5900? NV4x!

[jvd]

Doesn't that still count as 'better' ?

I dunno. Like the 9700pro was a major step up from the geforce 4 4600 which was the best thing yet. That was in agust of last year. This year the jump was much smaller to the 9800xt . So 2002 was a much better year for video cards than 2003. 2004 might be a much better year than 2005 for video cards. Thats just my thinking though.

 

[cthellis42]

I think he was just slyly point out that we pretty much ALWAYS get "better cards"... we just might not be getting better increases over the last bunch.

 

[fbg1]

But otherwise the similarities are striking, aren't they?

So are the differences. In addition to what's already been mentioned, Nvidia has other more reliable revenue streams, notably Nforce, that will help it weather the storm longer than 3dfx did.

 

[jvd]

But otherwise the similarities are striking, aren't they?

So are the differences. In addition to what's already been mentioned, Nvidia has other more reliable revenue streams, notably Nforce, that will help it weather the storm longer than 3dfx did.

Well considering the nforce 3 is not the athlon 64 mb to own I don't know if it will help

 

[KimB]

Well considering the nforce 3 is not the athlon 64 mb to own I don't know if it will help

From the benchmarks I've seen, it is pretty much tied with VIA's chipset. However, this was to be expected. With an on-die memory controller, different motherboard chipsets just aren't going to be that different in performance.

The chipsets seem to have very similar featuresets, but with the single-chip design of the nForce3, it should be a lot cheaper. A quick look at pricewatch shows that the nForce3 is now available in large quantities, at a reasonable price. The KT800 is not.

But you seem to think that the VIA chipset would be the one to own. Why?

 

[PaulS]

Whilst we're on the subject of the nForce 3:

Isn't this rather reminiscent of the NV30 128bit vs R300 256bit arguments, that nVidia was putting forward at that time?

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Whilst we're on the subject of the nForce 3:

Isn't this rather reminiscent of the NV30 128bit vs R300 256bit arguments, that nVidia was putting forward at that time?

Yes, that's what I was thinking. You know that the next revision of Nforce 3 will have higher bandwidth, and then Nvidia will be telling us how we really, really need the extra speed they said wasn't necessary six months beforehand.

 

[Sxotty]

BZB you should have read the whole thing the argument actually does hold some water, in that the next revision will have gigabit ethernet and will need more speed than the current offering.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

BZB you should have read the whole thing the argument actually does hold some water, in that the next revision will have gigabit ethernet and will need more speed than the current offering.

I did read the whole thing, but to me it just confirms what seems to be known about Nforce 3 earlier - it seems to have a worse spec in many ways than Nforce 2, either for technical or marketing reasons. How will Nforce 3 cope when board manufacturers ship motherboards with things like GB Ethernet already on-board as they do with the Nforce 2 solutions? Will a current Nforce 3 board with GB ethernet be choking at the memory bandwidth? Probably.

It seems to me that this is Nvidia's marketing speak just spuriously explaining away deficiences in the implementation. For instance, why no Soundstorm on Nforce 3? Technical reasons, or they just want to sell add-in board versions? Saying "we don't need the extra speed" is because they're shipping a memory controller that it significantly slower than their competition. It's kind of like admitting they don't need the extra speed because the rest of the chipset is underspecced.

Sounds to me like they've rushed Nforce 3 out to meet the Athlon 64 launch, and the next revision will really be the Nforce 3 chipset you wish you'd bought for your Athlon 64.

 

[arjan de lumens]

I did read the whole thing, but to me it just confirms what seems to be known about Nforce 3 earlier - it seems to have a worse spec in many ways than Nforce 2, either for technical or marketing reasons. How will Nforce 3 cope when board manufacturers ship motherboards with things like GB Ethernet already on-board as they do with the Nforce 2 solutions? Will a current Nforce 3 board with GB ethernet be choking at the memory bandwidth? Probably.

1GBit ethernet = 125 MBytes/sec. The HT link should be fine (even the handicapped version in Nforce3 can do >1GByte/sec in either direction) but the old PCI bus may cause trouble. More a PCI bandwidth rather than a core memory bandwidth issue.

It seems to me that this is Nvidia's marketing speak just spuriously explaining away deficiences in the implementation. For instance, why no Soundstorm on Nforce 3? Technical reasons, or they just want to sell add-in board versions? Saying "we don't need the extra speed" is because they're shipping a memory controller that it significantly slower than their competition. It's kind of like admitting they don't need the extra speed because the rest of the chipset is underspecced.

There is no memory controller as such in the Nforce3, just a Hypertransport link. One of the major points of Athlon64 is that the memory controller is now a part of the CPU itself. As it appears right now, the only device that can really draw bandwidth enough to strain the HT link of Nforce3 is the AGP bus.

 

[nonamer]

BZB you should have read the whole thing the argument actually does hold some water, in that the next revision will have gigabit ethernet and will need more speed than the current offering.

I did read the whole thing, but to me it just confirms what seems to be known about Nforce 3 earlier - it seems to have a worse spec in many ways than Nforce 2, either for technical or marketing reasons. How will Nforce 3 cope when board manufacturers ship motherboards with things like GB Ethernet already on-board as they do with the Nforce 2 solutions? Will a current Nforce 3 board with GB ethernet be choking at the memory bandwidth? Probably.

It seems to me that this is Nvidia's marketing speak just spuriously explaining away deficiences in the implementation. For instance, why no Soundstorm on Nforce 3? Technical reasons, or they just want to sell add-in board versions? Saying "we don't need the extra speed" is because they're shipping a memory controller that it significantly slower than their competition. It's kind of like admitting they don't need the extra speed because the rest of the chipset is underspecced.

Sounds to me like they've rushed Nforce 3 out to meet the Athlon 64 launch, and the next revision will really be the Nforce 3 chipset you wish you'd bought for your Athlon 64.

As a one-chip solution, the Nforce3 easily undercut in cost of any other motherboard, so it's the low mantra (a la 5200), so it doesn't need the most features or performance. Actually, it does have Soundstorm but it's disabled. It must be some technical reason why it isn't enabled. A single chip solution is probably more difficult to implement than the other designs it would seem.

And the Nforce3 150 came out like in June for the Opteron, and now it's rebadged/revised for the A64. I believe that it's the 250 that was really targeted for the consumer PC, so "rushed" is the wrong idea.

 

[jvd]

Well considering the nforce 3 is not the athlon 64 mb to own I don't know if it will help

From the benchmarks I've seen, it is pretty much tied with VIA's chipset. However, this was to be expected. With an on-die memory controller, different motherboard chipsets just aren't going to be that different in performance.

The chipsets seem to have very similar featuresets, but with the single-chip design of the nForce3, it should be a lot cheaper. A quick look at pricewatch shows that the nForce3 is now available in large quantities, at a reasonable price. The KT800 is not.

But you seem to think that the VIA chipset would be the one to own. Why?

There are two versions of the nforce 3 . One is very available and the other is very rare . The one that is rare is the ultra part and has the ht links running at 200mhz faster in line with the via chipset. Its also not as feature rich as the the via chipset. I own both.