GPU war over already?

[Josh378]

I'm arguing with some guy aboout the next gen GPU from Sony/MS. Now, he's saying that with the new info, there is no way that Nvidia can compete with Ati's new R500, I'm arguing differently that we don't know anything of what the RSX really can perform except for vague info from Sony. So, posters, what do you think about next gen's GPU discussion in your opinion? Does the RSX have a chance or is this war all over in terms of the GPU?

Your thoughts,

-Josh378

 

[Almasy]

I think I´m going to go mad over all of these rumors, tech demos and who´s stronger than who. ATI´s chip, if it really performs 192 shader ops per second, is a real monster.

Which sucks for me, I was expecting NVidia to have an stronger chip. Not only is it huge, it´s really inefficient if the 150M transistor count for ATI´s chip hold up.

 

[Acert93]

Well the RSX wont be going against the R500 on the desktop.

The RSX, aka G70/GF 7800, will be competing against the R520.

And in 2006 when WGF 2.0 arrives it looks like the R600 and the successor of the G70 (i.e. GF 8800).

The R500 (aka C1, Xenos) is a console only part. And at this point we know ALMOST NOTHING about either chip. Probably the juiciest thing we know outside of neat architecture stuff is that the R500 has free 2x AA and almost free 4x AA and that the RSX does 128bit pixel percision for HDR effects and the like (although we do not know if it has the performance to do to that in typical games).

We may never know who the winner is because of the architectures (PS3 as a unit and Xbox 360 as a unit) AND because each has strengths and weaknesses. Games will be tailored to exploit strengths and minimize weaknesses.

But we need to know more before we say much.

 

[Almasy]

Well, ATI´s chip having eDRAM was a nice move. I´m sure that performing 4X AA on PS3 will take a much bigger impact on performance than on X360, no?

I´m disapointed to tell the truth. I was expecting PS3 to be a better machine than X360.

 

[phat]

I think I´m going to go mad over all of these rumors, tech demos and who´s stronger than who. ATI´s chip, if it really performs 192 shader ops per second, is a real monster.

Which sucks for me, I was expecting NVidia to have an stronger chip. Not only is it huge, it´s really inefficient if the 150M transistor count for ATI´s chip hold up.

Umm... I believe the "192 ops" comes from the eDRAM logic, which does nothing more than subsampling of the back buffer in the eDRAM to output a fully baked front buffer to slower memory for the RAMDAC stage. ATI's calling them component operations, for the RGB components they operate on. They are far from shader ops.

MS is trying to throw out random large numbers at this point to look competitive with Sony PR. It's going to be a game of leapfrogging numbers between the two for a while, but, in my opinion, MS is more desperate.