GeForce FX series

The GeForce FX or "GeForce 5" series (codenamed NV30) is a line of graphics processing units from the manufacturer Nvidia.

Overview

Nvidia's GeForce FX series is the fifth generation of the GeForce line. With GeForce 3, the company introduced programmable shader functionality into their 3D architecture, in line with the release of Microsoft's DirectX 8.0. The GeForce 4 Ti was an enhancement of the GeForce 3 technology. With real-time 3D graphics technology continually advancing, the release of DirectX 9.0 brought further refinement of programmable pipeline technology with the arrival of Shader Model 2.0. The GeForce FX series is Nvidia's first generation Direct3D 9-compliant hardware.

The series was manufactured on TSMC's 130 nm fabrication process. It is compliant with Shader Model 2.0/2.0A, allowing more flexibility in complex shader/fragment programs and much higher arithmetic precision. It supports a number of new memory technologies, including DDR2, GDDR2 and GDDR3 and saw Nvidia's first implementation of a memory data bus wider than 128 bits. The anisotropic filtering implementation has potentially higher quality than previous Nvidia designs. The primary addition, compared to previous Nvidia GPUs, was per-pixel video-deinterlacing. It was jokingly referred to as the "Dustbuster", due to a high level of fan noise.

The advertising campaign for the GeForce FX featured the Dawn, which was the work of several veterans from the computer animation Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Nvidia touted it as "The Dawn of Cinematic Computing".

Nvidia debuted a new campaign to motivate developers to optimize their titles for Nvidia hardware at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in 2002. In exchange for prominently displaying the Nvidia logo on the outside of the game packaging, the company offered free access to a state-of-the-art test lab in Eastern Europe, that tested against 500 different PC configurations for compatibility. Developers also had extensive access to Nvidia engineers, who helped produce code optimized for the company's products.

Hardware based on the NV30 project didn't launch until near the end of 2002, several months after ATI had released their competing DirectX 9 architecture.

Overall performance

thumb|GeForce FX 5200

GeForce FX is an architecture designed with DirectX 7, 8 and 9 software in mind. Its performance for DirectX 7 and 8 was generally equal to ATI's competing products with the mainstream versions of the chips, and somewhat faster in the case of the 5900 and 5950 models, but it is much less competitive across the entire range for software that primarily uses DirectX 9 features.

Its weak performance in processing Shader Model 2 programs is caused by several factors. The NV3x design has less overall parallelism and calculation throughput than its competitors. It is more difficult, compared to GeForce 6 and ATI Radeon R300 series, to achieve high efficiency with the architecture due to architectural weaknesses and a resulting heavy reliance on optimized pixel shader code. While the architecture was compliant overall with the DirectX 9 specification, it was optimized for performance with 16-bit shader code, which is less than the 24-bit minimum that the standard requires. When 32-bit shader code is used, the architecture's performance is severely hampered. The FX 5200 did not perform as well as the DirectX 7.0 generation GeForce 4 MX440 or Radeon 9000 Pro in some benchmarks.

In May 2003, Nvidia launched the GeForce FX 5900 Ultra, a new high-end product to replace the low-volume and disappointing FX 5800. Based upon a revised GPU called NV35, which fixed some of the DirectX 9 shortcomings of the discontinued NV30, this product was more competitive with the Radeon 9700 and 9800. In addition to redesigning parts of the GPU, the company moved to a 256-bit memory data bus, allowing for significantly higher memory bandwidth than the 5800 even when utilizing more common DDR SDRAM instead of DDR2. The 5950 was competitive with the Radeon 9800 XT, again as long as pixel shaders were lightly used.

In December 2003, the company launched the GeForce FX 5900XT, a graphics card intended for the mid-range segment. It was similar to the 5900 Ultra, but clocked slower and used slower memory. It more thoroughly competed with Radeon 9600 XT, but was still behind in a few shader-intense scenarios.

The GeForce FX line moved to PCI Express in early 2004 with a number of models, including the PCX 5300, PCX 5750, PCX 5900, and PCX 5950. These cards were largely the same as their AGP predecessors with similar model numbers. To operate on the PCIe bus, an AGP-to-PCIe "HSI bridge" chip on the video card converted the PCIe signals into AGP signals for the GPU.

Also in 2004, the GeForce FX 5200 / 5300 series that utilized the NV34 GPU received a new member with the FX 5500.

GeForce FX model information

All models support OpenGL 1.5 (2.1 (software) with latest drivers)
The GeForce FX series runs vertex shaders in an array

{| class="mw-datatable wikitable sortable" style="font-size:85%; text-align:center;"

! rowspan="2" |Model

! rowspan="2" |Launch

! rowspan="2"

! colspan="4" |Fillrate

! colspan="4" |Memory

! rowspan="2"

