Nvidia GeForce GTX 200 GPU Technical Brief
Technical Brief
NVIDIA GeForce® GTX 200 GPU
Architectural Overview
Second-Generation Unified GPU
Architecture for Visual Computing
Table of Contents
Introduction ...................................................................................................................4
GeForce GTX 200 Architectural Design Goals and Key Capabilities...............................5
Architectural Design Goals................................................................................................. 5
Gaming Beyond: Dynamic 3D Realism................................................................................ 6
Gaming Beyond: Extreme HD......................................................................................... 7
Gaming Beyond: SLI .....................................................................................................7
Beyond Gaming: High-Performance Visual Computing and Professional Computat ion..............8
GeForce GTX 200 GPU Architecture ...............................................................................9
More Processor Cores.................................................................................................... 9
Graphics Processing Architecture.................................................................................. 10
Parallel Computing Architecture.................................................................................... 12
SIMT Architecture....................................................................................................... 13
Greater Number of Threads in Flight............................................................................. 13
Larger Register File..................................................................................................... 14
Improved Dual Issue................................................................................................... 15
Double Precision Support............................................................................................. 15
Improved Texturing Performance................................................................................. 15
Higher Shader to Texture Ratio.................................................................................... 16
ROP Improvements..................................................................................................... 16
1 GB Framebuffer ....................................................................................................... 16
Geometry Shading and Stream Out .............................................................................. 17
512-bit Memory Interface............................................................................................ 17
Power Management Enhancements..............................................................................18
Additional Pipeline and Architecture Enhancements........................................................ 18
Summary ......................................................................................................................20
Appendix A: Retrospective...........................................................................................21
Appendix B: Figure 1 References .................................................................................22
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Figures
Figure 1: Realistic warrior from NVIDIA “Medusa” demo..........................................................6
Figure 2: Far Cry 2 – Extreme HD Dynamic Beauty! (Ubisoft)................................................... 7
Figure 3: Significant Speedup Using GPU................................................................................8
Figure 4: GeForce GTX 280 GPU Graphics Processing Architecture.......................................... 10
Figure 5: GeForce GTX 280 GPU Parallel Computing Architecture ........................................... 12
Figure 6: TPC (Thread Processing Cluster) ........................................................................... 13
Figure 7: Local Register File 2× versus 1× ........................................................................... 14
Figure 8: Geometry Shading Performance ............................................................................ 17
Tables
Table 1: Number of GPU Processing Cores .............................................................................9
Table 2: GeForce 8800 GTX vs GeForce GTX 280.................................................................. 11
Table 3: Maximum Number of Threads ................................................................................ 14
Table 4: Theoretical vs Measured Texture Filtering Rates....................................................... 16
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Introduction
In this technical brief we introduce NVIDIA’s new GeForce
family, the first GPUs to implement NVIDIA’s second-generation unified graphics
and computing architecture. The high-end, enthusiast-class GeForce GTX 280
GPU and performance-oriented GeForce GTX 260 GPU are the first members of
the GeForce GTX 200 GPU family and deliver the ultimate visual computing and
extreme high-definition (HD) gaming experience.
We’ll begin by describing architectural design goals and key features, and then dive
into the technical implementation of the GeForce GTX 200 GPUs. We assume you
have a basic understanding of first-generation NVIDIA unified GPU architecture,
including unified shader design, scalar processing cores, decoupled texture and math
units, and other architectural features. If you are not well versed in NVIDIA unified
GPU architecture, we suggest you first read the Technical Brief titled NVIDIA
GeForce 8800 GPU Architecture Overview. You can also refer to Appendix A for a
historical retrospective.
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GTX 200 GPU
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GeForce GTX 200 Architectural Design Goals
and Key Capabilities
GeForce GTX 200 GPUs are massively multithreaded, many-core, visual computing
processors that incorporate both a second-generation unified graphics architecture
and an enhanced high-performance, parallel-computing architecture.
