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The GeForce 6 Series (codenamed NV40) is NVIDIA's sixth generation of GeForce graphics chipsets. All of them support Vertex and Pixel shader version 3.0, as required under the Microsoft DirectX 9.0c specification. more...

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Launched on April 14th 2004, the GeForce 6 family introduced several important new features to the GeForce product-line: PureVideo functionality, Shader Model 3.0 support, and SLI technology. But perhaps most importantly, the GeForce 6 family addressed the perceived shortcoming of its predecessor GeForce FX family, mediocre Shader Model 2.0 performance. Hence, on both technical and marketing terms, the GeForce 6 enabled NVIDIA to return to a position of competitiveness against its rival, ATI Technologies.

GeForce 6 Series features

SLI

The Scalable Link Interface (SLI) allows two GeForce 6 cards of the same type to be connected in tandem. The driver software balances the workload to the two chips dynamically. (Although SLI is also the name for the late 3dfx's Scan-Line Interleave scheme, NVIDIA and 3dfx's SLI technologies are different in implementation.) SLI-capability is limited to select members of the GeForce 6 family: 6500 and above. SLI is only available on the PCI-Express platform.

NVIDIA PureVideo Technology

NVIDIA PureVideo technology is the combination of a dedicated video processing core and software that delivers high-definition H.264, VC-1, WMV, and MPEG-2 movies with minimal CPU utilization and low power consumption. The subpixel processing enables videos to be scaled to any size at a potentially higher quality than some other software.

Shader Model 3.0

While ATI was the first to deliver Shader Model 2.0 capability to the retail market, NVIDIA was the first to deliver Shader Model 3.0 (SM3) capability. SM3 extends SM2 in a number of ways: standard FP32 (32-bit floating-point) precision, dynamic branching, and longer shader lengths are the main additions. Shader Model 3.0 was quickly adopted by game developers because it was quite simple to convert existing shaders coded with SM 2.0/2.0A/2.0B to version 3.0, and it offered noticeable performance improvements across the entire GeForce 6 line.

Caveats

There are reports of incompatibility between 6 series cards and some wide aspect ratio LCD panels when connected through DVI. Purevideo functionality varies by model, with some models lacking WMV9 and/or H.264 acceleration.

Geforce 6 Series Comparison

Here is how the released versions of the "GeForce 6" series family compare to NVIDIA's previous flagship GPU, the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, in addition to the competitive units of ATI's newly released for the time Radeon X800 and X850 Series:

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