NVIDIA Introduces GeForce FX (NV30)

Final Words

The launch of the GeForce FX reminds us a lot of the GeForce3; the GPU is impressive and it can enable a good deal of developers to make some great looking games, but it won't be out for a while and neither will those great looking games.

The perfect example we like to use is Doom3; Doom3 was designed around DX8 technology, it will be Doom3's successor that can truly take advantage of the features of GeForce FX. This is why we're not easily sold on advanced pixel and vertex shader support when it comes to GPUs; luckily NVIDIA was able to pack much more into the GeForce FX in order to make it quite attractive.

NVIDIA's Intellisample technology is the perfect example of the type of innovation we're used to seeing from them. NVIDIA will undoubtedly make the move to a 256-bit memory interface eventually, but until then the combination of high speed memory and their compression engine make for a very efficient use of memory bandwidth.

So there you have it; the elusive NV30 has surfaced in the form of GeForce FX. ATI has won the first round with the Radeon 9700 Pro, what will be most interesting will be what ATI has up their sleeves when the GeForce FX hits the shelves in February.