Nvidia FX wins Microprocessor Report Analysts' Choice Award: Best Graphics Processor

[Arris]

Nvidia Geforce FX awards page

I assume that this aware is based solely on the core design and not the actual use of the "DustBuster" in a computer. Looking at the DX9 features implemented in the FX and 9700Pro the FX has more. I guess that "best graphics processor" in this case isn't based on actual performance.

 

[iss]

isnt this the one that caught alot of flak because by it's own rules the graphic's processor to be eligible for the award has to be on the market for purchase during the year in question? and the guy who did the award weaseld by saying that card manufacturers had been able to buy the chipset by the end of 2002.

 

[Arris]

Dunno, this is the first I had seen anything about it. But it is quite funny that the best graphics processor of 2002 has still got to hit the shelves.

 

[iss]

Dunno, this is the first I had seen anything about it. But it is quite funny that the best graphics processor of 2002 has still got to hit the shelves.

yeah that is what the fuss was about. according to the rules the award could only be given to a graphics chip that available in the year the award was given(2002) and the guy fudged by claiming that since some card manufacturers had the chipset by the end of 2002 it was qualified. which to me would put a shadow of doubt over the guy's credibility and objectivity. if he is willing to fudge on his own rules what else does he fudge on?

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

I would have given the award to 3Dlabs Wildcat VP series cards.

From Tom's Hardware Guide:
P10: GPU Becomes VPU

It has taken almost two years for 3Dlabs to develop the P10. According to 3Dlabs, many of the established technologies were thrown out, and a fully overhauled chip design was born.

The chip has more than 70 million transistors, which even surpasses the Pentium 4 on this count. The costs for the research and development in this project ran up to nearly $22 million. The P10 is produced via the 0.15-micron process, and 0.13-micron is being prepared. 3Dlabs'attention is focused on the full programmability of pixel and vertex shaders - thus the name Visual Processing Unit (VPU). Even textures do not necessarily have to be loaded, and instead, they can be programmed. 3Dlabs keeps the memory management completely virtual.

The P10 can logically address 16 GB. However, Wildcat VP cards will only be available on the market with 64 and 128 MB memory, the rest has to be tapped from slow system memory if needed. The P10 uses 256 instructions per program to process the vertices (transform, lighting and clipping). A maximum of 22 opcodes, 256 constant registers and 16 work registers can be used for this purpose.