3DForce 6800 series nVIDIA GeForceTM 6800 series User's Manual Version 1.00 Copyright © 2004 Jaton Corporation, USA Contents WARNING!!................................................................................. 3 INTRODUCTION ......................................................................... 4 FEATURES AND SPECIFICATIONS ......................................... 5 SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS.......................................................11 CHECKLIST .............................................................................. 12 HARDWARE DESCRIPTION.................................................... 12 DISPLAY DEVICES OUTPUT .................................................. 13 HARDWARE INSTALLATION.................................................. 15 INSTALLATION PROCEDURES STEPS............................................ 15 SOFTWARE INSTALLATION................................................... 16 WINDOWS® 2000 DRIVER INSTALLATION .............................. 16 WINDOWS® XP DRIVER INSTALLATION.................................. 20 TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE...................................................... 24 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQ) ....................................... 26 PINOUT AND SYNC FREQUENCIES ...................................... 28 ANALOG COLOR DISPLAY PINOUTS (DB 15) .................................. 28 CONVERSION TABLE: PIN ADAPTERS............................................. 28 9-TO-15 PIN CONVERSION TABLE ................................................. 29 DIGITAL VISUAL INTERFACE (DVI-I) CONNECTOR........................... 29 TECHNICAL SUPPORT................................................................... 30 HOW TO OBTAIN WARRANTY SERVICE .......................................... 31 LIMITED WARRANTY .............................................................. 33 OTHER LIMITS.............................................................................. 33 EXCLUSIVE OBLIGATION ............................................................... 34 OTHER STATEMENTS.................................................................... 34 TERMS AND CONDITIONS .............................................................. 34 SERVICES AGREEMENT:................................................................ 35 ENTIRE OBLIGATION..................................................................... 35 REDUCING WARRANTY CLAIM REJECTIONS..................... 36 Warning!! The following warning information is required to publish by nVIDIA. This graphics card requires: 1. 2. A minimum 350W system power supply. An AGP compliant motherboard. Some motherboards violate the AGP specification and therefore this card may not physically fit in some systems. disk drive connector is not sufficient). 3. An Available hard disk drive power dongle (smaller floppy 4. 3DForce 6800Ultra would need 2 hard disk drive power dongle. 3 Introduction 3DForce 6800 series video accelerators are nVIDIA GeForceTM 6800 core technology based 128MB/256MB DDR/DDR3 BGA memory modules built-in onboard. The 3DForce 6800 series GPUs supercharges PC game performance. Featuring groundbreaking technology innovations such as the industry's first superscalar 16-pipe architecture and support for the world's fastest DDR3 memory, these revolutionary GPUs arm you with everything you need to tear through your favorite games at unbelievable frame rates. With 8x floating-point shader power and 2x the vertex processing power over previous-generation GPUs, the 3DForce 6800 series raise the bar for 3D graphics performance. 3DForce 6800 series also feature NVIDIA UltraShadow II technology designed to enhance the performance of shadow-intensive games. 3DForce 6800 series are the industry's first and only GPUs to feature unique support for Microsoft DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 3.0. Powered by the proven NVIDIA CineFX 3.0 engine, these advanced GPUs enable unlimited programmability and infinite program length, allowing develops to create new class of advanced visuals and effects. In addition, features such as displacement mapping enable the creation of unique 3D characters and objects, allowing develops to alter a 3D models appearance on an individual vertex basis. Through this technique, developers can create ultra realistic models that fully interact with the unique lighting of a particular environment. In addition, through Shader Model 3.0 and the advanced CineFX 3.0 engine, game develops can create complex lifelike effects like skin, hair and shadows that fool the eye of even the most discriminating game enthusiast. 3DForce 6800 series are the first to implement 64-bit texture filtering and blending technology, taking 3D graphics one step closer to film quality. Fully compatible with the OpenEXR standard used by Industrial Light & Magic, NVIDIA's 64-bit texture implementation brings professional film rendering techniques to today's games. This new technology delivers full floating point support throughout the entire pipeline including floating point filtering, floating point texturing and floating point blending. Additionally, the new rotated-gird antialiasing technique removes jagged edges from images by providing more subsample coverage values in both the vertical and horizontal direction. Further, 16x anisotropic filtering adds clarity to extreme geometry, allowing more texture samples to be applied to each pixel of an extreme polygon. All of these features raise the bar for image quality, clarity and 4 detail. 