ELSA hints GT206 and GT212

[Kaotik]

Allison Klein in her PDC presentation very briefly said that it's D3D10 not 10.1.

Jawed

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/display/GraphicsGuide_Win7.mspx
Microsoft released a paper regarding graphics in Windows7 which confirms that the desktop is D3D10, but it also states that 10.1 or 11 support is required for "best windows 7 experience"

 

[Blazkowicz]

it's irrelevant!
who really gives a shit about that 3D desktop? DX9 is more than enough, and 3D desktops available on gnu-linux do more with DX7-level hardware.

 

[Kaotik]

it's irrelevant!
who really gives a shit about that 3D desktop? DX9 is more than enough, and 3D desktops available on gnu-linux do more with DX7-level hardware.

But DX10 (10.1, 11, who knows) might be a bit lighter load than DX9 based one. Also, the OGL desktop comparison is irrelevant, who ever said that for example Aero couldn't be done on a bloody DX5 card if they wanted to, it's a matter of is there point to do it so, or is it easier, lighter and what not when you use the capabilities of modern day cards (which would translate those DX7 or 5 or whatever calls to be done on shader units anyway, OGL is another thing of course, but same units would still do the calculations)
And do more? A rolling cube? Didn't you just say who gives a shit about 3D desktop? "can be done" and "should be done" are two different things, what makes you think one couldn't twist Aero to do that damn fancy cube with virtual desktops on all sides? (in fact, i think there was some project like this already somewhere?)

 

[Kaotik]

Allison Klein in her PDC presentation very briefly said that it's D3D10 not 10.1.

Jawed

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20081029/windows-7-dwm-cuts-memory-consumption-by-50/

 

[Jawed]

I watched a video a few days back, I think it was to do with the Colour Hot Tracking in the taskbar icons, and the presenter said this is only available on 10.1 - I think...

This isn't that video:

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=DLZcGDyacHo

So I suppose 10.1 adds some eye-candy to the eye-candy and I guess it makes more efficient use of render-targets/textures which could be how the memory savings come about.

Jawed

 

[BRiT]

Currently in Vista all windows are double-buffered. In Windows 7, they no longer need to do the double buffering. They mentioned this during the Keynote, at least that's what I recall. I might be misremembering since I did attend a lot of PDC sessions.

 

[Humus]

Any word on what changes where made so that double buffering isn't needed anymore? Or why it was required in the first place?

 

[fellix]

I know that Apple's OSX does double-buffering of the GUI elements (windows) in both system memory and the frame buffer (RT), but some folks are arguing, that this is not the exact case in Vista Aero?!
We need more clarification on this.

 

[DmitryKo]

FYI, the sessions and PPX presentations are available at Channel 9.

http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/

Click "Windows 7" in the tag cloud.

 

[DmitryKo]

Any word on what changes where made so that double buffering isn't needed anymore? Or why it was required in the first place?

This is a DirectX/GDI interoperability issue that has been resolved in Windows 7.

http://blogs.msdn.com/greg_schechter/archive/2006/05/02/588934.aspx

Dual buffers per window - yes, it's true that GDI windows have both a system memory and a video memory representation. There is without doubt a memory cost to doing this. One obvious alternative is to simply have a video memory representation and have the GDI redirection mechanism render to that format. There are two primary problems with this. The first is that the formats are not the same, and GDI doesn't support rendering into the DirectX format. Even if that were resolved, the more fundamental issue remains. Many GDI operations (XORs, alpha blending, and text are examples) are read-modify-write operations. To do that to a native video memory surface would involve reading back from video memory into the CPU (and thus into system memory), performing the operation, and then writing back. This is typically a horribly slow and pipeline-stalling operation.

WDDM v1.1 features 2D GUI acceleration DDI, so the system memory copy can now be eliminated.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/display/GraphicsGuide_Win7.mspx
Guidelines for Graphics in Windows 7
(this paper has been temporarily removed, but I have a local copy).

 

[N00b]

Xbitlabs reports that Nvidia has made the transition to 55nm, which may mean that we will see GT200b / GT206 / GTX 270 / GTX 290 soon.

“Improving gross margin while managing operating expenses enabled us to significantly improve our operating fundamentals. We transitioned our performance segment GPUs to 55nm and are now poised to recapture lost share,” said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and chief executive at Nvidia, during the most recent conference call with financial analysts.

