2D and Video Operations

Does NV30 feature 40bit DAC's, in which case will 10/10/10/10 or 10/10/10/2 desktop support be offered similar to Matrox Parhelia's "GigaColor"?

GeForce FX has 10-bit DACs, but does not support 10-bit values in the frame buffer. It uses a 10-bit DAC to convert the 8-bit color data (32bpp is 8b of Red, 8b of Green, etc.) to analog.

Does NV30 feature full MPEG Decoding in hardware? Is this done via specific hardware or is it done on the Pixel Shaders?

GeForce FX includes a full MPEG decoder in the hardware. This is done with specific hardware, not the Pixel Shaders.

In the past, 2D and filter/circuitry quality varied greatly depending on the manufacturer of the card and how far they strayed from reference component levels. Has anything been done with GeForce FX to better ensure consistent quality?

Yes, GeForce FX includes a new generation of Digital Vibrance Control (DVC) that features the ability to sharpen photographs, colored text and many elements of the GUI. This will help to maximize image quality across all GeForce FX boards. However, there will still be variation based on the quality of output filter components. NVIDIA recommends you choose a board supplier that meets your personal preferences.

Board & Cooling Questions

Will dust, hair, animal fur be a major worry with cooling system on GeForce FX? Will the cooling need cleaning?

NVIDIA believes the FXFlow thermal solution will be reliable as designed under operating conditions that meet the specification.

We know that 'silient running' detects the operations of the chip and adjusts various thing dependant on the load. Should there be a failure of the fan will it be able to protect the chip from over heating?

Yes, silent running includes thermal monitoring that will be triggered if the fan should fail.

General Questions

How many engineers were involved with the design of this GPU?

About 1000 engineers were involved when you consider all of the functional groups (architecture, hardware engineering, software engineering, chip operations/manufacturing, and board design/manufacturing.

How many GeForceFX GPUs could theoretically operate in parallel?

GeForce FX requires an AGP interface, so only one can operate in a PC.

Is DXT1 texture compression decoding with 32bits now?

We have not disclosed those details of the DXT1 texture compression.

Do you plan to implement (a subset of) OpenGL 2.0 on NV30 hardware when the OpenGL2.0 specification is finalised?

GeForce FX will be the best GPU for OpenGL 2.0. NVIDIA will fully support OpenGL 2.0 with this GPU.

What percentage of NV30 would you consider to be totally new?

 All of it had to be redesigned for the .13 micron process technology. Of course, the Vertex Shader, Pixel Shader and memory interface were areas of revolutionary changes and enhancements over previous GPUs.

Now that GeForce FX is finally complete from a design / hardware perspective how happy is NVIDIA with it? How much of an advance is it over anything else for NVIDIA? What have they learnt for the future? What can we expect for the future of cg in realtime in general and for NVIDIA?

NVIDIA is delighted with GeForce FX. We have learned a lot about designing a fundamentally new programmable graphics platform with full support of software development tools like Cg Toolkit and Cg compiler. GeForce FX establishes a new level of graphics capability and image quality and truly ushers the Dawn of Cinematic Computing. Real-time graphics have never looked so good as they do on GeForce FX.

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