User Guide

4
NVIDIA Corporation
Chapter 1 About the Detonator XP Unified Driver
modes. This in turn allows developers to utilize more OpenGL 1.3 features with
NVIDIA Extensions to deliver real-time, cinematic-quality graphics for the
personal computer.
Optimized DirectX Pipeline with NVIDIA Pixel/Vertex
Shaders
Detonator XP software features a highly-tuned DirectX pipeline specially
designed to fully accelerate Windows XP and all other Windows-based
operating systems. New optimizations were added to the pipeline to deliver
increased performance in high-resolution antialiased modes.In order to achieve
better performance, Detonator XP software optimizes the movement of data
read/writes and decreases the memory requirements when transferring texture
data. Detonator XP software reduces bus transfers, effectively decreasing the
peak saturation of the bus. This reduction provides the GPU more bandwidth to
transfer texture and geometry information. As the reference platform for
developers creating new content using DirectX 8 Pixel and Vertex Shaders on
both the PC and Microsoft Xbox game console, GeForce3 GPU family’s
performance must be extremely fast in order to deliver fluid, real-time cinematic
effects for the consumer. All of these new optimizations will enable Detonator
XP software to deliver the fastest NVIDIA Pixel and Vertex Shader
performance, enabling high performance, real-time cinematic effects with the
GeForce3 family of GPUs, regardless of platform.
Detonator XPress Link
The NVIDIA Detonator XP unified driver contains a proprietary Detonator
XPress Link technology written specifically for Windows XP. Utilizing the
patented Direct Memory Access (DMA) found on all NVIDIA hardware, the
Detonator XPress Link provides a direct connection from the hardware to the
operating system. As a result, the Detonator XPress Link assists in accelerating
the new optimizations made in the I/O subsystem and memory management
portions of the Windows XP core, thus delivering the fastest 3D graphics
performance on all Windows XP platforms.
Windows XP contains new low-level enhancements designed to improve
overall system, graphics, and multimedia performance. While current Windows
drivers will work with Windows XP on NVIDIA-based platforms, it is
necessary to re-write drivers in order to take advantage of the new
improvements as new routines have been added to the Windows XP core.
DetXP_Features.book Page 4 Thursday, October 11, 2001 3:53 PM