I doubt that NV's "driver situation" would have anything to do with "big wins". By end of May when R600 is expected to launch, I would expect NV to have solid drivers at a minimum.

That really does not appear to be the case.. at all. Drivers are actually a huge part of what an OEM would consider. If the driver is not stable then the OEM is the one hearing about it and that simply costs them money after the purchase, something they very much do not like. It is no secret that Nvidia has had driver troubles as of late in Vista, specifically with the 8800 series, unless something radical happens within a month then I have doubts Nvidia is going to be able to improve the driver drastically.

320 stream processors eh? Looks like AMD decided to bite Nvidia marketing..

I mean it's probably irrelevant to actual performance, but hey, it's a bigger number..

I'm still holding out hope that R600 is a massive performance increase on 8800..hey it's possible.

So are we going to be hearing stuff on R600 April 23/24, or is it one of those NDA lifts two weeks later meetings we talked about?

Well OEM's use some common sense too. They've had a relationship with NVIDIA for years and years, and all of a sudden they are going to be concerned about "driver issues" from NV and not ATI, when speaking about brand new architecture and brand new OS? That doesn't make any sense. The R600 has not even launched yet, so how could they judge stability and reliability of a product that hasn't even launched yet?

Now, not to be disrespectfull (but of course it'll be taken that way), but why is it that 99% of people who have these cards sent out to them are almost always 'dense'. Gibbo just seems like some kind of 'average user' who's never really done any benchmarking before in his life. Heck, he's asking people for advice on things to run other than 3dmark... And he seems a little ditzy on troubleshooting. Bit of a 'Got an error, what do I do?' type thing.

It reminds me of when people started receiving x800 samples, one of them didn't even know what the hell 3dmark was! Another put on blank stares when someone suggest the (at the time) hugely popular Aquamark. It just seems like ATi's gone out of their way to find braindeads to test their hardware...which makes no sense because such cards should be going to the elite of the community.

:???:

What? Did you not realize that it was a hypothetical situation? If the R600 drivers are more stable than Nvidia's then of course its going to be a win for AMD, but in the end we do not know and therefore its hypothetical.

I don't understand what point you are trying to make. Why would OEM's speculate on a hypothetical "whose drivers will be better" type of scenario, especially when one card/lineup hasn't even launched yet? It just sounds silly. Both companies have plenty of bugs to work out when faced with a brand new architecture and brand new OS.

OEM are not, we are. Kaotik stated from what he heard that ATI's drivers were more stable, and therefore it would be a win for them. Your comment was further just a guess by stating that you doubt Nvidia will have any more driver issues by R600 launch. It is entirely hypothetical and we are simply making guesses right now on this front.

I don't think Kaotik really has any personal experience comparing drivers on R600 vs G80. The only way we will know is when the R600 has been selling for a few weeks and people get to directly compare and constrast with G80.

I believe that both companies are working like hell to fix bugs and glitches on their Vista and XP driver sets. This is just compounded by the fact that the architectures are brand new. I don't expect one or the other company to have any significant advantage over the other in terms of driver stability over the next few months. Both driver teams are pretty good. We will see.

Seems to me that AMD is holding off on releasing a GDDR4 2900 XTX until they see what Nvidia decides to do. It also seems to me that 2900 XT is likely slightly better than 8800 GTX (IQ and features) and will be judged "the best" by most reviewers and boutique box makers. Slapping a $399 price point on it will prevent Nvidia from migrating the 8800 GTX down in price to undercut the 2900 XT and thus preserve AMD's "win" with the flagship part.

The tricky part is that this "win" will last only as long as Nvidia decides to not unleash the 8800 Ultra or whatever bests the 2900 XT. At that point, AMD can decide to either field a 80 nm GDDR 4 2900 XTX or if all is going VERY well perhaps a 65 nm part billed as 2950 XTX. It all depends on Nvidia which way AMD will be forced to go. Seems like AMD didn't need to release the XTX to beat the GTX so they are holding it in reserve if needed....or they just got lucky with the XT.

