[turtle]

Julidz, the difference is just what it says:

GPU wattage is wattage used by just the GPU (at default referance clocks)

Board wattage is wattage used by the GPU + rest of the board (RAM etc.) at default reference clocks.

The GPU on the XTX uses more power because presumably it is clocked higher.

Both use 225W because both are limited in clocks either/or because that is what is availble of the use of the 2x6-pin connector and/or difference in RAM used (2.0 is just the closest flat number.) Obviously 225W limits R600. IIRC overclocking is disabled when using 225W (2x6-pin) because it is THAT close to using 225W at default speeds.

All these overclocking scores are using 300W of available power, which in my mind explains the results, and the TDP is reality is going to be much higher when doing so.

G80's TDP I believe is 177W, but overclocking may be limited by available power (225W), which of course will make the power usage increase. I am not sure on that though (G80's case), but I surely believe R600 benefits from having that extra 75W available to it.

[Shtal]

R650 is the Radeon HD 2950XTX

ATI hasn't launched the R600 yet and it is already planning its next launch of a die shrinked version. It won't be launching the 1024 MB graphics card until Q3. It plans to launch the R650 chip and brand it as Radeon HD 2950XTX, 1024 MB GDDR4.

The chip is called R650 and it is a 65 nanometre core, how convenient. With this new chip ATI might have a fighting chance against the Geforce 8800 Ultra, but the real question is what will Nvidia have at that time.

The cards are scheduled for late Q3, so you should expect them to arrive in August or September, unless they get postponed. http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?op...d=871&Itemid=1

Looks to me that they might scrap R600-XTX "HD 2900XTX 1024MB GDDR4" altogether.

So we will have Q2, 2007. R600 HD2900XT 512MB GDDR3
So we will have Q3, 2007. R650 HD2950XTX 1024MB GDDR4

I guess for R650 mostly be high clocks @ 1GHz GPU maybe ?

I wonder what Nvidia do? "I don't think Ultra will help, plus it is overpriced compare to ATI-R650"

[PSU-failure]

Originally Posted by Rangers

Does DX10 somehow reduce the need for texturing?

Although I guess, if the bottleneck shifts to other parts of the card in DX10, parts that ATI would do better in based on this presumption, it's somewhat irrelevant...

Think about what makes 3DMark06 such a "bad" GPU benchmark, except the CPU score weighing really too much.

What is texturing used for in most pre-DX10 games? Don't they use texture based bump mapping and lighting a lot?

In the light of 3DMark06 scores, it seems HDR is well handled by the R600 (almost the same SM3.0 score as the G80) and non-hdr tests suffer from a texturing weakness.

So, the question is: will upcoming games be full of dynamic lighting/geometry displacement or use mapped lights/shadows/bumps?

[Rangers]

Originally Posted by PSU-failure

Think about what makes 3DMark06 such a "bad" GPU benchmark, except the CPU score weighing really too much.

What is texturing used for in most pre-DX10 games? Don't they use texture based bump mapping and lighting a lot?

In the light of 3DMark06 scores, it seems HDR is well handled by the R600 (almost the same SM3.0 score as the G80) and non-hdr tests suffer from a texturing weakness.

So, the question is: will upcoming games be full of dynamic lighting/geometry displacement or use mapped lights/shadows/bumps?

Not sure what you're getting at. I dont know, I assume the former.

I think that could be where R600 makes ground. If it's poor at texturing but good at HDR texturing..well I think HDR is the future right?

[nAo]

in your tipical next gen game the vast majority of textures are LDR.

[seahawk]

Originally Posted by Shtal

I wonder what Nvidia do? "I don't think Ultra will help, plus it is overpriced compare to ATI-R650"

Do you beleive G80 will be the competition for R650 ? They shipped in Nov 2006.

[AlexV]

Originally Posted by PSU-failure

Think about what makes 3DMark06 such a "bad" GPU benchmark, except the CPU score weighing really too much.

