Ultra Shadow II

Another noteworthy Nvidia technology introduced within its Geforce 6 series GPU is Ultra Shadow II. As the realism of games increases year on year one of the crucial features commonly used to enhance the environments are shadows and as graphics chase reality so do they. Unfortunately a complex scene with shadows can become a large burden on any GPU and so this is where Ultra Shadow II offers some relief. As for any consumer striving to enhance their gaming experience will agree frame rates can at large determine the playability factor and even to some extent the expertise one can showcase within a game. Ultra Shadow II is a form of shadow accelerator that internally within the GPU calculates the level of depth in a current scene and only enables drawing its shadows within such boundaries. The outcome is reduced GPU overhead (by as much as 400%) rendering only those shadow effects a player visibly may observe, any saved resources can be used boost frame rates thus the playability aspect discussed above. Some current games such as DOOM III extensively use shadows to create the ultimate environment atmosphere - Ultra Shadow II however can benefit all games as it does not require specific coding by developers.

Shadow calculations in DOOM III

Shadow calculations in DOOM III with Ultra Shadow II

InteliSample 3.0

InteliSample 3.0 is Nvidia's marketing name for the antialiasing and texture filtering hardware found within Geforce 6 series GPU's. Improving from version 2.0 found in previous GeforceFX series graphics cards Nvidia has made advancements in several key areas. Texture filtering is now performed at 64bit precision whereas anisotropic filtering has received a new yet higher mode of 16x. From a consumer standpoint these translate to more lifelike textures which seem more vibrant, realistic, and exhibit more detail. Extending on this notion Nvidia brings to the table rotated grid antialiasing to enhance the removing of rough edges while lowering the impact this has on frame rates. To further boost performance - especially at high resolutions and with anti aliasing enabled - the Geforce 6600 (GT) and above includes high-resolution compression technology (HCT), this set of algorithms internal to the GPU lowers bandwidth usage via compression and according to Nvidia can benefit frame rates by as much as 50%. Any potential buyer should view InteliSample 3.0 as methods concerned with enhancing realism and the speed in which this is achieved.

Geforce 6 series video processor

It has been overly common over the past several years for graphics cards to natively support hardware accelerated video playback however encoding and decoding video streams has been left to the processor. Starting from the Geforce 6 series GPU's Nvidia has integrated what is a fully capable video hardware encoder and decoder, in essence a chip within the graphics chip itself. With this its possible to utilize it and therefore relieve the system processor from such tasks, taking advantage of its acceleration decoding features lacks any need for changes to existing files or programs. In order to use it for encoding software support is necessary nevertheless the industry has already spoken of plans to include it in future releases, as for example in After Effects suite by Adobe. Below is a complete rundown of the features offered by Nvidia's NV4x (Geforce 6 series) video processor:

- High Quality Video
Motion Adaptive De-interlacing
High quality scaling & filtering
Video de-blocking
Integrated TV-encoder

- Complete HDTV Solution
Transport stream handling
HDTV Output (720p, 1080i, 480p, CGMS)

- Complete PVR Solution
Hardware Audio/Video
Synchronization
MPEG 1/2/4 encode/decode
WMV9 decode acceleration

- HDCP Support