And the great thing is, many of these per-pixel lighting effects can, according to NVIDIA, be done in one pass. With the case of per-pixel bump mapping, per-pixel lighting, and per-pixel specular lighting, they can all be done, not only in one pass, but in the same pass. Of course, truth be told, the operations for all three of them are extremely similar. They can, in effect, all be done in the same operation with a little bit of extra math here and there to finish the job.

Seven of One, Half a Dozen of...

And so, according to NVIDIA, with the GeForce2 GTS you get seven per-pixel operations in one pass through their per-pixel shader. You get a base texture, colored fog, ambient light and alpha transparency from the old style of doing things. And then per-pixel lighting gives you per-pixel diffuse and specular lighting as well as some great looking per-pixel bump mapping all in just about the same step. Not bad.

One sort of new feature the GeForce2 GTS implements is anti-aliasing. Anti-aliasing techniques are techniques that reduce the jagginess that comes from having diagonal lines in digital images. When you have a black line at a 45-degree angle on a white background, you will see a very apparent stair-stepping effect. With anti-aliasing, the stair-stepping effect is reduced by changing certain black pixels of the line and certain white pixels of the background that intersect the line into shades of gray. The changes give the line a smoother look from a distance, though the effect disappears when you get up close.

When we asked NVIDIA about whether they would include anti-aliasing with the GeForce2 GTS, they replied with something along the lines of "Another checkmark." Which is to say, they view anti-aliasing as another necessary feature for success in today's market.