Having given game developers their chance to give NVIDIA a pat on the back, the proof, we feel, will be in the pudding. The next phase is actually getting game developers to implement some of these nifty 3D features/cheats into their games over the coming months. With development cycles ranging anywhere from 12-18months and right through to 'Daikatana' (the new Oxford dictionary term used to describe games that take longer to develop than your 100 year old granny takes to leave the dinner table and go home for the night), the chances of per pixel shading techniques having been implemented from the ground up would be unlikely.
Unless developers have been introduced to hardware at the beginning of their development cycles and implementing new features is relatively easy-to-do, the likes of Activision, EIDOS and every other big publisher probably won't be too happy with their artists whom have just spent a couple of months crafting bowls of fruit with dot product 3 bump mapping. We still reckon that cube environment mapping, per pixel shading techniques and the like will take a while yet before they grace your monitors. After all, how long did it take for S3TC and multi-texturing to catch on? T&L titles seem to be flavor of the month just now and according to NVIDIA, there are some 100 titles due to take advantage of T&L hardware before the year is out.
So you've seen the tech specs, screen shots and you've seen GeForce2 GTS benchmarks and by now you're probably shaking that porcelain piggy, looking under the sofa cushions and under the back of your car seat for cash. Lot's of cash. Remember, if you want to stay one-step ahead of the Jones', it's always going to put you out of pocket. The GeForce2 GTS you're going to need to spend $350+ on for the fastest 3D accelerator on the block. Further down the pipeline expect to see 64MB DDR versions of the GTS selling for a plump $450. So if you've got a TNT2, Voodoo3 or G400, now would probably be a good time to consider the plunge with the GTS.