Explaining 3DNow!™ Technology

What is 3DNow™ technology?
3DNow!™ is a leading edge 3D enhancement technology aimed at improving floating point calculations and other 3D intensive calculations that can slow down a processor. The goal of 3DNow! technology is to produce more realistic and lifelike 3D images and graphics, near theater quality sound and video, and an excellent Internet experience. First introduced in the AMD-K6® -2 in May of 1998, it was designed to expand upon the multimedia improving instructions of MMX™ technology. 3DNow! technology moves beyond the MMX base to provide the performance needed by many of today's 3D applications such as games, educational entertainment, and business titles.

3DNow™ technology was not designed to replace 3D video cards but to work hand-in-hand with them. Some of today's graphics accelerators put such a strain on the CPU that it cannot keep up, resulting in a bottleneck. 3DNow! technology is designed to relieve this bottleneck by accelerating the 3D intensive calculations that occur early in the pipeline. The relief of this bottleneck helps ensure optimum 3D performance.

What 3DNow! technology means to your customer.

• Powerful 3D performance
• Fast, realistic 3D imaging and graphics
• Near theater quality sound and video
• Excellent Internet experience

3DNow! technology in the AMD family of processors
3DNow! technology is now found in the complete range of desktop and mobile computing systems based on AMD-K6® family processors-from sub-$1,000 PCs to high-performance laptops to high-end multimedia desktop systems.

The AMD Athlon™ processor offers enhanced 3DNow!™ technology in which there are 24 additional instructions added to the existing 21 found in the AMD-K6-2 processor. These 24 new instructions are designed to take the AMD Athlon processor to the next level of performance. Included are 12 new instructions to enhance speech recognition and video processing. 7 new instructions accelerate data movement for Internet browser plug-ins and other streaming applications. The 5 DSP instructions are unique to the AMD Athlon processor and support soft modems, MP3, and Dolby Digital surround processing. The DSP instructions are not supported by the Pentium® III processor.

Support
3DNow! technology does not require operating system changes; it is supported now in Microsoft® Windows® 95, Windows® 98, Windows NT® 4.0, and new Microsoft operating systems. Optimized drivers can be found in products from leading 3D graphic accelerator suppliers, including 3Dfx, ATI, Matrox, and nVidia. Today's leading application-programming interfaces - Microsoft's DirectX 6.x API and SGI's Open GL API - are optimized for 3DNow! technology.

09/28/2003 DATE THIS PAGE WAS LAST EDITED© Feedback to The WebMaster