GeForce3
Encyclopedia
The GeForce 3 is the third-generation of NVIDIA
's GeForce
graphics processing unit
s. Introduced in March 2001, it advanced the GeForce architecture by adding programmable pixel and vertex shaders, multi-sampling full-scene anti-aliasing
and improved the overall efficiency of the rendering process.
The GeForce 3 family comprises 3 consumer models: the GeForce 3, the GeForce 3 Ti200, and the GeForce 3 Ti500. A separate professional version, with a feature-set tailored for computer aided design, was sold as the Quadro DCC. A derivative of the GeForce 3, known as the NV2A, is used in the Microsoft Xbox
game console.
Introduced three months after NVIDIA acquired 3dfx
and marketed as the nFinite FX Engine, the GeForce 3 was the first Microsoft Direct3D 8.0 compliant 3D-card. Its programmable shader architecture enabled applications to execute custom visual effects programs in Microsoft Shader
language 1.1. With respect to pure pixel and texel throughput, the GeForce 3 has four pixel pipelines which each can sample two textures per clock. This is the same configuration as GeForce 2 (not MX).
To take better advantage of available memory performance, the GeForce 3 has a hardware memory manager dubbed Lightspeed Memory Architecture (LMA). This is composed of several mechanisms that reduce overdraw, conserve memory bandwidth by compressing the z-buffer
(depth buffer) and better manage the memory bus.
Other architectural changes include improvements to anti-aliasing functionality. Previous GeForce chips could perform only super-sampled anti-aliasing, a demanding process that renders the image at a large size internally and then scales it down to the end output resolution. GeForce 3 adds multi-sampling and Quincunx
anti-aliasing methods, both of which perform significantly better. Finally, the GeForce 3's texture sampling units were upgraded to support 8-tap anisotropic filtering
, compared to the previous limit of 2-tap with GeForce 2. With 8-tap anisotropic filtering enabled, distant textures can be noticeably sharper.
GeForce 3 did not have DirectX 8-compliant competition until the arrival of the Radeon 8500
. The Radeon 8500, when clocked at retail specifications, is superior to the original GeForce 3 and to the Ti200, but the Ti500 is similar to it. GeForce 3 also has multi-sampling anti-aliasing support, a feature not available with the Radeon 8500, which is much less demanding than super-sampling and is thus more usable in contemporary games.
5200.
NVIDIA refreshed the lineup in October 2001 with the release of the GeForce 3 Ti200 and Ti500. This coincided with ATI's releases of the top-line Radeon 8500
and mid-range Radeon 7500
. The Ti500 has higher core and memory clocks (240 MHz core/250 MHz RAM) than the original GeForce 3 (200 MHz/230 MHz), and generally matches the Radeon 8500. The Ti200 was a cheaper card meant to compete in the mid-range segment. It is clocked lower (175 MHz/200 MHz) yet it surpasses the Radeon 7500 in speed and feature set outside of dual-monitor implementation.
The GeForce 2 and GeForce3 lines were replaced in early 2002 by the GeForce 4 MX and Ti lines, respectively. The GeForce 4 Ti was very similar to its predecessor; the main differences were higher core and memory speeds, a revised memory controller, improved vertex and pixel shaders, hardware anti-aliasing
and DVD playback. Proper dual-monitor support was also brought over from the GeForce 2 MX. With the GeForce 4 Ti 4600 as the new flagship product, this was the beginning of the end of the GeForce 3 Ti 500 which was already difficult to produce due to poor yields, and it was later completely replaced by the Ti 4200.
However, the GeForce3 Ti200 was still kept in production for a short while as it occupied a spot between the (delayed) GeForce 4 Ti 4200 and GeForce 4 MX 460 in performance. Despite the Ti200's positioning, which would have kept the chip going until the end of 2002, it was discontinued due to naming confusion with the GeForce 4 MX and Ti lines. The discontinuing of the GeForce3 Ti200 and Radeon 8500LE disappointed many enthusiasts, because the performance-oriented Ti 4200 had not yet fallen to midrange prices, while the mass-market Radeon 9000
was not as fast as the Ti200 and 8500LE.
The original GeForce3 and the Ti500 derivative were only released in 64 MiB configurations throughout their lifetimes. This was also mostly true of the Ti200, a handful of third-parties did sell 128 MiB versions without much success since it was found that the GeForce3 got little performance gain from the extra VRAM. The Radeon 8500 series on the other hand did benefit significantly from 128 MiB, which also explained the reason why Nvidia quickly replaced the GeForce 3 with the GeForce 4 Ti.
