Whats taking Nvidia soo long?

[Josh378]

I really want to see this "Next gen" GPU for PS3...or at least a patent for it.....I want to see what technologies they have unleashed on this GPU, what add-ons...etc. we've already just about heard everything about the R500...

I hope this GPU is that good...if not (which alot of people are thinking that Nvidia GPU may not be on par with with ATI is offering for the X2), it would haver been a waste of time finalizing a GPU at the end of the year just to be outclassed by ATi's work....

my thoughts...

-Josh378

 

[Inane_Dork]

I'd say nVidia only has about 4 months more (rough guess). Not really that close to 1 year.

But I do expect it to outperform the X2's GPU if only by a slight amount.

 

[TexT]

I'd say nVidia only has about 4 months more (rough guess).

If that..

PS3 is said to be release March of next year in japan, Xbox is said to be release November of this year..that's like you said four months..but as would any smart person know things will have to be put on silicon way ahead of the plan release date for mass production and to test yields..

I give nVidia only a 2 months advantage.

 

[hey69]

and i give 6

 

[Inane_Dork]

...but as would any smart person know things will have to be put on silicon way ahead of the plan release date for mass production and to test yields..

I agree there is a lead-in time, but I'm not aware of anything that would make that time significantly shorter for ATi than it is for nVidia. My thinking is that however long that period is, there's still that 4 months or so that nVidia has and that ATi doesn't.

That's what makes sense to me, anyway.

 

[Megadrive1988]

Josh, what do you mean 'Whats taking Nvidia soo long?' ? and you're post doesnt really make sense.


all we know is that Nvidia stated that they expect to have completed the Playstation 3 GPU silicon before the end of 2005. It is not as if Nvidia is late, yet, because of what they said about having the GPU by the end of the year. It was only fairly recently that Nvidia & Sony officially announced that Nvidia would be designing the PS3 GPU, that was about 6 months ago (or so) in fall 2004.

 

[nAo]

Josh: what if we get just a pumped up nv40? would you be disappointed?

 

[Acert93]

The biggest issue is not the time-- 4 months, 6 months, etc... While 6mo will be helpful, it is pretty clear that the X2 and PS3 GPUs are related to desktop parts. The process each is on could possibly make a big difference (or not as we say with the R300)/

Also, both design decisions were locked in a long time ago. While there are many factors that go into this the main ones are how aggresive each was, what process, and how good the desktop design is and how much did they deviate from the desktop design.

6mo may be nothing if ATI has a better desktop design and was more aggressive; on the other hand if nVidia was more aggressive and has a better design that 6mo and appears on 65nm it may make the nVidia GPU substantually faster.

I have a feeling that whatever MS does with the memory will be the biggest difference. 256, 384, 512? How fast? eDRAM? We know Sony will have XDR in the PS3 so MS needs a very fast memory interface to remain competitive imo.

 

[j^aws]

I really want to see this "Next gen" GPU for PS3...or at least a patent for it.....I want to see what technologies they have unleashed on this GPU, what add-ons...etc. we've already just about heard everything about the R500...

I hope this GPU is that good...if not (which alot of people are thinking that Nvidia GPU may not be on par with with ATI is offering for the X2), it would haver been a waste of time finalizing a GPU at the end of the year just to be outclassed by ATi's work....

my thoughts...

-Josh378

ALL things being EQUAL, any silicon being released at a LATER date will have access to BETTER manufacturing fab technology and for a given transistor budget, will have the better silicon. You can leverage this advantage to produce something cheaper or more powerful.

 

[London Geezer]

Not getting the topic. What's taking so long for NVIDIA to do what exactly? Tell us what they're doing? They're not bound to release any information, and seeing how tight-lipped Sony can be sometimes, i'm not surprised at all.

My bet is, they've got a decent idea of how the final hardware will be but are still open to changes, depending on what the competitors will have.

That's the whole point of releasing after your competitors, that way you can always oneup them, and this is the consoles market so any advantage/shortcoming will be there for 5 years.

Let them do their thing, you'll have your info when the new Pope wants.

 

[Titanio]

what if we get just a pumped up nv40? would you be disappointed?

I'm not Josh, but I'll answer with a no. This wouldn't be too surprising. NVidia already jumped on the SM3.0 bandwagon..the PS3 GPU will be 3.0+, so in terms of functionality it's unlikely to be THAT far ahead of what they've already got out. The differences to look for will be in efficiency, usability and most of all performance.