If AMD can't beat the refreshed 8800 GTX or Ultra with a souped up 80 nm GDDR4 2900 XTX why on earth would they release it? In that case AMD will be forced to use the R650 to again top Nvidia. So I can see a scenerio where the 80 nm R600 GDDR4 XTX would be canned in favor (and neccesity) of the 65 nm GDDR 4 R650 when it is ready.

While this arguement works both ways, AMD may finally have the catbird seat for a month or more if 2900 XT has IQ and feature advantages that Nvidia can't touch right now. I like the pricepoint of $399 as it will prompt many to finally switch their rigs to Vista IF the drivers are solid. They are playing the volume game at $399 and make no mistake about it.

Lastly, if AMD can show Barcelona is a beast and RD790 is the shiznick than AMD has maybe finally stopped the bleeding.

The big OEMs like Dell/HP all ready know about the R600/RV630, and RV610 because they been testing them for months now. They get engineering samples long before the launch of a product. It would not surprise me if Dell/HP/other OEMs had R600 around December to test out.

Texture/Fillrate/ROP's and shader clock frequency plays very important part of the role.
But I remember the days when R300 came out and some people said extra bandwidth is a waste; but later 256bit memory served very well for R300 and made sure R300 was fed all the time.
Extra bandwidth may serve later - based on ATI idea - Thats what I think what ATI has in mind.

But I do agree with you about over-clocking GPU+memory on G80 and see FPS increase, but if you will not over-clock GPU itself - you will less likely see higher FPS.

What is interesting maybe R600 needs extra bandwidth to utilize full potential of the core to scale better based on architecture design of the R600: - maybe R600 is memory hungry beast.

100GB/s bandwidth should be normal for games, but extra bandwidth on top is a bonus.
One last thing I want to add that R600 1GB RAM vs. 768MB RAM G80, will be very interesting when limitation start hitting on G80 because of the amount memory it has.

So in other words, you foresee AMD going from People's Glorious Family Launch to "release one card, (2900 XT) see what happens"? That would be quite an about-face as far as their stated strategy/intentions are concerned.

Also, in order to stop the bleeding AMD has to do more than "show" Barcelona. They need to ship it.

With recent drivers you can enable up to (relatively useless) 32xS on a single G80. And just to clarify the sample placement in that hybrid mode is for the trash can; at least if you compare it directly to 16xS in terms of quality and the rather huge performance penalty compared to the latter.

As I recently said in a private conversation with a friend (yes more OT) those hybrid modes nowadays are only good for older games and if you're limited to a relatively low resolution. For alpha tests there's Transparency AA available and for shader AA I doubt performance allows any portion of Supersampling in a reasonable resolution. What remains is the added LOD offset due to the SS samples.

Uhmmm I'm not implying that those 24xAA-whatever thingies are for a hybrid mode or anything, yet higher sample densities don't exactly mean anything before one sees what it truly stands for.

Agreed, its interesting to see scenarios change so fast. Launch date cant come fast enough.

Well, they are losing credibility by the second to be sure. If they don't launch the entire family as they stated then they are full of crap. I am still assuming they will launch all as expected with the exception of the 2900 XTX which is pointless if the 2900 XT is faster than G80.

p.s. You won't find a bigger critic of ATI than I for the past several years so I am NOT defending them or their strategy...especially concerning launch dates.

Why 2900XTX be pointless - it is whole point for ATI to have something a lot faster then G80 in order to recover itself as a company because delay after another delay for the new product release, since they are behind the schedule.

I don't think so, I believe AMD has high-clock R650 65nm X2950XTX for the reserve - just in case if nvidia has a surprise for AMD.

The psycho music gets boring and unexciting when you hear it 3 times a day for many months.

Keep in mind that there are rumors of a delay for RV610 and 630.

So what's the alternative while witing for the R600 miracle, sell last-gen cards forever?

That will happen in a year or so and G80 will be very old by then.

but the problem is, it already feels old..

:smile:

LOL, yes. Freaky.

I have it on very good authority that the X2950XTX card held in reserve is not only real but in addition to a 65nm R650 will also feature 2(!) 32-pipeline R520s that ATI has been patiently holding in reserve since the fall of 2005.