NVIDIA Geforce 6800 (NV40) Launch

The Core:

The core of the Geforce 6800 is completely new. Many enthusiasts and some in the computer industry have called the Geforce 5900 series core flawed. While there is no way to either prove or disprove that assumption people who think that can burry those comments when it comes to the Geforce 6800 series core. The core is again being made by Nvidia’s contract manufacturer International Business Machine (IBM) and contains more than 222 million transistors. This is a huge number of transistors when one thinks of the fastest Intel desktop processor the Extreme Edition as it has only 178 million transistors.

New Demos:

As with every new GPU that comes to market there comes new technology along with it. This means special demos must be made that show off the stunning new features that the new graphics core can produce. Over the past couple years we have seen Dusk and Dawn that showcased the power of the Geforce line of GPU’s. Nvidia showed us the usual demos showing lots of water (Great for eye candy) and also a funny clip of an odd looking fellow called Timbury, the taking center stage is Nalu the Nvidia mermaid.

All the demos that Nvidia showed us at the launch event can be downloaded as of today via Nvidia’s servers. Also available for download was a movie demo of the GPU’s performance over a number of games and demos that was pretty impressive.

Nalu:

This new demo is simply a mermaid that is underwater and floating around. Nalu’s hair alone contains 300,000 polygons, which is actually more than the 200,000 polygons that are used to detail her body. This demo also showed how they are now able to reproduce the rays of light coming down from the surface of the water. The were also able to render how the light travels through the different thicknesses of her hair. Also shown for the first time was Pixel Shader 3.0. Nvidia was able to demonstrate the difference with and without Pixel Shader 3.0 by zooming in on the shadow across her forehead and the results were stunning. Altogether the demo looked amazing and the technology was met by the applause and positive comments by those in the audience.

Other Demos Shown:

Although current video cards can’t honestly do these demos justice I still advise you download and to try these demos out. On the Geforce 6800 Ultra 256mb card these demos rendered smoothly, but when downloaded and used on on the currently available cards it’s a different story!