G70. A design for console or pc?

[geeQ]

Have been thinking recently about some of the decisions made by nvidia concerning the design of the G70 GPU. It's interesting to note that if you look at the design compared to past and present revisions of the Geforce chip the G70 stands out as being quite unique.

With the G70 update it appears to me that nvidia decided to take a different approach which saw them make significant changes to the design which would take into consideration things like power draw and clock speed. It seems clear that nvidia's goal with G70 was to produce a cooler running, highly efficient chip which would be significantly more powerful than the Geforce 6 even with very little change in clock speed. If I remember correctly the Geforce 6800 Ultra ran at 400Mhz where as the 7800GTX ran at 430Mhz. If I also remember correctly it required less power than the Ultra and therefore ran cooler as well.

I guess what I am driving at here is many people seem to feel that the RSX is simply a PC chip with a few design tweaks. However could it not be that G70 has in fact been designed from the outset with the PS3 in mind? Also do you think nvidia would have taken this design approach to G70 had Sony not been onboard?

It is also interesting to note that after G70/G71 nvidia has returned back to designing parts more aligned to the pc market i.e Geforce 8. A part with substantial power requirements and increases in clock speeds etc.

 

[PS3MAN]

In my opinion. GeForce 6 can be compare as P4 Northwood 130nm design. GeForce 7 can be compare with P4 Prescott 2M 65nm 90nm design. GeForce 8 can be compare with Conroe.

RSX may some kind of Pentium D from above.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Have been thinking recently about some of the decisions made by nvidia concerning the design of the G70 GPU. It's interesting to note that if you look at the design compared to past and present revisions of the Geforce chip the G70 stands out as being quite unique.

With the G70 update it appears to me that nvidia decided to take a different approach which saw them make significant changes to the design which would take into consideration things like power draw and clock speed. It seems clear that nvidia's goal with G70 was to produce a cooler running, highly efficient chip which would be significantly more powerful than the Geforce 6 even with very little change in clock speed. If I remember correctly the Geforce 6800 Ultra ran at 400Mhz where as the 7800GTX ran at 430Mhz. If I also remember correctly it required less power than the Ultra and therefore ran cooler as well.

I guess what I am driving at here is many people seem to feel that the RSX is simply a PC chip with a few design tweaks. However could it not be that G70 has in fact been designed from the outset with the PS3 in mind? Also do you think nvidia would have taken this design approach to G70 had Sony not been onboard?

It is also interesting to note that after G70/G71 nvidia has returned back to designing parts more aligned to the pc market i.e Geforce 8. A part with substantial power requirements and increases in clock speeds etc.

I didn't really see anything about the G70 that diverged from the normal PC route of GPU development. I don't know much about the business side of things but given everything that has been said about RSX since, I find it highly unlikely that G70 was designed with anything but the PC in mind.

Also bare in mind that at the expected clock speeds of RSX (550Mhz), G70 was anything but low heat/power (7800GTX 512MB).

 

[pjbliverpool]

In my opinion. GeForce 6 can be compare as P4 Northwood 130nm design. GeForce 7 can be compare with P4 Prescott 2M 65nm 90nm design. GeForce 8 can be compare with Conroe.

RSX may some kind of Pentium D from above.

Not really since RSX is just a basic GF7. You analogy would make RSX more like a pair of 7800GTX's in SLI which clearly isn't the case.

If anything, because of the reduced memory bus and ROP count, the closest analogy for RSX would be a Prescott based Celeron.

 

[Heinrich4]

I think G70/NV47 is more NV40 evolution but with "new world" come with R-400/500/unified shaders etc G70 (i remember nvidia Kirk talk about unified shaders not a big deal...) it turns more a transition card...and If wee consider G80 resulted after 4 years development (2002-2006) and good part of this in same time/parallell development G70 (2001-2004/december are taped out) ...Yes maybe G70/NV47 build to be more a transition card going to unfied shader pipe universe to offer relativelly good performance and cost for a console like ps3.

(G70 launched in june/july/05 and G80 come in november/06 with incredible performance gain not see since Radeon 9700pro/R-300 vs Geforce 4600/NV-25 in 2002)

 

[archie4oz]

In my opinion. GeForce 6 can be compare as P4 Northwood 130nm design. GeForce 7 can be compare with P4 Prescott 2M 65nm 90nm design. GeForce 8 can be compare with Conroe.

