R420 chip = Loki - R420 card = Skateboard ?

M

Megadrive1988

Veteran
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14397

ATI R420 "skateboard" spotted

DDR 1 thing


By Fuad Abazovic: Friday 27 February 2004, 14:26

THERE WILL be two versions of ATI's forthcoming R420 – one one based on high end memory DDR2. Or let's say GDDR 3 as Nvidia and ATI call it lately.
GDDR 3 is higher clock DDR 2 memory that uses similar DDR 2 commands. Hopefully it runs cooler then DDR 2, but bear in mind that the current Nvidia 5950 Ultra has its memory passively cooled at 950MHz.

ATI is not ready to talk about clock speeds but we guess that it will be close to 1000MHz, or that's what the firm hopes. ATI is famous for faster clocked memory able to match the performance of higher clocked memory cards.

Cards will be equipped with 256MB or DDR 1 memory 8x32 chips. The memory bus is going to be 256 bits wide, as with the R300, R350, 360 marchitecture. I expect that cards will outperform Radeon 9800XT if the chips are clocked properly. We still don’t know whether the slower memory version of R420 will have a chip that runs at the same speed.

The cards will be AGP 8X and VGA, DVI and VIVO ready, as well as supporting DirectX 9.0c ready and I guess that pixel shader 3.0 is under that spec as well.

"Skateboard" is the code name that these Canadian fellows have for this card, just wait and see what name it uses for R423 GDDR3. It will be related to snow as well, unless ATI has one of its famous meetings and decides to change the code name at the last minute. µ
Click to expand...


gotta love codenames 8)
 
I believe he is suggesting that skateboard is the codename for the lower end version (non pro?) card with the r420 on it.

But he also doesn't understand the difference between gddr2 and gddr3, so I find it hard to take him seriously.
 
[off topic]
relating (code)names to snow is dangerous...

Glaze, Avalanche... ;)

I have no idea how the last one would have been called.... while Glazes are really slow moving, Avalanches move from 60 all way to 160 km per hour. what could be even faster way of moving for solid water?
[/off topic]

back to the subject... it's Inq again, so why do we actually care? :) In any case, ATI used to have pretty straight forward codenaming system. They had Rage series which ended with Rage6 that later on was called R100. after that they had R-series, but R4xx chips have now already at least another codename, Loki, that I just can't figure out where it's coming from. And now, if R420 is also known as Snowboard or Skateboard, I wonder how many of these are actually real?

(besides, Snowboard does not sound pretty good codename for a chip. it is a bit too flat and feels like "not so powerful", because it's the gravity that keeps the real snowboard moving. there's no power source.)
 
Nappe1 said:
after that they had R-series, but R4xx chips have now already at least another codename, Loki, that I just can't figure out where it's coming from. And now, if R420 is also known as Snowboard or Skateboard, I wonder how many of these are actually real?
Click to expand...

Codenames are just placeholders. In fact, the more random and misleading they are, the better, so people can't guess what you are talking about and what they mean. I mean come on "Loki" is the Norse god of lies and mischief - "the deceiver". Why would you give people the impression that lies and mischief were related to your product unless you wanted to keep them guessing?
 
Nappe1 said:
And now, if R420 is also known as Snowboard or Skateboard, I wonder how many of these are actually real?
Click to expand...
Why can't they all be?

Loki is the chip codename.
R420 is the numerical designation.
Skateboard is the codename for the non-Pro board.
"Snowboard" perhaps is the codename for the Pro board.
Radeon *** is the official name.
 
Fodder said:
"Snowboard" perhaps is the codename for the Pro board.
Click to expand...

And perhaps Fuad's just full of %*&$.

Considering how many things he confused and/or plain screwed up in that article, that DOES seem the most plausible explanation.

Making up BS is one of the fortés of the inquirer after all.
 
duh guys .


THe r420 has 8 extreme pipelines


Whats the biggest extreme sport now adays .


Skateboarding .


See it all makes sense . :p
 
Chalnoth said:
ATI is famous for faster clocked memory able to match the performance of higher clocked memory cards.
Click to expand...
Since when??
Click to expand...

We already went though this in another thread:

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10491

It's likely that "Understandable English" translation of the piece is something like "ATI has a reputation for being more efficient with memory, allowing them to compete with cards that have higher clocked memory."
 
I don't see why that's necessarily being more efficient with memory, but yes, that person apparently doesn't know how to write what he means in English.

And I further don't see how one architecture's memory usage makes a company famous.
 
Nappe1 said:
back to the subject... it's Inq again, so why do we actually care? :) In any case, ATI used to have pretty straight forward codenaming system. They had Rage series which ended with Rage6 that later on was called R100. after that they had R-series, but R4xx chips have now already at least another codename, Loki, that I just can't figure out where it's coming from. And now, if R420 is also known as Snowboard or Skateboard, I wonder how many of these are actually real?
Click to expand...

R200 and R300 were Sidewinder and Stinger, respectively. I hear marketing decide codenames, which is a little odd. R420 was also R390 and R400 at various stages, AFAIK (confusing, since some of the work that went forward into R500 was still headed "R400").

How are you guys reading that article any other way than R420 = skateboard, R423 = snowboard?!

MuFu.
 
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