GeForce FX Architecture Explained

Brian writes "3DCenter has published one of the most in-depth articles on the internals of a 3D graphics chip (the NV30/GeForce FX in this case) that I've ever seen. The author has based his results on a patent NVIDIA filed last year and he has turned up some very interesting relevations regarding the GeForce FX that go a long way to explain why its performance is so different from the recent Radeons. Apparently, optimal shader code for the NV30 is substantially different from what is generated by the standard DX9 HLSL compiler. A new compiler may help to some extent, but other performance issues will likely need to be resolved by NVIDIA in the driver itself."

Comments

Linux Drivers

[maizena]

In the Windows(argh) world I really couldn't care less about what card to use.
ATI or NVIDIA, it's just a matter of taste and/or faith.

But in the Linux world NVIDIA still rules.
And it's not that NVIDIA's cards are better, but they at least have a descent Linux driver.

The bottom line is: "If you use Linux, the best choice still is a NVIDIA card!"

Re:Say what

[afidel]

Basically it comes down to MS partnered with Nvidia for DX8 and XBox-1, Nvidia asked MS to use some KY so MS chose ATI for DX9 and XBox-2.

p.s.
If you don't get this, MS was losing money on the XBox for a long time, some analysts say they still are, to minimize those losses they asked Nvidia to take a hit on the contract terms for the XBox hardware agreement, Nvidia being a relitivly small company said no thanks and that effectivly ended their relationship for now.