What is texturing used for in most pre-DX10 games? Don't they use texture based bump mapping and lighting a lot?

In the light of 3DMark06 scores, it seems HDR is well handled by the R600 (almost the same SM3.0 score as the G80) and non-hdr tests suffer from a texturing weakness.

So, the question is: will upcoming games be full of dynamic lighting/geometry displacement or use mapped lights/shadows/bumps?

Come again on the bolded part?Unless you`re stuck somewhere in DX8 era, no, not quite, AFAIR. The thing is this:if you suck at math in DX9(it`s an example, I`m not saying that`s the case with R600 because, frankly, I dunno and I hate stating some crap personal assertion as fact), you`re still going to suck at it in DX10 mostly. There`s no huge paradigm shift, you`re not doing stuff essentially different. You have the ability to do them far more elegantly, that`s certain. The trump card with DX10, IMHO, is the GS...that one is new, and we don`t know how it`ll perform.

The noise about the GS was that first-gen DX10 hardware wouldn`t be fast enough to make it a viable large-scale general use option for games. That makes me think it`s a point where an advantage could be gained:you have two ass-slow parts, but one is only half-ass slow...the difference from 0 to 20 fps is far more perceivable than the difference from 60-80(this is oversimplified, but I think it serves to get the point across). If ATi is actually better than nV at this(as some MS noise suggested), and if they can actually get devs to make use of the GS in such a manner that creates the opportunity of illustrating this performance delta(which I kindof doubt, because they`ve sucked the big one on this front ever-since first introduction of DX9, 3Dc, Fetch4 and so on, whilst nV managed to push everything they had in one way or another), it may actually matter. But notice there`s a lot of ifs in there.

And again, consider AMDs and implicitly ATi's position as a company:are they really in such a situation that they can afford to release world-breaking performance at mid-range prices?Are they a charity?Ya think?There must be something else at play here.

[vertex_shader]

Originally Posted by w0mbat

I'm bored with 3dmark scores, its say nothing about real ingame performance.

[Silent_Buddha]

And there's always the case that Dev's won't do much with Geometry Shaders even if R600 (and this is a gross exaggeration I'm sure) managed to outperform G80 by an order of magnitude (WRT GS).

After all IF the current high end market leader cannot run GS worth a damn, yet their competition can run it well, it's still not going to gain major traction. I'd imagine this is a major reason NV doesn't seem very concerned with GS, even if ATI goes gangbusters on it. If both companies can't do it at least reasonably well, why put a lot of resources into developing a game that will make major use of it?

Personally, the main selling point of a performant DX10 part at this point in time is for people like me. Someone who only upgrades a video card once every 1-2 years. (This year might be an anomaly for me as I might upgrade 2 systems graphics cards this year.)

So, considering that I'm getting either G80 or R600 with the expectation of using it at the VERY least until next summer (more likely next winter) then I, for one, am VERY interested to see anything that might give an indication of how each might possibly perform with regards to DX10 and its use of Geometry Shader.

Regards,
SB

[Unknown Soldier]

When Nvidia has been this quiet, I think you can always expect them to drop something beeg.

So the G80 has ruled the roost for 7 months and the Ultra might just own the HD2900XT for a short while until the XTX is released then ATI is expected to own for +- 5-6 months, but then I expect Nvidia to release it's next GPU which should put the hurting back(if what we've seen with both the NV40-G80).

Questions is, what does ATI plan to do for the following 6 months after that?

US

[Unknown Soldier]

Originally Posted by vertex_shader

I'm bored with 3dmark scores, its say nothing about real ingame performance.

And it says nothing about DX10 scores either.

US

[Arnold Beckenbauer]

Originally Posted by Jawed

If you read horizontally, everything comes out just fine. These diagrams aren't consistent in the way they orientate the ALUs (if you go back to R5xx versions of these diagrams you'll see what I mean):

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/...520-part1.html

e.g. X1600 should show the ALUs organised vertically if it follows the X1800 convention - which we know is 1:1 ALU:TEX. Or maybe X1800 is the odd one out, lol - except I've got an X1900 diagram here that agrees with the X1800 orientation.



