What potential for the NV31 and NV34?

[BoardBonobo]

Well since the NV30, though offering greatly increased performance over its siblings, appears to be more fud than fun what can we expect to see from the mainstream offerings?

It this arena it will be competing with the likes of the R9000\9500 all of which are also running a 128bit memory bus and a 8 or 4x1 pipeline. Here it would seem to be a more balanced architecture. So from the latest set of previews would it be possible to extrapolate some expected performance for the mainstream GPUs? Is it possible that in this area the NV3x architecture will be more dominant and that maybe what nVidia are aiming for?

[edit]
forgot the 9500 is an 8x1

 

[KimB]

Well, with 4x FSAA, the GeForce FX is usually still able to perform better than the Radeon 9700 Pro, so the NV31/NV34 shouldn't have much trouble against the 9500 series. Don't forget that the Radeon 9500 doesn't have HyperZ III enabled.

 

[Typedef Enum]

You need to qualify that statement a little bit, IMHO. The 4x mode on the R300 is superior to that of the FX.

But even more telling is the fact that when you enable _all_ features, the R300 certainly looks like the better offering. Anand's review is a good source at showing this pattern.

Even more impressive, to me, is how well the R300 does when enabling the 6x mode. That one chart that Anand has showing the performance dropoff is very telling, to say the least.

 

[Boke]

"Well, with 4x FSAA, the GeForce FX is usually still able to perform better than the Radeon 9700 Pro" 8)

 

[Dave Baumann]

Well, with 4x FSAA, the GeForce FX is usually still able to perform better than the Radeon 9700 Pro, so the NV31/NV34 shouldn't have much trouble against the 9500 series.

Jury's out on that. Remember 9500 PRO has double the pipes. I'd guess this lot may see a refresh before long.

You are also assuming that all the compression / saving techniques are making their way across, which we've heard may not be the case.

Don't forget that the Radeon 9500 doesn't have HyperZ III enabled.

HyperZIII is, as in all the compression and early Z rejection is enabled, just HierZ is disabled.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

Well, with 4x FSAA, the GeForce FX is usually still able to perform better than the Radeon 9700 Pro, so the NV31/NV34 shouldn't have much trouble against the 9500 series.

And how do you figure that? Especially since

1) It seems to me that with 4X FSAA, the cards are on par. Each one wins in different benchmarks.

2) Based on rumors, NV31/34 won't have any clock-speed advantage over the Radeon 9500/9500 Pro, that the FX has over the 9700 Pro. Furthermore, the 9500 pro will have an immense fill rate advantage, due to its 8 pipe design.

3) And again, qualitywise, 4X FSAA on the GeForce is not comparable to 4X FSAA on the Radeon.

4) You mention Heirarchical Z being disabled on the 9500 non-pro. Yet no consideration about all the "disabled/missing features" on the NV31/NV34?

Edit: Dave beat me to it. 8)

 

[Dave Baumann]

Actually we know not all the NV3x line will feature all the "Intellisample" features

NVIDIA Intellisample White Paper[/url]]This paper explains the latest innovations that distinguish the NVIDIA GeForce FX GPUs with Intellisample technology. Each of the new NVIDIA graphics processors leverages some or all of the described features as appropriate for the target markets.

 

[antlers]

NV34 will have to compete against RV350--and we have no idea how either of them perform.

 

[LeStoffer]

... and then there is the unpleasent question about how NV31 will perform against the GeForce 4.

It all nice that card makers can write DX9 on their boxes, but if performance is about the same as their 1 year old DX8 part, how will concumers react? Maybe they will react with reason!

 

[Sharkfood]

I have my concerns about the NV31 and NV34. On the forefront is this tidbit from x-bit:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/story.html?id=1042994509

Of course, there is alot to DX9.0, and has already been mentioned in another thread, let's hope this doesnt apply to pixel shaders.

 

[Doomtrooper]

Hi-z is enabled on all eight pipe R300's, including 9500 PRO's.

Just realized. Hierarchical Z is disabled on the 9500. So you guys are actually enabling it through a registry? You're not talking about having a broken feature, you're talking about enabling a feature which is not enabled by default and getting corruption. That's different.

Yes, hiZ is disabled on the 9500 non-pro, by design. Re-enabling it will cause visual artifacts or hangs. That's not something new; 9500 non-pros never had HiZ enabled.

So, yes, we know of this. It's not a problem, since it's not supposed to be enabled.

sireric

9500 NP is the problem.

 

[KimB]

1) It seems to me that with 4X FSAA, the cards are on par. Each one wins in different benchmarks.

I don't think so. Looking at Tomshardware and Hardocp, the GeForce FX wins until the resolution is cranked up too high (where both are below 60 fps...). This, to me, looks like a clear driver issue. It doesn't appear that the cards are CPU-limited, and the higher resolution would be easier on color/z-compression. But, regardless of whether you think it wins or not, it is impressive how well it does with less bandwidth in 4x. The Codecreatures benchmark is also very interesting...the FX actually improves its lead with FSAA enabled. My first guess would be that this is a memory granularity issue. The Radeon 9700 Pro uses 4 128-bit memory controllers, while the GeForce FX has 4 64-bit controllers. While it has less total bandwidth, it should still be better when accessing many textures at once. I don't really know for sure what this means for future games, but I think it is worth noting.

