RSX Related: Inquirer releases Pics of 7800 and Final Specs

[gosh]

WE MANAGED to get the final remaining details about the soon to be launched Geforce 7800 GTX. We revealed most of it already, but here we go again.

The chip is made using a 110 nanometre process and will have 302 million transistors. So far, this is the biggest chip ever built for graphics use. As we revealed before, the chip will be clocked at 430MHz and will use 1200MHz memory with a 256 bit GDRR3 interface.

It will have eight vertex shader units and will be able to process 24 pixels per clock. Nvidia claims that it has 24 pipelines. Some senior editors are referring to this chip as NV47 as it's nothing more than the NV47 was supposed to be, an NV40 with more pipelines and two more vertex shaders.

The peak fill rate of the card is 6.88 Billion/second (16 ROPs at 430 MHz). Bilinear-filtered texel fill rate is 10.32 billion/second when all 24 pipelines work at the full 430MHz.

The peak power consumption of the chip is 100 to 110W, all the information and benchmarks of the Geforce 7800 Ultra or two cards under SLI will be revealed at six in the morning European time, on the 22nd of June.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23959
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23951

 

[gosh]

so seeing this release and comparing a similiar RSX, how does it compare to Xenos

 

[Titanio]

so seeing this release and comparing a similiar RSX, how does it compare to Xenos

There's not much info in that article to compare. And we can't be sure how similar RSX is to G70 (comparing even the details here highlights what should be fairly decent differences, performance wise anyway). But assuming it is similar, and comparing the info given in that article, we get:

Clockspeed:
G70: 430Mhz
Xenos: 500Mhz
RSX: 550Mhz

Fillrate:
Xenos: 4 Gigapixels
G70: 6.88 Gigapixels
RSX: 8.8 Gigapixels (assuming same number of ROPs as G70)

Process:
G70: 110nm
Xenos: 90nm
RSX: 90nm

External main memory bandwidth:
Xenos: 22GB/s
G70: 38.4GB/s
RSX: 22GB/s + 25GB/s (Would be nice if Sony bumped the VRAM bandwidth to match the GTX, but I'm not sure what if any issues that might introduce, cost aside).

Transistors:
G70: 302m
RSX: >300m
Xenos: 232m (Shader die) + ???m (daughter die)

I included all the details in that report, I think. As you can see, there is not a lot to compare yet

 

[hugo]

Hey that's a single slot card.

 

[AlNom]

It must be pretty heavy with the copper on there.
I wonder what the dual GPU card would like like and what it would weigh.


edit: so... what's the RSX connection? I think this should be in the graphics card forum as it's more about a PC part.

 

[PC-Engine]

Hey that's a single slot card.

Yes and it dumps heat back into your PC case.

 

[hugo]

Hey that's a single slot card.

Yes and it dumps heat back into your PC case.

Yup that's weird considering that we're expecting something which may produce much more heat than the previous gen.It doesn't look like some vacuum to me.The hot air will be pulled from side and circulated upwards instead.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Yes and it dumps heat back into your PC case.

Yes, like almost every other component in your PC case. Thus why so many of us invest time and effort to insure we have excellent air flow in our PC cases to "vent" this hot air that is produced.

It's quite a novel concept, I'm surprised you haven't heard of it.

 

[two]

RSX = +2x6800ultra or +2x 6800ultra SLI?

 

[Titanio]

RSX = +2x6800ultra or +2x 6800ultra SLI?

Good question, I had to look it up to clarify myself.

From Gamespot:

"Nvidia CEO and founder Jen-Hsun Huang explained that "the RSX has twice the performance of the GeForce 6800 Ultra, the highest performance GPU in the world today. Each of these GPUs retails for $500. There will be two of them, equivalent horsepower, in the RSX.""

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6125429/p-2.html

So the first option methinks..

 

[Carl B]

RSX = +2x6800ultra or +2x 6800ultra SLI?

Really after seeing the benchmark result for the 7800, it falls short of both. That's of course if that leaked benchmark for 3DMark05 is to be believed; though I have no reason to doubt. Games can come up different than 3Dmark though, and with NVidia's edge in the Doom engine, and word on the street that the Unreal 3 engine is optimized NVidia, maybe twice the 6800's performance will seem more the case in actual games.