ATi has a bigger jump to make with R500 - SM2.0 to SM3.0 and a shift from dedicated to unified hardware (which relates more to implementation than actual functionality/feature-set). NVidia were already further along the road (in terms of SM3.0), so the jump for them in terms of functionality should be smaller. That could bring advantages for them in terms of experience etc...theirs will be a second implementation versus ATi's first. This doesn't guarantee a more mature or more advanced implementation, but it surely isn't a bad thing either.

 

[Dave Baumann]

I'm not sure there is much of a case in "xxx has to make a jump to yyy capabilities" - its not as though ATI sucked with their first gen PS2.0 hardware when they had to jump from PS1.4 and its not as though NVIDIA sucked on their first stab at SM3.0; its all about designing for the projected needs and how close or far from those needs you hit when it comes to fruition and trying not to hit any other bumps (process) along the way.

I'm also fairly certain that ATI have been experimenting along the lines that the Xenon graphics will be recieving for some time (i.e. R400). And for that matter we are dealing with closed box environments - Xenon graphics won't correspond to any PC graphics part and probably never exactly match the capabilities of PC parts.

 

[London Geezer]

Josh: what if we get just a pumped up nv40? would you be disappointed?

Hell, for one, i'd be happy to see just how much juice you can squeeze out of a NV40. Whatever is in these new consoles, they will be coded to the metal, showing much better results than the same architecture would show on PCs, generally speaking.

 

[Titanio]

I'm not sure there is much of a case in "xxx has to make a jump to yyy capabilities" - its not as though ATI sucked with their first gen PS2.0 hardware when they had to jump from PS1.4 and its not as though NVIDIA sucked on their first stab at SM3.0; its all about designing for the prejected needs and how close or far from those needs you hit when it comes to fruition and trying not to hit any other bumps (process) along the way.

I'm also fairly certain that ATI have been experimenting along the lines that the Xenon graphics will be recieving for some time (i.e. R400).

All true, I didn't mean to suggest ATi would have difficulties with this "jump". Just that if risks were there, they'd probably fall more into ATi's lap than NVidia's right now. Broken implemetations don't happen very often though. I'm confident ATi will get to where they want to go with apparent ease (and I say apparent because I'm sure these things are more difficult than they look ).

 

[Legend]

I expect both GPUs to be fairly equal. What will make the difference however is that nVida has access to Cell. Cell specializes in media applications, and having Monster Cell by your side can make a difference.

 

[London Geezer]

I expect both GPUs to be fairly equal. What will make the difference however is that nVida has access to Cell. Cell specializes in media applications, and having Monster Cell by your side can make a difference.

6 months in GPU time is a lot of time. And we still don't know what either GPU will actually do, hearing the rumours that PS3 will do vertex shading on the CPU and leave the GPU to do only pixel shading. So the GPUs might not be so similar afterall, and if they are, they might not be doing the same thing...

It's gonna be interesting to see how MS, Sony and the big N will handle things, which one will be the most efficient, and which one will actually output the best graphics.

 

[jvd]

All true, I didn't mean to suggest ATi would have difficulties with this "jump". Just that if risks were there, they'd probably fall more into ATi's lap than NVidia's right now. Broken implemetations don't happen very often though. I'm confident ATi will get to where they want to go with apparent ease (and I say apparent because I'm sure these things are more difficult than they look ).

I dunno about that , the r500 will be the second sm3.0 part from ati . Not to mention they have had some sm3.0 features such as g.i since the 9700 was released what 3 years ago now ? So its not a huge leap for ati.

What i think its going to come down to is fillrate and some feature diffrences , who the feature diffrences favor however , i have no idea . I would expect nvidia to have the fillrate advantage as the part will be coming out later

 

[London Geezer]

I dunno about that , the r500 will be the second sm3.0 part from ati .

What's the first?

 

[jvd]

I dunno about that , the r500 will be the second sm3.0 part from ati .

What's the first?

R520 , i believe that taped out first two completely diffrent cores

 

[Titanio]

I dunno about that , the r500 will be the second sm3.0 part from ati . Not to mention they have had some sm3.0 features such as g.i since the 9700 was released what 3 years ago now ? So its not a huge leap for ati.

What i think its going to come down to is fillrate and some feature diffrences , who the feature diffrences favor however , i have no idea . I would expect nvidia to have the fillrate advantage as the part will be coming out later

Second after the R520? Right, but they're coming out so close to one another than the "experience" going into both is likely about the same. I'd probably agree on your other points though. NVidia has a chance at performance differences with the later schedule also, but we'll see.