One IQ comparative not is posible in this point ;) is a variable scene, with water particules etc. - .

:lol:

Wasn't G9x a bit delayed and now supposed to arrive in Dec 07/Jan 08? The 3 months you're talking about would indicate a release in Aug/Sep which should coincide with the release of R650.

Where is the ground mist, its on the GTX pic?

I sure am going to enjoy my R600.:razz:

The R600 must die a horrible death...just because it seems to have spawned a wanking generation of single screenshot releasing ZOMG OWNORRZZZZZZZ ROXXXORZ ZA BEST forumites/internetites whatever. It`s a sexy architecture, kudos to ATi for bringing an arguably good product to the market, but this capital sin cannot be forgiven. BUUUUURN:D

Brent was hinting that 3dmark scores matter shit to be frank, and yes he didn't mean it in a good way, the r600 will do well in 3dmark...... And the new drivers you guys are talking about 3% improvement overall in games, but gives like 700-1000k 3dmark 06 bonus

I've seen driver profiles especially for FRAPS.. ;)

How come R600 did not get scrapped for R620 this time like the previous generations of R4 and R5 before it?

uhm..

R300 and R400 were developed quite close to each other.
R400 was also not performing the way ATI expected it. So instead of going for this radical "unified" design ati Pumped R350, tweaked it, added a few new tricks and launched it as R420.

R400 project was picked up as R500 which.. again could not fulfill expectations as a PC part. R520 is a contingency plan on that part. don't see it as a last ditch attempt. but quite early in the development of that project it was clear that it would not perform in the current environment.
That's why R500 was placed in Xenos. having a clear environment to start from was obviously more beneficial than trying to fit the unified design in a DX9 suit.

The reason it didn't get "scrapped" for R620 is, in my view, simply because this new architecture simply did not have a back-up plan.. there isn't something like bolting a few alu's on R580 and hoping it will do DX10.

Heh, the roadmap/codename juggling that began in 2002 finally rejoins the main line.

Btw, I'm feeling cranky today. If I see another rolly eyes sarcasm-dripping troll in this thread today there will be one or more vacations handed out that will last until a few days after the expected R600 launch. :twisted:

Why is it that when any drops of ATI info land on your stony surface they always fall a particular direction? I think that either you broke the chaos theory or perhaps wind is a factor. :razz:

Well, there are multiple possibilities here.

1). They're cheating. Get the pitchforks.
2). Their part is particularly suited to 3DM06. Possible, I suppose.
3). As some people have suggested upstream, their compiler "optimization opportunity" is pretty steep, and they're starting with high profile benchie stuff like 3DM06. . . and those kind of increases will be along for many other apps in the months to come as they get their arms around their new baby.

I have 3.xG pics of it on my dvdr

I don't think they are cheating, driver opts, possibly, 3dmark 06 does push pixel shaders and vertex shaders pretty hard, so thats probably where the performance is coming from.

Because look at crap Mao was posting for the past 2 weeks, he says it way better then gtx, but shows screenshots of where the screenshots arn't even close to the same, and when they are, the frame rates come out very close. Coincidence, I don't think so.

If the "R650 in the Summer" silly season starts in force now, AMD might have an "Osborne Effect" on their hands.
I don't think they would want to undermine the R600 family launch like that.

they wouldn't have put the price of the r600 as it is, there won't be an osborne effect.

Could be. All that "version 2 of unified" messaging they've been doing, while literally true, I don't know that it helps them much on optimizing, frankly. A closed environment where everyone writes for your part on an api customized for your part is quite a bit different than the PC platform. So I'm going to guess they really do still have a significant optimization opportunity in front of them. But then 6 months in, my impression is that G80 hasn't really shown any eye-popping performance improvements, and I'd have thought they'd have had a similar opportunity.

And what if R650 comes out priced the same as the R600 XT ?
It's a direct successor after all, isn't it ?

The delay of G80's new XP drivers might have something to do with it.
Transition from WDM to WVDDM is no easy feat (let alone with a brand new hardware architecture), and it could forced performance optimizations (that were there in XP, with a mature driver model) to take a backseat to compatibility. This, of course, in light of the strong public backlash regarding the poor Vista driver quality.
Fortunately, most 150 series driver releases seem to be much better than the old ones, but there's still a lot of work ahead until they can concentrate on true performance, i'm sure.

True, though arguably NVIDIA has had other priorities for their driver effort to date, and without any meaningful competition there's no real rush for them to bring performance improvements to the end-user just yet (presuming they have them, hiding in their repository somewhere).

Of course, already possessing 50-150% peformace edge, Nvidia had little incentive to showcase any performance improvements.

EDIT: Meh, nutball beat me to it.

Well one thing that strikes me odd is every single 3dmark06 score the r600 does much better in sm 3.0 then sm 2.0, which really doesn't make much sense at this point looking at the g80 and r600 architecture since 3dmark06 doesn't really have much benefits over sm 3.0 and sm 2.0 concerning dx10 GPU's. Maybe more game benchmarks will show this as well, or nV is still holding back performance or going to get more performance in upcoming drivers or playing a cruel joke.

Inkster, I think the price level of the r600 is a huge indication of what to expect of the r600, AMD isn't a charitable company lol, yes they want some marketshare back, but if the r600 is a better performer (not just marginally or sometimes), they don't need to drop their pants to get it back. I don't think the r650 will suffer from the same problems of the r600, at least not to the degree I'm expecting. So it should be able to compete well, unless nV has plans to release another GPU in the same time frame.

:yes:

The SM3.0 are HDR tests and that's the scenario where you'd expect superior bandwidth of XT to come through. It should be particularly evident in texture-light, HDR-heavy Deep Freeze.