Jawed

Reading horizontally I see two shader clusters with 12 5D ALUs and one TU per shader cluster (RV630). The RV610 has then one shader cluster with one TU and 8 5D ALUs.
My problem is: Why ATi says, RV630 has 3 SIMDs and RV610 2 SIMDs?
http://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/4/7

[Pressure]

Originally Posted by Unknown Soldier

When Nvidia has been this quiet, I think you can always expect them to drop something beeg.

So the G80 has ruled the roost for 7 months and the Ultra might just own the HD2900XT for a short while until the XTX is released then ATI is expected to own for +- 5-6 months, but then I expect Nvidia to release it's next GPU which should put the hurting back(if what we've seen with both the NV40-G80).

Questions is, what does ATI plan to do for the following 6 months after that?

US

What if AMD does not care for the Ultra High-end market anymore? I mean, NVIDIA releasing a $800+ graphic card just to rain on AMDs parade seems like a major case of the silly-willies.

If the Radeon HD 2900XT releases at $399 and performs nicely I see it as a good trend.

Admittedly it is late, and very late indeed, if it were to compete against the G80 in the first place. I still think it has its place though and hopefully the mid-range and low-end parts is very competitive against anything NVIDIA currently has on the market.

[aeryon]

Originally Posted by SugarCoat

i dont mean to rant or anything....well actually i do

3DMARK SCORES ARE MEANINGLESS STOP PRAISING THEM.


One of the main reasons i liked these forums in the past was the lack of beating 3Dmark scores to death everytime a random number was leaked in conjunction to a new peice of hardware. Is this a new trend? Maybe its just me but it looks ignorant!

it's so true ! and talking about gaming performance, some food to mao5 :

KTE wrote:
I read Sampsa saying the HD2900XT 512MB GDDR3 is only a competitor to a 8800GTS, not able to compete with the 8800GTX or Ultra.

well know Kinc reply:
Yes in DX9 games in gamin resolutios with AA that is. There is a new driver coming today lets see wha that does.

Synthetic benchmarks doesnt awlays apply to real world gaming

source: nordichardware forum

[leoneazzurro]

Originally Posted by Arnold Beckenbauer

Reading horizontally I see two shader clusters with 12 5D ALUs and one TU per shader cluster (RV630). The RV610 has then one shader cluster with one TU and 8 5D ALUs.
My problem is: Why ATi says, RV630 has 3 SIMDs and RV610 2 SIMDs?
http://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/4/7

They refer to the main block organization of both GPU, if you take a look at the Ultra threaded processor outputs, you see it is connected to 3 (in RV 630) or 2 (in R610) cluster of units, they are the SIMD units they refer.
Now, the disparity of TU in regard to SIMD can mean two things IMHO:

1) Each cluster can access every TU indipendently because they are fully decoupled or
2) organization of R6XX is far more complex, with the TU coupled "orthogonally" to SIMD clusters, i.e. every SIMD cluster is further divided into blocks (i.e. 4 for R600, 2 for RV630 and only one for R610) and each block is coupled with a TU (8 address, 4 filtering, 20 fetching units each).

I already wrote a lot of posts ago that a very reliable source told me that R600 is structured as 4-4-4-5 whereas G80 is 8-2-8. In this case it can be that in R600 every 80-SP cluster is divided in 4 blocks with (4x5)SP each each working on a quad, and every one of these blocks has a dedicated TU. In this way, block 1s in SIMD 1,2,3,4 access TU 1, block 2s in SIMD 1,2,3,4 access TU 2, and so on. If you take a look at the block diagram there could be some hints about this possibility.
The benefits of doing so I cannot understand, however.

