NV40: Surprise, disappointment, or just what you expected?

[Nick Spolec]

The Radeon 9600 XT has 75 million transistors for a 4-pipe design.

So, if we do some simple math, and assume that if we can take the transistor difference in the 9800 XT and the 9600 XT to be indicative of a transistor difference if we added pipelines......

What is it with you?

You simply overlook KEY ELEMENTS to make your arguements correct.

The missing 4 pipes are not the ONLY parts of the chip/transistor that were cut out from the 9600. How could you even not mention this?

You are forgetting that the 9600 is also missing (from the 9800) Hierarchical Z, has 2 less geometry engines, doesn't have the F-buffer, and probably has a slew of other differences/changes inside the core that save on die space and transistor count (this includes chip optimazations).

This basically makes your assumption and guess at the transistor progressions of the 420 WRONG.

P.S. And isn't the 9600 chip produced using Low K?

 

[digitalwanderer]

I've already made my choice for this generation. I'm going with NV40 all the way... Not really becauseI don't think the X800XT will be a bit faster, but because I'm only really going to play Doom 3, Call of Duty (And the new one too ), and a few other games that are obviously going to be where nVidia simply takes the cake without much of a problem. I don't think anyone is going to argue that nVidia will have ATi beat in many of the upcomming OpenGL games, and that's primarily what I'm going to play.

How can you have made an informed choice between the two cards when we haven't really seen either of 'em yet?

The R420 hasn't even premiered and we don't know what the shipping version of the 6800 "Ultra" will be yet...don't ya think it's a bit early to be making an informed choice between the two? :|

 

[surfhurleydude]

I've already made my choice for this generation. I'm going with NV40 all the way... Not really becauseI don't think the X800XT will be a bit faster, but because I'm only really going to play Doom 3, Call of Duty (And the new one too ), and a few other games that are obviously going to be where nVidia simply takes the cake without much of a problem. I don't think anyone is going to argue that nVidia will have ATi beat in many of the upcomming OpenGL games, and that's primarily what I'm going to play.

How can you have made an informed choice between the two cards when we haven't really seen either of 'em yet?

The R420 hasn't even premiered and we don't know what the shipping version of the 6800 "Ultra" will be yet...don't ya think it's a bit early to be making an informed choice between the two? :|

No, because is anyone really expecting the R420 to outperform the NV40 in Doom 3? I also have a P4 3.0 Ghz CPU as well, I don't plan on upgrading the rest of my stuff for a while (until 939 socket athlon 64s come out, PCI express boards come out, NV40 or R420 refresh comes out, etc. etc.), I can't run above 1280x1024, and I primarily only play OpenGL games. There's really no reason for me to go ATi next round.

 

[CMAN]

The R420 hasn't even premiered and we don't know what the shipping version of the 6800 "Ultra" will be yet...don't ya think it's a bit early to be making an informed choice between the two? :|

I think he's going off the fact Nvidia's cards, even of the NV3x genereation did extrememly well in those games, so it would be difficult for ATI's do better in those games unless they redid their architecture or were insanely faster in every other game. His statement was not without warrant if you only want to play OpenGL games. I'd like a better all around card, but that's me.....

I think they will be very competitive this time and the board manufacturers and prices would sway me (such as bundles, look, price, if the performance and IQ is similar). I'm waiting another generation though since I have a 9700Pro, two generations is the sweet spot for upgrades.

 

[surfhurleydude]

I think he's going off the fact Nvidia's cards, even of the NV3x genereation did extrememly well in those games, so it would be difficult for ATI's do better in those games unless they redid their architecture or were insanely faster in every other game. His statement was not without warrant if you only want to play OpenGL games. I'd like a better all around card, but that's me.....

Bingo, right on the money

 

[Nick Spolec]

No, because is anyone really expecting the R420 to outperform the NV40 in Doom 3? I also have a P4 3.0 Ghz CPU as well, I don't plan on upgrading the rest of my stuff for a while (until 939 socket athlon 64s come out, PCI express boards come out, NV40 or R420 refresh comes out, etc. etc.), I can't run above 1280x1024, and I primarily only play OpenGL games. There's really no reason for me to go ATi next round.

