Nv40 16 full pipelines- The Inq.

An Inquirer story is always full of colour, often at the expense of more important data.

 

Was it?? Or just maybe the Tape out was scheduled?

Hmm? That's around 150/180 days for roll out. Wasn't it said before the roll outs from tape out to production takes 90/120 days? Also that 150/180 day mark reminds me of the NV30 tape out rumours till production.

Yes, but then Nvidia would still fall behind ATI for a few months (most probably 1-2 months)

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Well Cebit's up in 2 weeks. Can't wait. Pity I live so far.

Lo Hanners .. haven't seen you around in a while.

US

 

What? you want to go Vikings again?

 

Ok, here's an interesting thought...... IF the soon to be released NV40 is such an ATI ballbuster, as being alleged.....then why is MSI (I believe they are the #1 nVidia producer) starting to produce retail ATI cards? I'm sure they(MSI) have a pretty good idea as to just what the capabilities and costs of the next gen cards are..... Once again, this make me think that the two products (NV40 and R420) are probably pretty close performance wise - if anything, this leeds creedence to ATI being either faster or a much better value.......

 

Err, because they want to sell more cards? Even if NV40 stomps all over R420, there will still be people who buy ATI cards from all sections of their product lineup. By shipping cards from both Nvidia and ATI, MSI open themselves up to a wider market. Why do you think Gigabyte started making Nvidia cards this generation when ATI clearly had the superior hardware? It's always about money.

 

Sure it's all about money....but you have to believe that no company would jump on the bandwagon of a company that's about to get "owned"!

 

Oh then you are saying that Gigabyte went to Nv even knowing that NV40 would suck?

 

And if NV40 does "own" R420, who's to say the rest of the new cards will follow suit?

 

In Jen-Hsun Huang's speech he stated "if we’re not a lot more than 2 times faster I’m going to be very disappointed", he was presumably talking about NV40.

At the IDF ATI demonstrated a demo of Colin McRae Rally 4 on R420 and it was running 2 to 3 times faster than present DX9 hardware.

I'm just not seeing NV40 owning R420 based on those descriptions of the hardware. Especially since ATI owns NVIDIA in DX9 right now. If NV40 is say 2.5 times faster in DX9 applications than NV35 then that puts them pretty far behind ATI.

SteveC

 

because MSI's contract with Nvidia is running out in april. So they took the chance to add another supplier on their list. This does not say anything about how many products they will acutally produce based on their new supplier. That depends on the market's demand.

 

Take it with a grain of salt, without any basis of comparison the "2 times faster" number is meaningless.

What will it be 2x faster at? Shaders? AA? EVERYTHING?!?

It's a meaningless PR term, wait for some benchmarks.

 

It's also worth remembering that we don't know if, for example, he's talking about 2x faster DX9 speed whether it's faster than their true DX9 speed or their inflated DX9 speed. Key difference.

To be honest, I can't imagine anyone owning anyone. I still think R420 will be the DX9 card of choice, but I can certainly see NV40 winning pre-DX9 , AA benchmarks, and OGL titles (Doom3 being the obvious one). Either way, I suspect they'll be a closer match than the current offerings.

 

I understand that none of those statements can really be taken at face value lets just play devils advocate for second and make the assumption that they are real. Further we will assume that Huang was talking DX9 performance across the board and not just Shaders, etc...

Right now R300 is almost twice as fast as NV35 in DX9. In Beyond3D's review of the 9800XT and also their review of the FX5900 Ultra. In the Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness test at 640x480 with no AF the FX5900 Ultra scored 79fps while the ATI 9700 Pro (R300) got 114fps for the same test. The 9800XT got 124fps.

So if NV40 is 2.5 times faster then we are looking at 197fps for the same benchmark. If R420 is 2.5 times faster we are looking at 310fps for the same benchmark. Now how is NV40 owning R420?

SteveC

 

Right now? Mainly thru PR FUD.

 

The name of Loki for the *original* R420 project came for TWO reasons, IMO:
1) Loki, semi-god of evil, triumphed, but sometime in the future, nobody knows when, the god of "good" (R400 AKA R500 now), to simplify the myth's terms, will come back, and evil will be defeated forever then.
2) Loki has an observatory, "from which he could spy but could not be seen". This refers to ATI spying on NVIDIA when making the decision canning, or rather delaying, the R400 was in their best interest.

Dig: Those specs have not been given by "real" PR personnel. Wanna try guessing what I meant?


Uttar

 

Ooh! I think I know! Do you mean that NV PR has been leaking specs to people and those people then act as PR mouthpieces? Huh? Huh? Wait. Nevermind. I just remembered your goddamn cat, so I will never try to guess what you mean again.

 

Say NV40/NV45 taped out on 18/12/03. Do you think nV could get demo boards out by late January? I'm just trying to figure something out... either there was a less-capable, native AGP NV40 project that got canned, or they've been flat-out lying to developers about its capabilities (despite the presence of demonstration hardware - seems bizarre, I know). Several parties seem to have been told 8x1/16x0 by devrel and/or PR but now we're pretty certain it's more along the lines of 16x1/32x0.

There's been some speculation that they've been changing the architecture drastically between steppings. That could explain a few things but it seems really odd (and goes against the commonly accepted definition of what defines an ASIC "stepping" anyway). You'd think that there isn't much on the digital side of things that you can't predict using sims, and hence avoid wasting a serious amount of resources on "functional prototype" tape outs.

Heh. I would have thought "Norse god of mischief + it sounds cool" was reason enough.

MuFu.

 

It means that they're actually genuine instead of utter PR rubbish?

 

Errr, no.
And aww, don't you love cats anymore, Baron?

Uttar

 

No offense Uttar but i remember your posts during Nv30 hype so i am really dubbious when i read your NV40 insights

Not saying you are necessary wrong but other side not obviously right.