first r420 review leak

[jimmyjames123]

I still stand by my assertion that SM 3.0 is as "marketable" as PS 1.4 (DX 8.1) is over DX 8.0. That is...not much.

Time will tell of course, but we can see that some developers have already started developing games with SM 3.0 support in mind. I don't think of SM 3.0 as the main marketing point, but it is certainly a marketable point. How marketable? Tough to say.

Yes, and did you see the rumored specs of the 6800 non-ultra? Yeeech...

There is also supposed to be a 6800 GT that fits in between the 6800NU and 6800U, also supposedly a single slot design. Not sure about that, but we will see.

 

[DemoCoder]

6800 non-U is to Radeon 9500.
as
6800U is to Radeon 9700


The real fight is NV41 vs RV4?0 for the midrange. X800PRO and 6800-nonU are going to disappear quickly.

 

[jvd]

Nothing wrong with aggressively marketting the technology, though. If TWIMTBP means SM 3.0 available in a render path for cards that support it, all the better. The more accustomed ISVs become to using it, the sooner we'll see it become the norm once it becomes available in more video cards.

well its hard. Twimtbp has to make the games playable on the crap that nvidia has sold for the last 2 years first , then they can worry about p.s 3 suppot. But look at farcry . Why are all the benches using p.s 1.1 instead of 2.0

That kinda has more to do with NVidia's hardware design than developer relations. . . There's no doubt that SM 3.0 will be pushed only to the point where it'll run well on their cards. Whether a developer decides to experiment beyond that point has nothing to do with NVidia. Still, even a bit of support for the tech would be great.

yes it would be , that i can agree on . Unless of course for some reason its slow on the nv40 like p.s2 stuff was on the nv30

 

[jimmyjames123]

what do you mean by scalable . Clock speed ? well i dunno how much higher they can go. Look at the heatsink on it already.

Check out the 3DCenter translated article here for more info on scaleability:

http://www.3dcenter.org/artikel/nv40_technik/index_e.php

 

[trinibwoy]

yes it would be , that i can agree on . Unless of course for some reason its slow on the nv40 like p.s2 stuff was on the nv30

if i'm not mistaken ps3.0 on nv40 should be faster (not including branching) than ps2.0 on nv40.

 

[jvd]

what do you mean by scalable . Clock speed ? well i dunno how much higher they can go. Look at the heatsink on it already.

Check out the 3DCenter translated article here for more info on scaleability:

http://www.3dcenter.org/artikel/nv40_technik/index_e.php

what page is it on , quick glance dosn't say anything about scalable , from what i can make out , not good with tranlation

 

[jvd]

yes it would be , that i can agree on . Unless of course for some reason its slow on the nv40 like p.s2 stuff was on the nv30

if i'm not mistaken ps3.0 on nv40 should be faster (not including branching) than ps2.0 on nv40.

how fast is the p.s 2.0 on the nv40 . I've only seen farcry benched at 1.1

 

[jimmyjames123]

Page 6 of 6..."An Architecture to Scale" section.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

The real fight is NV41 vs RV4?0 for the midrange. X800PRO and 6800-nonU are going to disappear quickly.

Not so sure about that.

I would expect that to be the case with the nVidia part (that is one HUGE die), but as long as the Pro sells in the $250+ range, I see it as a completely different situation than the 9500 Pro. I don't see why a 166 million transistor chip on 0.13u can't sell in the same price range that a 110 million transistor chip on 0.15u currently does. Would be interesting to know the exact die sizes of the R300 and R420.

There have been rumors of a DUAL disabled quad X800 SE. And that part I would suspect (if it makes it to market) would be one that ATI would want replaced ASAP with a more targeted chip. (Like a die shrunk R300). But I bet ATI doesn't have any near future plans to replace the X800 Pro....

 

[AlphaWolf]

it might not be so rough there is a few title that are going to use p.s 3.0 some and by the time p.s 3.0 becomes the standar both ati and nv will have their next gen of cards out but we still dont know how good the 6800 can run p.s 3.0 hopefully it will run kind of decent

Well if you look at what the early adopters of ps3 are doing, such as crytek in farcry, I don't think anyone will miss those features as they are going to be sparse and only add performance, not IQ benefits.

There really hasn't been a lot of testing of the actual ps3 abilities on the nv40. The ones I have seen don't look that great, especially if you consider a scaled down part attempting to run them.

