3DLabs P9
The 3DLabs P9 VPU ( V ISUAL P rocessing U nit) is a fully programmable graphics processor of 3DLabs . This graphics chip was used in mid-2002 as the VP500 on the Wildcat VP 560 and about six months later as the VP500SE on the Creative Labs Graphics Blaster Picture Perfect .
construction
The P9 basically represents a halved P10 and therefore consists of 100 individual 32-bit vector processors , which together achieve a computing power of 100 GFLOPS or 0.6 TeraOPs. Due to the high flexibility, the computing power of these vector processors can be divided as required.
Features
Like the P10, the P9 has virtual texturing and can therefore also address 16 GB of virtual memory. In contrast to the P10, the P9 only has a 128-bit memory interface. The chip supports DirectX 8.1 with vertex shader 1.1 and pixel shader 1.2 as well as OpenGL 2.0.
Slipstream
In addition, the P9 has a process called SlipStream , which effectively reduces overdraw . Under certain conditions, the P9 is therefore faster than the P10, which is significantly more powerful in terms of raw data. However, Slipstream only works with Direct3D .