nVidia GeForce4 lab tested
The new flagship graphics processing unit (GPU) from nVidia, the GeForce Ti 4600, is an impressive chip. It has 7 million more transistors than its predecessor the GeForce3, making a total of 63 million transistors. Even modern CPUs such as AMD's Athlon XP, with 37.5 million, and Intel's new Northwood Pentium 4, with 55 million, cannot match the transistor count on this leading-edge GPU. This is especially remarkable when you consider that in these CPUs most of the electronic switches are reserved for the Level 2 cache. The GeForce4 sets new standards for dynamic memory, too. Up to now, 64MB has been considered the absolute top specification for graphics cards. However, the GeForce4 can handle twice as much RAM. Even some PC users might envy that. Apart from its higher performance, the GeForce4 delivers enhancements in other areas. The new nView functionality allows the chip to drive two monitors -- something nVidia's competitors Matrox and ATI implemented some time ago (Matrox calls it Dual Head, while ATI calls it Dual Display). Video-in and -out functionality is not integrated into the GeForce4, though. For this, as before, you must rely on external components. The performance advantage of the GeForce4 Ti 4600 over the GeForce3 Ti 500 is due to several improvements: higher chip and memory speeds; a second vertex shader; Accuview anti-aliasing technology (which saves a program in memory more efficiently than its predecessor); and an enhanced pixel shader that's up to 50 percent faster than the GeForce3's. Beyond that, nVidia has built a high-quality edge smoothing process called subpixel antialiasing into the GeForce4, which competes with ATI's Smoothvision. Despite all this progress, anisotropic filtering which improves the image quality of foreground-to-background textures, is turned off by default under Direct 3D, although it can be activated for OpenGL games. Only with special driver tools such as NVMax 4.0 or RivaTuner can anisotropic filtering be activated under Direct 3D.How we tested
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