I think we need to wait the extra six days to get the full breadth of benchmarks required to really judge.

EDIT: Sorry I'm talking about G70 not RSX.

 

[PC-Engine]

Yes and it dumps heat back into your PC case.

Yes, like almost every other component in your PC case. Thus why so many of us invest time and effort to insure we have excellent air flow in our PC cases to "vent" this hot air that is produced.

It's quite a novel concept, I'm surprised you haven't heard of it.

Why even have a fan on your graphics card if it just dumps the heat back into the case?

That's like pumping your exhaust from your car back into your intake.

I guess you've never heard or seen of this mysterious alien technology either.

 

[Rockster]

RSX: 8.8 Gigapixels (assuming same number of ROPs as G70)

Seems unlikely as you would need over 70GB/sec to support that in plain jane 32bit color.

External main memory bandwidth:
Xenos: 22GB/s
G70: 38.4GB/s
RSX: 22GB/s + 25GB/s

Xenos: 22GB/s + 32GB/s* I like my asterisk.

 

[ralexand]

So the trannie numbers seem to match the RSX.

I speculate that the overall performance advantage the RSX has over the G70 will be due to the higher clock and maybe the cell contributions to graphic operations.

 

[Carl B]

So the trannie numbers seem to match the RSX.

I speculate that the overall performance advantage the RSX has over the G70 will be due to the higher clock and maybe the cell contributions to graphic operations.

I agree with that on the whole - though with it's much later tape-out there may or may not be something else thrown into the mix. The seeming similiarities in transistor count cannot be ignored though.

 

[ralexand]

So the trannie numbers seem to match the RSX.

I speculate that the overall performance advantage the RSX has over the G70 will be due to the higher clock and maybe the cell contributions to graphic operations.

I agree with that on the whole - though with it's much later tape-out there may or may not be something else thrown into the mix. The seeming similiarities in transistor count cannot be ignored though.

Yeah, with a smaller process maybe you can stick more trannies on there but its likely that that will allow for a higher clock and lower heat at decent yields. The question is what will 300+ trannies allow this beast to do vs. older cards. Maybe there is a special function that requires all those transistors. We'll see.

 

[Titanio]

External main memory bandwidth:
Xenos: 22GB/s
G70: 38.4GB/s
RSX: 22GB/s + 25GB/s

Xenos: 22GB/s + 32GB/s* I like my asterisk.

I was comparing "External main memory bandwidth". I'd consider the 32GB/s to the daughter die to be more internal bandwidth than external, and moreover not to main memory. I tried thinking of a fair way of putting that in there, but couldn't..the figure doesn't belong in a comparison to the others' main mem figures, I don't think, but the above may appear not to do tell the whole story re. Xenos. I guess just another issue re. how difficult all these chips are to compare directly.

edit - hehe, yeah, I see your asterix now. A qualified comparison is certainly possible, but still..

 

[Carl B]

Yeah, with a smaller process maybe you can stick more trannies on there but its likely that that will allow for a higher clock and lower heat at decent yields. The question is what will 300+ trannies allow this beast to do vs. older cards. Maybe there is a special function that requires all those transistors. We'll see.

Oh with a smaller process you can definitely stick more transistors in there - but the fact that NVidia stated the RSX would have ~300 million transistors makes me think they're not going the route of putting as many transistors on there as they could. What RSX is and isn't, well we won't know even when G70 gets full exposure shortly - but either 300+ million transistors is some sort of target count over at NVidia, there has been an incredible coincidence in terms of the counts between the two, or G70 and RSX are highly similar.

 

[therealskywolf]

Well we know that the RSX does HDR 128 Bits + It works at a higher clock, the G70 is supposed to only have HDr 64 bits right?

Seeing how the transistors count is basically the same (You know that a number doesnt go much up when the company says "OVer 300 M transistors" ) i guess that the other MAIN difference is really all about Cell interaction.

 

[Carl B]

Right but performance could be effected in a big way depending on just what that Cell interaction is. So come the day we learn what the deal is, I'm prepared to be any of several various shades of dissapointed and/or pleased.

Also depending on exactly what that interaction is, I'm wondering if perhaps they would remove some vertex pipes to be replaced with pixel pipes - but I won't let myself go down this useless though path at the moment.