Vertex shaders
If you were expecting me to tell you the number of vertex shader units the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra has, you probably haven't been paying attention. ATI has laid it out clearly: the R300 and R350 each have four vertex shader units, each consisting of a 128-bit vector processor and a 32-bit scalar processor. The GeForce FX 5800 Ultra has—you guessed it—an "array" of computational units.

Ah, the disclosure.

Anyhow, finding out the relevant info about the FX isn't too difficult. We'll test the cards and see how they perform.

The ATI chips' vertex shaders appear to be more powerful than the NV30, despite the fact the NV30 runs at a higher clock speed. The FX benefits from specific optimizations in 3DMark03, but not quite enough to catch up with the 9700.

Now let's test legacy transformation and lighting performance, which is generally provided by a vertex program on newer cards.

The FX excels here, probably because old-school T&L runs on a single vertex shader unit, and the FX's higher clock speed becomes more of an asset.