NVIDIA Kepler speculation thread

[ltcommander.data]

like shown on the roadmap of DirectX, MS offtly ( for dont say allways ) introduce this type of feature in at min 2 phases. Like many specific DX11.1 features, you have first a software ( API + driver ) compatibility introduced, then in general an hardware requirement for support the level features.

This is for keep compatibility with older GPU's for developpement and dont break compatibility in a same "DirectX series " too fast ( between DX11.0, 11.1, 11.2 etc.. )

Like for many features on DX11.1 :

- Tiled resources first introduction " Tier1" = software DX11.1 compatibility feature level ( driver update, require DX11.1 software support on DX 11.0 GPU + DirectX 11.2)
- Tiled Resources second level "Tier 2" = Hardware DX11.1 requirement
But for Tier3, i dont know maybe
- Tiled Resources third level " Tier 3" = final level, the introduction software > hardware is completed.

What do you mean Tier 1 being in "software". Weren't nVidia's Tiled Resources demos running in hardware on the GTX 770 even though it's only a hardware feature level 11_0 part and presumably Tier 1?

EDIT:
As an observation, earlier in the thread it was speculated that when nVidia said 90 million of their GPUs support Tiled Resources they were referring to Keplar's installed base, which presumably means that Fermi doesn't support Tiled Resources. AMD is only supporting WDDM1.2 on HD5000 and HD6000 GPUs, so if Tiled Resources requires WDDM1.3 drivers (does it?), then AMD is only supporting it on Southern Islands. Given those results with nVidia and AMD, support from Intel in Ivy Bridge and Haswell isn't very optimistic. Until next-gen GPUs arrive, if the above is true, it seems then like the tiers are currently effectively vendor specific optimizations with Tier 1 being Keplar and Tier 2 being Southern Islands.

EDIT 2:
http://www.gamedev.net/topic/644771-so-direct3d-112-is-coming-o/#entry5073613

Someone tested with Fermi which only supports WDDM1.2 in the latest 8.1 preview drivers and doesn't support Tiled Resources. So it does look like for now, Tier 1 = Keplar and Tier 2 = Southern Islands.

 

[AnarchX]

Trinity/Richland supports WDDM 1.3, too: http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalystWIN8-1PreviewDriver.aspx

 

[lanek]

If my brain is not completely freezed ... Some DX11.1 ( or DX11.2 etc ) features require hardware build in for support thoses features, some can be used by hardware or compatible with API runtime ( driver/software implementation )..

Tier1 dont require to be Hardware enabled and can be run by the runtime support ( software enabled ).. tier 2 will require the features are enabled in the hardware.


If you look at the MS list of Features level for DX you will understand. All features level writed as Optional Requires the Direct3D 11.1 runtime and so can be enabled without hardware requirement . its why some features of DX11 are availble on DX10 cards ( and why too DX10 games developpement have been stopped and there's just a compatibilty level with DX11 ( just some features are missing on the DX10 gpu's running a DX11 games ).
Other will require to be hardware compliant.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ff476876%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

 

[MfA]

I'm sure PC developers are just chomping at the bit to support this ... when Microsoft has decided not to backport it to windows 7 ...

 

[Ryan Smith]

What do you mean Tier 1 being in "software". Weren't nVidia's Tiled Resources demos running in hardware on the GTX 770 even though it's only a hardware feature level 11_0 part and presumably Tier 1?

EDIT:
As an observation, earlier in the thread it was speculated that when nVidia said 90 million of their GPUs support Tiled Resources they were referring to Keplar's installed base, which presumably means that Fermi doesn't support Tiled Resources. AMD is only supporting WDDM1.2 on HD5000 and HD6000 GPUs, so if Tiled Resources requires WDDM1.3 drivers (does it?), then AMD is only supporting it on Southern Islands. Given those results with nVidia and AMD, support from Intel in Ivy Bridge and Haswell isn't very optimistic. Until next-gen GPUs arrive, if the above is true, it seems then like the tiers are currently effectively vendor specific optimizations with Tier 1 being Keplar and Tier 2 being Southern Islands.

EDIT 2:
http://www.gamedev.net/topic/644771-so-direct3d-112-is-coming-o/#entry5073613

I need to get confirmation on this from NV, but I suspect you need bindless textures to pull off tier 1 tiling, hence the Kepler limitation.

 

[Jawed]

I'm sure PC developers are just chomping at the bit to support this ... when Microsoft has decided not to backport it to windows 7 ...

PC developers who happen to make multi-platform games are going to find the new consoles' support for this pretty compelling, I suspect.

 

[dbz]

And for channel products they are wrong. All the HD 7000 Series are DX11_1 feature level.