! style="text-align:left" |GeForce FX 5100

| rowspan="3" |Mar 2003

| rowspan="5" |NV34

| rowspan="6" |TSMC 150 nm

| rowspan="5" |45

| rowspan="5" |124

| rowspan="2" |AGP 8x

|200

|rowspan="2" |166

|rowspan="10" |4:2:4:4

|800

|100.0

|64 128

|2.6

| rowspan="14" |DDR

|64

|12.0

! style="text-align:left" |GeForce FX 5200 LE

| rowspan="2" |250

| rowspan="2" |1,000

| rowspan="2" |125.0

| rowspan="3" |64 128 256

|2.6 5.3

|64 128

|rowspan="2"|15.0

! style="text-align:left" |GeForce FX 5200

|AGP 8x PCI

|200

|3.2 6.4

|64 128

|21

! style="text-align:left" |GeForce FX 5200 Ultra

|6 Mar 2003

|AGP 8x

|325

|1,300

|162.5

|10.4

|128

|19.5

|32

! style="text-align:left" |GeForce PCX 5300

|17 Mar 2004

|PCIe x16

|250

|166

|1,000

|125.0

|128 256

|2.6

|64

|15.0

|21

! style="text-align:left" |GeForce FX 5500

|Mar 2004

|NV34B

|45

|91

|AGP 8x AGP 4x PCI

|270

|166 200

|1,080

|135.0

|64 128 256

|5.3 6.4

|128

|16.2

! style="text-align:left" |GeForce FX 5600 XT

|Oct 2003

| rowspan="4" |NV31

| rowspan="19" |TSMC 130 nm

| rowspan="4" |80

| rowspan="4" |121

|AGP 8x

|235

|200

|940

|117.5

|64 128

|3.2 6.4

|64 128

|14.1

! style="text-align:left" |GeForce FX 5600

|Mar 2003

|AGP 8x PCI

|325

|275

|1,300

|162.5

|64 128 256

|8.8

|rowspan="3" |128

|19.5

|25

! style="text-align:left" |GeForce FX 5600 Ultra

| rowspan="2" |6 Mar 2003

| rowspan="3" |AGP 8x

|350

|1,400

|175.0

|rowspan="2" |64 128

|11.2

|21.0

|27

! style="text-align:left" |GeForce FX 5600 Ultra Rev.2

|400

|1,600

|200.0

|12.8

|24.0

|31

! style="text-align:left" |GeForce FX 5700 VE

|Sep 2004

| rowspan="6" |NV36

| rowspan="6" |82

|rowspan="6"|133

|rowspan="2"|250

|rowspan="2"|200

|rowspan="6"|4:3:4:4

|rowspan="2"|1000

|rowspan="2"|187.5

|rowspan="3" |128 256

|rowspan="2" |3.2 6.4

|rowspan="2" |64 128

|rowspan="2"|17.5

|20

! style="text-align:left" |GeForce FX 5700 LE

|Mar 2004

|AGP 8x PCI

|21

! style="text-align:left" |GeForce FX 5700

|2003

|AGP 8x

| rowspan="2" |425

| rowspan="2" |250

| rowspan="2" |1,700

| rowspan="2" |318.7

| rowspan="2" |8.0

| rowspan="6"|128

| rowspan="2"|29.7

|20

! style="text-align:left" |GeForce PCX 5750

|17 Mar 2004

|PCIe x16

|128

|25

! style="text-align:left" |GeForce FX 5700 Ultra

|23 Oct 2003

| rowspan="8" |AGP 8x

| rowspan="2" |475

|453

| rowspan="2" |1,900

| rowspan="2" |356.2

| rowspan="2" |128 256

|14.4

|GDDR2

|rowspan="2"|33.2

|43

! style="text-align:left" |GeForce FX 5700 Ultra GDDR3

|15 Mar 2004

|475

|15.2

|GDDR3

|38

! style="text-align:left" |GeForce FX 5800

| rowspan="2" |27 Jan 2003

| rowspan="2" |NV30

| rowspan="2" |125

| rowspan="2" |199

|400

| rowspan="2" |4:2:8:4

|1,600

|3,200

|300.0

|rowspan="5" |128

|12.8

|rowspan="2" |GDDR2

|24.0

|55

! style="text-align:left" |GeForce FX 5800 Ultra

|500

|2,000

|4,000

|375.0

|16.0

|30.0

|66

!style="text-align:left" |GeForce FX 5900 ZT

|15 Dec 2003

|rowspan="5" |NV35

|rowspan="5" |135

|rowspan="5" |207

|325

|rowspan="2" |350

|rowspan="7" |4:3:8:4

|1,300

|2,600

|243.7

|rowspan="2" |22.4

|rowspan="6" |DDR

|rowspan="7" |256

|22.7

! style="text-align:left" |GeForce FX 5900 XT

|style="white-space:nowrap"|15 Dec 2003

|390

|rowspan="2"|1,600

|rowspan="2"|3,200

|rowspan="2"|300.0

|27.3

|48

!style="text-align:left" |GeForce FX 5900

|May 2003

| 400

|rowspan="2" |425

|rowspan="2"|27.2

|28.0

|55

!style="text-align:left" |GeForce FX 5900 Ultra

|12 May 2003

|450

|1,800

|3,600

|337.5

|rowspan="2"|128 256

|31.5

|65

! style="text-align:left" |GeForce PCX 5900

|17 Mar 2004

|PCIe x16

|350

|275

|1,400

|2,800

|262.5

|17.6

|24.5

|49

! style="text-align:left" |GeForce FX 5950 Ultra

|23 Oct 2003

| rowspan="2" |NV38

| rowspan="2" |135

| rowspan="2" |207

|AGP 8x

| rowspan="2" |475

|475

| rowspan="2" |1,900

| rowspan="2" |3,800

| rowspan="2" |356.2

| rowspan="2" |256

| 30.4

| rowspan="2"|33.2

|83

! style="text-align:left" |GeForce PCX 5950

|17 Feb 2004

|PCIe x16

|425

|27.2

|GDDR3

|83

! rowspan="2" |Model

! rowspan="2" |Launch

! rowspan="2"