Part 1. Memory, Resolutions, Bit-depths and Buffering

A video board requires memory to store textures and the images it renders. In older video solutions such as 3dfx's (3Dfx back then) Voodoo Graphics and Voodoo 2, the accelerators utilized separate memory systems for textures and frame/Z-buffers. Today UMA's or Unified Memory Architectures are much more common. What this means in practice is that the video board can divide the on-board memory in any way it sees fit to meet requirements for either increased resolutions, color depths or texture sizes...

Part 2. Texture Filtering

Texture filtering is one of the most fundamental features required to present the sweet looking 3D graphics we're accustomed to in today's titles...

Part 3. Anti-aliasing

Anti-aliasing is a quite popular buzzword that you'll find on many product spec sheets. Anti-aliasing can best be described as a method of smoothing out jagged edges in order to improve the quality of a rendered image...