Define "channel product".
As far as my understanding goes, a channel product is any that is offered outside of an OEM build. There are a hell of a lot of HD 73xx - 76xx series cards that fall into the category of "white box", or just offered as a new product online ( this one is local for me)

 

[sebbbi]

This video answers many technical questions about the tiled resources.

According to the information I gathered from that presentation, DX 11.2 tiled resources provide identical feature set compared to AMD_sparse_texture (GCN) OpenGL extension. Identical 64 KB page size, identical page dimensions (and 2x1 page dimensions for uneven formats). HLSL has now has similar new instructions to check for missing pages/mips. So it seems that this feature has been tailored according to GCN feature set.

Unfortunately the presentation didn't answer any questions about the reduced feature level support for tiled resources. Also they didn't disclose which GPUs support which feature level. Without knowing the exact limitations and how broad the hardware support is, it's hard to say how useful this feature is in practice.

I'm sure PC developers are just chomping at the bit to support this ... when Microsoft has decided not to backport it to windows 7 ...

Yes, the biggest question is: Is Microsoft going to update Windows 7 to support DX 11.2 (11.1 support was added in a update: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chuckw/archive/2013/02/26/directx-11-1-and-windows-7-update.aspx). Huge majority of game developers are using Windows 7 in their development computers. Tiled resources is a nice feature, but not nice enough to upgrade hundreds of computers just to develop support for it. Also if Win 8.1 is the sole supported platform, the customer base benefiting from the feature will not be big enough to spend extra coding resources to support it. Hopefully there will be a Windows 7 DX 11.2 update in the future, so that we will actually see this (very nice) feature used in PC (and Windows tablet) games as well.

 

[MfA]

It probably interacts too heavily with virtual memory to be doable without WDDM 1.3 ...

 

[Dave Baumann]

Define "channel product".
As far as my understanding goes, a channel product is any that is offered outside of an OEM build. There are a hell of a lot of HD 73xx - 76xx series cards that fall into the category of "white box", or just offered as a new product online ( this one is local for me)

That's actually an OEM SKU. The page even references the codename platform it comes from...

 

[Alexko]

OEM products have a habit of somehow showing up in retail.

 

[lanek]

Its not what i will call a retail shop, its more something like Ebay... Look like someone who have buy a Dell and replaced the gpu and now sell the OEM one or someone who have access to OEM lines and sold them for profit.

 

[dbz]

Its not what i will call a retail shop, its more something like Ebay... Look like someone who have buy a Dell and replaced the gpu and now sell the OEM one or someone who have access to OEM lines and sold them for profit.

The latter given the range of products they sell. Local to me are quite a number of walk-in electronics stores selling the same item (along with numerous other sub- HD 7700 series cards. White box. No accessories. They don't sell on the net so I used a local online trading site as an example.

The point I was making that the distinction between "retail channel" and "OEM" is largely an exercise in semantics at best...unless a glossy outer box is somehow a "must have" feature.

 

[Dave Baumann]

That's grey market stuff. Its not just the glossy box but a known vendor and warranties.

 

[DSC]

http://techreport.com/news/25050/evga-slaps-titan-style-cooler-on-geforce-gtx-770

 

[MfA]

Since NVIDIA doesn't really have a reason to stay chummy with Microsoft at the moment maybe they should use their resources to push OpenGL for PC gaming ... they could make a SDK to make porting from PS4 to OpenGL as painless as possible and offer full feature parity even on Vista and Windows 7.

 

[Kaotik]

Since NVIDIA doesn't really have a reason to stay chummy with Microsoft at the moment maybe they should use their resources to push OpenGL for PC gaming ... they could make a SDK to make porting from PS4 to OpenGL as painless as possible and offer full feature parity even on Vista and Windows 7.

They need to offer hardware level feature parity first, too, which they don't have at the moment.

 

[DSC]

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/splinter-cell-blacklist-geforce-gtx-bundle

 

[Dresden]

I'm not sure whether this has been discussed yet in this thread, so forgive me if this question has been answered, but does anyone predict a dual GPU 700 Kepler based card, IE a 790, or will Nvidia plow forward and release the Maxwell chips?

 

[lanek]

I'm not sure whether this has been discussed yet in this thread, so forgive me if this question has been answered, but does anyone predict a dual GPU 700 Kepler based card, IE a 790, or will Nvidia plow forward and release the Maxwell chips?

Outside the communication of Nvidia, like the 760-770 will be the 2 last of the 700 series;

They dont really have any reason for do it yet, and this will mean too to base it on the 770 ... with maybe lower turbo core speed ( so basically something close of the 690 ). based on the 780, the cost of developpement will be a bit higher, due to the higher TDP and memory size.

But who know, things can change.