CineFX 3.0

We take one step closer to getting 3D effects on your PC that look as good as a film. The next generation CineFX engine from Nvidia takes that step for you by unleashing the power for programmers to use the latest DirectX program commands and the latest OpenGL 1.5 API. Programmer now have even more power to create realistic effects. More sophisticated surfaces and shadows can be drawn with even better lighting effects. Coupled with the power of the Geforce 6800 Ultra these great new looking games need not take a performance hit. Below are some of the features of the CineFX 3.0 engine (from nvidia.com)

• Infinite length shader programs: With CineFX 3.0 there are no hardware-imposed limitations on shader programs. The technology and speed advancements of CineFX 3.0 ensure that longer programs will run blazingly fast.

• Dynamic flow control: Additional looping/branching options and new subroutine call/return functions give programmers even more choices for writing efficient shader programs.

• Displacement mapping: CineFX 3.0 allows vertex processing with textures, providing a new level of depth and realism to every component, surface, and character in a scene. Displacement mapping allows developers to make subtle changes in a model’s geometry with very little computational cost.

• Vertex frequency stream divider: Effects can be efficiently applied to multiple characters or objects in a scene, providing individuality where models are otherwise identical.

• Multiple Render Target (MRT) technology: MRTs allow for deferred shading, a technique where the lighting of a scene can be done after rendering all of the geometry, eliminating multiple passes through the scene. Photorealistic lighting can be created while avoiding unnecessary processing time for pixels that do not contribute to the visible portions of an image.

Pixel Pipelines

There was much confusion over some of the previous from Nvidia about the pixel pipelines, and how they described them. There was claims that the cards didn't have some "real pipelines". This time Nvidia have avoided all that dilemma and gone in with no gimmicks. The Geforce 6800 have 16 "real Pipelines" Only one texture can applied per pipeline per clock though. Basically then this means that on single textured pixels the Geforce 6800 will be able to process 16 pixels per clock cycle and on dual textured pixels it can process 8 pixels per clock cycle. The NV35/38 chipset was set up in a 4x2 system (4 pixel pipelines x 2 textures per pipeline) This would allow the card to process 4 single textured pixels per clock cycle or 4 dual textured pixels per clock cycle.

16 Pipelines is a massive amount and can really speed up the drawing process. Even with only 1 texture being able to be applied in each pipeline its still quicker than any other pixel processing engine. Even in dual textures it can achieve double that of the NV35/38.

Ultra Shadow II

Creating realistic shadow effects is a very complex thing to do, especially when you are talking about using multiple light sources. Although complex this is not a problem for game creators. The bigger problem is the amount of calculations that the graphics card has to do. Step in Ultra shadow technology from Nvidia. The idea of this technology is to determine which parts of the scene can be seen by the player and which area's are hidden behind other objects. Knowing this the GPU will only have to calculate the shadows effects for the visible areas, greatly decreasing the amount of processing power required to produce the scene. This also allows programmer to make even more complex scenes without the performance hit.

The version of Ultra shadow on the Geforce 6800 series is said to be about 4 times more efficient than it was on the previous generation of cards.

Video Encoding

The Geforce 6 series of cards will feature a separate video accelerator. Now many graphics cards have supported hardware video acceleration for years. However the chip inside the Geforce 6 series of cards will have real hardware support for video encoding and decoding. This means that the CPU will be under les of a strain when encoding or playing compressed video formats. If you do a lot of video work on your PC you will know that it can be painstakingly slow. The acceleration on the Geforce 6800 Ultra should give you a welcome relief. Please note that some video formats will require additional software for the hardware support to work correctly.

SLI (Scan Line Interleave)

Nvidia after taking over the knowledge of 3DFx many moons ago have decided to take a crack at the technology that made the voodoo 2 such an instant success. This is of course is the ability to combine 2 graphics cards of the same type in order to increase graphics performance. This was originally done by assigning odd lines of the image to the first card and the even lines of the image to the second. This time Nvidia has new SLI technology that allows the image to be split horizontally between the 2 cards. The clever part is that it can calculate the amount of resources needed by the image so that if more processing power is needed by the bottom half of the image than the top, the split would be lower down. SLI Has to used by two cards of the same type, i.e. you can't use a Geforce 6800 ultra and a Geforce 6800 standard in an SLI configuration.

SLI has once again been made possible with the introduction of PCI express. The requirements are that you have 2 cards the same and that you also need a motherboard with 2 x16 PCI express slots. At time of writing these are not commercially available. However PCI Express is still in its early stages of life and motherboards to utilize this feature will only be a matter of time. The last thing that you will require is a connecting bridge that you will be able to buy. This bridge is the link between the two GeForce 6800 cards.

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