The LAST R600 Rumours & Speculation Thread

[3dilettante]

If user's don't have Vista, then that's a pretty goodly-sized pool of satisfied users.

Contrast that with the size of the pool of R600 users.

Nvidia's driver situation isn't great, but its strategic position can probably weather a snafu on a new OS. They could even try some kind of voucher or other PR reward.

Not having a new product on any OS with the clock ticking is a wee bit different. AMD can't very well make a voucher for its own card, or can it?

 

[KimB]

It'll be interesting to look back and see who mucked-up worst: AMD for the R600 lateness (even if it turns out that R600 is the only R6xx GPU that's technically "late") versus NVidia for the Vista horror story that's still driving people away...

This so-called "Vista horror story" has been blown way out of proportion. When looked at more evenly, over a wide variety of benchmarks, it's hard to tell whether it is nVidia or ATI that loses more in the switch to Vista.

 

[willardjuice]

This so-called "Vista horror story" has been blown way out of proportion. When looked at more evenly, over a wide variety of benchmarks, it's hard to tell whether it is nVidia or ATI that loses more in the switch to Vista.

Tell that to (non-8800 series) SLI users...

 

[nonamer]

It'll be interesting to look back and see who mucked-up worst: AMD for the R600 lateness (even if it turns out that R600 is the only R6xx GPU that's technically "late") versus NVidia for the Vista horror story that's still driving people away...

Jawed

It's not that it's late, it's that it seems to be both power-hungry and under-performing alongside being late. That's the NV30-class trifecta of doom, and that is a major disaster. They are somewhat OK if it doesn't under-perform though.

 

[SugarCoat]

It's not that it's late, it's that it seems to be both power-hungry and under-performing alongside being late. That's the NV30-class trifecta of doom, and that is a major disaster. They are somewhat OK if it doesn't under-perform though.

again i disagree, the NV3x is notorious not because it was late but because it was a total failure at DX9.

 

[Rangers]

I'm beginning to think we need midrange G8x and RV6xx threads.

DailyTech seems to think nothing significant from Nvidia until at least April: http://www.dailytech.com/NVIDIA+will+not+be+present+at+CeBIT/article6200.htm

So much for 8900GTX before R600...

Or any mid-range parts.

 

[INKster]

So much for 8900GTX before R600...

Or any mid-range parts.

What makes you so sure they'll have nothing out by the time R600 is here ?

 

[Arty]

It's not that it's late, it's that it seems to be both power-hungry and under-performing alongside being late. That's the NV30-class trifecta of doom, and that is a major disaster. They are somewhat OK if it doesn't under-perform though.

1. No concrete rumors about power consumption. All we have is shots of the power connectors and we have people going "OMG 300W!". Geo suggested that the 2x4 slot could be optional/backward compatible and now the rumor mills have switched their tune. Keep in mind the same rumor mills also concluded that G80 was "OMG 225W!".
2. Even less rumors/leaks about "under" performing part. I guess you could spin the delay only this way (if you'd like) but for all we could guess, it could be x of y many things.

And thats the nth time you've brought in the NV30 card. At this rate, why do you even bother keeping track of this thread. Seems like you are bent upon fulfilling a prophecy.

 

[Razor1]

So much for 8900GTX before R600...

Or any mid-range parts.

and the r600 seems to have slipped till end of April

 

[Tim Murray]

again i disagree, the NV3x is notorious not because it was late but because it was a total failure at DX9.

you're thinking NV3x, not NV30. you remember NV30, don't you? late, Dustbuster-class cooling, hotter than the sun, slower than the R300, and with worse IQ to boot?

I really doubt that R600 will be NV30-level, though. I don't think we'll ever see another NV30.

 

[icecold1983]

you're thinking NV3x, not NV30. you remember NV30, don't you? late, Dustbuster-class cooling, hotter than the sun, slower than the R300, and with worse IQ to boot?

I really doubt that R600 will be NV30-level, though. I don't think we'll ever see another NV30.

its possible intels first video card could be terrible compared to the competition.

 

[trinibwoy]

Well there has to be a high level of expectation before you can have a high level of disappointment. I doubt people will be expecting great things from Intel just because they're Intel.

 

[trinibwoy]

It'll be interesting to look back and see who mucked-up worst: AMD for the R600 lateness (even if it turns out that R600 is the only R6xx GPU that's technically "late") versus NVidia for the Vista horror story that's still driving people away...

Jawed

Based on what I've been seeing people are being driven away from Vista more than away from G80. No doubt that G80 sales would be higher if their Vista drivers were in better shape but I'm not sure how you could even start comparing that to a product that's not even on the market. And that's after you've limited your analysis to those people remotely interested in upgrading to Vista......

But this will undoubtedly become a more important consideration in the next few months. If R600 dominates it won't matter much but, if things are more even performance wise, driver quality and stability could be a strong deciding factor.

 

[BRiT]

its possible intels first video card could be terrible compared to the competition.

