NVIDIA's GeForce 7 Update: Introducing the 7900 GTX, 7900 GT & 7600 GT
Introduction, Specifications & Related Info
Product refreshes in the Graphics world have tended to become rather casual, commonplace occurrences. A little tweak here, a clock speed bump there and presto, there's a new SKU to fill the store shelves and something new to look at in the benchmarks. Historically, refreshes or "kickers" as they are sometimes known, often are just the result of manufacturing process enhancements, a different bond-out option on the GPU, or even a software modification that unlocks or locks, as the case may be, certain features within the architecture. NVIDIA's launch of new additions to their GeForce 7 line-up is by no means this sort of refresh, however. In fact, this launch is about as dramatic a change that one can make to the architecture, without completely ripping it up.
Once upon a time, NVIDIA pioneered TSMC's .13 micron manufacturing process and took a few lumps along the way, working out the kinks in their architecture for what was then a leading edge process geometry. That was a long time ago however, relatively speaking, and the painful days of the NV30 seem to be but a distant memory now, with more than a few very successful product launches since then. In addition, the company has significantly improved execution on delivery of retail product, and even more recently a move to .11 micron manufacturing, with introduction of the GeForce 7800 series, proved to be wildly successful, catching ATI flat-footed until they recently launched their Radeon X1900 product . The Radeon X1900 weighs in at 48 pixel shader units strong versus NVIDIA's 24 in the 7800 GTX. So what's NVIDIA's next move?
Logically, one would think the natural migration for NVIDIA would be a more powerful GPU with more rendering resources on board, like more shader pipes or perhaps a few more raster operators to balance things out a bit. But there's also another way to skin the proverbial cat. Rather than going back to the drawing board NVIDIA instead decided to make a move based on manufacturing process technology once again; bold to be sure, when you can consider their trials and tribulations of days gone by. From here the move would be from .11 micron to .09 or 90 nanometer technology, once again no small feat in and of itself.
Today's launch is the fruits of NVIDIA's labor at 90nm. We have full details and performance profiles for you here on three new NVIDIA 90nm-based graphics cards, a new flagship called the GeForce 7900 GTX, a new performance mid-range card dubbed GeForce 7900 GT and a new mainstream 12-pipe machine, the GeForce 7600 GT.
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| 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 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 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 |
NVIDIA Digital Vibrance Control (DVC) 3.0 Technology •_DVC color controls •_DVC image sharpening controls 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 UltraShadow II Technology •_Designed to enhance the performance of shadow-intensive games 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 external TMDS transmitters and external TV encoders •_Full NVIDIA nView multi-display technology capability Advanced Engineering •_Designed for PCI Express x16 •_Designed for high-speed GDDR3 memory |
The feature set hasn't changed with the introduction of these new GPUs, it just takes up less die real-estate in .09 micron geometries. For a more comprehensive look at the main features of the GeForce 7 series, and some details regarding NVIDIA's multi-GPU SLI platform as a while, we recommend taking a look at a few of our recent articles...
- NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB
- NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX (G70) Launch
- SLIAA / Forceware v77 Launch
- NVIDIA's PureVideo Technology
- NVIDIA's Multi-GPU Strategy: SLI
- NVIDIA nForce 4 SLI Performance Showcase
- NVIDIA nForce 4 SLIX16 Performance Showcase
That's a lot of reading, but the information and performance data in those articles will give you all of the background and architectural details necessary to fully understand the new products being announced today. If something on the proceeding pages doesn't click, look back to these articles for more detail.
