Tony Tamasi Interview

[karlotta]

A friend of mine who has gotten wind of the FX fiasco and knows about ATI's current performance lead still went out and bought a 5900XT. His previous card was a GF2 which treated him well and the 5900 reviews have all been positive and that was good enough for him. When I tease him about AA quality he says that he can't miss what he's never seen

Well i guess he will never see HDR on HL2 then......

 

[Dave Baumann]

They have implemented HDR on FX series using integer buffers. However, the 60.72 drivers actually appear to finally expose float buffers on FX's as well.

 

[karlotta]

They have implemented HDR on FX series using integer buffers. However, the 60.72 drivers actually appear to finally expose float buffers on FX's as well.

Is there a performance penalty?

 

[Dave Baumann]

I'm sure there would be for apps that use it.

 

[o.d.]

Re: what about the physics stuff?

PS3 is not required for any "physics" at all.

From the Tamasi interview...

"One of the examples, from our own developers, is the physics demonstration that we gave at Editor's Day that actually provides, with Shader Model 3, a feedback path between the pixel and the vertex processing(<-- Is this available in PS2.x??). In that particular demonstration, what the developer did was displace a geometry field to create essentially a mountainous scene, and then they compute the physics for the particle system entirely in the graphics processor. They actually compute what we would call motion vectors in the pixel shader and they feed those motion vectors back into the vertex processor and use vertex texture fetch to read the motion data to move the particle system around. So it's a completely GPU-driven particle system, for example.
"

http://www.techreport.com/etc/2004q2/tamasi/index.x?pg=3

so.... can other types of physics be computed as well on the GPU?

 

[Unknown Soldier]

I was just trying to put the discussions on these boards in the context of Nvidia's perspective. I think someone implied that they should care about what we think of their marketing practices, but should they really?

TR: When will the GeForce 6800 Ultra arrive in stores?

Tamasi: By Memorial Day the 6800 Ultra will be available, and by July 4th, the full line of the 6800 series will be broadly available.

TR: On the non-Ultra, how much memory will it have?

Tamasi: The $299 card?

TR: Yeah.

It worries me that the dewd doesn't even know his companies cards. Surely the non-Ultra bit would've been enough for him to know it was not the top of the range card. Also Nvidia have only officially announced 2 6800 GPU's. The 6800 Ultra and the 6800 NU.

US

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Hehehe How many cards are sold at Best Buy at full price instead of someone doing some research and buying it less at Newegg.com or somewhere else. This should give you an idea of how many dunces are buying $500.00 cards.

Oii Stryyder .. you know of any web company like newegg that does shipping Internationally?

I'm looking for one.

US

 

[Dave Baumann]

Re: what about the physics stuff?

so.... can other types of physics be computed as well on the GPU?

A fluid dynamics representation has been demonstrated on PS2.0.

 

[pocketmoon_]

Re: what about the physics stuff?

so.... can other types of physics be computed as well on the GPU?

check out http://www.gpgpu.org/ for a huge list

 

[Xmas]

They have implemented HDR on FX series using integer buffers. However, the 60.72 drivers actually appear to finally expose float buffers on FX's as well.

I guess it's the FP16c (conditional) format mentioned in the last Meltdown pps, isn't it? Only available with DX9.0c?

 

[Dave Baumann]

Truthfully, I've not investigated what floats are now supported - I only noticed that the option on TR:AoD that requires a render to FP texture was no longer greyed out for the FX series.

 

[bloodbob]

Truthfully, I've not investigated what floats are now supported - I only noticed that the option on TR:AoD that requires a render to FP texture was no longer greyed out for the FX series.

I think you might find its only for the NV35 but not the NV30. I could be wrong but I know the NV35 will work with that film rendering gelato or whatever app but I believe the NV30 won't.

 

[Xmas]

Truthfully, I've not investigated what floats are now supported - I only noticed that the option on TR:AoD that requires a render to FP texture was no longer greyed out for the FX series.

I think you might find its only for the NV35 but not the NV30. I could be wrong but I know the NV35 will work with that film rendering gelato or whatever app but I believe the NV30 won't.

NV30GL aka QuadroFX 2000 is supported. In fact the only QuadroFX cards not listed as supported are the 500 and 600 PCI.
http://film.nvidia.com/page/gelato.html

But the TR:AoD behavior seems to indicate it's not the FP16c format, but a "regular" FP format.

 

[flf]

TR: When will the GeForce 6800 Ultra arrive in stores?

Tamasi: By Memorial Day the 6800 Ultra will be available, and by July 4th, the full line of the 6800 series will be broadly available.

TR: On the non-Ultra, how much memory will it have?

Tamasi: The $299 card?

TR: Yeah.

It worries me that the dewd doesn't even know his companies cards. Surely the non-Ultra bit would've been enough for him to know it was not the top of the range card. Also Nvidia have only officially announced 2 6800 GPU's. The 6800 Ultra and the 6800 NU.

Has it occurred to you that there might be more than one "non-ultra" version, despite what has been officially announced?

 

[digitalwanderer]

Actually the way they keep changing their cards names around I can see how the guy got confused....

 

[trinibwoy]

Actually the way they keep changing their cards names around I can see how the guy got confused....

Who says he's confused? I find it hilarious that random people can claim to have more understanding of a company's products that the marketing folk at the company. You guys are my heroes

 

[digitalwanderer]

Who says he's confused?

I do. The man was asked by specific name about his companies product and he had to ask a point of clarification to know which one he was being asked about.

Is it really that hard for you to see? :|

 

[Sxotty]

DW the "non-ultra" is not a specific name bro sorry .I guarantee that if you go to best buy you won't see boxes of "non-ultras" sitting there alongside the "not so fast", and "pretty mediocore" cards .

Considering we all beleive there will be a 6800pro an 6800ultra, and 6800 as well as other things that are non-ultra I think it is fair to ask which product that isn't the ultra are they refering too.

 

[WaltC]

... I find it hilarious that random people can claim to have more understanding of a company's products that the marketing folk at the company. You guys are my heroes

Yes, "marketing folk at the company" are just so obviously objective and unbiased, aren't they? Why, certainly--if there's an aspect of their product which is inferior to a competitor's, they are going to tell us all about it, right? Heh...

I often find it hilarious when random marketing folk claim to know more about their competitor's products then they will ever reveal about their own company's products, don't you?...

 

[Geeforcer]

... I find it hilarious that random people can claim to have more understanding of a company's products that the marketing folk at the company. You guys are my heroes

Yes, "marketing folk at the company" are just so obviously objective and unbiased, aren't they? Why, certainly--if there's an aspect of their product which is inferior to a competitor's, they are going to tell us all about it, right? Heh...

I often find it hilarious when random marketing folk claim to know more about their competitor's products then they will ever reveal about their own company's products, don't you?...

No one says they are unbiased; I would contend however that they know more about their product line then random people on the Internet.