Nvidia G71 - rumours, questions and whatnot

Gabe himself has said that using a FP16 framebuffer is the way to go for the future, and he's the only one using this method. It has limitations, like not working properly with transparency. From the sound of it, it seems to predetermine what will get a bloom effect and what won't.

In short, it's a hack that doesn't show the true potential of HDR.

 

I meant it's merely a matter of speed/crunching ability in Source games whether you can power HDR+AA. All you need is SM 2.0 and lots of oomph.

 

Sure, but for how long will these hacks be used? I would venture a guess that the arrival of Direct3D 10 will mark the point when all developers breathe a sigh of relief and get down to doing it one standard and "proper" way. But that's a whole new set of hardware.

 

Well, not necessarily, because the HDR mode does post-processing that the non-HDR mode doesn't. Post-processing requires code to handle resolving of the AA buffer using StretchRect.

Simple enough in theory, but I'm not 100% sure about the difficulty involved here.

 

I don't think so, because like I said, only Valve chose to do it this way. Even when developers are adding HDR support for graphics cards without FP alpha blending, like SC:CT, they're still using a FP16 framebuffer and finding ways to get around that shortcoming, like alpha blending on the final tonemapped framebuffer that's going to be output to the monitor.

That way they can still support old video cards while developing rendering technology that won't get outdated.

 

Looks like G73 has 4 quads after all...

 

Why's that?

 

Well, because 7600GT has one quad disabled at the hardware level... I'm not 100% sure about this and i'm not the one you should talk to about this

 

7600GTX coming?


I don't think having 4 quads make much impact though, since I believe its heavily bandwidth limited...

 

This is incorrect. ATI is actually sitting pretty because they're the fastest for,oh, six months. That trumps price. $600 video cards might clue you in on that. Performance is more important than price to a pretty high price level.

And the difference in price fabbing 380 mil versus 302 will shrink more and more with time, to become more irrelevant. It's like which is harder to fab a Xbox or a pS2? It was once the Xbox by a large margin, but now who cares. They aged so much it's completely irrelevant. The same is the case for 380 vs 302. Over time it will mean nothing. The performance will loom larger and larger though.

 

Also X1900XT's are already going for 449 at newegg and ATI just slashed MSRP further. Who knows where it ends up. You will see <299 X1800XT's as well.

That card should be as fast as the fastest Nvidia. So unless Nvidia plans on pricing the 7900 at what, 99? They have a long way to go and cant gain any significant advantage anyway.

Why do you think many Nvidia guys where upset with not getting 32 pipes? Because theyd rather have bragging rights than nice margins for David Kirk, by FAR.

It is Nvidia that is in the worse position, I believe time will tell.
They also do not have the checkbox features either, (HDR+AA).

Dynamic branching did not take much considering all the ALU's only added not that many transistors to X1900. Alu's just are small.

 

Actaully ATi isn't sitting pretty, this is low sales season in the gfx industry, so really doesn't matter much what each company has for another couple of months, once OEM's start looking into what cards they want to put in there systems. ALU's didn't add that much to the transistor count was it around a 10% increase? Also the amount of extra ALU's aren't justified for the amount of performance gain so far.

nV is in a better position to cut prices (hell of alot smaller die) and lock OEM's in that they already have won last year. Of course ATi hasn't sold many r520, and x1900 derevitives since they were late to the party, the x1600 came out in January, thats only 3 months of sales, which they should have had 6 months. So thier breadmaker is the x1300 for the past 6 months.

 

And ATI's still gonna be faster then. That's my point. This is a long lull until the next big cards come out.

And the leaked 7900 benches so far being discussed around the web are being typically called unimpressive.

And we have a new wave of PC games coming like Oblivion that should really show ATI"s shader advantage in an even bigger way.

ATI mainly needs to get more 256 MB cards out. That's where they messed up. Leading them to appear overpriced when they were not. The 256 X1800XT goes for like 349.

 

Also all the 7900 prices I've seen bandied about are less impressive than even the benches.

Where are the big savings? They are priced WAY high right now.

 

The performance of the r580 and g71 is very close, if anything the g71 will have a performance lead in most games today, and a slight loss in Fear, and SCCT.

The reason the nV's chips are less in comparative price brackets (before ATi announced thier price cuts, well even then nV's chips are sill less) is because of the feature deficiencies not really the performance.

But if ATi goes through with price cuts as soon as nV's new high ends and midranges comes out, nV can cut down more. Look at the cost of the original 7800 gt, it started at 399, its was down to 350 2 months after it came out, and now its down to under 299 now. The 7900 gt will have a smaller HSF and smaller die, and smaller board, its going to end up even less to produce this card, so thier initial prices of $299 still leaves a nice margin of profits.

When is Oblivion scheduled for release? I was under the impression it wasn't going to be for another 2 or 3 months?

NM march 21st,

Doesn't really matter though, performance probably won't vary much on these cards from ATi and nV much.

 

But this doesn't correlate with what you just said... --> http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=NVDA&t=5d&l=on&z=l&q=l&c=ATYT

 

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And probably BF2, and COD2, and soon Oblivion, and Ghost Recon, and every other advanced game.

How is Nvidia die like HALF the size when the transistor count is alledgedly much closer? Is it Nvidia overcounting transistors relative to ATI? Any ideas?

That chip looks to my eye about the size of Xenos Shader core alone, both at 90nm. Good news for Xbox360.

 

I cant help that Nvidia stock is overvalued.

Here's the thing: 380 vs 300 becomes meaningless.

The faster card becomes more meaningful.

 

So what'd you say? Which is faster overall? x1900xtx or 7900gtx?

 

Can you assume though that although Ati have now cut prices to match the rumoured nvidia prices nvidia may have more room to cut prices in the future ?