RSX may some kind of Pentium D from above.

Bad comparison... The GeForce 7 line is a decent improvement over the GeForce 6. Prescott was a step backwards from Northwood (IMO other than EM_64T support) and the Pentium D just Prescott times two. GeForce 8 to Conroe is fine, both are significant architectural improvements as well as delivering performance improvements as well...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

IMO it's more like GeForce 6 is chopped liver where GeForce 7 is a wooden shack at the back of the garden. Northwood is a 3 string violin and Prescott is a Welshman. GeForce 8 is to a stretched New Mini what a dual-Prescott is to a worn guitar amp, and ARM is a flush that trumps them all in clubs.

Spoiler

Is it really easier to talk about GPUs as if they're CPUs, rather than for the real GPU's that they are? Especially with a view to answering the OP's question

 

[swaaye]

In retrospect, I wonder if David Kirk's "we dont need unified shaders yet" remark was a smart way not to insult their recent console GPU.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It was a 'smart way' to downplay nVidia not having US when ATi did, and basically not wanting to appear to be behind the tech curve. That recent console GPU was also their top-of-the-line PC part as well, don't forget. It's not like PS3 lacked US where the 7800 and 7900 had it.

 

[swaaye]

Yeah true. It's always a bad idea to announce to the world that your next part will annihilate your current offering. Kinda kills sales.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Yeah true. It's always a bad idea to announce to the world that your next part will annihilate your current offering. Kinda kills sales.

I dunno I'd think somehow thats a better trend than having your past offerings annihilate your new ones, which is kinda what we've been looking at for a while now.

 

[Neb]

No becouse I doubt the Cell would make it 2x pixel shading capacity, ROP, VRAM throughoutput, fixed logic functions etc. Also you wont have the whole Cell dedicated to graphic tasks becouse that would mean lack of AI, physics, collision detection, sound etc.

I'm sorry but I dont think "magic" is invovled!

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The modhat's coming on. The topic is G70, but from the second post a bizarre analogy has mostly taken over the discussion. Posting up what a Prescott or Pentium D is isn't at all explaining what G70 is or, most importantly (as we know what G70 is) whether there's reason to think it was more targeted towards a console or not. It's as OT as talking about what engine particular cars make because you made a G70 analogy with cars. So I'm chopping out CPU talk where it adds nothing to the topic.

 

[Akumajou]

Have been thinking recently about some of the decisions made by nvidia concerning the design of the G70 GPU. It's interesting to note that if you look at the design compared to past and present revisions of the Geforce chip the G70 stands out as being quite unique.

With the G70 update it appears to me that nvidia decided to take a different approach which saw them make significant changes to the design which would take into consideration things like power draw and clock speed. It seems clear that nvidia's goal with G70 was to produce a cooler running, highly efficient chip which would be significantly more powerful than the Geforce 6 even with very little change in clock speed. If I remember correctly the Geforce 6800 Ultra ran at 400Mhz where as the 7800GTX ran at 430Mhz. If I also remember correctly it required less power than the Ultra and therefore ran cooler as well.

I guess what I am driving at here is many people seem to feel that the RSX is simply a PC chip with a few design tweaks. However could it not be that G70 has in fact been designed from the outset with the PS3 in mind? Also do you think nvidia would have taken this design approach to G70 had Sony not been onboard?

It is also interesting to note that after G70/G71 nvidia has returned back to designing parts more aligned to the pc market i.e Geforce 8. A part with substantial power requirements and increases in clock speeds etc.

Going back in time you really gotta wonder why it was that Nvidia's Nv30 gpu, despite being released AFTER ATI's R300, failed to perform well under Direct X 9 benchmarks and compliance according to many sources.

In Wikipedia its stated that Microsoft withtheld the Dx9 SM2.0 specs from Nvidia as a way to punish them for the Nv2A XBox contract when in fact it was not Nvidia's fault.

Then as a result Nvidia began courting Sony while making the highly improved Nv35, the amazing for its time Nv40 and then the G70 while at the same year announcing their Sony contract deal at E3.

