Texture compression is now enabled by default and anti-aliasing is firmly embedded in the drivers. A catch-all category for per-pixel effects called per-pixel shading has been added. According to NVIDIA, this per-pixel shading takes seven types of operations (all of which could be done before in one form or another) and handles them in a single pass
"Base-texture, per-pixel bump mapping, per-pixel diffuse lighting, per-pixel specular lighting, colored fog, ambient light and alpha transparency can all be done together - in any combination - in one pass."
However, they had this response to the question of a performance hit while utilizing per pixel shading:
"Depending on which shading operations you specify, there is no performance penalty. However, using highly complex shaders can have an effect on performance."
All of these changes come together to make the GeForce2 GTS an extremely impressive card.
Before we get into the mince meat of benchmarks (almost there…) a few issues need to be addressed. Along with updated hardware, the GeForce2 GTS comes with an updated driver. This driver, now up to version 5.16, adds features and improves performance, and not only for the GeForce2 GTS.
Using both the 3.68 and 5.16 drivers for the GeForce 256, we saw a marked improvement in the GeForce 256. If nothing else it demonstrates just how much of a performance gain one can get in Quake III: Arena from the added support for texture compression, which the newer 5.16 drivers added. Another major difference affecting performance between the older and newer drivers is "Fast Writes".
In our 64MB GeForce 256 review, we found that when using and Intel 820 platform and the 368 drivers with default fast writes actually hampered performance. After confirming this with both Intel and NVIDIA, we decided to disable "Fast Writes" when using the 3.68 drivers for benchmarking as that is undoubtedly how one would use them for best performance. Incidentally, the new 5.16 drivers fixed the problem for the GeForce 256 and ran just fine and dandy with the GeForce2 GTS. We asked NVIDIA for their input on this,
"There's nothing wrong with either the Intel's silicon or our GPU. The issue probably arose because it's the first version of Fast Writes Hardware and Software. We're constantly improving our hardware, firmware and drivers to take advantage of the information learned from our initial Fast Writes technology. When new versions of our Graphics and Core Logic Drivers are introduced, that Fast Writes will offer a clear improvement in performance."