Ironically I tried to play today NFS:Carbon in 1280*1024 with 16xS (4xRGMS + 4xOGSS). Not only did the overall result in 2048*1536 with 16xCSAA+4xTSAA look overall better, but it ended up being a lot faster too ( I wouldn't call the first case "playable" and racing sims don't demand any high framerates either).

You know this isnt an artificial limitation right? Different GPUS with different amount of memory can go higher resolutions. Grestorm also mentioned that this limitation was inherant to 256 cards. 512/768 meg cards have different limitations for how high the XS modes can go.

Chris

Well, the 16xS pattern is quite orderish (mean - a lot more redundancy sampling), compared to the new MS modes in G80.

Anyone care to speculate when can I have R600 in my hands to test? "exact date"
Is it going to be before G80-Ultra release time frame?

16 TMU's is absurdly low, considering G80 has what, 32+? and these ATI "ratios" are a joke, that hopefully is good and dead.

16 TMU's would essentially mean it was little faster than R580, since that would be the bottleneck. They'd get a little bump for clock speed and maybe a little bump in shader limited titles, that's it.

Maybe, but you never know how much texture samplers are behind those 16 address units (if they are so) -- free trilinear, single cycle FP16 and so on. We'll see.

FREE is good, but would you rather have a free DVD player in the aforementioned ferrari or are you happy with building it in a 2007 ford focus? Looking at that Dailytech article R600 is more like a funnel which is loaded with gallons of bandwidth at the top but it's being held down doing something.. free.

hence my unbalanced comment so long ago :wink:

With those specs, I'd expect them to get killed on the 300fps vs 200fps types of benchies. It would be interesting to see how many people fell for that as being important. If those numbers are right, they're going to need pretty demanding kind of scenarios for their advantages to show up. But then that's why one buys a high-end card, isn't it?

We might be in for an interesting discussion. Let's try a thought experiment tho, just for grins and giggles.

Two applications, A & B. Two viddy cards, 1 & 2.

App A, Card 1 -- 150fps
App A, Card 2 -- 120fps
App B, Card 1 -- 50fps
App B, Card 2 -- 62fps

Now, tell me. . . which card is more "balanced"? Because my answer would be Card 2, since it provides a more consistent experience (i.e. a smaller spread between min and max) than Card 1.

Btw, I think I'm actually looking forward to [H] histograms this time quite eagerly. That's one of the things that unified is supposed to level out a bit, so it'll be interesting to see R600's vs G80's on demanding apps.

But then you're assuming that Card 2 will only lose when there's performance to burn. i.e, your definition of a demanding app is one which taxes Card 2's strengths.

Low median framerate, by my mean, is the most "vivid" point for smooth motion experience.
It's a bit like the V'sync + triple buffering case.

card 2 is the clear choice in your example

Are both apps running under the same rendering platform (D3D or openGL) or is app. B running under openGL? ;)

A typically confused post from The Inquirer:

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38923

It describes all of the different products that are supposed to feature in the R(V)6xx launch, and also talks a bit about HDMI and HD video capability.

The sting is in the tail:

(re: Inq article)

9 months late?

I thought it was only 2 months late... :?:

Unless they mean 'Late to the party' in which case - 6 months.


IIRC ATI meant to release the R580+ 9 months ago, which is what they did.

Good point, I was thinking more of the lines the performance advantage won't be equal to the increased bandwidth at theoretical levels :)

That doesn't make it unbalanced though, and if the theoretical card 2 is the one with all the bandwidth, that means it's a better balanced card.

depends on how you look at it the x1800xt was a great card with bandwidth usage optimizations but if you get a game that is shader and fillrate bound......

This might be the same situatation we see the r600 in but of course to a lesser degree. This is why we see a 1 to 1 increase with the g80 when you clock the core up and around .5 to 1 increase when memory is clocked up, there was an article with overclocking on the g80 where they showed this. I don't remember the exact ratios but something close to this. The g80 isn't fully bandwidth bound, so the gains we see with the extra bandwidth on the r600, if the r600 doesn't have equal fillrates and shader through put, will be diminishing returns.

edit if I remember correctly after thinking about it, it was an article that showed both bandwidth and fillrate due to over clocking gave a 1 to 1 increase on the g80.

I was of the understanding that the X1800XT was performing very nicely in modern titles against the 7900GTX.

So the parts where the G80 is bandwidth bound are to be removed by the massive bandwidth advantage of the R600. 0.5 - 1 to 1 you say? Hardly diminishing is it? Though it is lower than 1 to 1 as you say.

I'm not sure you meant diminishing returns, as much as you meant, or at least meant to imply ;) low return. Even so... it's still quite a hefty return by your calculations wouldn't you say?

512 MB seems to be kind of the sweet spot, though.

I dont think you really need more currently+near future.

So it might actually kind of be a good move, if it allows them to cut costs.

So all the bandwidth the R600 has....is for no good? Why on earth do it have a 512 bit bus then ??? It seams to me it is just to waste...

Keep in mind it is just a rumour thread :wink:

With HDR becoming more and more common, it's likely that the biggest use of the bandwidth will come from having 64-bit+AA displays, and/or deferred rendering with AA.

'Deferred rendering with AA'. - I let out a contented sigh whilst reading that.

Something to look forward to with DX10 for sure.