Two overarching themes drove GeForce GTX 200 architectural design and are
represented by two key phrases: “Beyond Gaming” and “Gaming Beyond.”
Beyond Gaming means the GPU has evolved beyond being used primarily for 3D
games and driving standard PC display capabilities. More and more, GPUs are
accelerating non-gaming, computationally-intensive applications for both
professionals and consumers.
Gaming Beyond means that the GeForce GTX 200 GPUs enable amazing new
gaming effects and dynamic realism, delivering much higher levels of scene and
character detail, more natural character motion, and very accurate and convincing
physics effects.
The GeForce GTX 200 GPUs are designed to be fully compliant with Microsoft
DirectX 10 and Open GL 2.1.
Architectural Design Goals
NVIDIA engineers specified the following design goals for the GeForce GTX 200
GPUs:
Design a processor with up to twice the performance of GeForce 8800
GTX
Rebalance the architecture for future games that use more complex
shaders and more memory
Improve architectural efficiency per watt and per square millimeter
Improve performance for DirectX 10 features such as geometry
shading and stream out
Provide significantly enhanced computation ability for high-
performance CUDA
Deliver improved power management capability, including a substantial
reduction in idle power.
GeForce GTX 200 GPUs enable major new graphics and compute capabilities,
providing the most realistic 3D graphics effects ever rendered by GPUs to date,
while also providing nearly a teraflop of computational power.
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applications and GPU physics
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Gaming Beyond: Dynamic 3D Realism
While prior-generation GPUs could deliver real-time images that appeared true-tolife in many cases, frame rates could drop to unplayable levels in complex scenes
with significant animation, numerous physical effects, and multiple characters. The
combination of the sheer shader processing power of GeForce GTX 200 GPUs and
NVIDIA’s new PhysX
including:
Convincing facial and character animation
Multiple ultra-high polygon characters in complex environments
Advanced volumetric effects (smoke, fog, mist, etc.)
Fluid and cloth simulation
Fully simulated physical effects such as live debris, explosions, and
fires.
Physical weather effects such as accumulating snow and water, sand
storms, soaking, drying, dampening, overheating, and freezing
Better lighting for dramatic and spectacular effect, including ambient
occlusion, global illumination, soft shadows, color bleeding, indirect
lighting, and accurate reflections.
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technology facilitates many new high-end graphics effects
Figure 1: Realistic warrior from NVIDIA “Medusa” demo
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Gaming Beyond: Extreme HD
GeForce GTX 200 GPUs provide 50-100% more performance over priorgeneration GPUs, permitting increased frame rates and higher visual quality settings
at extreme resolutions, resulting in a truly cinematic gaming experience.
Figure 2: Far Cry 2 – Extreme HD Dynamic Beauty! (Ubisoft)
Support for the new DisplayPort interface allows resolutions beyond 2560 × 1600,
and 10-bit color support permits up to a billion different colors on screen (driver,
display, and application support is also required). Note that prior-generation GPUs
included internal 10-bit processing, but could only output 8-bit component colors
(RGB). GeForce GTX 200 GPUs permit both 10-bit internal processing and 10-bit
color output.
Gaming Beyond: SLI
NVIDIA’s SLI® technology is the industry’s leading multi-GPU technology, giving
you an easy, low-cost, high-impact performance upgrade. PC gaming simply doesn’t
get any faster or more realistic than running GeForce GTX 200 GPU-based boards
in SLI mode on the latest nForce
Two flavors of SLI are supported by the initial GeForce GTX 200 GPUs:
Standard SLI (two GPU boards), which typically boosts supported
game performance by 60-90% and permits higher quality settings
3-way SLI, which provides even higher frame rates and permits higher
quality settings for the ultimate experience in PC gaming when
connected to a high-end, high-resolution monitor.
GeForce GTX 200 GPUs process and display complex DirectX 10 and OpenGL
game environments with amazing graphics effects and high frame rates at extreme,
high-definition resolutions.
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motherboards.
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