ATI R600

[PaulS]

Given that R500 is basically the spring 05 part, and the XBox2 is (at best) Summer/Fall 05, it's not out of the question that it's an R600 derivative. However, as HB noted, I suspect the truth lies somewhere inbetween. Another cross-generational hybrid part, a la the NV2A?

 

[jimmyjames123]

Actually thats precicely what i am commenting on.

Read more carefully what DaveB wrote in that linked thread. He is saying essentially the opposite of what you are saying.

 

[PaulS]

Actually thats precicely what i am commenting on.

Read more carefully what DaveB wrote in that linked thread. He is saying essentially the opposite of what you are saying.

Hence he commented by saying that he believed Dave's information was inaccurate

 

[jimmyjames123]

DaveB seemed quite convinced that he was right. I guess it's DB's word vs HB's word huh? We'll just have to wait and see...

 

[Megadrive1988]

Given that R500 is basically the spring 05 part, and the XBox2 is (at best) Summer/Fall 05, it's not out of the question that it's an R600 derivative. However, as HB noted, I suspect the truth lies somewhere inbetween. Another cross-generational hybrid part, a la the NV2A?

well, you might very well be right.

however a cross between R500 and R600 would not be the same as NV2A being a cross between NV20 and NV25. the R500 and R600 are two different generations. The NV25 was simply a beefed up refresh of NV20.
thus, NV2A was between NV20 and its refresh. I suppose one could agrue that NV2A incorporated elements of the NV30 (some geometry features, as once mentioned) but I don't see much evidence of NV30 in NV2A. I suppose some shader length things, but.. well nevermind.


with that said, I am more than willing to believe Dave B over HB on the R500 vs R600 issue.

R600 makes more sense. Microsoft NEEDS the absolute latest ATI technology they can get their hands on, in the fight against PS3.

 

[KimB]

even though it shares some technology with R600, it has enough of its own technology (the stuff MS holds) that it never gets released on the PC, in the way that GeForce 4 Ti 4200 was very close to the Xbox GPU.

I'm pretty sure that the rendering engine of the NV2A and NV25 were almost identical, the difference being that a lower level of programming was exposed for the NV2A.

I don't know if ATI will go down a similar route: we'll have to see.

 

[Dave Baumann]

From the information here, it seems that NV2A also featured NV30's double pumped Z/Stencil, had more FX units per pipeline and NVIDIA also themselve made note that NV2A would feature some of NV3x's vertex processing capabilities (but I don't know what that was).

 

[Ardrid]

Just wanted to say that there is no R450. It's R480

 

[Megadrive1988]

R480 it is.

question is, is R420 ==> R480 like R300 ==> R350

 

[Ardrid]

R480 it is.

question is, is R420 ==> R480 like R300 ==> R350

I believe so. R480 is supposed to be the refresh.

 

[bloodbob]

R480 it is.

question is, is R420 ==> R480 like R300 ==> R350

I hear its gonna be a fair bit bigger then a refresh but as if I find out any good information from anyone till just before a product is released :/

 

[nAo]

From the information here, it seems that NV2A also featured NV30's double pumped Z/Stencil, had more FX units per pipeline and NVIDIA also themselve made note that NV2A would feature some of NV3x's vertex processing capabilities (but I don't know what that was).

That's true, with no color writes NV2A can easily achieve a real (measured) fillrate above 1 GPixel/s (where theoretical maximum would be 933 MPixel/s). It's pretty simple to achieve that..one have just to disable color writes and switch on multisampling..

ciao,
Marco

 

[bloodbob]

You'll find out why - May 5.

Its may 5th tell us XBOX 2 details!

 

[nAo]

Its may 5th tell us XBOX 2 details!

LOL

 

[Evildeus]

The interview is there. XBOX2 seems a derivative of R400...

 

[bloodbob]

The interview is there. XBOX2 seems a derivative of R400...

Oh I must have skipped that part hmm looks like the xbox2 won't be a SM3.0 part.

 

[Evildeus]

Not sure, because we don't know what parts were put aside for the Xbox2 and the other for R420...
Last question:

Just after the introduction of R300 you talked about R400, however shortly afterwards that appeared to go off the roadmap and R420 appeared – what happened during that period? And would that be related to upcoming contracts with console vendors?

We changed the roadmap.

You can look at cause and effect. That was not the cause,internal changes was the cause and the outcome was that we decided the best way to go forward was to do “thisâ€￾ with the PC roadmap and take “thatâ€￾ and use it with X-Box. But that wasn’t the cause of the roadmap change, we had to make this change anyhow due to execution issues.

 

[PatrickL]

Don't know how you deduce the R400 part from that. ATI internal roadmap is already fixed to R700 or R800 i bet, so when Orton says that it could talk about R400 up to R600.

 

[Saem]

"this" speaks about the current part R420, while "that" speaks of what could have been with the R400.

So, now the quesitons are.
-When is the R480 going to be released?
-What process will it use?
-What will ATI have learned by then or has already learned -- as relevent?

Personally, here is my take. Say they couldn't work the current process they wanted with a reasonable die size. This seems to be a big issue with them. The next was power. So lets say they've advanced these a fair bit.

Say, they can get more transistors in there and keep the power acceptable.

Now, what are they going to do with this?

Well the R480 could be a fairly radical departure from the R420. Maybe, they've learned how cram enough transistors in there that a high speed, more flexible part is possible. Remember, Orton said Nvidia was about 10%-15% larger die, could they squeeze things a bit tighter? Improve yields on the current process to absorb any hit that they might incur with their current setup.

The R400 work wasn't ditched. Merely delayed till it was feasible.

 

[christoph]

Don't know how you deduce the R400 part from that. ATI internal roadmap is already fixed to R700 or R800 i bet, so when Orton says that it could talk about R400 up to R600.

because of the question that was asked?

Just after the introduction of R300 you talked about R400, however shortly afterwards that appeared to go off the roadmap and R420 appeared – what happened during that period? And would that be related to upcoming contracts with console vendors?