2) Based on rumors, NV31/34 won't have any clock-speed advantage over the Radeon 9500/9500 Pro, that the FX has over the 9700 Pro. Furthermore, the 9500 pro will have an immense fill rate advantage, due to its 8 pipe design.

Well, we'll see, but I doubt the 9500 Pro will drop much in price, since it's basically a 9700 with a 128-bit memory interface. I would imagine that ATI will try to get it phased out as quickly as possible.

3) And again, qualitywise, 4X FSAA on the GeForce is not comparable to 4X FSAA on the Radeon.

Yes, that's true, unfortunately. This is something that people have been complaining about nVidia for a long time now...hopefully nVidia's FSAA will be fixed soon...but, at the same time, right now the FX is quite a bit better than the Radeon 9700 for older games with alpha tests. This doesn't make a difference to me at all, but I suppose some might think it a plus.

4) You mention Heirarchical Z being disabled on the 9500 non-pro. Yet no consideration about all the "disabled/missing features" on the NV31/NV34?

Yes, that's true, I suppose. It's just that in the past nVidia has been more likely to include the memory bandwidth-saving features in the lower-end parts than the higher-end parts. That is, look at the GeForce4 MX. It has the FSAA/anisotropic of the GeForce4 Ti, but not the programmability features. We essentially know that the NV31/NV34 will have the core programmability of the FX, but it seems likely that the memory bandwidth savings stuff would be there as well. I suppose you're right, though, this will determine whether the NV31/NV34 will perform very well or just decent (for the price). It will be very interesting.

 

[Clashman]

Isn't it more like GFFX's 4x AA can usually outperform the 9700's 6x AA? I don't think any of the reviews have actually compared 4 to 4. And the ones that have compared GFFX's 4 to ATI's 6 have said that the ATI method wins hands down in IQ.

 

[Fuz]

Isn't it more like GFFX's 4x AA can usually outperform the 9700's 6x AA? I don't think any of the reviews have actually compared 4 to 4. And the ones that have compared GFFX's 4 to ATI's 6 have said that the ATI method wins hands down in IQ.

Huh

Reviews I have read difinately compared 4x to 4x.
ATI's 6x will of course wins hands down to Nv's 4x.

I am not sure what you are getting at??? :?

 

[Gollum]

Call it a hunch, but I expect to see a similar picture in the low- to mid-end market segments as we are seeing in the high end now. With a little bit brighter hue for Nvidia however, as they shouldn't need to have huge, hot, power hungry and loud cards in that marketplace to compete, its the place where the .13 process might help them out more in the end IMO.

The NV31 based products should scale similarly to ATI's, covering the range between 9500 and 9700 non-pro performance (with the 9700 being a good bit faster than any NV31 based card though, the non-ultra FX is it's primary competitor after all) and offering a similar price/performance ratio. NV34 based cards will likely scale somewhere between 9000 and 9500 but be very competitively priced (could be a very exciting product, unlike the 9000/9100 series bringing DX9 to the masses, IF they keep at least the minimum DX9 featureset intact). Should the NV31 based cards make similarly efficient use of their limited bandwidth as the NV30, then they could prove to be very well balanced products. So very much unlike their bigger brother...

Overall I see Nvidia finally being competitive again in those market areas, even once RV350 hits. ATI will most likely keep the lead in the high-end enthusiast market though: they have the IQ lead, the performance gap they need to bridge is fairly small and the next high-end product from Nvidia at least 6 months away while theirs is just around the corner...

 

[Beatles]

Well, with 4x FSAA, the GeForce FX is usually still able to perform better than the Radeon 9700 Pro, so the NV31/NV34 shouldn't have much trouble against the 9500 series. Don't forget that the Radeon 9500 doesn't have HyperZ III enabled.

You just don't have a fucking clue do you?

 

[Tahir2]

Watch the language mate!

 

[KimB]

Call it a hunch, but I expect to see a similar picture in the low- to mid-end market segments as we are seeing in the high end now. With a little bit brighter hue for Nvidia however, as they shouldn't need to have huge, hot, power hungry and loud cards in that marketplace to compete, its the place where the .13 process might help them out more in the end IMO.

Just consider that ATI won't have the bandwidth advantage at the lower-ranges of the market that they enjoy with the 9700 Pro.

 

[antlers]

Just consider that ATI won't have the bandwidth advantage at the lower-ranges of the market that they enjoy with the 9700 Pro.

Of course, NVidia won't have the clock-rate advantage (54%! over the 9700 Pro) that they have with the FX.

 

[MuFu]

A 400MHz-450MHz NV31 was part of nVidia's fall lineup. They do not have one at this time.

Subsequentally, it looks like there will be no card capable of competing with 9500 Pro and 9700 in terms of price/performance. An NV31 at 300MHz-350MHz is simply not fast enough. I doubt they can respin it again given time/cost constraints.

Final R350 Si coming back soon, btw...

MuFu.