R600 has 512-bit external memory bus, Orton promises it takes no prisoners

That all depends on it's performance. If it's 5% faster (or slower) than 8800GTX, very likely. If it's 40% faster, not likely.

ATI is still late but at least judging from the die pics we already got, we know they will not have a huge die size disadvantage this time around. That alone puts them in a vastly better position imo. Last time around ATI was actually a good deal more aggressive on pricing than Nvidia, and that was with 2X die size in general! That's going to open up various possibilities if they are even sized now ATI would actually be able to vastly undercut on price, for the same profits they had to just match Nvidia last time around.

Nvidia continues to be overly wedded to 40+% profit margins imo, and they're damn lucky they're so far not competing with someone (like Intel, I daresay) that would make them pay dearly for it. The fact is, where they not texture limited ATI's last gen part would have likely been on the order of 100% faster than Nvidia's, and I hope someone at Nvidia noticed they barely dodged that bullet, and dont get in that position again.

 

That's just speculation, as well.

Might as well say if Nvidia strikes out the next two times, they'll be looking to get out of the business as well.

 

Its not going to be about performance its going to be about money and marketshare, if AMD sees that they can't make money on high end parts, and so far ATi hasn't been able to counter nV's aggressive market penetrations in ever market where ATi and nV are going at each other specially the last two to three (well we can say even from the gf 6 line till now) quarters, its not something AMD will be able to reinforce immidiately by cutting down prices. Going into a pricing war in GPU and CPU, where CPU makes more money for them....., where will the resources go first?

nV didn't dodge the bullet, they knew ATi's card it was already released, so they released accordingly, the 7900 line.

 

Except Nvidia does not have a product in the CPU market, nor does it have any other part that outways its GPUs. That's not the case at all with AMD.

 

The high end parts, for the hardcore/enthusiast martket, is a very lucrative business. The margins are quite high.
Moreover, one of the primary advantage of the GPU semiconductor business is the ability to create a whole subset of lower cost part out of a single, high end, technology.

 

This thing sounds exciting. The buzz is palpable and building; my eye is certainly on one. I just hope it plays out; many moons ago I remember hearing similar world-beating performance claims for an oft-delayed card whose big number was also 6...

 

I can't wait for a 1024-bit bus, with NVIDIA and ATI constantly at eachother's throats, it should arrive within a few years.

 

Good points, however there was a time when we thought hard drives wouldn't need to be even a gigabyte too. Hardware is constantly evolving, and bus speeds should as well as the need arises for more bandwidth. I said a few years jokingly, I really wouldn't expect a 1024-bit bus so soon but I think one day it will happen.

 

I bet they will go serial rather than 1204 wide.

 

Given the rational that was used to make the call that R600 is 512-bit I think we can safely say that R600 is also 65nm. After all David Orten did say they would be first in the same discussion as the R600.

 

I hope he takes the bet.

 

Can’t resist or deny but to comment just once!

I think 512bit stuff is more going to be like AGP4X vs. AGP8X. Oooohh!: Double the bandwidth for the marketing point: Or -PCI-Express 16x vs. 8x.

Maybe like Call of duty 2 or future 3 which require more bandwidth will come to play.

 

Hi Shtal

I would think the extra bandwidth should help with higher AA i.e. 8xSSAA etc.

I just have to wonder at what level the AA will be free(given fps without performance hit). 4xAA .. 8xAA??

What else should be free?

US

 

But bandwidth in your examples does infact show gain. PCIExpress 32 vs 16 vs 8 lanes for example shows some serious scaling when heavy doses of CrossFire/SLI AA are implimented. For every day use or most games out currently, the bandwidth will problably go to waste, you're right, but for future games or a select few current it has the potential to show some real advantage.

Plus not to point out the obvious, but they may have a few tricks of their sleeves that can use that bandwidth.

 

Just another question..

DirectX 10 doesn't exist anymore does it? I thought it was supposed to be Direct3D 10.

 

Well! take a look at Windows Vista beta, what does it says or how Microsoft calls DX10.