Whilst there's some truth to this, ATi have said quite the opposite - they've stated a number of times that they expect to beat NV40, regardless of the specs. It'll be a shame if they only ship with the memory clocked at 600mhz. 200mhz of headroom, nice. Ignoring the heat, obviously
Which could mean that either NV40 isn't a full 16x1 or R420 isn't limited to 8x1 as implied by the Inq. Someone's rumored specs are not accurate, that's for sure. Perhaps nVidia leaked the "full 16" pipeline info because they found out something about R420 that got them worried. Or perhaps there are those who are connected to one or to both who are fueling the speculation because it's entertaining to watch the discussions between people who aren't connected. Ya think?
What was he on about with emphasising the 'snow' aspect? "SnowBIT show", skiing, Canada + hockey etc Sounds like hes blatantly providing a snowjob to me. ie false info.
Perhaps, but maybe the NV40 specs are true, and ATi are just saying what you'd expect them to say. They'd hardly be saying "Well, ya know what? I think we screwed up badly. Hot damn, we gonna get owned!" Of course, maybe everyone is telling the truth. Or no one is. OH THE DRAMA.
Well, hasn't there already been an indication that R420 would be in the ballpark of "2-3" times the performance of R360, at least in Colin McCrae? If that's the case, then who gives a shit if the memory is "only" at 1000 if it whoops ass on the previous generation?
"When I first tried the NV40, I found it too spicy for my taste. But, as I let it sit in my mouth, this wonderful flavor emerged. It reminded me so much of my childhood and the foods my mother used to make. The Iron Chef truly showed his mastery of cuisine with this dish." Bah, Iron Chef Commentary is hard. American Chopper Commentary, on the other hand, is far more fulfilling and a lot easier.
I've been getting hooked on that show, something about fabricating with metal that I just like...I gotta get me an english wheel and trick out my mini-van! I still think that all we're hearing is a lot of idle speculation with no hard data. I'm sure we've heard some solid info on the card, but there ain't no way to tell who/what is right until some actual cards come out. I'm not saying that it isn't fun to speculate, just keep in mind that most of us really don't know. (Gads, I'm mellowing in me old age! )
Because such indications are evidence that it's 2-3 times faster when pixel shading. There are, you know, other aspects of rendering that tend to be more bandwidth limited, such as AA. I don't understand why people seem to be opposed to the idea of whooping even more ass.
Karma, justice, balance...whatever you want to call it. Everyone likes the thought of a great new card that can kick more ass, but everyone seems to like the idea of the bad guys losing and getting hurt more for their terrible business practices more so.
There's still something to be said for brute force, and ATI seems like they simply won't even use aggressive clock speeds even if they have very efficient architectures to begin with. Considering how competitive a 9800XT would be if it had 450Mhz RAM (a 85Mhz bump, and it would be competitive in that it would win just about everything), I'm not a big fan of ATI's conservative nature in that department. Sure, a lot of it is to appease OEMs, but the idea of a R420 clocked at 550/1200 or something crazy like that makes my mouth water, as I'm sure it does to a lot of other people in the enthusiast crowd.