“We have 65nm inventory remaining, but everything we are ramping now is 55nm and everything on the high-end that we are shipping now is 55nm,” added Mr. Huang, implying that Nvidia is ready with its code-named GT200b/GT206 graphics processor, which is a lower-cost version of the GT200/G200 that powers GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 280 graphics cards.

 

[suryad]

Xbitlabs reports that Nvidia has made the transition to 55nm, which may mean that we will see GT200b / GT206 / GTX 270 / GTX 290 soon.

Yeah I just saw that as well. Good news but with the rumored ATI 4xxx series refresh it will possibly be status quo?

 

[homerdog]

Quadro FX 5800 55nm?

Latest Quadro FX graphics card has 4GB of RAM

Quadro FX 5800

• 52 billion texels/s
• 4GB GDDR3 @ 800MHz
• 189W TDP

GTX280

• 48.2 billion texels/s
• 1GB GDDR3 @ 1107MHz
• 236W TDP

So there's a slightly increased core clock - 650MHz if my maths are correct - and a much lower TDP. Sure the GDDR3 is clocked lower but there's four times(!) as much of it.

 

[Psycho]

The TDP for the gtx280 is quite high compared to the actual load power - maybe they have tightened the specifications a bit for this one? (I guess that would also be a natural thing to do for a refresh, when you have better control of the process etc).
edit: it's most probably the 55nm part, the power saving based on TDP numbers just seems much better than usual for the 65->55 transition.

 

[Tchock]

Maybe just a new revision of GT200 instead?

Reviewers always seemed to had good samples of the GTX 280 but in the retail wild I don't think thermal output was that consistent.

They might have just binned it easily, but still I'm inclined to think that this is the 55nm shrink, especially after the 4GB RAM power consumption delta.

 

[Domell]

Well i wonder what NVIDIA will do with names of their future GPUs based on GT2xx architecture. According to rumours cards based on GT206 aka GT200B will be GTX290/GTX270. Q1/Q2 next year there are GT12/216. One of them is supposedly mainstream GPU which could be named as GTX250/GTX240/GTX230 but the second is most likely their hext "Big thing" until GT300 is released. So it should be significantly faster than any current GT200 version and even GT206. It is said to have much more Shaders and faster clockw thanks to 40nm. So if it is supposed to be much faster than GT200 and GT206 (which are around the same performance level IMO) what name this GPU will have? GTX295 or what? All we know that GTX380 and others GTX3xxs are reserved for GT300 GPUS.

Still completely mess with names.

PS. And another thing is how NVIDIA wants to compete with ATI with "only" DX10 GPU (GT212/GT216) next year when ATI is going to have DX11 GPUs (Rv870)?

 

[igg]

@Domell: I don't expect Rv870to be a DX11 GPU. IMO it's more likely they'll increase performance to compete with GT212 and release the DX11 GPU in the end of 2009.

Naming: Nvidia introduced a series called GeForce GT1xx (GeForce GT150 and so on). Maybe the new GPUs will be released as ULTRA290 or something like that.

 

[Kaotik]

Well i wonder what NVIDIA will do with names of their future GPUs based on GT2xx architecture. According to rumours cards based on GT206 aka GT200B will be GTX290/GTX270. Q1/Q2 next year there are GT12/216. One of them is supposedly mainstream GPU which could be named as GTX250/GTX240/GTX230 but the second is most likely their hext "Big thing" until GT300 is released. So it should be significantly faster than any current GT200 version and even GT206. It is said to have much more Shaders and faster clockw thanks to 40nm. So if it is supposed to be much faster than GT200 and GT206 (which are around the same performance level IMO) what name this GPU will have? GTX295 or what? All we know that GTX380 and others GTX3xxs are reserved for GT300 GPUS.

Still completely mess with names.

PS. And another thing is how NVIDIA wants to compete with ATI with "only" DX10 GPU (GT212/GT216) next year when ATI is going to have DX11 GPUs (Rv870)?

Or maybe GT206/200b won't be named GTX270/290 but rather 260/280+? Or maybe there will be just 270 & 280(+) with the new 280 having 206 too

 

[DegustatoR]

There won't be anything new in the NV's desktop videocard line this year AFAIK.

 

[Domell]

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10421&Itemid=1

...interesting but what he was talking about? Because according to leaked unofficial roadmap there will be GT212/216 in 40nm and GT300 too. So could it be possible that NVIDIA is going to do some architectural improvements in GT212/216 over current GT200s? (i mean something like G80-->G9x improvements).