Nvidia Ampere Discussion [2020-05-14]

Yes, I've been wondering why NVidia didn't go "wide" on the GPC count, each with less SMs. Clearly less ALU per pixel, but GA102 appears to be over-the-top in this respect for years to come.

 

Is it less taxing on the transistor count/density ?

 

GPC is geometry processing cluster, all NV GPUs since Fermi were overkill in geometry processing power, no need to go wider.

 

Doesn't Nvidia attribute their so-called Polymorph Engines to the TPC (texture processing clusters) - whatever sense that naming makes? GPCs are graphics processing clusters and grouped by rasterizers, AFAIR.

 

Yeah, you are right. With Ampere this is extended to ROPs now though. So the more GPCs - the more rasterizers and ROPs.

 

Back in G80 days TMUs sat outside the SMs and were shared by multiple SMs in a TPC. It went away for a while then TPC was reintroduced with Pascal to group SMs that shared a polymorph engine. No idea why they didn't change the name back then.

 

Shouldn't the reviews be erm.. reviewed, then?

 

Yah, I'd like to see some benchmarking with the new driver.

 

Next wave of AIB reviews will use new drivers, then 3070 launch on 15th, etc. It's not like we'll never know the difference now.

 

Not to mention the Navi2x reviews.

 

https://www.computerbase.de/2020-09/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3080-ctd-abstuerze/

Google translate:

 

No shit. All I said was I'd like to see benchmarks with the new driver.

 

https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/g...ely-due-to-poscap-and-mlcc-configuration.html

 

Good to see its fixed so quick with drivers. Early drivers tend to be abit problematic.
Il still wait for navi21 and see what that does. And zen3 ofc.

 

I'm lurking for zen3 + 3080 20gb or big navi 16gb, if perfs are great. It's an interesting time. Happy to see that drivers are fixing the problem.

 

For some reason i think i go Navi21, been on NV since the 9700Pro days basically. Ofc zen3 since it supposedly has large ipc gains over zen2.

 

The testing process for launch is sketchy as hell.

Edit: One of the main points brought up (if this is TLDR for you) is that the AIBs only had drivers that would run 3dmark and furmark, not regular games. So they were able to properly test their cooler designs, but they did not have drivers for testing games where they might see lighter loads with higher boosting behaviour. It also doesn't sound like they have much time to test everything before launching. I'm actually pretty shocked at how rushed it all is for a product that's so expensive. I'll never buy a gpu right at launch.

 

All in the name of preventing leaks. What a dumb move.

 

Does that really make sense? Would they really issue drivers that look for an executable and refuse to run it if the program was not 3DMark or Furmark? It's not like it's hard to fool it by changing the name? How would they limit the drivers otherwise? How much effort would it be? Calling bullshit on this one honestly.

 

It's more likely they just whitelisted the exectuables hashes. And this is the first time i heard 3DMark and furmark being on the list. Before, it was NV-internal tools with NVPunish mentioned more than once.

edit: too many commata