Ati following in nvidia's footsteps ?

Just being greedy!

The only data that's going to be shuttled to-from memory is vertex data, texture data (e.g. render to texture) and the frame-buffer. I'm not thinking of "intermediate" data, such as the post-transform vertex cache (buffer) as being stored in main memory.

But internally there are all sorts of data paths, some are shared by multiple units of the same type, others are effectively point to point.

I should have said "various buffers, set-up engines and caches".

I'm just saying all this stuff to see if we can get some more informed opinion...

Jawed

 

Well, whatever it is, I look at the Xenos piece and the kind of conversations that must have gone into it, and am greatly comforted when afterwards Wavey is still making allusions of the kind above.

 

I thought the memory controllers on modern GPUs already do read/write reordering for coherence.

 

...one ring to rule them all. With un1f13d memory busszz

 

If the respin does work ok. The R520 might cost a fair bit less than the G70 to produce. They might price it like the 800XL.

I think the 90nm process is much higher volume with 12inch wafers compared to the 130nm SOI process they were using for the 800XT and 850XT.

 

That would be a nice change of pace.

 

It's not logical to price your top performing card like the 800XL.
The costs of the respin itself (and the delay in revenues) must be compensated also.

 

I'm not sure you "should" be comparing the G70 to the R520... I do not think anyone has a clear understanding of the G70's history in relationship to the product road map - NV48, 50, etc. I'm willing to bet a soda that it is more inline with the R4xx series than the R5xx. I always hold the right to be incorrect though

 

I will rape a herd of donkeys if ati`s high-end, rather troublesome by the looks of it, souped up mega GPU is priced like an XL.No way that is going to happen, unless God has finally taken heed to the pain of hardware enthusiasts and has added an eleventh commandment-Thou shalt not overprice like hell thy products, for that is evil

 

Sig!!!

 

Some people are thinking the R520 may be priced at $500-550, rather then $600 like the 7800 GTX.

 

Well, given they need 512mb of the fastest memory for the framebuffer to enable the 16x aa their new bus makes possible, I'm thinking not.

Oops. I've said too much.




[I AM kidding]

 

Run donkeys.

 

That's a far cry from the price of the XL though. And i seriously doubt that the price of the 7800 GTX will be 600$ when the R520 arrives. Though i guess that that depends on the price of the R520.

 

The GTX is more like 550$, from what I`ve seen.Heck, it`s 514 euros where I live, and this country is anything but cheap.500-600 seems to be the spot for 256mb high-end cards, but i don`t think the XL fits in the picture, unless someone makes an uber-expensive XL.

IMO, the only imaginable chance of it being in the 200-300 range is for it to suck so bad it forces ATI to use dumping prices-how likely is that now?

 

[offtopic]
funny thing... I had Parhelia's "number specs" several months before release on my signature at muropaketti.com (biggest finnish HW site, around 40,000 users.) and nobody didn't even noticed. And I used to post a lot back then.

I originally thought putting same here, but thought that being too risky.[/offtopic]

My comment? well, IF R520 still shows up in late summer and is as fast as G70, but priced a bit lower, then we'll see some serious real driver tweaks from both sides. (3 years ago sam situation would have mean good price competition, but that's gone.)

IF R520 is inferior to G70, then we'll see some quick respins from that core to secure some of the markets (and possible driver optimizations again.) Maybe that would accelerate ATI's rather slow R&D (lately... since R300) quite bit too.

 

What if the R520 blows the doors off the G70?

 

Nvidia has an advantage in that they are shipping now with a really good looking part. ATI may have to drop prices in order to get that marketshare back, and they should be able to afford to do so if their yields are good, as they will be getting a lot more chips per wafer than Nvidia.

However, if R520 is really great, ATI may be able to keep their prices high by showing that R520 is the best thing out there by miles.

 

How likely is that?What are the odds of either NV or ATI blowing the other out of the water?Even with the NV3X it wasn`t a blow the doors off situation in terms of immediately apparent performance.