Annonce GeForce3

En anglais, et quelques jours avant la date prévue :

NVIDIA INTRODUCES GEFORCE3 - BREAKS NEW GROUND IN THE QUEST FOR REAL-TIME CINEMATIC GRAPHICS

Industry's Most Advanced GPU to be Flagship Graphics for Apple's Power Mac G4 Line

MACWORLD-TOKYO-FEBRUARY 22, 2001-Providing the catalyst for a new graphics revolution, NVIDIA® Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA) today introduced the world's most advanced graphics processor, the GeForce3TM GPU for the Macintosh® platform at Macworld Expo Tokyo 2001.

Powered by the new NVIDIA nfiniteFX(tm) engine the new GeForce3 GPU enables users to experience a rich, interactive environment. 3D scenes have ambiance with GeForce3 because objects appear photo realistic and custom lighting heightens drama and emotion. Characters and living creatures have organic behavior and unique expressions-their personality emerges.

Programmability and performance are the catalysts for this graphics revolution.

"This announcement comes just one month after the first NVIDIA-based Macintosh launch," stated Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of NVIDIA. "We are excited to have the first public showing of GeForce3 at MacWorld Tokyo in Steve Jobs' keynote address. The combination of our new leading-edge technology with Apple's is going to send shock waves throughout the Macintosh community."

"Apple is proud to be able to introduce the most powerful graphics processing unit on the planet first on a Mac," said Philip Schiller, Apple's vice-president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "The all-new Power Mac G4 with Velocity Engine, when combined with the incredible NVIDIA GeForce3 GPU, delivers industry-leading computing and graphics performance to Mac customers."

In addition, GeForce3 is:

* The first fully programmable GPU-the nfiniteFX(tm) Pixel Shader processor and Vertex Shader processor give developers the ability to program a virtually infinite number of special effects and custom looks.
* The first high-resolution antialiasing (HRAA) GPU, featuring NVIDIA's patented Quincunx AA mode, for high-resolution, high-quality, high-performance multisampling capabilities.
* A platform for advanced transform and lighting features, enabling more complex, visually exciting objects and scenes.
* OpenGL® 1.2 compatible.
* Available in 64MB DDR SDRAM configuration that supports both the innovative Apple® Display Connector and the industry standard VGA connection.

NVIDIA's nfiniteFX Engine:
The GeForce3 GPU's nfiniteFX engine gives developers the ability to program a virtually infinite number of special effects and custom looks. Instead of every developer choosing from the same hard-coded palette of capabilities and ending up with a generic look and feel, application developers can specify personalized combinations of graphics operations and create an unlimited list of their own effects. Two architectural advancements enable the nfiniteFX engine's programmability and its multitude of effects: Vertex Shaders and Pixel Shaders.

Injecting Personality and Ambiance via Vertex and Pixel Shading Operations Vertex Shaders inject personality into characters and environments. Motion invades the entire scene, not just the focal points. The vertex processing capabilities allow characters to move and show facial emotion, materials to stretch, and the scene to come alive. By customizing the skinning and motion, developers can create an appropriate personality, intensifying the impact of the visualization or animation.

Pixel Shaders create ambiance with materials and surfaces that mimic reality. Amazingly realistic material effects replace the artificial, computerized look with high-impact organic surfaces. Characters now have facial hair and blemishes, golf balls have dimples, a red chair gains a subtle leather look, and wood exhibits texture and grain. By altering the lighting and surface effects, artists are able to manipulate colors, textures, or shapes and generate complex, realistic scenes.

High Performance, High Resolution, High Quality The Lightspeed Memory Architecture(tm) brings power to the GeForce3, delivering earth-shattering performance and fluid motion even for the most complex scenes. NVIDIA's new Quincunx antialiasing (AA) mode, generates high performance samples at nearly four-times the rate of the GeForce2 Ultra, while excellent visual quality.

Rendering at high resolutions with high frame rates becomes the standard with GeForce3, as its advances in pixel rendering and memory efficiency break down the boundaries of frame buffer bandwidth and enable high-resolution antialiasing (HRAA) for the first time ever on the PC.

Sophisticated Processing Technology
The GeForce3 is the world's most advanced GPU with more than 57 million transistors and the ability to perform more than 800 billion operations per second and 76 billion floating point operations per second (FLOPS). The GeForce3 GPU achieves an astounding 3.2 billion antialiased samples per second fill rate--more than four times the performance of the award-winning GeForce2 Ultra and more than seven times the processing power of any competitive consumer graphics product. As do all of the GeForce family products, GeForce3 drives the most extreme resolutions and color depths of up to 2048x1536x32.

Another key feature of GeForce3 is its high-definition video processor (HDVP) that enables a variety of crystal-clear HDTV solutions when combined with a mainstream CPU and a low-cost DTV receiver. The HDVP allows mainstream high-performance processors to support all 18 Advanced Television Standards Committee (ATSC) formats with a simple, cost-effective DTV receiver card.