, but it was very loud and garnered complaints from gamers and developers alike. It was even jokingly coined the 'Dustbuster' and graphics cards which happen to be loud are often compared to the GeForce FX 5800 for this reason. Wikipedia |
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