 

[geeQ]

Perhaps I'm just reading too much into the slight change in design philosophy behind the G70 as compared to say the Geforce 6 and 8.
I just remember when the Geforce 7's were released and the reviews started pooring out how surprised I was to find that nvidia had taken a new direction by really concentrating on power efficiency etc. I mean I don't think it is too often that the top end graphics card of a new generation ends up needing less power than the top end card from the previous generation. However I will admit I haven't looked into this too closely.

If we assume Sony approached nvidia before G70 was conceived is it not likely that this partnership would have an affect on the overall design of G70 and it's direction? Or is it simply a case as others have mentioned that this partnership never went that deep?

 

[Akumajou]

Perhaps I'm just reading too much into the slight change in design philosophy behind the G70 as compared to say the Geforce 6 and 8.
I just remember when the Geforce 7's were released and the reviews started pooring out how surprised I was to find that nvidia had taken a new direction by really concentrating on power efficiency etc. I mean I don't think it is too often that the top end graphics card of a new generation ends up needing less power than the top end card from the previous generation. However I will admit I haven't looked into this too closely.

The basic idea behind Nvidia graphic chips has always been the following ever since the Riva TNT:

Riva TNT) new arch chip

Riva TNT2) addresses weakness of previous chip while at the same time benefitting from technological engineering advances

GeForce) new arch chip

GeForce2) addresses weakness of previous chip while at the same time benefitting from technological engineering advances

GeForce 3) new chip that intros more new tech

GeForce 4) addresses weakness of previous chip while at the same time benefitting from technological engineering advances


GeForceFX 5800 130nm) new arch that intros more new tech

GeForceFX 5900 130nm) addresses weakness of previous chip while at the same time benefitting from technological engineering advances though this one marked a major revision that had to make up for the Nv30's shortcomings.

GeForce 6800 130nm) new arch that intros more new tech while at the same time addressing weakness of previous chip by a wide margin.

GeForce 7800 110nm) addresses weakness of previous chip while at the same time benefitting from technological engineering advances

GeForce 7900 90nm) addresses weakness of previous chip while at the same time benefitting from technological engineering advances


GeForce 8800 90nm) new arch that changes the way Nvidia's chip works while also intros new tech

GeForce 8800 GT/new GTS 65nm) addresses weakness of previous chip (this time being video processing) while at the same time benefitting from technological engineering advances though initially not being meant as a full replacement due to its 256BIT bus being lower than the 90nm part but does add trannie count to 750 up from 680.

GeForce 9800 65nm) at this point the actual single GPU is not released yet and the GX2 to me does not really count and the main problem plaguing Nvidia's Dx10 compliant GPUs is that ATI or rather AMD is not aiming for the high end as of the R600.

Keep in mind that this mainly affects the PC world, the Nv2A used in XBox 1 was a chip that technology wise is between a GeForce 3 and GeForce 4 and was fabbed by TSMC.

RSX is a custom version of G70 aka Nv47 as the official documentation shows and is a carefull approach to a GPU being used in a home console so it addresses the weaknesses associated with the PC parts, heat, power draw, etc and is fabbed in Sony supervised fabs in Japan, again a sign of Sony being extrememely carefull and protective of the GPU.

If we assume Sony approached nvidia before G70 was conceived is it not likely that this partnership would have an affect on the overall design of G70 and it's direction? Or is it simply a case as others have mentioned that this partnership never went that deep?

It may in reality be that it was Nvidia that approached Sony by my estimation, months after XBox 1 was made as a way to secure the contract and prevent any rivals at the time (S3, Videologic, Matrox and ATI) from possibly securing a contract as even XBox 1 was not the first time Nvidia was approached to make a console GPU with Nvidia's dealings with Sega during the Saturn days.

This is mainly my opinion BTW as I read up alot on the behaviour of Nvidia and Sony leading up to the PS3 announcement and its no surprise to me that they really were secretive as Nvidia's dealings with Sega years earlier would have materialized into a console or arcade board had the contracts been signed, then again Sega was more chaotic back then.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Perhaps I'm just reading too much into the slight change in design philosophy behind the G70 as compared to say the Geforce 6 and 8.
I just remember when the Geforce 7's were released and the reviews started pooring out how surprised I was to find that nvidia had taken a new direction by really concentrating on power efficiency etc. I mean I don't think it is too often that the top end graphics card of a new generation ends up needing less power than the top end card from the previous generation. However I will admit I haven't looked into this too closely.

