NV30 vs R300?

[LeStoffer]

It gets more an issue of ethics to state "hey that's fine but I know of something better coming out soon". Where "better" is subjective and "soon" rather vague.

It would be far more simple if all of them would stick to JUST what they are allowed officialy to state, wether they know or not is irrelevant. That's the stage where many reviewers before analyzing hardware to the best possible degree are endangered to shoot themselves in the foot and turn out with minor or major at times mistakes.

No one is perfect and we all make mistakes but a major reviewer has quite a responsibility against his readers and I wish they would consider it more often.

This is so very true. I did find it quite annoying that both anandtech and tomshardware gave hints about the upcoming NV30. The hints might sound like nothing big, but they do make the impression that something even better is coming, putting potential buyers off.

My problem is that the websites really don't know when the NV30 will ship - or whether it will be that much faster/better when it ships. Drop the bloody hints of crying out loud. It comes out as biased - true or not. Just say that the NV30 is coming but nobody yet knows whether it is worth waiting for [over the Radeon 9700]!

Important disclamer for fanboys: I have yet to buy an ATI card and have a GF4 4600Ti now (but kinda wish that I could hold off with my GF1 until the Radeon 9700 )

 

[Gollum]

Yeah it can be a bit distracting to read those "NV30 is coming" lines in R300 previews, but lets be realistic - those comments have little to no importance compared to the rest of the article. Its even a part of journalism IMHO, after all these sites are not doing previews purely as promotion for ATI, but because they are covering the industry. P/Reviews have always, and always will, include comments about competitors and other products, it's not a journalist's job just to praise some product for pages without end without acknowledging possible competition (even if its not yet official I think there is little reason to doubt that NV30 will come out sooner or later to compete with R300).

In total it's what, like 1 sentence on a 16 pages article? Complaining about that is nitpicking. That comment is not gonna stop anyone from buying this fantastic card, not after 16 pages of "Look, this is a great piece of hardware, its fast, stable, fast, has great IQ, more features than you can imagine, uhm did I mention its faster than anything else?". If, for some unimaginable reason, R300 should not sell well, nobody in his right mind could seriously think that's because of Tom and Anand mentioning NV30 in their preview. That's ridiculous and means overestimating those people's influence by 100.000.000.000% ...

The last few months, in card roundups or Parhelia reviews, you often got to hear about how cool R300 is gonna be. Now that the R300 is here and mostly de-mystified, sites need more fuel for the readers, its as simple as that, and I don't blame them. You got to admit, without those "peeks" on things to come, the months in between product releases would be very boring on boards such as these...

IMHO its the people who accuse reviewers of being biased (just because they dare mentioning other upcoming products in a preview) that have a problem, not the reviewer themselves...

 

[LeStoffer]

IMHO its the people who accuse reviewers of being biased (just because they dare mentioning other upcoming products in a preview) that have a problem, not the reviewer themselves...

I don't know whether this was aimed at me or not...? Anyway, I should probably have stated my point more clearly: I don't like the fact that especially Anandtech give hints about the NV30 which the reader has not possibility to gauge the importance of. We know that anandtech knows more than they can tell about the NV30, but we do not have a clue about what we should/could read into these "hints". And that isn't really being fair to the reader in my book...

 

[Ailuros]

IMHO its the people who accuse reviewers of being biased (just because they dare mentioning other upcoming products in a preview) that have a problem, not the reviewer themselves...

If I would have accused reviewers of bias then I´d actually sit down and reply to the quote above.

 

[Nagorak]

Few minutes before I go to a long meeting.

Russ,
After a second thought my guess you are right about the power scalling, but it means that NV30 will probably be in the AGP specs. The problem is that ATI went beyond the AGP spec.

I think the AGP power spec is as good as dead as far as graphics cards go. Even with die shrinks, they won't be able to harness enough power across the AGP bus alone. This is just the first nail in the coffin.

 

[DemoCoder]

I think the AGP power spec is as good as dead as far as graphics cards go. Even with die shrinks, they won't be able to harness enough power across the AGP bus alone. This is just the first nail in the coffin.

Pray tell, why? I don't think it's self evident that this will be the case, especially if AGP3.0/4.0 cranks up the power a little bit like AGP Pro.

 

[Fred]

Agreed Gollum, Anand in particular will usually preface any new launch with a 'but there's upcoming chips from so and so, that will challenge this new card'.

I don't see this as being particularily biased or not. Despite teh moans, and conspiracy theories about him being payed off.

