Source: http://www.neowin.net/events/?p=68
Consider also that Longhorn is now scheduled for mass availability in the holiday season of 2006.
More DX Next and Longhorn release details
- Thread starter Richard
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Source: http://www.neowin.net/events/?p=68
Consider also that Longhorn is now scheduled for mass availability in the holiday season of 2006.
I don't find that surprising. Trying to get somewhere between one and all IHV's hitting WGF2.0 at the same time as Longhorns release, which itself have been a moving target, is probably going to be a bit of a nightmare. Safer way of doing it this way round, for all concerned.
Personally, I'll be very disappointed if my Longhorn desktop doesn't sport better graphics than Unreal 3-engine games. 8)
Also as TSMC 'high-performance' 65nm process is timed a little later (early 2007) than Longhorn's expected release (Q4 2006). Then it would make sence to release the new gen cards on this process, inline (or as close as possible) with WGF 2.0's release.
Looks like SM 3.0 will see a longer lifetime!
Looks like SM 3.0 will see a longer lifetime!
Para said:Yes, after all we do need per-pixel realtime soft shadows for the cursor and even background pictures are soooo old, full blown 3D environments as background is the next big thing.
I was being sarcastic, but thanks for the eye rolling.
Come to think of it, another rather important point should have occurred to me earlier. It is the reverse of Wavey's oft-stated observation that a WGF2.0 card is liable to be a cripple (okay, my paraphrase ) without WGF2.0 to run on.
What happens in transition to IHV product lines while Longhorn gains steam and acceptance? To use ATI as an example (because I'm still unsure what the hell to call NV's gen at that point), do R5xx and R6xx coexist in the product line much longer than normal in order to serve both customer bases? Is there liable to be some fancy dancing on when to pull the plug on manufacturing/selling the pre-WGF2.0 cards? We all know by their own admittance that ATI did not judge the acceptance rate of PCIe as well as they would have liked. Is the WGF2.0 transition a bigger or lesser risk than the PCIe transition in that regard for the IHVs?
Edit: And, another come-to-think-of-it, could the above be part of NV's rationale for why they want to do less hardware integration under the covers --in order to better manage the above transition at the driver level rather than the hardware level?
) without WGF2.0 to run on. What happens in transition to IHV product lines while Longhorn gains steam and acceptance? To use ATI as an example (because I'm still unsure what the hell to call NV's gen at that point), do R5xx and R6xx coexist in the product line much longer than normal in order to serve both customer bases? Is there liable to be some fancy dancing on when to pull the plug on manufacturing/selling the pre-WGF2.0 cards? We all know by their own admittance that ATI did not judge the acceptance rate of PCIe as well as they would have liked. Is the WGF2.0 transition a bigger or lesser risk than the PCIe transition in that regard for the IHVs?
Edit: And, another come-to-think-of-it, could the above be part of NV's rationale for why they want to do less hardware integration under the covers --in order to better manage the above transition at the driver level rather than the hardware level?
IgnorancePersonified
Regular
I'm not going to touch longhorn till at least service pack2 though where I work (28,000 user base) are early adopters 
Must be so important to have the stupid office paper clip rendered in 3D.
Must be so important to have the stupid office paper clip rendered in 3D.
Jawed
Legend
So, really, R600 would be crippled without WGF2.0 driver support? In other words, a mere DX9 driver would be wildly "out of synch" with R600's architecture?
I suppose this would be down to the software-architectural split between driver and OS - or it might be more fundamental, e.g. R600's architecture might be founded, for example, on unified shaders and virtual memory.
ATI's mis-timing on PCI Express seems to me to be Intel's fault, though. Wasn't PCI Express about one quarter late?
Agreed, NV's route may well be safer if the architectural dependencies between R600 and WGF2 are as strong as supposed. Ouch.
Jawed
I suppose this would be down to the software-architectural split between driver and OS - or it might be more fundamental, e.g. R600's architecture might be founded, for example, on unified shaders and virtual memory.
ATI's mis-timing on PCI Express seems to me to be Intel's fault, though. Wasn't PCI Express about one quarter late?
Agreed, NV's route may well be safer if the architectural dependencies between R600 and WGF2 are as strong as supposed. Ouch.
Jawed
Jawed said:
Right, I'm wondering if NV is thinking that such a strategy will allow them to have one hardware gen to serve both audiences simultaneously, managed at the driver level, while ATI's route will require different hardware for each.
I suppose the reverse risk for NV (if indeed that's what they are thinking) is the "jack of all trades, master of none" risk.
Varg Vikernes
Newcomer
edit: nevermind, was already posted
Jawed said:
Why would this be? Dx versions are always supersets and I don't see MS releasing DX next (WGF 2.0) for longhorn only. I mean, they're already backporting Avalon and <gasp> some parts of Indigo to XP.
OT: Did you guys see that confirmation that the Xbox 360 controller is going to be compatible with Longhorn?
According to the original roadmaps yes but I wonder if PCIe's adoption had more to do with it rather than the 915/925 chipset problems.
