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Asus EN6800GT Video Card Review :: Features
The ASUS EN6800GT is based upon NVIDIA's NV4x architecture. NVIDIA announced the NV4x architecture more than a year ago with the release of the 6800 Ultra, the 6800GT and the 6800 for the high-end. This is the first video architecture available that supports DirectX 9.0c Pixel and Vertex Shader 3.0, otherwise known as Shader Model 3.0. Pixel shaders are small programs that can be performed on pixels. Effects that can be done with pixel shaders include: subsurface scattering which can provide realistic lighting on a person's skin in a game, soft shadows providing very sophisticated lighting effects. Pixel Shader 3.0 allows for virtually unlimited shader instructions and has the ability to loop and branch shader instructions. The vertex shader on the NV4x architecture has a similar instruction set to the pixel shader instruction set. A key new feature of SM 3.0 is the ability to render to texture. Render to texture allows for features like displacement mapping. One thing about the 6800GT is the ability to process 406 million vertices in a single clock cycle. This compares with the X850XT PE which can give performance of 750 million vertices in a second. Intellisample is NVIDIA's trademark for their image quality improving algorithms. Aliasing occurs when lines are thinner than a pixel. The 6800GT can use SuperSample and or Multi-Sample Anti Aliasing. 2X mode and 4X mode are rotated grid patterns. 4XS is a combination of 2X SS and 2X MS patterns. 6XS is a combination of SS and MS, and the final mode is 8X.  SLI Connector SLI stands for Scalable Link Interface. This allows NVIDIA card owners to improve performance with the use of two video cards, a nForce4 SLI motherboard from a NVIDIA partner, and either an AMD or Intel CPU. Asus's EN6800GT card is SLI capable; as long as you use two like EN6800GTs you should be able to SLI them. ATI, VIA and other companies will likely have their own version of SLI this year. Discuss This Article
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