 

[Ostsol]

yes it would be , that i can agree on . Unless of course for some reason its slow on the nv40 like p.s2 stuff was on the nv30

if i'm not mistaken ps3.0 on nv40 should be faster (not including branching) than ps2.0 on nv40.

how fast is the p.s 2.0 on the nv40 . I've only seen farcry benched at 1.1

Not a Farcry example, but Marko Dolenc's Fill-rate Tester appears to show that in PS performance alone it's a heck of alot better than the NV3x. . .

http://www.beyond3d.com/previews/nvidia/nv40/index.php?p=21

 

[jvd]

Page 6 of 6..."An Architecture to Scale" section.

this ?

nVidia was clever enough to stongly focus on scalability while developing the NV40. The GeForce 6800 Ultra includes 16 pipes, the GeForce 6800 still 12. Further NV40-based designs with 8, 4 or even only 2 pipes are also possible. The vertexshader is an array of 6 units with 4 pointsampling TMUs in total. A single vertexshader with just one TMU (the other 3 can be "virtual" TMUs, then) will also meet the VS 3.0 requirements

cause the r420 can also add blocks of 2 pipes . See the 12 pipline pro and 16 pipeline xt .

 

[jimmyjames123]

Yes...

ATI's architecture is also very scaleable. NV's architecture traditionally has not been very scaleable until now. Definitely a step in the right direction.

 

[trinibwoy]

yes it would be , that i can agree on . Unless of course for some reason its slow on the nv40 like p.s2 stuff was on the nv30

if i'm not mistaken ps3.0 on nv40 should be faster (not including branching) than ps2.0 on nv40.

how fast is the p.s 2.0 on the nv40 . I've only seen farcry benched at 1.1

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/gffx/nv40-part1-c.html#p4

 

[jvd]

Yes...

ATI's architecture is also very scaleable. NV's architecture traditionally has not been very scaleable until now. Definitely a step in the right direction.

but whats the point . That isn't an advantage for nvidia. If nvidia adds 2 pipes ati surely can

 

[jimmyjames123]

It's an advantage for NVIDIA in the sense that there can be some trickle-down technology from the flagship model. The 3DCenter article briefly explains that with VS 3.0 I think. ATI would have the same advantage of using trickle-down technology, of course using a somewhat different feature set than the NV4x series.

 

[Scarlet]

Well, it now seems pretty clear -

This seems like 9800 Pro vs 5950 all over again, except the NV40 legitimately performs on almost equal footing with the X800 Pro...

X800 Pro looks like a fucking steal for 299.99 though...

X800 XT looks like it will be an extremely poor price-performance ratio for those that want the fastest card possible.

Wow. Long thread.

X800 Pro at $299? Really? Forget what the XT or 6800 Ultra perform at. If the performance delta of the X800 Pro is as small as it seems to be from those two top-end cards, who would throw their money away on them?

Get the X800 Pro and spend the extra $200 on something else. What a deal.

 

[trinibwoy]

OT: Why is this thread getting 50 views/min ??

 

[jvd]

yes it would be , that i can agree on . Unless of course for some reason its slow on the nv40 like p.s2 stuff was on the nv30

if i'm not mistaken ps3.0 on nv40 should be faster (not including branching) than ps2.0 on nv40.

how fast is the p.s 2.0 on the nv40 . I've only seen farcry benched at 1.1

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/gffx/nv40-part1-c.html#p4

seems to be a mixed bag don't u think . Some times its double the performance of a r360 and sometimes its less or equal . Like i asked , why is farcry (the big named p.s2 game) being only benched with p.s 1.1

I really just want to know as that is the game i'm playing the most right now and would like more framesper sec than my 9700pro but not by droping quality

 

[Rican]

it might not be so rough there is a few title that are going to use p.s 3.0 some and by the time p.s 3.0 becomes the standar both ati and nv will have their next gen of cards out but we still dont know how good the 6800 can run p.s 3.0 hopefully it will run kind of decent

Well if you look at what the early adopters of ps3 are doing, such as crytek in farcry, I don't think anyone will miss those features as they are going to be sparse and only add performance, not IQ benefits.

There really hasn't been a lot of testing of the actual ps3 abilities on the nv40. The ones I have seen don't look that great, especially if you consider a scaled down part attempting to run them.

well have in mind the dx 9.0c isnt out yet either from my undertanding that has all the necessery p.s 3.0 features and that might make a difference on how it will run but this is my guess