R400/R500 guessing game

Well, as long as ATI can execute, I think I have a general fondness for that board marketing manager! Oh, and for the board engineers that actually implement it, I guess, but I'm thinking ATI engineers in general don't need any more ego feeding right now.

 

What are you basing this off of? Don't you think it could have something to do with the fact the R300 was more or less designed for DDR1, which ends at around 400 MHz (now) and it was slower at release? Are you saying the R300 architecture is incapable of using faster ram efficiently? I really have a hard time imagining that this could be the case...

 

How is this possible for endusers to qualify given the disparity of RAM used on these boards?

OTOH my 9700 NP & 9500 pro boards are identical, which I know is peculiar for a 9500 pro...

 

No, nothing to do with efficiency. Stability. There is probably some kid of internal limit/TL problem that causes the ~350MHz ceiling. You'll have to take my word that one of the big areas of optimisation/tweaking in the R300 to R350 transition involves the memory interface/controller. Like I said earlier, the PCB will probably be fine at 350MHz+ - it'll just use more power.

MuFu.

 

Well that's the key thing - similar overclocks *despite* the rating disparity.

Yeah - must be a very early one.

MuFu.

 

I know, however, that presupposes that BIOS timings, etc, aren't to blame. You're not really testing the same GPU+PCB vs diff RAM. You're testing same GPU+PCB+BIOS vs diff RAM. I don't necessarily disagree with your conjecture, mind you.

 

Optimistic : End of Feb.
Conservative: End of March.

 

Interesting, I like these comments.

 

I don't really see anything wrong with "conventionally grouped" pipelines... I would also hope that they don't go hog wild with .13 and grow the circuitry disproportionately just because they think they can. I'd like to see them concentrate on maintaining a decent thermal profile while attaining a much higher clockspeed--which I think they ought to be able to do--provided they KISS. I would think they'd want to eschew elegance if it's going to mean a slew of complex logic conflagrations down the line. I'm also not sure if it's a good thing to look at "nv30's vertex shader" discretely, for that kind of thing. Yea, it's possible you could get what you want on the first go--also possible you'd get a great big mess, instead...

 

The mobile market is a big part of ATi's focus, so I don't imagine they'll deviate much from their previous methodology. So, rest easy.

 

With the R350 sporting 30GB/s of bandwidth, ATi might just be wiser leaving it for late Nov/early Dec. 30GB/s!

 

Well, we have not heard anything abot R400 taping out, which probably means it hasn't. We usually get tipped off around here when these things happen.

Assuming that's the case, and given the fact that this should be another brand new architecture, I don't really see any way it can be in production this summer.

At best, I would guess we might see ATI do something similar to what nvidia did with the FX. Launch it late this year, and possibly get it out late 4Q. However, my guess would be R400 is pushed back to the Spring '04 cycle (which effectively is what happened to the NV30).

Assumimng that's the case (no real R400 this year), it will be interesting to see what ATI does for the fall cycle. If ATI is true to their convictions of keeping "the flag" cpatured at the high end, we may see another R3xx refresh this summer. I'm not expecting another chip, but perhaps that's when we may see something like a 450Mhz+ R350 paired with 450 Mhz DDR-II.

We know that ATI will launch some 256 MB R350 in April. If the clocks are no different than the 128 MB 9800 Pro (which I suspect they will be the same), then my guess is they are going to launch a 450/450 or similar R350 this summer....around the time that the NV35 starts to ship...

 

But didn't we see FIC do a press release with a 420? core and 460 ddr-ii ram?

From most of the reviews the core is clocking up very well... so wouldn't it be a case of FIC or another vendor speed binning and getting premium chips?

From ATi I would rather see something past the 500Mhz range for the fall product.. After all, we all know that ATi's architecture is much better than Nv's at the moment..

 

Yes we did see it, although it was premature and AFAIK, it could have been based on old / incorrect information. Now that the R350 is official, is that FIC PR with those same specs available?

It is certainly possible.

Well, yeah, I'd rather see a 750 Mhz+ product. However, it is in ATI's best interests for their high-end cards to be "just fast enough" to be considered "faster" than nVidia's latest offerings.

In other words, a 420/460 R350 would really be overkill (for ATI, not us!) considering the competition. That could hurt the margins on the 9800/9800 Pro depending on the pricing of the 9800 Pro/Ultra/SuperDuper FIC type card.

IMO, ATI is just better off waiting for nVidia to show it's "NV35 card", and then respond to it with an "Ultra" R350, once they know more or less exactly what the NV35 is capable of.

 

Okay, so we had a lot of 3DFX/nVidia comparaisons with the VSA-100 / NV30 similarities.

But is it just me or does the R400 look an awful lot like Rampage?

The Rampage was a fundamentally different architecture, compared to its predecessors and everything else on the market.
The Rampage got delayed
3DFX made several intermediary architectures ( V3, V4 & V5 ) in order to remain competitive

The R400 is a fundamentally different architecture, compared to its predecessors and everything else on the market.
The R400 got delayed ( although it seems it won't be delayed anywhere near as much, and I'd be *very* surprised if it was delayed by more than 6 months )
ATI is probably going to release a 0.13/DDR2 R350 in order to remain competitive.


The only difference is that ATI still got a lot more financial resource than 3DFX back in the day.
If the R400 in 2004 could be what Rampage would have been in 2001... Wow...


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