Clock speed ceiling on NV40?

[trinibwoy]

What can we really expect from refresh parts? Given that Nvidia probably pushed NV40 architecture to its limit for the initial launch can we expect any significant speed increases in the next six months? Is there an imminent die-shrink that would facilitate this?

I ask because I am pretty impressed with the NV40's ability to keep up or surpass R420 performance at a very significant clock speed deficit.

 

[Cryect]

Might be part of the reason they are showing off SLI but kinda doubt it.

But, I'm not really sure what they could do a refresh part. I've been wondering this as well.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Isn't it a bit premature to be talking about a refresh part when the cards are just now becoming widely available? :|

 

[trinibwoy]

Isn't it a bit premature to be talking about a refresh part when the cards are just now becoming widely available? :|

Digi, since when is any discussion on the Technology forum 'premature'? I'm quite sure that the refreshes will come out before SM4.0, DX10 and Unreal Engine 3....did that stop discussion on those topics?

 

[digitalwanderer]

Sorry, I wasn't trying to diss ya...it just really seemed too early to me.

I'm still trying to get a handle on the cards everybody put out, I haven't given a whole lot of thought to the future right now.

My apologies, I'll shut up.

 

[trinibwoy]

No probs. Even with the limited availabililty of retail cards shouldn't overclocking ability (with stock cooling) and possible availability of faster memory hint at what we could expect in fall?

If the refreshes will be a la 9800PRO -> 9800XT then they won't be worth waiting for IMO.

 

[KimB]

It appears that the next high-end card from nVidia will not much much faster, if any, than the current 6800 Ultra, as it will essentially just be a PCI Express version of the current video card.

The NV48, which should be available sometime around the end of the year, give or take a few months, will be the traditional "refresh" part, and should offer some noticeable advancements. Most of what I would expect are higher clock speeds all around, but with most of the improvements being in per-clock efficiency. I therefore expect more efficient shader execution, particularly with branching and FP inputs/outputs.

 

[jvd]

I would say nvida will make it into the low 500s and ati will make it into the low 600s . Mabye mid 600s .

I think both nv4x and r42x parts will be short lived though

the current ram is already hard to get. I don't much faster ram comingo ut any time soon

 

[Briareus]

Isn't it a bit premature to be talking about a refresh part when the cards are just now becoming widely available? :|

I figure in a couple weeks it will be time to start talking about "5th" gen GPUs. I wonder if we will have more than 2 cards to talk about next go round.

 

[KimB]

I would say nvida will make it into the low 500s and ati will make it into the low 600s . Mabye mid 600s .

I think both nv4x and r42x parts will be short lived though

Nah, I expect the NV4x to carry nVidia until the release of the next version of DirectX. I mean, it really has everything that you'd want from a DirectX 9 card. The only real differences should come in the form of efficiency improvements, possibly with the addition of MSAA to floating-point buffers, or other relatively minor changes.

As for ATI, they'll probably finally release a product with the features of the GeForce 6800 next year, but I don't think you can look at the clockspeeds of current hardware to predict what ATI's next gen's clock speeds will be like. In fact, given that nVidia will have had much more time to refine their architecture by that time, they'll probably be able to get higher clockspeeds than ATI.

 

[jvd]

There are still other things in the dx 9 spec that nvida can add or improve.


I don't think they will keep the nv4x that long. It seems it may not be till 2006 for dx 10. Which i don't know about u but if thats the end of 2006 the 6800 tech will look a bit long in the tooth.


As for ati . I would fully expect them to release a card that would match up like the geforce 4 ti 4600 did to the 9700pro.

Esp if as you say nvidia sticks with the 6800 tech and just increases performance.

 

[Ailuros]

I would fully expect them to release a card that would match up like the geforce 4 ti 4600 did to the 9700pro.

Chances are high that this scenario was a one time occurance. Unless something goes inherently wrong with either/or IHV and similar delays occur in the foreseeable future, I don't think we'll easily see such performance differences again.

I'd rather think that both IHVs will be extremely careful from now on not to step into any traps or make serious mistakes. Competition has gotten too fierce these days to allow any slips at all.

 

[KimB]

There are still other things in the dx 9 spec that nvida can add or improve.

Like what, exactly? There really aren't any more dramatic changes to make in DirectX 9-level hardware. That is, unless nVidia wants to put out some hardware that has unified pipelines a bit early. That could help efficiency, preventing the hardware from being bottlenecked by either geometry or pixel processing at the expense of the other.

 

[StellaArtois]

Aren't nVidia supposed to be moving to low-k for the NV48? Surely that'll help clock speeds a little, up to the 500 mark maybe. I don't see ATi with as much potential for ramping clockspeeds. But then they're clocked higher to start with...

PCIe, SLI, 512Mb cards... Doom3 eat your heart out

 

[duncan36]

As for ATI, they'll probably finally release a product with the features of the GeForce 6800 next year

Maybe by that time Nvidia will release one with the features of ATi aka a card that reaches full mass production.

 

[overclocked]

Do we know who is making NV48?

 

[JoshMST]

This is actually a very interesting question. If we look at NVIDIA's past, it has had a history of solid refresh parts, as well as some really mediocre parts. The GeForce 256 turned into the very capable GeForce 2, while on the other hand the FX 5900 turned into the FX 5950 (not much of a refresh at all).

The NV40 architecture is very impressive (from my point of view). NVIDIA did many things right here that they had failed to do with the previous two generations (NV30 and NV35 and their derivatives). This is an architecture that will live on for quite a few generations of products. Saying this, there are also a lot of improvements that NVIDIA could make. The NV40 architecture is not nearly as mature nor efficient as ATI's R420 (which I consider to be a very well rounded product with a solid feature set), but it does arguably bring some compelling features of its own to the tables. I would say that the NV48 refresh part will be significantly faster than the current NV40/NV45 parts. This speed will come from architectural optimizations and reworking parts of the design. So not only will there be better per clock performance, but quite a few clock speed optimizations will be done. I would expect the refresh part would hit 500 MHz without a problem (depending on if they keep with IBM or TSMC... and it looks like they will be staying with IBM for the near future).

It may not be the jump that occured with the GF256 to GF2, but it will be certainly better than the FX 5900 Ultra to the FX 5950.

 

[trinibwoy]

With NV40's superior per-clock performance if Nvidia can manage 500Mhz out of a 220 million transistor chip in addition to efficiency improvements then ATI will be hard pressed to compete. I would say R4xx would need to be approaching 600Mhz along with it's own tweaks. NV4x @ 500Mhz seems optimistic at the moment but who knows.

 

[KimB]

This is actually a very interesting question. If we look at NVIDIA's past, it has had a history of solid refresh parts, as well as some really mediocre parts. The GeForce 256 turned into the very capable GeForce 2, while on the other hand the FX 5900 turned into the FX 5950 (not much of a refresh at all).

Um, the 5900 was the refresh to the 5800, and it was a very significant refresh (though partly because the 5800 was so, well, broken). Since the GeForce2 Ultra, nVidia has also released "speed bumps" of many of its cores. I don't expect we'll see an increase in performance over the GeForce 6800 Ultra until the NV48 hits the shelves (it looks like the NV45 is just a PCI Express version of the same card).

 

[trinibwoy]

Will there be a GT variant of NV45?