No, I don't expect R420 to outperform the NV40, but then again, I don't expect the NV40 to outperform the R420.

You're forgetting that Doom 3 will be capped at 60fps. So, I think in most normal situations (no crazy AA and resolutions), both chips will be able to hit that without a problem.

 

[jolle]

Im no fancy big city lawyer, but the main "feature" for nvidia in Doom3 is
that it can do the Zpass in 32 pipes right?
that is a very fast pass in anycase, so i dont think its something that makes
or breaks the total peformance in the game...

If R420 is faster then NV40, its not impossible it can outrun it in doom3 aswell
i would guess..
And its not impossible they also went with something similar to Ultrashadow
since shadows in games has walked in and sat down, and isnt going anywhere..

Im just saying its possible, I have no clue.. But i do not belive Doom3 will
be capped at 60Fps, why would anyone wanna do that?

 

[muzz]

All I know is I will lmao if the skinny R420 with it little tranistor count kicks the shit out of the new "King" ( I never said that, zealot NV fans have, and they haven't even seen what the R420 can do..... fools as usual).

If the R420 is a FP24 chip with SM2.0 then you can't really make valid comparisions between transistor counts and performance. And since when
is performance the only thing to measure a chip with ? (especially these
days)

I am aware of this, that post was for all the NV40 is king fans.
I already know ATi will have great IQ, thats a given, and I believe the feature set will be fine also.
It may not be as futureproof as the NV40, but I don't buy cards and keep them for 2 yrs anyway, I buy 1 every major release.The only thing I am concerned about is the attitude that PS3 is the end all be all and the fact that ATi may not support it means their gear is no longer in the running for some folks.
I personally think thats a foolish attitude, but thats jmo.

 

[Doomtrooper]

I think it is agreed on that the R420 will not support FP32 and PS 3.0. Both of those options do require more transistors. Now, ATI has said in the past that they could have done full FP32, but it would have required anywhere between 5% and 10% more transistors. Rendering FP32 at a decent speed would have required even more transistors, so the decision to go FP24 for the first few generations of chips was a very good plan, as it did save a lot on transistor counts, and those transistors can be used elsewhere for things like better visual quality (higher AA levels) and making a faster shading chip (1 full and 1 partial shader per pixel pipeline vs. only having 1 full shader). ATI has been working on the R420 chip for some time, and we can most likely take it that the pixel pipeline design has undergone some changes, most of which will help the overall speed and efficiency of their operation (as well as adding another 4/8 pipelines to the mix- giving chips with either 12 or 16 pixel pipelines). We can also guess that the vertex shader has also undergone a lot of work, and I wouldn't be surprised if it in fact was a VS 3.0 compliant piece of hardware. Current R3x0 chips have 4 VS units on board as is, and I can easily see them putting 6 VS units in there, which would give NV a run for its money in that area.

The SE version will be their value entry this round with a possible 8 pipes, I would worry more about the NV3.xx lineup than ATI's as the 9600-9800 was the target platform for DX9 titles. The current R.3XX is still a very good lineup to be used for developers, lets face it these new cards will only allow games that have been in development to run at higher resolutions with speed and possibly higher AA modes, but there will be no game released in the next year a 9700 Pro could not run, lets not get ahead of ourself here.DX7/ DX8 class cards still dominate the installed user base.

It is my opinion that the X800 will be slower overall than the 6800 Ultra, but that the X800XT will be faster than the 6800 Ultra in most operations. Of course, the X800XT will not support PS 3.0. This may or may not be a sticking point. One big point will be the power draw and heat given off by this chip. I am also betting that it will run cooler and consume less power than the NV40. I also believe that the X800XT will run at over 500 MHz. ATI does not sit on their hands, and the design groups that currently work at ATI are truly second to none.

So, I think ATI will continue to have the performance crown this summer after the dust settles, but it will not hold the overall feature crown. One other thing to consider is that the NV40 architecture still looks like it can run FP16 at significantly higher levels of performance over FP32 rendering, so in applications which utlize partial precision, the NV40 could see some hefty speed increases over pure FP32 (this really only stands to reason).

