Paving The Way For The Next GeForce Series: AGP 8x
Of course NVIDIA thought to integrate AGP 3.0 on the nForce2 - after all, the next generation of graphics accelerators will be based on this fast interface.
Up till now, NVIDIA has not been able to provide samples for testing, so a review of the new AGP interface will come at a later time. The press kits also don't mention whether the graphics unit of the nForce2 IGP is connected via AGP 4x or AGP 8x, although this is an aspect that can very much affect the performance of the graphics unit.
As for the nForce2 SPP, the 3D performance depends solely on the graphics card that is used. Nevertheless, the nForce2 is theoretically the best platform for 3D applications because of its combination of dual DDR and AGP 8x.
nForce2 IGP: GeForce4 MX Integrated
At this point, we are unable to make a definitive statement about the performance of the graphics unit for lack of a testing sample. The 3D unit of the first nForce worked with 175 MHz. With the nForce2, there should be a significant increase in performance compared to that, but there are tighter limits to integrated chipsets compared to dedicated graphics chips, so we expect a clock speed between 220 MHz and 250 MHz (corresponds to 440-500 Mpixels/s).
The 3D features correspond to those of a GeForce4 MX, and include the following:
- 256 Bit 3D accelerator
- Shading Rasterizer with DirectX8 support
- No Pixel or Vertex shaders (only with GeForce 3 and GeForce 4 Ti)
- 32 Bit Stencil Buffer
- Accuview Anti-Aliasing
- Multiple-display support through nView
- Digital Vibrance Control
- Hardware DVI-Out for TFT displays
- Resolutions up to 1920x1440
- Integrated PAL/NTSC TV encoder for TV-out up to 1024x768
- MPEG-2 hardware decoding
For further details on the GeForce4 MX, see the article PC Graphics Beyond XBOX - NVIDIA Introduces GeForce4 .
