Nvidia speeds up GeForce FX graphics chip
- — 13 May, 2003 07:23
Nvidia introduced its fastest graphics processors yet at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles on Monday, the company said in a release.
The GeForce FX 5900 series of GPUs (graphics processing units) contains the GeForce FX 5900 and the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra. Both feature a 256-bit memory bus.
The 256-bit memory bus allows more data to flow from the main memory to the GPU, said Peter Glaskowsky, editor in chief of The Microprocessor Report in San Jose, California. Most PCs have a 64-bit wide data path between the memory and the CPU, he said. The wider bus improves the frame rate of moving images on high-resolution displays, he said.
A new version of the company's CineFX architecture makes its debut with the new chips. CineFX 2.0 doubles the floating-point pixel shading capabilities of its predecessor, according to Nvidia. The Santa Clara, California, company is trying to render graphics with indistinguishable pixels through shading techniques, which produces a more lifelike image, Nvidia said.
The chips also supports Microsoft Corp.'s DirectX 9.0 and OpenGL feature sets, which contain libraries that enhance graphics performance.
Nvidia will offer three products within the GeForce FX 5900 family of GPUs, said Brian Burke, an Nvidia spokesman. The GeForce FX 5900 Ultra, priced at US$499, has a core clock rate of 450MHz, a memory clock rate of 425MHz, and 256M bytes of DDR1 (double data rate) memory. Clock speeds for the GeForce FX 5900 have not yet been determined, but the chip will come with 128M bytes of DDR1 memory and cost $399, Burke said.
The chips will be available in June in PCs from companies like Alienware Corp., Falcon Northwest Computer Systems Inc., Voodoo Computers Ltd. and 4 MBO International Electronic AG, Nvidia said.
Later this year, Nvidia will release a version of the GeForce FX 5900 chip family that costs $299, but specifications for that chip have also not yet been determined, Burke said.
Due to problems in getting its older chips out of production, Nvidia's rival ATI Technologies Inc. was able to steal customers away from Nvidia with its releases, Glaskowsky said. But the new GeForce FX 5900 chips offer "a slight performance edge" over the latest ATI chip, the Radeon 9800, he said. The Radeon 9800 began shipping Monday.
The Nvidia chips will be made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), Burke said. Nvidia agreed earlier this year to use IBM Corp. as a foundry partner for the next generation of its GeForce chips starting around the middle of this year. TSMC was blamed for some of the production problems with prior versions of the GeForce technology.