Same souce told that R600 performs better with long shaders, but on simple shaders this organization, by having one "level" more with respect to G80, incurs in some penalty.

[Unknown Soldier]

Originally Posted by Pressure

What if AMD does not care for the Ultra High-end market anymore? I mean, NVIDIA releasing a $800+ graphic card just to rain on AMDs parade seems like a major case of the silly-willies.

If the Radeon HD 2900XT releases at $399 and performs nicely I see it as a good trend.

Admittedly it is late, and very late indeed, if it were to compete against the G80 in the first place. I still think it has its place though and hopefully the mid-range and low-end parts is very competitive against anything NVIDIA currently has on the market.

At the end of the day, people like us do look at the high-end, so don't kid yourself that if the XT only beats the GTS and can't beat the GTX that people won't go for the GTX instead. Of course some of us also prefer better IQ, so it'll have to have better IQ than the GTX, which we all know is pretty good atm.

I think though that the most important thing will be the DX10 performance. Of course we'll still have to wait for any worth while software to come out and by then(most probably) newer and faster hardware will be available.

US

[neliz]

AMD's power of three?

http://ati.amd.com/online/getall3/

[Arty]

From Tweaktown

The voucher will cost AIB partners roughly $6 - 7 USD each and will be bundled with all XT cards but it is unsure at this stage if the voucher will be bundled with lower end graphics cards.

We have got some information form a reliable source that ATI will be launching the Radeon HD 2900XTX in the end anyhow but nobody is entirely clear on the exact details.

It will most likely not be out until late July or early August, but it should be on display at Computex by at least a couple of ATI’s partners from what our Taiwan spies are telling us. This is the consumer version of the XTX and will look pretty much identical to the HD 2900XT except with a different sticker and more and faster GDDR-4 RAM under the cooler, i.e. this is not the 12.4in full length cards that will be available from OEM’s although both PCB length versions are floating around. The model name hasn’t been set as yet and it might be called XT GDDR4 or XTX, but we’ll stick with XTX for now. ATI partners have the option of ordering either the GDDR-3 XT or GDDR-4 version right now.

It will feature 1GB of GDDR memory and this means a higher memory clock, up from 1650MHz DDR for the HD 2900XT to 2020MHz DDR. The core will also be boosted, but only a laughable 10MHz from 740 to 750MHz. It seems like there will be as much point in buying the Radeon HD 2900XTX as it is to buy a GeForce 8800 Ultra. Maybe the era of the super high-end cards is finally over and we will all get decent performance from an affordable graphics card, but then again, miracles doesn't happen that easily.

ATI’s 1GB GDDR-4 card will likely be priced around the same as Nvidia’s GeForce 8800GTX 768MB at around $550 USD and you will probably be able to buy it in late July or sometime in August.

[Pressure]

Originally Posted by Unknown Soldier

At the end of the day, people like us do look at the high-end, so don't kid yourself that if the XT only beats the GTS and can't beat the GTX that people won't go for the GTX instead. Of course some of us also prefer better IQ, so it'll have to have better IQ than the GTX, which we all know is pretty good atm.

I think though that the most important thing will be the DX10 performance. Of course we'll still have to wait for any worth while software to come out and by then(most probably) newer and faster hardware will be available.

US

Not to mention actual reviews of the hardware we are discussing.

I do not really care whether or not the Radeon HD2900XT beats the Geforce 8800GTX, what I care about if it enables me to do more things in real-time when editing video and applying effects. In the end of the day I hardly play games anymore and there is hardly any games released for Mac OS X regardless. Hopefully Apple will use the Radeon HD 2900XTX 1GB OEM version in its Mac Pro line-up.

The Radeon 2k family should bring more to the table than just 3D-performance afterall

But sure, performance figures is always fun to look at.

[bigtabs]

That's an odd statement to make in a forum such as this.

Originally Posted by tweaktown

It seems like there will be as much point in buying the Radeon HD 2900XTX as it is to buy a GeForce 8800 Ultra.

