Zephyr?, a long time reader of Beyond3D, has been pouring all over the documentation released by ATI and NVIDIA, and the Microsoft DirectX9 specifications, and has condensed them to produce a technical comparison of R300 and NV30 in relation to what is currently known about DirectX9. Zephyr details all the instruction, register and modifier details known about the Vertex and Pixel Shader pipelines and sums up a whole bunch of information on these two architectures. While ATI?s DirectX9 chip has been around for a couple of months now, in the form of the high end Radeon 9700 PRO and soon to push into lower end markets with the expansion of and 9700 and 9500 boards there is still a relative lack of developer information on the capabilities of the chip. Conversely, while NVIDIA?s NV30 chip is not here yet and probably still looking like it will be next year before widespread availability, NVIDIA have published a wealth of information on the capabilities of the architecture to ensure developer interest for when they can get their hands on the new chip.

A technical comparison of NVIDIA's NV30 and ATI's R300 @ Beyond3D