The i740 was a pretty terrible video card. Oh, you mean their next first video card?

 

[Ailuros]

Based on what I've been seeing people are being driven away from Vista more than away from G80. No doubt that G80 sales would be higher if their Vista drivers were in better shape but I'm not sure how you could even start comparing that to a product that's not even on the market. And that's after you've limited your analysis to those people remotely interested in upgrading to Vista......

But this will undoubtedly become a more important consideration in the next few months. If R600 dominates it won't matter much but, if things are more even performance wise, driver quality and stability could be a strong deciding factor.

A GPU driver only would not save the day with all the DRM horror stories circulating the web; granted some are exaggerated but there are many reasons why users are in general held back from porting entirely to Vista.

The usual practice is IMHO a dual boot experiment, whereby I'd say that a lot of users will keep the secondary XP installation for quite some time. Many devices out there (always depending on how old they are) have either no Vista driver at all or a pre-installed driver into Vista that exposes merely basic functionalities. That's a common by-product with any new OS releases and nothing really unexpected.

The whole Vista driver pondering is utter bullshit, merely for the reason that the only GPU Vista drivers that are comparable right now are those for D3D9 GPUs and I haven't read anything that shows significant advantages with AMD Vista drivers for R5x0 (or lower) vs. G7x (or lower). G80 drivers are compared to exactly what? A non existing product? If AMD behind the curtain claims their R6x0 drivers to be in a much better shape, then I've got only ONE reasonable response: put up or shut up.

When R600 finally makes it to shelves, then and only then we will be able to see the stability and shape of its Vista drivers compared to its straight competitor.

 

[DemoCoder]

Many of the people I know who upgraded to G80s aren't even in a rush to upgrade to Vista. Tons of people are perfectly happy with XPSP2 until DX10 titles come out. Vista after all, is quite pricey and a resource hog, plus DRM'd out the wazoo. I was running it for a while, but then reformatted and went back to XPSP2. IMHO, Vista is overhyped and overblown, and there is no practical reason why a high-end GPU needs it until DX10 content arrives.

 

[flippin_waffles]

Many of the people I know who upgraded to G80s aren't even in a rush to upgrade to Vista. Tons of people are perfectly happy with XPSP2 until DX10 titles come out. Vista after all, is quite pricey and a resource hog, plus DRM'd out the wazoo. I was running it for a while, but then reformatted and went back to XPSP2. IMHO, Vista is overhyped and overblown, and there is no practical reason why a high-end GPU needs it until DX10 content arrives.

No way dude. That would imply that the only good thing about Vista is DX10. I just don't see that when my RAM is being fully utilized, as apposed having 2 GB sitting doing nothing %90 of the time, that it is hogging resources. The difference is, Vista actually uses the RAM that I spent my hard earned money on. SuperFetch offers a huge improvement in speed. My windows and apps open instantly, with no thrashing of the harddrive. IMO Vista is very good and the difference is very noticable to me.

 

[jamesnmandy]

No way dude. That would imply that the only good thing about Vista is DX10. I just don't see that when my RAM is being fully utilized, as apposed having 2 GB sitting doing nothing %90 of the time, that it is hogging resources. The difference is, Vista actually uses the RAM that I spent my hard earned money on. SuperFetch offers a huge improvement in speed. My windows and apps open instantly, with no thrashing of the harddrive. IMO Vista is very good and the difference is very noticable to me.

well, yes and no....unfortunately, since it does use alot of that memory, now we are seeing an overall system bandwidth limitation i believe, because even though there is system memory free, Vista still runs dog slow compared to XPSP2....even though it is using "the RAM that I spent my hard earned money on"

just what the hell does my OS have business doing with 2Gb's of my ram when i haven't asked it to do anything? ....okay, maybe an exaggeration....but still, seriously, all of that quick search mumbo jumbo and what not is completely not worth the overall performance hit

 

[Miksu]

Didn't Valve just postpone their HL2: EP2 release? Maybe we'll see some joint marketing push from AMD and Valve.

 

[flippin_waffles]

well, yes and no....unfortunately, since it does use alot of that memory, now we are seeing an overall system bandwidth limitation i believe, because even though there is system memory free, Vista still runs dog slow compared to XPSP2....even though it is using "the RAM that I spent my hard earned money on"

just what the hell does my OS have business doing with 2Gb's of my ram when i haven't asked it to do anything? ....okay, maybe an exaggeration....but still, seriously, all of that quick search mumbo jumbo and what not is completely not worth the overall performance hit

Man I don't get it. Maybe it's just me then, cuz I certainly don't see this phantom performance hit that some are talking about. Mine is just the opposite. Everything runs smoother and snappier. Sluggish is the last word I would use to describe it. And I actually only have 1GB of RAM left in it. There's no darn starving of bandwidth, if something needs access to memory, it get's it. Anyway, I like it. heh And I love the fact that my comp comes out of sleep mode faster than my monitor to a full functioning desktop.
I'm way off topic.