Well ATI tried the better features road since the 8500, it was a more complete chip, had better DVD playback, had better PS support than Nvidia offerings, had Truform. All of these made the chip much better in 'features' than what Nvidia offered at that time, but it lost constatly to Ti4200-Ti4600 by a few frames per second here and there and became 'third or 4th best'.
Speed sells, look at the current reviews....all we see is graphs up graphs. This is why Nvidia chose to go to angle to dependend AF as they were losing the quality benchmarks constantly.
Whoever wins the speed crown will win overall, has always been that way.

 

[surfhurleydude]

Well ATI tried the better features road since the 8500, it was a more complete chip, had better DVD playback, had better PS support than Nvidia offerings, had Truform. All of these made the chip much better in 'features' than what Nvidia offered at that time, but it lost constatly to Ti4200-Ti4600 by a few frames per second here and there and became 'third or 4th best'.
Speed sells, look at the current reviews....all we see is graphs up graphs. This is why Nvidia chose to go to angle to dependend AF as they were losing the quality benchmarks constantly.
Whoever wins the speed crown will win overall, has always been that way.

Dude Doomtrooper, for a LONG time the 8500 lost to the GeForce 3 by a few frames per second, and I don't think it ever came within a few FPS of the Ti4600 either, by the end of its life, the 8500 was comparable to a Ti4200 at BEST.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

I've already made my choice for this generation. I'm going with NV40 all the way... Not really becauseI don't think the X800XT will be a bit faster, but because I'm only really going to play Doom 3, Call of Duty (And the new one too ), and a few other games that are obviously going to be where nVidia simply takes the cake without much of a problem. I don't think anyone is going to argue that nVidia will have ATi beat in many of the upcomming OpenGL games, and that's primarily what I'm going to play.

How can you tell until you've seen the reviews for both cards? How do you know R420 hasn't improved OpenGL performance, or has a clockspeed advantage that offsets any Nvidia OpenGL advantages?

If you're chosing Nvidia now without seeing the competiton, you're just buying on brand loyalty, because you really don't know whether NV40 is better than R420 in the games you have mentioned above. There's no need to convince us or yourself that you're making a choice based on valid performance/IQ advantages, you can just say it's a choice based on brand loyalty, and that's fair enough if the company name is your only buying criteria.

 

[Dave Baumann]

The R420 hasn't even premiered and we don't know what the shipping version of the 6800 "Ultra" will be yet...don't ya think it's a bit early to be making an informed choice between the two? :|

DW - I would say that we do know what the shipping version of the Ultra is. Whether there is something else is another matter, but they would not have announced the Ultra at these specifications if they a.) didn't have reasons for doing so, b.) weren't going to ship the Ultra at these speeds.

Unless you want the high end to be a complete loss leader (and these products are supposed to be able to command the highest margins) then you have to pla the yield game.

 

[lukar]

I hope admin will find the same post like this one month and month ago, and also admin of rage3D. People were laughing by know all about r420 for long time, since r420 was in development fro long time now.

r420 ~180-190 million transistors actually
GPU 500Mhz/GDDR3 500Mhz 256 mem Bus (Originally it was DDR2, and 512 mem Bus)
The chip itself has cache memory similar cache memory found on CPU
Full support for PS3.0 and VS3.0 (DX9.0c)
16Pipes 1TMU 8 Vertex Shader units
Full support for displacement mapping called as Trueform 3.0
Smartshader 3.0, Smoothvision 3.0
AA 2x AA4x AA6x AA 8x modes Improved AA algorithm
AF4x AF 8x AF 16x AF 32x modes the same as in r3xx
Full Support for OPENL2.0

Some bench numbers:
HALO full details AF8x 1024*768 120-150FPS
AF8x 1280*1024 100+FPS

3DMark03 ~15000

 

[Nick Spolec]

3DMark03 ~15000

Were those numbers obtained with the "BS" optioned enabled in the drivers?

