3D Accelerators

By far the most popular type of graphics card, mainly because they do everything. They display the standard 2D screens that we all need to work with. They also accelerate the graphics in games to make the frame rate quicker. This improves game play and performance. Games dominate the PC world these days. As the PC is an upgradeable machine, it is the most powerful machine to play games on. Most 3D accelerators these days also have some function for improving graphic quality as well as speed. features such as FSAA (Full Screen Anti Aliasing) can be found in cards today. FSAA smoothes out the rough edges that computer sprites leave on the screen. Since older cards did not have enough power to handle this type of technology it has only surfaced recently. Features such as these are drawing more and more people in the 3D market. 

As well as accelerating graphics in games, many 3D graphics cards help in the aid of decoding DVD's some even have true DVD decoding onboard. This can be a handy tool if you have a multimedia computer and want to keep your option open. Today's computing is all about your ability to do whatever you want with your computer. Having a decent 3D graphics card can be a key to unlocking some of your computers potential. 

If you have decided that you do need a 3D card you will now be thinking which one is right for me? well there is no simple answer as you might be able to imagine. There was 3 main Chipset providers Nvidia, 3Dfx and ATI. I say was because 3Dfx is no more. Themselves and Nvidia had so many court battles over technology rights that they decided to settle out of court and in the end Nvidia have bought 3Dfx. We'll take a look at the various chipset manufacturers and weigh up some of the pro's and cons of each

Nvidia was the maker of the original 3Dfx competitor the TNT chipset. A lot has happened since then and the graphics card war has heated up tremendously. Since the original TNT card, Nvidia has made the TNT 2, TNT2 M64, TNT2 Ultra, Geforce 256, , Geforce 2, Geforce 2 MX, Geforce 2 Ultra, Geforce 3, Geforce 3 Ti, Geforce 4 MX and the Geforce 4 Ti.. As you can see Nvidia has been busy in the past few years trying to gain the top spot in 3D cards. The original TNT has now gone and the TNT2 cards are selling cheap. You should be looking and those cards if you feel you are on a budget. They will cope with the older 3D games and will display a decent 2D resolution as well. 

With the release of the Geforce range, Nvidia became a real threat to 3Dfx. People were no longer buying the Voodoo range of cards just on merit and started to flock to this brand new idea from Nvidia. The brand new idea was of course the Geforce's GPU (Graphic Processing Unit). This revolutionary idea took the processing of graphics from the main CPU and did the work itself, leaving the CPU to concentrate on other tasks. The GPU allowed more demanding games to be played on PC's with lower end processors. Of course it didn't mean you could play on any old computer but it certainly help to speed things up. The Geforce range became very popular and many companies bought the rights to make cards with the Geforce chipset. Nvidia doesn't sell there own cards like ATI or 3Dfx but it sells the chipset to 3rd party manufactures to implement in there own models.

* NOTE - Because Nvidia doesn't sell there own cards but sells the chipset to other manufactures the quality of the cards on sale are not the same as each other. Just because you buy a Geforce 2 doesn't mean it will be the same speed or quality as another Geforce 2 card. Other factors such as the memory speed and quality and the quality of the drivers provided as well as the simple things like the quality of manufacturing can all have an affect on the card. 

Nvidia was the first to integrate hardware T&L (Transform and Lighting). Transform and Lighting has not been implemented in many games at the moment but is a big thing for the future. 3D games and the 3D world that you see is made up of triangles as you move through the world the computer has to determine where these triangle move to and shape they appear like (Transform). The lighting section is basically the lighting effects made on objects from light sources in the game. as you move around the world the light changes as you move towards or away from light sources. reflections etc change every frame. Taking this load off the CPU is a great help for speed in games. Quake III was the first to implement this.  

One of the more popular brands for Nvidia's chipsets is Creative. They have made use of all of Nvidia's available chipsets right from the TNT range. They are still using Nvidia now and have release a Geforce 2 Ultra card. 

The latest in the Geforce range is the Geforce 4. Geforce 3 and after the cards feature the NfiniteFX FX engine. which allows programmer freedom to create there own effects for the card. Before programmers had to use what instructions Nvidia provided. This card will bring a lot more spectacular effects to games. Other latest technologies in the Geforce 4 include Lightspeed Memory Architecture, designed to make better use of the memory bandwidth. Others include vertex shaders and accuview anti-aliasing system.

Next - 3Dfx Voodoo range

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