The 1GB VRAM would be more than a small point for me. With that much memory I could use every texture mod I wanted in Oblivion and crank AA up to great levels without worry. Can't do that with 512mb.

I'd also expect UT3 to want more than half a gig of VRAM at max settings. So I think their comparison is a little wrong there.

[PSU-failure]

Originally Posted by Morgoth the Dark Enemy

And again, consider AMDs and implicitly ATi's position as a company:are they really in such a situation that they can afford to release world-breaking performance at mid-range prices?Are they a charity?Ya think?There must be something else at play here.

The answer is quite easy to find: 6 months delay since nVidia competing part launch.

Did you ask the same question when Intel released Conroe at a lower price point than AMD's X2 competing parts?

[Dalton Sleeper]

I was hoping to get some X-Fire results in real games, i don't think one XT will be enough with only 512MB. But it's only going to be X-Fire if it performs good, alot better than one card. Otherwise it's going to be XTX...

[AlexV]

Originally Posted by PSU-failure

The answer is quite easy to find: 6 months delay since nVidia competing part launch.

Did you ask the same question when Intel released Conroe at a lower price point than AMD's X2 competing parts?

No. Why did the R520 launch at such a comparatively lower price?Don`t answer that if you`re in love with ATi and think that they`re in it for the good of the planet. They want to make a profit. If they had similar performance to the GTX across the board, they would`ve priced it similarly, and maybe even kick nV in the nuts about it. I don`t think the R600 is cheap enough to make to warrant such a lowish price. Even if you factor comparatively lower RAM size.

Intel released Conroe at the price-points that were characteristic for their market-a super high-end part is at 1000, for example, and from there down-wards. They could afford to sell it at that price and maintain considerable margins. AFAIR, Conroe had goodish yields. They also have much more flexibility:from a wafer they can get a lot of parts(let's say E6600/6700/X6800, depending on how they handle clock-rates). I don`t think you can make X2600s from failed X2900-I may be wrong here though.

If some of you ppl can`t see why it`s fairly illogical, from an economic standpoint, to release your presumably top-end card at this price-point, if it is so much better/at least equal to your competitor, that`s that, I doubt anything I or anyone say will change the apparently universally accepted idea that ATi=God`s arm on earth.

[3dilettante]

Conroe is also a process node ahead of the top X2s.

It's roughly 140mm2 compared to a 90 nm X2 that is just under 200 mm2.
Coupled with Intel's much larger fab capacity, a lower price point could be hit while simultaneously butchering AMD's margins.

I do not see a die size advantage for R600 over G80, unless the NVIO significantly impacts manufacturing costs.
Since both Nvidia and ATI are fabless and use the same foundry, there is no indication of any large differences in economies of scale between the two.

Perhaps the lower price is due to AMD's newfound allergy to inventory. It sounds like they don't want too many R600s to experience old age in their warehouses.

[Jawed]

Originally Posted by Arnold Beckenbauer

[...]
My problem is: Why ATi says, RV630 has 3 SIMDs and RV610 2 SIMDs?

Aha! Hmm, I hadn't spotted that, that definitely contradicts what I've been asserting (I've been referring to the first versions of those diagrams that leaked, without the green box - sigh - so I've missed this point).

If, as suggested (and you rightly link Xenos), these lower GPUs have finer-granularity, then that definitely puts a different complexion on things. They have more sequencer complexity than I was expecting, which means they have better dynamic branching than I was expecting, too.

Ouch

That might point to the future of R6xx, where sequencer complexity increases, to bring batch sizes down. I'm expecting R600 to have batches of 64. It would appear that RV630 has a batch size of 32 and RV610 is 16.

3 SIMDs and 2 TUs in RV630 is really very curious just because it's a hybrid of R5xx and Xenos instruction (ALU + TEX) scheduling.

But, well, this is a definite change of course for me. Ooh that's quite a nice surprise

Jawed