(Despite claims in the documentation that 94.24 supports the Geforce 3 series, it does not)
Windows 95/98/Me Driver Archive
Windows XP/2000 Driver Archive
NVIDIA
Nvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
's GeForce
GeForce
GeForce is a brand of graphics processing units designed by Nvidia. , there have been eleven iterations of the design. The first GeForce products were discrete GPUs designed for use on add-on graphics boards, intended for the high-margin PC gaming market...
graphics processing unit
Graphics processing unit
A graphics processing unit or GPU is a specialized circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory in such a way so as to accelerate the building of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display...
s. Introduced in March 2001, it advanced the GeForce architecture by adding programmable pixel and vertex shaders, multi-sampling full-scene anti-aliasing
Anti-aliasing
In digital signal processing, spatial anti-aliasing is the technique of minimizing the distortion artifacts known as aliasing when representing a high-resolution image at a lower resolution...
and improved the overall efficiency of the rendering process.
The GeForce 3 family comprises 3 consumer models: the GeForce 3, the GeForce 3 Ti200, and the GeForce 3 Ti500. A separate professional version, with a feature-set tailored for computer aided design, was sold as the Quadro DCC. A derivative of the GeForce 3, known as the NV2A, is used in the Microsoft Xbox
Xbox
The Xbox is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Microsoft. It was released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and March 14, 2002 in Australia and Europe and is the predecessor to the Xbox 360. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console...
game console.
Programmable shaders and new features
3dfx
3dfx Interactive was a company that specialized in the manufacturing of 3D graphics processing units and, later, graphics cards. It was a pioneer in the field for several years in the late 1990s until 2000 when it underwent one of the most high-profile demises in the history of the PC industry...
and marketed as the nFinite FX Engine, the GeForce 3 was the first Microsoft Direct3D 8.0 compliant 3D-card. Its programmable shader architecture enabled applications to execute custom visual effects programs in Microsoft Shader
Shader
In the field of computer graphics, a shader is a computer program that is used primarily to calculate rendering effects on graphics hardware with a high degree of flexibility...
language 1.1. With respect to pure pixel and texel throughput, the GeForce 3 has four pixel pipelines which each can sample two textures per clock. This is the same configuration as GeForce 2 (not MX).
To take better advantage of available memory performance, the GeForce 3 has a hardware memory manager dubbed Lightspeed Memory Architecture (LMA). This is composed of several mechanisms that reduce overdraw, conserve memory bandwidth by compressing the z-buffer
Z-buffering
In computer graphics, z-buffering is the management of image depth coordinates in three-dimensional graphics, usually done in hardware, sometimes in software. It is one solution to the visibility problem, which is the problem of deciding which elements of a rendered scene are visible, and which...
(depth buffer) and better manage the memory bus.
Other architectural changes include improvements to anti-aliasing functionality. Previous GeForce chips could perform only super-sampled anti-aliasing, a demanding process that renders the image at a large size internally and then scales it down to the end output resolution. GeForce 3 adds multi-sampling and Quincunx
Quincunx
A quincunx is a geometric pattern consisting of five points arranged in a cross, that is five coplanar points, four of them forming a square or rectangle and a fifth at its center...
anti-aliasing methods, both of which perform significantly better. Finally, the GeForce 3's texture sampling units were upgraded to support 8-tap anisotropic filtering
Anisotropic filtering
In 3D computer graphics, anisotropic filtering is a method of enhancing the image quality of textures on surfaces that are at oblique viewing angles with respect to the camera where the projection of the texture appears to be non-orthogonal In 3D computer graphics, anisotropic filtering...
, compared to the previous limit of 2-tap with GeForce 2. With 8-tap anisotropic filtering enabled, distant textures can be noticeably sharper.
Performance
Regardless of the various improvements made to GeForce 3, the original GeForce 3 card and the Ti200 sometimes lose to the GeForce 2 Ultra. This is because the GeForce 3 GPU has the same pixel and texel throughput per clock as the GeForce 2 (NV15). The GeForce 2 is less efficient than the GeForce 3 overall, but the GeForce 2 Ultra GPU is clocked 25% faster than the original GeForce 3 and 43% faster than the Ti200. The GeForce 2 Ultra also has considerable memory bandwidth available to it, only matched by the GeForce 3 Ti500. However, when anti-aliasing is enabled the GeForce 3 is clearly superior because of its improvements in anti-aliasing support, and in memory bandwidth and fill-rate management.GeForce 3 did not have DirectX 8-compliant competition until the arrival of the Radeon 8500
Radeon R200
The Radeon R200 is the second generation of Radeon graphics chips from ATI Technologies. The architecture features 3D acceleration based upon Microsoft Direct3D 8.1 and OpenGL 1.3, a major improvement in features and performance compared to the preceding Radeon R100 design. The GPU also includes 2D...
