R420 F-buffer, R-buffer and memory virtualisation

[glw]

If the R420 has full memory virtualisation..

Will the F-buffer finally be enabled?
(To the best of my knowledge it is not at this
point in time.)

Will the R420 with most of PS3.0 and an F-buffer
be competitive, from a capability POV, with the
PS 3.0 implementation of the NV40?
(Performance is a separate issue.)

Related to this could ATI support an R-buffer
(pointerless A-buffer) for order-independent
transparency and high quality anti-aliasing?

 

[991060]

AFAIK, F-buffer only enables unlimited shader length, it has nothing to do with the dynamic/static branching ability which are required in PS 3.0.

And nVIDIA already claimed that unlimited shader length in VS/PS is supported by the hardware( NV40 ), but current API doesn't expose the feature. Hence I doubt if implementing F-Buffer has any practical use.