ATI RV740 review/preview

You are basically asking for OpenCL?

 

Heck yes. but what would happen to Graphics+ then?

 

Well, I am definitely looking forward to Snow Leopard personally

 

It would become Graphics++.

 

CUDA can't die, if it's backend for OpenCL.

 

Didn't CUDA set the foundation for OpenCL's success? It's one thing to yearn for open standards but I don't get the CUDA hate.

 

It's not a success yet

Not saying it won't be, but it's early days.

I get the (vague) impression that Apple's next OS will do a lot of stuff with OpenCL. Perhaps thread-worthy. Wonder if this stuff was prototyped on NVidia's hardware with CUDA?

Jawed

 

On the gamers side at least much of the 'hate' towards CUDA comes from the fact they decided to "hide" PhysX behind it

 

If you look at the both programming guides, you will see, that there are many commonalities; same things use different word (Execution Domain vs. Grid; Wavefront vs. Blocks/Warps etc).
I think, that the G80 is the basement for the OpenCL (hardware&software), everything is built on it.

 

What other option did they have?
If something like PhysX needs scatter-gather, then you can't use old fashioned shader based GPGPU. So then you either have to use CUDA or Brook (since there was no OpenCL yet.)

I'd say, in their case, the choice was a no brainer.

 

If you ask me, OpenCL 1.0 is CUDA with different terminology. Reading the spec makes me feel like it's almost totally nV's work. Of course many parties would have contributed, but the similarity is too much to CUDA. And yes G80 is the baseline, everything elsein compute 1.1 and above is via extensions.

 

Well, Apple was the driving force behind OpenCL. They don't really have much nvidia hardware except the Geforce 9600M GT and 8800GS with half decent performance.

One can wonder why they went with the Radeon HD 4870 as their newest upgrade for the Mac Pro.

 

OpenCL is in the future. Core Image is now, and will likely be entrenched in Apple's pro apps for some time as it is a part of the OS and Pro/Prosumer suites.

Core Image tasks (Final Cut Pro, Motion, Aperture, 3rd party Pixelmator) perform much better on ATI than on nVidia for some reasons. A 3870 beats the 8800GT handily.

http://www.barefeats.com/harper16.html

So I'd argue that the 4870/4850 on the Pro/iMac BTO is actually a really good choice for the ALU power provided against power draw, since FCS is quite a driving factor for higher-class Mac usage.

 

some more nvidia hardware:

Gen 3 macbook pro was GF8600
Gen 4 macbook pro was GF8600

All current models (except mac pro?) have GF9400

So apple is using really much nvidia hardware.

 

I was talking about 'decent' hardware. Not utter crap

 

I would like a geforce 8600 in my desktop.

 

Not anymore you wouldn't. Slow and power hogging compared to the ATI options out now.

 

RV740 is supposedly in the wild in mobile form, but I've looked in vain for power draw figures.
Anyone seen any data?

 

I am really looking forward to this card. I think there is a good chance I'll buy one as an upgrade to my 3870 if it can reach or exceed 4850 performance with lower idle power consumption.

 

I see it as a good upgrade in a CF'ed environment.