NVIDIA Fermi: Architecture discussion

...and I wan't obviously sure about it.

 

I wonder why the would neeed to do an A3 "to kill time". If A2 would have been good and just the process at TSMC not ready, they could have waited with the mass production and go with A2. NV must have gotten something from A3, be it higher clocks or better yields or both or whatever.

Time is actually working against them.

 

Sarcasm. My apologies for not being able to come up with more ridiculous sounding words to make it more obvious.

I don't understand how people can bring themselves to making these pointless statements. It's a pure crapshoot, not hindered by any amount of relevant experience.

The best you can do is speculate about the general likelihood about the nature of a metal spin. My personal take on this is clear: At least 95% of all fixes are pure functional bugs. A very generous 4% are timing related. 1% are yield. (On all the chips I've worked on, I know of only 1 metal ECO, out of thousands, that was yield related.) And that's really the best you can do. Yet reading the comments here, it's all about getting clocks up by some fantastic amount or doing magic tricks with yield. Some even persist in claiming that you can reduce leakage this way. All with a metal spin... Go figure.

 

Give this man a cookie for reluctantly including the most probable option!

 

I've been following this thread from the beginning and are content of just being a reader. However, I wish to clearify something here.

Eyefinity (and TH2G) is not about upping the resolution. Thats not what attracts the majority of the users. Its the change of aspect ratio, which gives more game content that is important. This is what we want to see when using Eyefinity or TH2G:
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/screenshots/hl2-lc-th2go.php

Going from 1920X1200 in 16:10 to 2560X1600 in 16:10 is "just upping the resolution". It doesn't add to game other then giving a higher resolution image. Going to 48:10 in Eyefinity or TH2G gives you 3 times more game content. You can like it or not, thats subjective, but objectively I don't think you can disagree that seeing 3 times more game content is a major change of the gameplay.

 

Look at silent_guy's last answer. NV is obviously waiting for 40G yields to improve and no they're IMO not in the same position as AMD as yields are obviously better on a by X% less complex chip as Cypress. NV has fixed or added "whatever" with the minor A3 respin, but that whatever doesn't make the "killing time" notion any exaggeration in the end.

 

Yep, metals spins are almost ALWAYS functional. Either you can do slight rewires to existing logic or add small additions to the logic with available bonus gates. The later certainly is not positive as far as timing goes. If you are fixing anything physical related you're effectively trying to shut the barn doors after the horses have left, that SHOULD be taken care of in pre-silicon. Leakage is pretty much a transistor level issue as well.

The only other thing you really fix with a metal fix are things like ROMs though any sane design with ROMs has limited patch capability anyways.

You aren't going to get better timing, you aren't going to to reduce leakage, and unless you are totally fubar in your DRC (which means you have basically failed), you aren't going to improve yield.

 

It's such a major change of gameplay that it's banned in many online multiplayer games (Valve games for instance). FOV is locked at 90 degrees max. It may be great for sims and car games, but I find it annoying otherwise.

 

No one has already heard about this post?

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/rahjas-freeeeeeee-t10420384.html

Any comments? Fake or not in your opinion?
I'm more for the "fake" option...

 

Well, it would be more apparent the closer we get to the official launch of this much delayed chip whether or not there is any truth to these numbers. However, one thing that sticks out as a sore thumb is the Tegra2 "news" concerning Apple. They would much rather make their own solutions, so they are in control of every aspect of the chip. Especially considering they bought P.A. Semi.

 

Given that the claim gets even more colourful in a post below that claiming:

I'm actually wondering why you're even asking. I was wondering when this nonsense will appear here and I wish the performance differences would be the only laughable claim in that post, but the rest doesn't have to do anything with the topic here.

 

If it is seen as an unfair advantage in gaming when not everyone has it, is quite understandable.

What baffles me though is that you find a >90 degree field of vision annoying. You must have a hard time being an ordinary human being then, or do you use blinders in daily life to limit your vision?

Please explain how a wider field of vision is a bad thing, besides that it's rather new in gaming and as such takes some getting used to.

 

Seems like a tradeoff Nvidia wasn't willing to make - (obviously I) dunno about the reasons though. Whatever the die space cost associated with this keep in mind that it's x16 for the whole chip.

For some reasons, Nvidia doesn't seem to want or to not be able to go the AMD way. Their chips tend to be quite big anyway and so making the basic units even bigger for coupling is maybe a worse choice wrt to their basic architecture than had they gone also for a 5-way VLIW.

Plus, it would go completely against their traditional strategy of first implemention for experiments, then making the feature usefull and only after that to go fully along that route.

 

As I predicted! Right on time. Leaks or fake leaks...

 

Do you honestly believe you dont get more visually on the screen going from say 640x480 to 1280x960 or 800x600 to 1600x1200? I can tell you, having played at 1024x768 and then 1600x1200, there is a good deal more visually from games on the screen from the higher resoution, and whether or not you wish to believe it, Eyefinity and TH2Go does nothing more than the same thing. Ups the resolution to give you more visually on the screen(s).

 

So... the 5970 is only 38% faster than the 5870?

Edit: Honestly though, I wouldn't be surprised with the way NV PR has been acting if they came out with some random situation where crossfire scaling didnt work and with some old driver revision that they "think" or "expect" it was that way, even when they really know its not true.

 

I wrote that based on a 10 sq. mm estimation and ninja edited after a check, which gave about 15 sq. mm.

It's too low considering computing (ridiculous throughput), but if we take the whole GPU into consideration it's too high at the same time as that would imply a ~100 sq. mm die, which I strongly doubt would be better than GT216 as that would require a quite high frequency.


Btw, I came across Golubev's IGHASHGPU home recently, and HD5870 has been given ~70% efficiency on md5 hash (down from ~78% on RV740 and RV770).

GF100 won't be able to to any better with md5 (expected ~1900M max at 1.5GHz for 512SP, ~2400M for HD5870) and SHA-1 (expected ~600M max, ~700M for HD5870). A that's Int, it will probably be better for DP, but even worse for SP.

 

Tech-Report's review doesn't show much more than that on average. There's only a case or two where it actually goes beyond 50% faster.

Every company does that. Going back to the HD 3870 X2, when AMD had nothing to compete with NVIDIA in the high-end, they used Call of Duty 4 to show how the X2 beat the 8800 Ultra, when there were many other games, much more demanding, where the X2 failed miserably against the year old 8800 GTX.

 

seems like source of supposed performance is none other than nV (as OP later comments):

then later ..

Kind of weird that he hasn't seen (witness) them firsthand, admits supposed results were emailed to him from nV then claims to know that the GF104 which by all accounts isn't even on the table yet "outperforms the HD5970 hands down"..

All while running at a max load temp of 55C.. umm ok..

 

Yes, and exactly the same thing happens when you go from 4:3 to 16:10/16:9. Revolutionary stuff, really. It's really nice to have a wider vista in flight or driving sims and certain other titles but for other stuff it just doesn't work, do I really need to see "more wall" in a corridor FPS?

Yeah but it's so full of BS it's not funny. 55c temps? Apple buying Tegra2 for a 2011 smartphone? He got the relative perf of HD5870 and HD5970 right but he could pull that off of any review.