I don't see how anyone can read into his latest review and claim he doesn't have anything but praise for ATI's latest offering (and justifiably so). Hell, he hardly nitpicked about anything at all (tiny errors in IQ, the rather annoying Matrox displacement mapping technique, gripes about shader program length, etc)

If anything, one could wish that he knew a little bit more about his field, since he makes a few technical mistakes.

I consider him a trustworthy, if not overly adept reviewer, --B3D is still king =) .

 

[pascal]

Pray tell, why? I don't think it's self evident that this will be the case, especially if AGP3.0/4.0 cranks up the power a little bit like AGP Pro.

I suppose NV30 will be AGP 2.0 compliant.

 

[Doomtrooper]

This is incorrect anyhow, it will be Nv30 vs the Radeon 9700 @ .13 Micron...

This is also incorrect, it will be whatever card you can buy for a certain price at a certain time vs. its likes.

I expect NV30 to come earlier than R300 @ 0.13µ

The R300 could move to .13 in the new year, samples in November and final cards ready for Q1 2003. I see Nv30 should also launch around November, Dec ...
The Idea here Xmas is if were making comparisons the NV30 is vaporware, like I always hear lets compare what is available today.
Like the 8500 was used to compare against the Geforce 3, Geforce 3 TI, Geforce 4, it will be .15 R300 vs Geforce 4 and NV28.
By the time NV30 comes around ATI will have .13 ready...The 9700 is not even out yet and its being compared to vaporware

 

[DemoCoder]

To some extent, NVidia shipping the NV30 around christmas is good for them. DirectX9 isn't out yet, and with the sag in the US economy, we'll be lucky if people start buying stuff during Christmas.

ATI's success in beating to NVidia to market with their .15micron design might turn out to be totally irrelevent, because many people will wait until Dec or January to buy the .13micron version of the R300 that they know is coming.

Beating them to launch right now is somewhat of a minor victory, because the real battle will happen this Christmas/Newyear season. The .15um fall launch of the R300 is if anything, a PR move.

 

[Dave Baumann]

To some extent, NVidia shipping the NV30 around christmas is good for them. DirectX9 isn't out yet, and with the sag in the US economy, we'll be lucky if people start buying stuff during Christmas.

May be the case for the retail market, but ATI are poised to make far better use of the OEM refreshes by relreasing these parts by September. Not having a mid-end part (9500) at the same time may make it a little tricky though.

 

[Nagorak]

I think the AGP power spec is as good as dead as far as graphics cards go. Even with die shrinks, they won't be able to harness enough power across the AGP bus alone. This is just the first nail in the coffin.

Pray tell, why? I don't think it's self evident that this will be the case, especially if AGP3.0/4.0 cranks up the power a little bit like AGP Pro.

Because even assuming it's increased in AGP 3.0 and 4.0, the time for that change to trickle down into the market will be too long. The graphics industry moves at 2-3x the pace of CPUs/Mobos, and everyone with only an AGP 1.0 or 2.0 board is going to have serious brownout problems. Thus the separate connector will become standard and once it does it will never end up going away (not really a big deal tho, IMO).

 

[McElvis]

I found Anand's comment in his news post rather funny...

If the R300 wasn't so incredibly fast we might be a little upset with ATI for making us stay up oh-so-late but as you're about to see, it's worth every minute we spent writing about it; and then some.

http://www.anandtech.com/news/shownews.html?i=3424&t=sn

 

[Above]

I will choose nVidia over ATi for the foreseeable future. Many here are 3D enthusiasts enchanted by numbers, but to me it is all about playing games. Things must work. I like the step in the right direction of the GF4, to image quality improvements transparent to the game itself with FSAA at lower cost. Mindful of the 3dfx acquisition, I am looking forward to the NV30.
I think it very ironic to look at the features being touted nowadays, and then look at how basic the current games are supposed to be. Perhaps in 3 years when games use these new cards I will buy one.

 

[McElvis]

I will choose nVidia over ATi for the foreseeable future. Many here are 3D enthusiasts enchanted by numbers, but to me it is all about playing games. Things must work. I like the step in the right direction of the GF4, to image quality improvements transparent to the game itself with FSAA at lower cost. Mindful of the 3dfx acquisition, I am looking forward to the NV30.
I think it very ironic to look at the features being touted nowadays, and then look at how basic the current games are supposed to be. Perhaps in 3 years when games use these new cards I will buy one.

So an R300 with much less performance loss with 4xAA and 16xAF than a GF4 does not appeal to you...?