3DForce 6800 series deliver unmatched video features and functionality through the industry's first on-chip video processor. This dedicated unit on the GPU handles the lion's share of the video processing load, freeing up the CPU for other tasks. The video processor delivers MPEG support for encoding and decoding of both analog and digital video content, as well as high quality video scaling and filtering for impeccable playback quality at any widow size. An integrated TV encoder allows you to connect your PC to TV for direct to TV playback and advanced adaptive de-interlacing technology provides smooth playback on progressive displays. Built on the foundation of the industry-renowned NVIDIA Unified Driver Architecture (UDA), 3DForce 6800 series deliver unmatched compatibility with the widest range of games and applications for the ultimate "install and play" experience. Equip yourself with a 3DForce 6800 series GPU so you can play your games the way it's meant to be played. Features and Specifications 3DFORCE 6800 series CineFX 3.0 Engine The third-generation of the NVIDIA® CineFXTM engine unleashes the power of the latest NVIDIA GPUs and streamlines the creation of complex visual effects. Through the power of the Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 and OpenGL® 1.5 APIs, programmers can now develop shader programs utilizing these technologies and techniques: Infinite length shader programs: With CineFX 3.0 there are no hardware-imposed limitations on shader programs. The technology and speed advancements of CineFX 3.0 ensure that longer programs will run blazingly fast. Dynamic flow control: Additional looping/branching options and new subroutine call/return functions give programmers even more choices for writing efficient shader programs. 5 Displacement mapping: CineFX 3.0 allows vertex processing with textures, providing a new level of depth and realism to every component, surface, and character in a scene. Displacement mapping allows developers to make subtle changes in a model's geometry with very little computational cost. Vertex frequency stream divider: Effects can be efficiently applied to multiple characters or objects in a scene, providing individuality where models are otherwise identical. Multiple Render Target (MRT) technology: MRTs allow for deferred shading, a technique where the lighting of a scene can be done after rendering all of the geometry, eliminating multiple passes through the scene. Photorealistic lighting can be created while avoiding unnecessary processing time for pixels that do not contribute to the visible portions of an image. With the increased horsepower provided by the CineFX 3.0 engine, developers can create more unique game features and effects than ever before. New effects include subsurface scattering, providing depth and realistic translucence to skin and other surfaces; soft shadows for sophisticated lighting effects; accurately represented environmental and ground shadows; and global illumination for incredibly photorealistic lighting. All of these effects can be combined to create intricate, detailed, trueto-life scenes that completely immerse you in the game environment. NVIDIA CineFX 3.0 is poised to unleash a new level of programming creativity. With full DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 support, the newest 3DForce 6800 series will soon power a new generation of games with unmatched realism, digital worlds with mind-blowing complexity, and lifelike characters that move through cinematic-quality environments. Intellisample Technology NVIDIA's Intellisample 3.0, part of the 3DForce 6800 series of GPUs, includes rotated grid antialiasing to deliver the smoothest polygon edges to date at unbelievably fast frame rates. The 6 3DForce 6800 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. Intellisample high-resolution compression technology (HCT)-- supported in the latest 3DForce 6800 series--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. UltraShadow II Technology 3DForce 6800 series of GPUs delivers the patent-pending NVIDIA® UltraShadowTM II technology, which can be applied to today's games to build stunning visual effects and to create distinctive digital environments. With a system powered by a 3DForce 6800 series GPU, anytime a game or application calculates shadows, UltraShadow II will enhance the overall performance. With UltraShadow II hardware, the more passes that are required for the lighting and shadow calculations in a scene, the more significant the performance improvement, with the most complex scenes achieving the most noticeable results. Thus, emerging next-generation games, that employ multiple light sources with many visible objects in each scene--such as Doom III from id Software--will see dramatic improvements in execution speeds. The technology advancements in UltraShadow II also deliver a 4× performance increase (compared to the previous generation) for passes involving shadow volumes. NVIDIA UltraShadow II gives developers the ability to calculate shadows much more quickly by eliminating unnecessary areas from consideration. By defining a bounded portion of a scene 7 (called "depth bounds"), and focusing calculations only on the area most affected by the light source, developers can greatly accelerate the shadow generation process. With the ability to fine-tune shadows within critical regions, developers create incredible visualizations that mimic reality, and still achieve awesome performance for fast-action games. UltraShadow II also works perfectly with NVIDIA® Intellisample 3.0 technology to ensure that shadow edges are properly antialiased. Superscalar 16-Pipe GPU Architecture 3DForce 6800 series includes a totally new superscalar shader architecture, which doubles the number of operations that can be executed per cycle compared to traditional architectures. The result is a significant performance increase over single-shader non-scalar designs. In addition, the new architecture provides full 32-bit floating point precision--while still allowing for 16-bit mode--so developers can deliver higher quality images in a broader range of real-time situations. The superscalar design also provides increased programming flexibility. Increased performance, flexibility, and 32-bit native mode enable a host of complex computations and pixel operations, resulting in an unprecedented level of image sophistication in the latest bleeding-edge games and other real-time interactive applications. This technology delivers 8x the shading power of previous generation products for screaming gaming performance. 64-Bit Texture Filtering and Blending Based on the OpenEXR technology from Industrial Light & Magic, NVIDIA's 64-bit texture implementation set ...