If we assume Sony approached nvidia before G70 was conceived is it not likely that this partnership would have an affect on the overall design of G70 and it's direction? Or is it simply a case as others have mentioned that this partnership never went that deep?

GF7 was very similar to GF6 in many respects so in that way it was a natural evolution. If it was more power efficient (I don't remember tbh) then it was most likely down to the fact that NV didn't need to push the clocks up very high since at the time, ATI had no competing solution. If say the X1800 had been launched at around the same time as G70, we would probably have been looking at a 500Mhz+ 7800GTX which would make the power efficiency story very different.

 

[pjbliverpool]

RSX is a custom version of G70 aka Nv47 as the official documentation shows and is a carefull approach to a GPU being used in a home console so it addresses the weaknesses associated with the PC parts, heat, power draw, etc.

These aren't really weaknesses of the PC part as its just a matter of clock speed. If anything they should be classed as strengths since the PC platform allows chips to run at speeds not possible in a console due to different heat/power limitations.

I doubt RSX in PS3 has much (if anything) over say the G71 based 7900GT in terms of heat and power draw.

 

[Akumajou]

These aren't really weaknesses of the PC part as its just a matter of clock speed. If anything they should be classed as strengths since the PC platform allows chips to run at speeds not possible in a console due to different heat/power limitations.

I doubt RSX in PS3 has much (if anything) over say the G71 based 7900GT in terms of heat and power draw.

Ever since the ATI 9700 and the Nvidia GeForce 5800, Graphics Processing Units have had to draw extra electrical current as well as generated more heat, specially in the case of the latter.

The issue did not go away with the replacements in Nv35, R4XX, Nv4X, R5XX, G7X and so on even with the benefit of newer and smaller and more efficient engineering processes.

It makes sense to notice that Sony did their homework for use in their closed platform specially when you consider that Sony's RSX fabs are in Nagoya and Nagasaki Japan sites as opposed to Taiwan, who only worry about PC parts.

It also makes plenty of sense that Nvidia would demo G70 retail on a 110nm process in 2005 running at 430Mhz and later at 550Mhz.

It then makes even more sense that G71 with fewer transistor would claim speeds of 650Mhz and more for overclocked potential on a 90nm TSMC process, its called technological progress

It does not make sense to simply slap a PC GPU part in a console without making modifications and taking into account real world use as current game consoles have to read data from disc media as a primary source, not cartridges or unreliable and space limited Hard drives.

It makes sense though to noticed that the PS3 indeed features a sophisticated heatsink and fan cooling system that effectively dissipates the heat in an efficient manner and is not simply a heatsink slapped on a chip.

Everything about a home console like the PS3 screams custom job otherwise we would be seeing temps shooting up across different console owners like many PC graphic card owners have reported in the past.

 

[pjbliverpool]

It does not make sense to simply slap a PC GPU part in a console without making modifications and taking into account real world use as current game consoles have to read data from disc media as a primary source, not cartridges or unreliable and space limited Hard drives.

It makes sense though to noticed that the PS3 indeed features a sophisticated heatsink and fan cooling system that effectively dissipates the heat in an efficient manner and is not simply a heatsink slapped on a chip.

Everything about a home console like the PS3 screams custom job otherwise we would be seeing temps shooting up across different console owners like many PC graphic card owners have reported in the past.

I'm not quite sure what your point was there. I understand that a console would come with custom cooling suited to its case and its expected use. But that has nothing to do with the core itself.

RSX is relatovely cool/low power compared to say the 7900GTX simply because it runs 150Mhz slower. Couple that fewer transistors because of the stripped out ROPS/memory bus and a cooler designed to work well within the PS3 case and you have a relatovely cool and quiet solution. However its not going to be any better than a similarly clocked G71 in a PC with a decent cooling solution.

I doubt you will find many people complaining of overheating 7900GT's!