 

[trinibwoy]

If you're chosing Nvidia now without seeing the competiton, you're just buying on brand loyalty, because you really don't know whether NV40 is better than R420 in the games you have mentioned above. There's no need to convince us or yourself that you're making a choice based on valid performance/IQ advantages, you can just say it's a choice based on brand loyalty, and that's fair enough if the company name is your only buying criteria.

Ummmm he admitted that ATI might be faster....and where does he try to convince anybody of anything? Why do you care what he spends his own money on? As mentioned before he has a valid point in stating that most of the games he plays traditionally exhibit strong performance on Nvidia's cards.

How can you tell until you've seen the reviews for both cards? How do you know R420 hasn't improved OpenGL performance, or has a clockspeed advantage that offsets any Nvidia OpenGL advantages?

Why should he have to wait? Not everyone will buy from either IHV based on a few fps here and there. NV40 seems to be an excellent offering and regardless of ATI's best he may be happy to shell out his dough for it. Given NV40's performance it's hardly likely that this round will be a blowout in terms of performance.

 

[digitalwanderer]

The R420 hasn't even premiered and we don't know what the shipping version of the 6800 "Ultra" will be yet...don't ya think it's a bit early to be making an informed choice between the two? :|

DW - I would say that we do know what the shipping version of the Ultra is. Whether there is something else is another matter, but they would not have announced the Ultra at these specifications if they a.) didn't have reasons for doing so, b.) weren't going to ship the Ultra at these speeds.

Unless you want the high end to be a complete loss leader (and these products are supposed to be able to command the highest margins) then you have to pla the yield game.

Thanks Dave. I wasn't sure if they were "allowed" to change specs around a bit between premiere and launch, I'll take the 6800 Ultra specs as pretty much carved in stone that it's gonna be the card that comes out.

(BTW-What do you mean by "Whether there is something else", like we have any doubts! )

 

[digitalwanderer]

I hope admin will find the same post like this one month and month ago, and also admin of rage3D. People were laughing by know all about r420 for long time, since r420 was in development fro long time now.

r420 ~180-190 million transistors actually
GPU 500Mhz/GDDR3 500Mhz 256 mem Bus (Originally it was DDR2, and 512 mem Bus)
The chip itself has cache memory similar cache memory found on CPU
Full support for PS3.0 and VS3.0 (DX9.0c)
16Pipes 1TMU 8 Vertex Shader units
Full support for displacement mapping called as Trueform 3.0
Smartshader 3.0, Smoothvision 3.0
AA 2x AA4x AA6x AA 8x modes Improved AA algorithm
AF4x AF 8x AF 16x AF 32x modes the same as in r3xx
Full Support for OPENL2.0

Some bench numbers:
HALO full details AF8x 1024*768 120-150FPS
AF8x 1280*1024 100+FPS

3DMark03 ~15000

"Full support for PS3.0 and VS3.0 (DX9.0c)"? Then why did they write the PS 2.0b standard? (And are you saying you think those are the final stats or is it your guess?)

 

[Doomtrooper]

Dude Doomtrooper, for a LONG time the 8500 lost to the GeForce 3 by a few frames per second, and I don't think it ever came within a few FPS of the Ti4600 either, by the end of its life, the 8500 was comparable to a Ti4200 at BEST.

The GF4 came out after the 8500, so did the 'Ti'500. Yes the 8500 came our during the original GF3 reign. New drivers made the 8500 competive with the Ti4200 in many situations in speed yet also supported alot more 'features'.

Speed sells.

 

[lukar]

Those are final stats...
But I have to mention, I forgot, that r420 will support FP24 and FP32 as well...
So basically r420 will, depending of complexity of shader instructions do switch back and forth between FP24 and FP32. It's not going to be control by software, but by hardware itself...

 

[Nick Spolec]

Those are final stats...
But I have to mention, I forgot, that r420 will support FP24 and FP32 as well...
So basically r420 will, depending of complexity of shader instructions do switch back and forth between FP24 and FP32. It's not going to be control by software, but by hardware itself...

Don't be offended if I say you're full of shit.