 

[Xmas]

well in that lodgic it would be the geforce 4 ti 4600 vs the r300 since you can buy them at the same price range at about the same time . Besides i predict that the nv30 on .13 will come out much later than the r300 on .15 micron

No need to roll eyes here, I agree with you though I don't think it will come "much" later.
Yes, if r300 will be available at the same price range as a ti4600, they're the ones to compare - until NV28/NV30/whatever product at that same price comes out. That's what I wrote.

The Idea here Xmas is if were making comparisons the NV30 is vaporware, like I always hear lets compare what is available today.
Like the 8500 was used to compare against the Geforce 3, Geforce 3 TI, Geforce 4, it will be .15 R300 vs Geforce 4 and NV28.
By the time NV30 comes around ATI will have .13 ready...The 9700 is not even out yet and its being compared to vaporware

Hm, what I wrote was "compare those products you can buy for the same bucks at a certain time". Guess that's not too far away from what you wrote here.

But I don't believe .13 r300 will come out at the same time as NV30. I expect r300 to be available in stores in late August/ early September (Hercules announced availability in September). Likewise, I expect NV30 to be available late November/early December, three months later. And I think .13 r300 will come maybe two months after that. So for two months, it would be .15 r300 vs. NV30, after three months of .15 r300 vs. NV25(28 )
Because ATI and NV don't get their new products out at the same time, the "opponents" are constantly changing throughout the lifetime of a product.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

Just to throw my hat in the ring...

I agree with XMas. I see a lot of ATI fans claiming how ATI will be ready with a 0.13 micron part as soon as nVidia releases NV30. Not likely, IMO, unless the NV30 gets delayed all the way to next spring.

I expect NV30 to be on the shelves around Dec. Around that time we might hear some official information about the 0.13 R-300 refresh part, but I don't expect to see it on the4 shelf until spring...at least 6-9 months after the R-300 hits the shelves.

What's interesting is what will nVidia have to counter the 0.13 R-300, and when? I wouldn't expect to see a "Spring" NV-30 refresh with the NV30 coming so late. We may not see nVidia's "answer" to the 0.13 R-300 until Fall '03.

It will also be interesting to see if ATI can keep up their fast pace of new product releases. ATI has, IMO, been releasing products faster than nVidia. They haven't been doing "refresh" chips every 6 months, but about once a year, they have been spitting out a brand new architecture: Radeon. In less than a year, ATI has gone from R-200 to R-300. (DX8 to DX9). In one year, nVidia has gone from GeForce3 to GeForce3 Ti, to GeForce4 ti...and it may end up being two years between nVidia's DX8 core and DX9 core part.

 

[Above]

McElvis, I do not see you will make a lawyer by reading like that. I refer you to sentences 3 and 5 of the first paragraph.

It might look as if ATi are making hardware faster than nvidia, but is everything about it coordinated, or are the features present predominantly in name only?

 

[Gollum]

ATI has, IMO, been releasing products faster than nVidia. They haven't been doing "refresh" chips every 6 months, but about once a year, they have been spitting out a brand new architecture: Radeon. In less than a year, ATI has gone from R-200 to R-300. (DX8 to DX9). In one year, nVidia has gone from GeForce3 to GeForce3 Ti, to GeForce4 ti...and it may end up being two years between nVidia's DX8 core and DX9 core part.

I've been wondering for quite some time wether all those 6-month refreshes are starting to actually hold Nvidia back (by usinbg up valuable resources and manpower), more than helping them to advance. True, trying to make most of an architecture that has seen much R&D investment and development is understandable and usually the refreshes are justified at least performance-wise. Recently however, unlike ATI, they appear to need at least 6 months more between their new architectures, which allowed ATI to not only catch up Nvidia's once significant lead, but actually overtake them!

I don't see the (supposed) up to 3 months NV30 comes later than R300 as a major blow yet, but if Nvidia has too many refreshs of NV30, NV40 could be out more than 6 months after R400 (given ATI's last 2 years of execution most probably due next August) - then things could end bad for Nvidia...

 

[MuFu]

Just to throw my hat in the ring...

I agree with XMas. I see a lot of ATI fans claiming how ATI will be ready with a 0.13 micron part as soon as nVidia releases NV30. Not likely, IMO, unless the NV30 gets delayed all the way to next spring.

Agreed; a 0.13u refresh shouldn't be necessary. ATi don't need to be "ahead" all the time to regain market share. They just need to make sure the that when they are one step in front of nVidia (as will be the case for the next few months) they really make the most of it. NV30 should be ready to roll come late October/November. If it isn't, then ATi might as well hold back, because by spring they may be ready to launch R400. Even if they do get it out of the gates by October, I'm sure ATi will be content to ride on the momentum that they will have built up by then. I cannot imagine the NV30 being much faster or much cheaper.

MuFu.