ASUS V6600 GeForce 256 Review

ASUS GeForce 256 is the second GeForce card released and selling in retail hereafter Creative Labs 3D Blaster Annihilator. After so much hype on the popular Riva TnT2,Voodoo3 and also Matrox G400 lines of cards, now it is time for NVidia's GeForce to stealthe show for now. There is no single card now that can match GeForce 256 performance as it is the world's first GPU (GraphicsProcessing Unit) that's made up of more than 23 million transistors. We will see how longGeForce 256 will continue stealing the show until the next new generation cards arereleased by Nvidia's competitors. The next card that are going to be released thisDecember or early January that is so called GeForce 'Killer' would be ATI's newest high-performance 3D accelerator, the Rage MAXX Fury that features dual Rage128 Pro graphics cores and their Alternate Frame Renderingcapabilities. Not only ATI Rage Fury MAXX is going to compete with Nvidia's GeForce, 3Dfxalso will be coming up but not so soon with their next generation graphics technology,Voodoo4 and Voodoo5 series of cards that will feature fill-rate and the ability to achieveover one billion pixels per second. With fill-rate come benefits such as higherresolution, faster speeds, greater application complexity and the ability to display highquality 32bpp rendering at 60+ frames per second (FPS) at ultra high resolutions. All ofthese attributes equate to better image quality and highly realistic environments. S3 hastoo announced their upcoming 3D card, the Savage2000 which has great features like thefully integrated Transform and Lighting Engine (S3TL™). Seems like Nvidia's GeForcewill be facing strong competitions from its rivals in the near future. Nonetheless,GeForce 256 is still the fastest card among its competitors currently and we shall waitand see the exciting battle that would be coming in the near future.    


What is a 'GPU' ?

The technical definition of a GPU is: a single-chip processor with integratedtransform, lighting, triangle setup/clipping and rendering engines that is capable ofprocessing a minimum of 10 million polygons per second.

The GeForce 256™chipset is the world's first Graphics Processing Unitthat bring about whole new concept in their graphics architecture. The QuadEngine™ includes separate integrated engines for transformation, lighting,setup and rendering for a minimum of 10 million polygons per second. The end result isthat this combination of hardware support can offload the graphical workload from your CPUwhile at the same time providing a new level of realism for our 3D graphics. It is capable of handling up to 15 milliontriangles per second and sustained DMA,tranform/clip/light, setup, and render rate. It is extremely efficent as more than 70% ofthe chip is active and up to 6 triangles "in flight" at a time ( typically 1-3). It has super-pipelined design and very low latency between engines so data can betransferred faster.

Transform & Lighting

The Transform Engine can describe 3D data according todifferent frames of reference or different coordinate systems at different times. Thedifferent frames are referred to as “spaces” that include world space, eyespace, screen space and others. The spaces are convenient to one or more operations thatare part of the 3D image that is created. Because each of the spaces are different fromthe next, 3D data must be converted or “transformed” from one space to anotheras it makes its move through the 3D pipeline. This is normally a move that is handled bythe CPU, a truly intensive mathematical overhead that slows down and reduces the qualityand frame rate of the 3D images. The GPU of the GeForce 256 on the other hand offsets thisoverhead by using the Transformation Engine to perform all of the highlymathematical transformations that requires complex computations.

The Lighting engine also offsets work from your CPU andperforms a set of mathematical functions as well. The lighting engine provides a widerange of support for the GPU including vertex lighting, advanced fog effects and more. Therefore it helps to enhance the realism ofa scene by providing lighting effects. All of these areprovided with no strain on the CPU and in conjunction with the transform engine as well.By providing discrete engine calculations for the transformation and lighting, theGeForce’s GPU can run at maximum efficiency without a problem.

Cube Environment Mapping

The NVIDIA's GeForce 256 isthe first to incorporate new method of bump-mapping, the cube environment mapping acceleration.It basically solves the limitations of current environment mapping techniques. Currentsphere mapping techniques have severe limitations that produces unsatisfactory imagequality. Image warping and distortions as well as the inability to draw in real-time makesthe current option undesirable. However, with the cube environment mapping built into theGeForce 256, developers can produce stunning real-timeaccurate reflections and specular lighting effects so you can immerse yourself in rich 3Dscenes. As this feature is accelerated in the hardware itself, future games can make useof this to create more interesting environments with the use of reflections and specularlighting effects such as reflective car bodies, spaceships, water etc. Cubeenvironment mapping is fully supported by and incorporated into DirectX 7 and there willbe a large number if games that will support it.

Cube Envrionment Mapping is impressive but not asimpressive as the Environment Mapped Bump Mapping (EMBM) that Matrox is using for theG400. The shortcoming of cube mapping is the fact that it is a reflection mapping, ratherthen a true type of environment mapping for the textures. The end result is you can getimpressive looking reflections of surrounding images, but you cannot get new levels ofmapping on the textures. EMBM on the other hand can give us new levels of textures and mapthem over existing ones. It allows you to show damage to your cars, robots etc thusproviding a new level of realism to your games.

AGP 4x with Fast Writes

The GeForce 256 has full support for AGP 4x with Fast Writes for those withAGP 4X supporting motherboards and is the only card on the market that currently supportsthis feature. The Fast Writes ispart of the AGP 2.0 specification that allows yourGeForce 256 GPU to communicate directly with your system CPU without having to go through system memory thus improves all writes from the CPU to thegraphics chip. With this feature, systems with Fast Writes can take the system memory outof the pipeline removes the bottleneck, and frees system memory to perform other functionsresulting in a dramatic increase in performance over systems without it.

DDR RAM

The GeForce 256 supports DDR RAM, Double Data Rate(DDR)Synchronous DRAM. While all addresses and control inputs are latched on the rising andfalling edge of the clock(falling edge of the /clock), data, data strobe and data maskinputs are sampled on both rising and falling edge of the clock. The data path isinternally pipelined and 2-bit prefetched to achieve higher bandwidth. Because data rateis doubled through reading and writing at both rising and falling edge of the clock, 2Xhigher data bandwidth can be achieved. The DDR option is also going to cost you another US$100 so the worth of gettingit is up to you.

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