Posted: April 24, 2002
Written by: Davey McWatters

MSI GeForce4 Ti4600

nfiniteFX II Engine

What nVidia has to say:

The NVIDIA nfiniteFX II Engine incorporates dual programmable Vertex Shaders, faster Pixel Shaders and 3D textures. The nfiniteFX II Engine gives developers the freedom to program a virtually infinite number of custom special effects to create true-to-life characters and environments.

When nVidia released the GeForce3, it came with an engine they called nFinite FX. It consisted of the vertex shader and pixel shader units. Now that the GeForce4 Ti series has been released, nVidia gave the engine a bit of a boost in power. They added a second vertex shader and renamed the engine nFinite FX II. The addition of the second vertex shader helps the GeForce4 perform operations much quicker.

They claim it will be able to deliver up to twice the performance of a GeForce3 based graphics card. This is one of the best features added to the Geforce4 Ti series of graphics cards.

Accuview Antialiasing

Aliasing is quite a problem in today’s games. It used to be that enabling antialiasing on your graphics card would decrease your frame rate to an almost unplayable level. Nowadays GPU manufacturers are coming up with more efficient methods of antialiasing. nVidia calls their new engine Accuview and it does a great job. It allows you to run games in 2x, 4x, Quincunx, or 4xS multisampling modes. 4xS is the newest addition and it does an outstanding job of antialiasing games while not lowering your frame rate as much as older generation graphics cards, even at higher resolutions. Here is what nVidia has to say about Accuview:

The NVIDIA Accuview Antialiasing (AA) subsystem tackles difficult antialiasing problems by providing a unique and flexible technology architecture that delivers high-quality graphics at unbeatable levels of performance. For the first time, end users can choose high-resolution antialiasing as their default display mode, without suffering any performance degradation in their favorite games and applications.

nView

nView is best for people who run multiple displays, but there are a few options for people who don’t. It allows you to span your desktop across multiple displays either horizontally or vertically or you can clone your desktop. nView also allows you to have multiple desktops on a single display, which you can toggle between using a hotkey. You can also set windows to be transparent when dragged across the screen. Here is what nVidia has to say:

The nView hardware and software technology combination delivers maximum flexibility for multi-display options, and provides unprecedented end-user control of the desktop experience. nView allows end-users to select any combination of multiple displays, including digital flat panels, analog CRTs, and TVs, and to modify the display properties using an intuitive software interface.

nView is designed more toward users with more than one display. That just about covers the brief overview of the GeForce4 Ti series new technologies.

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