Specifications

The List

GeForce 2 GTS GPU
0.18 micron manufacturing process
2nd generation T&L engine
25 million triangles/s
32MB DDR SDRAM
200MHz core clock
166MHz memory clock
Per-pixel shader
Per-pixel dot product 3 bump mapping
Per-pixel lighting and shading
Hypertexel architecture
Quad pixel pipeline
Two textures per pixel
800 Mpixels/s fill rate
1.6 Gtexels/s fill rate
1X/2X AGP, 4X AGP w/fast writes
32-bit rendering
32-bit textures
Z/Stencil buffer
DirectX texture compression
S3TC support
Cube Environment Mapping
Vertex Blending (2-matrix)
DX5, DX6, DX7, OpenGL 1.2 support
Hardware anti-aliasing
High definition video processor (HDVP)
Supports all 18 ATSC formats, including 720p and 1080i
350MHz RAMDAC

Notes

The GeForce 2 is a "spring refresh" part, but it looks like NVIDIA has put in a little more work. Most of the time, a "spring refresh" consists of the same chip with a higher clock speed and maybe a handful of minor new features. Yes, the GeForce 2 does sport a higher clock speed, but the improvements don't stop there.

As you may recall, the GeForce 256 GPU used the 0.22 micron manufacturing process. NVIDIA used a die-shrink to increase the clock speed. By switching to 0.18, NVIDIA was able to cut power dissipation in half and increase the core clock speed from 120MHz to 200MHz. NVIDIA also implemented a new HyperTexel architecture which added multi-texturing to each pixel pipeline. The original GeForce could only do one texture per pixel; the new GeForce 2 can do two textures per pixel.

These two pipeline and clock speed improvements account for a dramatic fill rate increase. The pixel fill rate jumps from 480Mpixels/s (4 pixel pipeline x 120MHz clock) to 800Mpixels/s (4 pixel pipeline x 200MHz clock). The texel fill rate jumps from 480Mtexels/s (4 pixel pipeline x 120Mhz clock x 1 texture per pixel) to 1.6Gtexels/s (4 pixel pipeline x 200MHz clock x 2 textures per pixel). This increase in fill rate is similar to the jump between the Voodoo 1 and the Voodoo 2. The Voodoo 2 basically doubled the clock speed of the Voodoo 1 and added multi-texturing.

Must.. ignore.. jaggies

This Isle bores me

More notes

The GeForce 2 also features S3TC and FSAA support. This isn't a surprise to most of you since these features have been available on the original GeForce ever since the 5.X detonators were leaked. NVIDIA wanted to save S3TC and FSAA for the GeForce 2, and planned to release the 5.X Detonators with the new card. Secrets don't get kept for very long in this industry.

The GeForce 2's triangle count has risen to 25 million triangles per second from the GeForce's paltry 15 million triangles per second. NVIDIA is also very big on per-pixel shading. We'll have more on this later.

Another new addition is the HDVP (High Definition Video Processor) which enables 720p and 1080i HDTV (High Definition Television) decode. Pick up a HDTV tuner card, and your monitor becomes a decent HDTV.