Intellisample Technology



- DirectX 9 -

- DirectX 8 -

NVIDIA's fifth- and sixth-generation GeForce GPUs take image quality to stratospheric heights, and sport enough juice to keep that eye-candy flowing without so much as a hiccup. Whether you're dying for the next wave of state-of-the-art digital entertainment, or just want a killer makeover for your current favorites, the superiority of the fifth- and sixth-generation GeForce GPUs give psychotic graphics a direct line to your visual cortex.

Antialiasing is the key to smoothing out rough edges, or "jaggies," that often appear on the edges of 3D geometry. NVIDIA's Intellisample 3.0, part of the GeForce 6 Series of GPUs, includes rotated grid antialiasing to deliver the smoothest polygon edges to date at unbelievably fast frame rates. The GeForce 6 Series GPUs also deliver a new 16x anisotropic filtering mode for the maximum detail on extreme geometry. In addition, Intellisample 3.0 utilizes 64-bit texture filtering and blending, enabling photorealistic lighting and shadow effects. High dynamic-range images are on the cutting edge of computer graphics. With 64-bit texture filtering and blending, users can experience graphics that contain a wider spectrum of bright and low-level lighting conditions and accuracy. Note: GeForce 6200 models do not include compression technology.

Intellisample high-resolution compression technology (HCT)—supported in the enthusiast and performance-class GeForce FX GPUs—delivers the next step in performance and visual quality, compressing color, texture, and z-data. Performance gains can be seen in all applications, especially at high resolutions with antialiasing. This new technology allows for up to a 50-percent increase in compression efficiency in these modes, and delivers unprecedented visual quality for resolutions up to 1600 × 1280.

The Intellisample process also uses gamma-adjusted sampling, taking into account the dramatic physical differences between how your eyes and monitor perceive light and color, making for much smoother and more natural edge transitions.

What's more, the innovative architectures of the fifth- and sixth-generation GeForce GPUs include an advanced and completely transparent form of


Antialiasing: Jaggy vs. Smooth

lossless depth z-buffer and color compression technology. The result? Essentially all modes of antialiasing are available at all resolutions without any performance hit. Greatly improved image quality, with no drop in frame rate!

Intellisample also incorporates the most advanced anisotropic filtering available. When a textured surface is close to edge-on with your viewpoint, the detail and accuracy of that texture drops drastically. NVIDIA's proprietary anisotropic filtering eliminates this distortion adaptively by determining how extensive distortion is likely to be, and applying its filtering muscle proportionally, so you get every last drop of quality and performance possible.

Intellisample inspires and fosters new levels of creativity in developers, and raises the realism of the digital experience for all users. For the first time, developers can give users exactly what they want—games with characters, special effects and animation that match those of the film world. It's a brave new world: don't face it with anything less than the best.


	Technical Brief: Intellisample Technology In 2002, several key technological revolutions came together to produce the biggest leap forward in graphics since the advent of dedicated graphics processing units (GPUs).(2MB PDF)