This
week has been relentless. It is as if the WinHEC
conference is the designated battle ground for
the PC Graphics Industry and the war has been
waged with a vengeance. Now if only we
media types can keep up with the onslaught of
announcements without burning out, life will be
pretty good.
Tonight the NDA
for NVidia's next generation processor has been
lifted. The following information will be
presented as a two part piece. A look at
the GeForce2 GTS GPU itself and also a card soon
to be available from Leadtek, the Winfast
GeForce2 GTS. First lets take a look at
what we know about NVidia's new 3D silicon power
house.
Specifications
/ Features Of The GeForce2 GTS
Blinding
Speed
.18 Micron
Core
200MHz.
Core Clock Speed
256-bit
Graphics Engine
1.6
GTexel per second throughput
DDR
SDRAM Interface rated up to 166/333MHz. DDR
for 5.3Gb/Sec Memory Bandwidth
Future
200MHz DDR Capable
350MHz.
Integrated RAMDAC for high resolution
support of up to 2048X1536 resolutions
Per Pixel
Shader
8
texture-mapped, filtered, lit texels per
clock cycle with "Hypertexel"
Technology
High Quality
Texture Filtering, including
Anisotropic
Advanced
per-pixel, perspective-correct texturing and
shading
DirectX
Texture Compression Support
S3TC Texture
Compression Support
An
impressive set of specs to say the least....
What stands out for us here is the 200MHz. Core
Clock Speed and 1.6 GTexel throughput. The
GeForce2 is capable of 8 texels per clock cycle
and with T&L support and hardware supported
FSAA. There is no telling what kind of an
impact FSAA has on the performance but we should
be getting a card from Leadtek shortly that will
allow us to bring you full detail.
Regardless, from a pure horsepower and muscle
perspective, the GeForce2 GTS is the most
impressive single chip product to date.
Relative
Performance Characteristics
Raise
the bar
In
lieu of a card available for actual benchmarks,
we were able to score the following chart, from
an inside source. It should give you an
indication of the relative performance of the
GeForce2 GTS. We don't have any
information on the system configuration here or
even what resolution or color depth these tests
were taken at. However, it is a side by
side comparison and should give you an
indication of what to expect in performance
increases over current NVidia based product.
Click
image for full view
Those Quake3 numbers
look an awful lot like 1024X768X32 with max
textures, for example on the GeForce DDR
card. What is impressive is
that we see the GeForce2 GTS brings a 20% frame
rate increase over a 64MB GeForce DDR
card. Also, take note of the 240MHz. core
clock scores for the GeForce2 GTS, which gain
you another 5%. It seems we are either in
store of a higher speed bin release later in the
year or this chip really overclocks.
Perhaps a combination of both? We can only
speculate at this time.
That is until we
get a hold of the Winfast GeForce2 GTS!
Click
image
Here is
the run down on this great looking new board from
Leadtek.
2nd-generation
GeForce GPU with Giga Texel Shading
Architecture
8 texels per clock
with Advanced Hypertexel pipelines
Most complete
DirectX7 hardware implementation for the highest
gaming quality and frame rate
High Definition
Video Processor for the fastest DVD, 2D and
video processing
32MB DDR
memory rated at 6ns.
DVD playback
package
Optional TV output
and DVI Interface
Winfast DVD
Software
Colorific Monitor
Color Calibration Software
Windows 2000,
Windows NT 4.0
Windows 98 and
Windows 95 display drivers
DirectDraw,
Direct3D, DirectVideo, ActiveX
OpenGL ICD for
Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000,
Windows NT 4.0
Fully PC00, PC99
and PC99a compliant
AGP (4x/2x) w/
Fast Writes
*(3.3 Volts, 5 Amps, AGP version 2.0 required)
As you can see in the
above shot, the folks from Leadtek don't cut any
corners. The heat sink used on this card is
oversized and heavy duty. It is reminiscent of
the golden color sink they have used in the past on
their Winfast GeForce DDR Plus card. This is
an excellent cooling solution and should allow for
solid overclocking. Also, the addition of TV
Out will beg you to find a way of incorporating your
computer as part of your living room entertainment
center. The enhanced DVD support ( stated to
be even better than the original GeForce) will
certainly add to the value of the package and it
will be interesting to see what could be Digital
Video perfection.
We'll get more
details about the GeForce2 GTS and Leadtek Winfast
product, to you as they become
available. We are expecting a board here this
week. They should also be in the retail
channel in 2 weeks or less! Cross your
fingers. It will be another long weekend for
us here at HotHardware.com. Stick around!
