NVIDIA Corporation 225
Appendix D
NVIDIA ForceWare Graphics Display Driver — Feature History
3D Graphics API Enhancements
Direct3D
• Improved antialiasing performance
• Improved shaders
OpenGL
New extension:
GL_NV_pixel_buffer_object
Release 50 Enhancements
The Release 50 driver offers new features not found in previous releases of the
NVIDIA Driver for Windows.
New Feature Highlights
64-bit Support
Driver Release 50 offers AMD64 and IA64 operating system support.
Dynamic Memory Mapping
Dynamic memory mapping adds support for 256 MB graphics cards for video,
display, and OpenGL drivers.
NVIDIA Unified Compiler
As today’s GPUs become more and more programmable they are entering a similar
era to that of the CPU. For CPUs, it is common for developers to implement code
paths specifically optimized for AMD or Intel (e.g MMX and 3DNow!).
Programmable GPUs are no different. Because architectures vary, it makes sense that
one common assembly language can’t cover all the nuances of specific GPU micro-
architectures. In fact, different code paths make different GPUs go faster. As a result
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