Today's launch of the Nvidia GeForce 8 series marks the advent of next-generation graphics. What can we expect from graphics makers with respect to DirectX 10 hardware? While Nvidia has not publicly commented on what structure its G80 processor is based upon, ATI has stated it would go with a unified shader core. Unified shaders makes the most sense, as it means shader units can change function on the fly. This means that if a frame has more vertex shader needs or more pixel shading needs, the core can designate more processing units or clusters to accomplish the task that is in most demand.

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