nVidia's fall part NOT to be called "Geforce5"

[ben6]

I first heard this from someone who attended Nvidia's San Francisco Geforce4 launch party. Apparently, nVidia's next card will not be called Geforce (any number), but something different. In keeping with Dave Baumann's report on the European launch party with Dan Vivoli, it appears the fall product will be something new, not just a "refresh" of Geforce4.

Here's what Maximum PC Magazine printed this month (Page30 April 2002 issue):

Geforce3 and Radeon 8500 owners should probably consider waiting for the next Nvidia chip this fall (we don't know it's name yet but nVidia tells us it won't be called Geforce5). The Geforce4 is an incremental upgrade, and you probably won't see any major performance increases if you already own a bad-ass videocard. But of course if you have to have the absolute fastest 3d accelerator money can buy, or desperately want to be able to use anti-aliasing ,, then the Geforce4 Ti is the way to go

 

[Saem]

Neat stuff.

I wonder what is soooo different that they need a name change. Perhaps, it's a new and much improved marketing campaign -like it wasn't good enough already.

 

[Sharkfood]

This can only mean one thing- there are a group of highly paid marketing weasels isolated from the outside world, sitting in a room trying to dream up a new product name... one that is new, but yet will still have some level of product recognition in relation to previous products.

My prediction is.. that after millions of marketing research funds have been expended and 100's of hours of combined efforts, patent clearing and the like, the change will be:

The product line formerly known as "GeForce"
will now be renamed to: "G-Force"

 

[nAo]

No, it will be renamed as "The Force"

 

[John Reynolds]

Nah, they'll call it the Voodoo 6 <rolls eyes>.

 

[Tagrineth]

They could.

Keep in mind that most of nVidia's own engineers working on NV30 were replaced with ex-3Dfx engineers.

 

[Dave B(TotalVR)]

HHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Ty]

They've been telling this to developers for many months now I believe.

 

[Rookie]

nforce will be much better than geForce,regarding that the fall product's emphysize will be antialiasing,u know,thats 3dfx 's strong tech,it maybe called accuforce... ;-) Voodooforce,no,not possible.

 

[JF_Aidan_Pryde]

NV30, codenamed is Eclipse if I recall correctly. I've read that it'll have 64bit colour (internal) and 8 pipes. The same guy also said it'll use QDR memory from Micron. Mojo concepts from 3dfx should also be integrated.

 

[Rookie]

NV30, codenamed is Eclipse if I recall correctly. I've read that it'll have 64bit colour (internal) and 8 pipes. The same guy also said it'll use QDR memory from Micron. Mojo concepts from 3dfx should also be integrated.

Eclipse is the iternal code dev name,and more,Eclipse is just a rumor.....
Wolfman with Eclipse... hmm,I think Eclipse is just the code of GF4?

 

[Ailuros]

NV30, codenamed is Eclipse if I recall correctly. I've read that it'll have 64bit colour (internal) and 8 pipes. The same guy also said it'll use QDR memory from Micron. Mojo concepts from 3dfx should also be integrated.

Salt, grain of.....

Like the GF4 Ti's were supposed before release to have either MSAA "for free" or up to 10x sample AA and in the end it turned out to be a hybrid SS/MSAA sollution.

To be honest I would love to see a real new generation chip from NVIDIA this fall; those rumours that say so far that it'll be just another revamped GF4 offering don't sound that good to me.

An adaptive Multisampling algorithm would be highly interesting; as for the 8 pipelines rumour which keeps resurfacing constantly for the R300 too, I rather tend to guestimate on 6 for both, under the condition that both chips will exceed the current 4 and not just add more pixel functions per pass on each pipeline (which with my rather limited knowledge sounds more reasonable for the time being). I can't see what would be so bad to increase the texture layers per pass and improve programmability on each chip in contrast to adding more pipelines, but then again these takes are up to the point I manage to understand things

 

[Joe DeFuria]

I first heard this from someone who attended Nvidia's San Francisco Geforce4 launch party. Apparently, nVidia's next card will not be called Geforce (any number), but something different...

Yeah, well, the last time you had some info like this ben6, it was back after the original GeForce3 launch, and the "word" from nVidia was something like

"The next card won't just be a faster Geforce3"

And then we got the GeForce3 Ti series.

Bottom line is, It's hard to get enthusiastic about what any card company says is "next", especially when it's about 6 months away and there's a lot that can change. In other words, they might very well be planning on bringing out "something new" this fall, but that might not be ultimately what's delivered.

 

[ben6]

mmm I actually have a interesting story behind that E3 visit . Maybe I'll post it if I get permission from Nvidia . Also have the story behind Matrox's "G800" under wraps, which I might be able to post once their next card is released .