. The Radeon 8500, when clocked at retail specifications, is superior to the original GeForce 3 and to the Ti200, but the Ti500 is similar to it. GeForce 3 also has multi-sampling anti-aliasing support, a feature not available with the Radeon 8500, which is much less demanding than super-sampling and is thus more usable in contemporary games.
Product positioning
The GeForce 3 brand never included a low-end variant. Instead, the previous GeForce 2 and GeForce 2 MX cards were price-reduced to fill in segments below the top-end. For example, the GeForce 2 Ti and GeForce 2 MX400/MX200/MX100 respectively were positioned as mid-range and various low-end offerings. The refresh of the GeForce 3 which was launched as the GeForce 4 Ti also did not spawn a mainstream variant; Nvidia would not introduce a mass-market DirectX 8 generation chip until the GeForce FXGeForce FX
The GeForce FX or "GeForce 5" series is a line of graphics processing units from the manufacturer NVIDIA.-Overview:...
5200.
NVIDIA refreshed the lineup in October 2001 with the release of the GeForce 3 Ti200 and Ti500. This coincided with ATI's releases of the top-line Radeon 8500
Radeon R200
The Radeon R200 is the second generation of Radeon graphics chips from ATI Technologies. The architecture features 3D acceleration based upon Microsoft Direct3D 8.1 and OpenGL 1.3, a major improvement in features and performance compared to the preceding Radeon R100 design. The GPU also includes 2D...
and mid-range Radeon 7500
Radeon R100
The Radeon R100 is the first generation of Radeon graphics chips from ATI Technologies. The line features 3D acceleration based upon Direct3D 7.0 and OpenGL 1.3, and all but the entry-level versions offloading host geometry calculations to a hardware transform and lighting engine, a major...
. The Ti500 has higher core and memory clocks (240 MHz core/250 MHz RAM) than the original GeForce 3 (200 MHz/230 MHz), and generally matches the Radeon 8500. The Ti200 was a cheaper card meant to compete in the mid-range segment. It is clocked lower (175 MHz/200 MHz) yet it surpasses the Radeon 7500 in speed and feature set outside of dual-monitor implementation.
The GeForce 2 and GeForce3 lines were replaced in early 2002 by the GeForce 4 MX and Ti lines, respectively. The GeForce 4 Ti was very similar to its predecessor; the main differences were higher core and memory speeds, a revised memory controller, improved vertex and pixel shaders, hardware anti-aliasing
Anti-aliasing
In digital signal processing, spatial anti-aliasing is the technique of minimizing the distortion artifacts known as aliasing when representing a high-resolution image at a lower resolution...
and DVD playback. Proper dual-monitor support was also brought over from the GeForce 2 MX. With the GeForce 4 Ti 4600 as the new flagship product, this was the beginning of the end of the GeForce 3 Ti 500 which was already difficult to produce due to poor yields, and it was later completely replaced by the Ti 4200.
However, the GeForce3 Ti200 was still kept in production for a short while as it occupied a spot between the (delayed) GeForce 4 Ti 4200 and GeForce 4 MX 460 in performance. Despite the Ti200's positioning, which would have kept the chip going until the end of 2002, it was discontinued due to naming confusion with the GeForce 4 MX and Ti lines. The discontinuing of the GeForce3 Ti200 and Radeon 8500LE disappointed many enthusiasts, because the performance-oriented Ti 4200 had not yet fallen to midrange prices, while the mass-market Radeon 9000
Radeon R200
The Radeon R200 is the second generation of Radeon graphics chips from ATI Technologies. The architecture features 3D acceleration based upon Microsoft Direct3D 8.1 and OpenGL 1.3, a major improvement in features and performance compared to the preceding Radeon R100 design. The GPU also includes 2D...
was not as fast as the Ti200 and 8500LE.
The original GeForce3 and the Ti500 derivative were only released in 64 MiB configurations throughout their lifetimes. This was also mostly true of the Ti200, a handful of third-parties did sell 128 MiB versions without much success since it was found that the GeForce3 got little performance gain from the extra VRAM. The Radeon 8500 series on the other hand did benefit significantly from 128 MiB, which also explained the reason why Nvidia quickly replaced the GeForce 3 with the GeForce 4 Ti.
Successor
The GeForce 4 Series(Non-MX) introduced in April 2002 is a revision of the GeForce 3 architecture. The budget variant dubbed the GeForce 4 MX is closer in terms of design to the GeForce 2.Final drivers include
- Windows 9x & Windows Me: 81.98 released on December 21, 2005; Download;
- Product Support List Windows 95/98/Me – 81.98.
- Windows 2000, 32-bit Windows XP & Media Center Edition: 93.71 released on November 2, 2006; Download.
(Despite claims in the documentation that 94.24 supports the Geforce 3 series, it does not)
Windows 95/98/Me Driver Archive
Windows XP/2000 Driver Archive