Actually four chips - two Rampage, two SAGE (Yes, they ARE scalable, hence the name: Scalable-Architecture Geometry Engine)... and the PCB was no bigger than Ti4600's (actually less than an inch shorter).
Vince said:Actually four chips - two Rampage, two SAGE (Yes, they ARE scalable, hence the name: Scalable-Architecture Geometry Engine)... and the PCB was no bigger than Ti4600's (actually less than an inch shorter).
Um, yeah... Actually, I knew of no plans for a PCB design with >1 SAGE. Their is no tangible increase once the theoretical T-setup preformance has been eclipsed - which due to SLI limitations was that which could be done on 1 rasterizer. Thus, I call Bullshit.
I find this utterly ridiculous - Why can't this whole damn thing go away?
Vince, sometimes I'd love to rip your throat out, because you've been called on a lot of bullshit in the past, mostly at x3dfx.
In fact, I do know at least one ex-3dfx engineer who never even knew a Vince (note the at least in there). And I'm not exactly talking about no-names.
Bonehed316 said:you go by the alais "insider" where you claim to have, at one point, worked at 3dfx. though ive never heard you utter the words, you certianly dont seem to argue against the point.
now you ask "why didnt nvidia make a rampage?" because they dont have the designs. simple as that. they cant. how do we know? because they havent yet. any company who had a risc co processor with programmable coding would put it out asap. nvidia has not. so they dont own it. but they were affraid of it. as im sure vince knows. they were scared to death of it. they were just getting on to their feet, when the vsa was supposed to come out at 183mhz. the vsa could have, with good drivers and no delays, dominated the gf2. the rampage WOULD have dominated the gf3. thats two missed cycles for nvidia. 2 more cycles down the drain. they couldnt have stood that. the cheaper alternative was to invest money in bringing their biggest copetitor down.
you know nvidia plays dirty. they ADVERTISE that they sue more companies than anyone else. theyre PROUD of it. they fight dirty. theyre snakes. all of them. ill wager any amount of money to bet that they paid off some 3dfx employees. paid them to delay the vsa. paid them to cause bugs. but who would do such a thing? well, i said that the rampage was supposed to come out after the voodoo3. well scott decided on the vsa. the rampage would have been more worth the wait. at this point, some of the engineers didnt like scott because of his decisions in this area, and his decisoin to buy STB and make their own boards. made alot of the engineers angry.
so thats it. thats, id wager, the most accurate account of what REALLY happened to rampge, 3dfx, and nvidia. id wager any amount of money on it. nvidia are evil. dont trust them, dont listen to what they say, they lie, and theyre just horrible people
now that you have lost THAT credibility, lets move on.
Bonehed316 said:reguardless, you probably worked at nvidia at one point, and thats how you think you know so much. so your never hearing of a dual sage pcb wouldnt be surprising, coming from someone who never had any affiliation with 3dfx.
now you ask "why didnt nvidia make a rampage?" because they dont have the designs. simple as that. they cant. how do we know? because they havent yet. any company who had a risc co processor with programmable coding would put it out asap. nvidia has not. so they dont own it.
Even if 3dfx had the capability to make a preliminary design of something as good as you claim Rampage was, they obviously didn't have the ability to implement it, which makes it about as wonderful and useful as a BitBoys product.
LOL, i was also thinking "it has no gates, huh, this guys has NO CLUE!"Geeforcer said:Oh, and let me get this staight:
GF3 is "cisk" while Rampage was "risk"? It had no "gates"? Gates were converted to transistors? LMAO.
Do you know what a CMOS gate acutally is?
Althornin said:LOL, i was also thinking "it has no gates, huh, this guys has NO CLUE!"
Tagrineth said:Actually four chips - two Rampage, two SAGE (Yes, they ARE scalable, hence the name: Scalable-Architecture Geometry Engine)... and the PCB was no bigger than Ti4600's (actually less than an inch shorter). Keep in mind the SAGE chips didn't have their own RAM, they (ab)used the AGP interface. Sustained performance per SAGE was pretty good, considering they had 2GB/sec or so dedicated... and extra bandwidth could be extended to the Rampage(s).
Oh, and full DX8.0 compliancy is in the Rampage core... SAGE is a geometry accelerator - in the sense that a Rampage on its own does have not-too-great-but-still-there hardware T&L/VS.
Geeforcer said:I always thought that the plans called for 3 chips: 2 Rampage and 1 SAGE for the high-end boards. But assuming that there would indeed be a 4 chips board, how could it possibly be an inch shorter then Ti 4600. It would have the same amount of RAM, but 4 times more chips. Additionally, how did 3dfx intend this monster to be powered?