are there ANY features of nv2X that haven't been used/released??

[ragejg]

Any feaures of the nv2X not get used yet?

Could any of the features of nv2x be optimized by 10-50% by more efficient driver code?

I'm kinda wondering what detonator drivers for nv2x written in 2 years will score in 3dmark2001... (rhetorical)

BTW, anybody know the exact use of NSR and whether or not it was ever used wisely or widely?

[Uttar]

Personally, I very hardly see any potential. I think the Detonator 40s were the final booster for the NV2x; else, they'd have released more to compete better with ATI GPUs ( sure, they're 'VPUs', but that term is so stupid that I refuse to use it )

Of course, they could always put Mode 6 ( 6xS ) and Mode 7 ( 8x ) for the NV2x; but that would make their Intellisample technology look a lot less interesting to the public.

I don't think any detonator release will largely increase NV2x performance. Now, nVidia wants their NV3x to sell. In barely a few months, they'll have both the NV31 and NV34, making the other GPUs performance "a very low priority"


Uttar

[ragejg]

There will be driver hackers who make custom drivers for these cards, possibly tapping optimizations that nvidia left untouched...

This stems from suspicion that there's more in these than what's advertised... So... with that said, just how "custom" is the XBox gpu? What's with PR people mentioning that the GFFX will allow PC games to retain full Xbox-ish feartures... shouldn't it be the other way around? Or is this due to less refresh rate demand (thus enabling heavier FX)

NSR? is that VS 0.5?

[StealthHawk]

the Xbox is a gf3 with a 2nd VS and possibly some other enhancements. it's not as technologically advanced as a gf4.

PR people spout just that: PR.
gfFX won't make games magically look like XBox games. we could have XBox quality games right now. what's the thing that's holding us back? the common installed lowend products which can't run games with good image quality.

there are other things to consider as well. XBox games use lower resolution, and almost no one wants to run PC games at low res. XBox also doesn't need as many high qualit textures, FSAA, or AF because the tv screen helps mask some defects that would appear with lower quality textures, etc.

[ragejg]

Higher poly counts in xbox games.... is that due to refresh rate?

And I thought AF was in use by XBox games!!

What's the rez that xbox games put out to tv? 6x4? 8x6? 720x480?

I love the "possibly some other enhancements" thing...

[NickSpolec]

X-Box uses 640x480, and it does have AF capibilities. Depends on what the developer uses.

But I doubt PC games will look like the highest quality X-Box games for awhile. Simply fact is, the low polygon counts of PC games doesn't make them look nearly as good, even with the resolution differences.

And it all stems from PC graphic cards STILL not being optimized for high polygon counts with full effects on. Look at the Radeon 9700.. While the buzz of ATI says "300 million raw polygons", when you apply a single light it drops to 60 some million (3DMark2001 singel light bench), and would further drop with other effects applied.

This is not only a problem of the graphics card, but the wholey unoptimized main CPUs (Athlon, Intel) that are just chips that have brute force instructions power and not 3D geometry in mind. See the fact hat Dreamcast can hit 5 million polygons a second on screen with full textures, lighting, and particles (Test Drive LeMans). Dreamcast can do pretty good not because of the PowerVR it uses, but because of the SH4 Risc processor. It's a powerhouse.

It's also because of the fact that many PC games are still built arund 3 or 4 generation old graphics hardware and unoptimized for current DX8 generation hardware. And that is a fault of the developers, mainly because they might be lazy.

[ragejg]

I understand a little better now...

Maybe in time things will equal out more...

Until then I'm jellus of Xbox versions of NBA Live 2K3, the new NFS, and from what I've seen, the new LOTR.

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by NickSpolec
This is not only a problem of the graphics card, but the wholey unoptimized main CPUs (Athlon, Intel) that are just chips that have brute force instructions power and not 3D geometry in mind. See the fact hat Dreamcast can hit 5 million polygons a second on screen with full textures, lighting, and particles (Test Drive LeMans). Dreamcast can do pretty good not because of the PowerVR it uses, but because of the SH4 Risc processor. It's a powerhouse.

XBox uses a lowly Pentium 3, and it doesn't seem to have problems pushing out the polygons.

[ragejg]

P3's aren't lowly when unharnessed and allowed to run full tilt w/o a Win98 or the like holding it back...

Must be PC OS'es really take that much out of a cpu/gpu combination to cause an efficiency deficit between them and consoles... It's too dang bad.

Oh, mr. StealthHawk? You double posted, silly...:)

[StealthHawk]

hmm, yeah. the page didn't load after i posted the first time...the mistake has now been rectified.

and the fact is that the x86 architecure isn't suited for graphics. i think an AMD CPU would have been a much better choice than a P3, but that's just me. in fact, all rumors pointed to a contract with AMD basically until the last minute, when Microsoft "magically" went with Intel. i wonder why :p

[NickSpolec]

From what I have read, the Intel processor in the X-Box is not focusing on pushing pixels and transforming graphics alongside the nVidia chipset, and is not an intergal part of the X-Box graphics, whereabouts the opposite is true for PCs.

[thcdru2k]

a pentium 4 cost more than xbox!

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by ricercar
Are we certain the Xbox has a GF3 and not a GF2? If NVIDIA has the GeForce3 core in the Xbox IGP, why did they take a backwards step with the release of GeForce2 core in the nForce1 IGP? This seems like lunacy.

yes. everything ever written about Xbox alludes to "gf3-based" and shaders. it is definitely not based on gf2.

lunacy? gf3 cores are much too expensive to be used for integrated graphics, especially since the gf3 is less powerful than the NV2A(Xbox). the codename alone should tell us what family the XBox GPU belongs to. it would have raised motherboard costs way too much to use a gf3 core at the time nforce1 was released.