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NVIDIA's upcoming Summer 2008 lineup gets some additional details

Later this week NVIDIA will enact an embargo on its upcoming next-generation graphics core, codenamed D10U.  The launch schedule of this processor, verified by DailyTech, claims the GPU will make its debut as two separate graphics cards, currently named GeForce GTX 280 (D10U-30) and GeForce GTX 260 (D10U-20). 

The GTX 280 enables all features of the D10U processor; the GTX 260 version will consist of a significantly cut-down version of the same GPU.  The D10U-30 will enable all 240 unified stream processors designed into the processor.  NVIDIA documentation claims these second-generation unified shaders perform 50 percent better than the shaders found on the D9 cards released earlier this year.

The main difference between the two new GeForce GTX variants revolves around the number of shaders and memory bus width.  Most importantly, NVIDIA disables 48 stream processors on the GTX 260. GTX 280 ships with a 512-bit memory bus capable of supporting 1GB GDDR3 memory; the GTX 260 alternative has a 448-bit bus with support for 896MB.  

GTX 280 and 260 add virtually all of the same features as GeForce 9800GTX: PCIe 2.0, OpenGL 2.1, SLI and PureVideoHD.  The company also claims both cards will support two SLI-risers for 3-way SLI support.

Unlike the upcoming AMD Radeon 4000 series, currently scheduled to launch in early June, the D10U chipset does not support DirectX extentions above 10.0.  Next-generation Radeon will also ship with GDDR5 while the June GeForce refresh is confined to just GDDR3.

The GTX series is NVIDIA's first attempt at incorporating the PhysX stream engine into the D10U shader engine.  The press decks currently do not shed a lot of information on this support, and the company will likely not elaborate on this before the June 18 launch date.

After NVIDIA purchased PhysX developer AGEIA in February 2008, the company announced all CUDA-enabled processors would support PhysX.  NVIDIA has not delivered on this promise yet, though D10U will support CUDA, and therefore PhysX, right out of the gate.

NVIDIA's documentation does not list an estimated street price for the new cards.

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No DX10.1?
By L33tMasta on 5/20/2008 4:18:17 PM , Rating: 5
Are you kidding? Why doesn't is support DX10.1?




RE: No DX10.1?
By robert5c on 5/20/2008 4:28:20 PM , Rating: 1
what do you need 10.1 now for?


RE: No DX10.1?
By L33tMasta on 5/20/2008 4:29:38 PM , Rating: 5
What do you NOT need it for? it's the newest API thus the hardware devs need to support it.


RE: No DX10.1?
By dsx724 on 5/20/2008 4:37:34 PM , Rating: 5
DirectX 10.1 introduces a new shader model as well as more flexibility. Flexibility costs in performance which is why Nvidia is clinging to DX10. ATI has far superior hardware in terms of programability and Nvidia knows it can't match ATI's performance if it upgrades the GPU's to comply with 10.1 spec.


RE: No DX10.1?
By L33tMasta on 5/20/2008 4:39:01 PM , Rating: 2
It also introduces "free" 4xAA with no performance hit.\


RE: No DX10.1?
By dubldwn on 5/20/2008 4:56:21 PM , Rating: 4
Free or required?


RE: No DX10.1?
By leexgx on 5/20/2008 5:38:52 PM , Rating: 3
required to support 4x hardware aa
not that the game has to use it thought


RE: No DX10.1?
By thartist on 5/21/2008 2:18:19 PM , Rating: 2
Yes of course, as if AA would now be magically invisible to horsepower requirements.


RE: No DX10.1?
By MrPoletski on 5/21/2008 10:55:28 PM , Rating: 2
Tile based renderers can do MSAA for virtually no performance cost.


RE: No DX10.1?
By gochichi on 5/27/2008 4:09:23 PM , Rating: 2
It is certainly possible to design hardware that would take care of AA with no performance degradation. In fact, I am surprised an unswitchable 4XAA hasn't been released long ago.

It would just be a matter of making the hardware just do anti-aliasing without asking drivers, games, or user settings. It is similar to saying that you can have a printer connected to your computer without performance degradation (you can), but more hardware is necessary (the printer). It is also similar to 3D acceleration in general... this hardware could be called "AA-accelerator" and it could certainly create a scenario where turning AA off would offer absolutely no performance benefit.

I look forward to the day where AA is considered at the hardware level to the degree that turning it off offers no benefit, as it stands I always err towards turning it off because any degree of added smoothness is always welcome. Even if it's a change of 60fps to 90 fps I still disable AA, and this is a failure of the hardware. The more specific the hardware, the more performance you'll get from it. Currently, the GPU is handling AA though some generalized processor, and it would be best if AA was a separate process done by its specific processor (or portion thereof).


RE: No DX10.1?
By StevoLincolnite on 5/21/2008 12:46:21 AM , Rating: 5
There is also the issue of future compatibility, this is the exact problem ATI had with the Radeon x850 series, they were SM2 capable, not SM3 like nVidia cards, then games like Bioshock were released which required SM3 hardware, despite the x850 being more than enough to run the game at fairly good settings, it failed because it didn't meet all the check boxes, so can we expect the same from the Direct X 10 cards in the future?


RE: No DX10.1?
By Jedi2155 on 5/21/2008 2:52:16 AM , Rating: 4
It is also the same issue Nvidia had with their DX8 cards when Battlefield 2 came out. All of Nvidia's DX8 cards didn't support it while ATI still had support with their DX8.1 based R200 and their more advanced Pixel Shader 1.4 while Nvidia only did up to 1.1 with the Geforce 3 and Geforce 4 Ti.

So yes...there is a concern for DX10.1 if developers choose to support it. Of course we don't really know till a big game hits....


RE: No DX10.1?
By StevoLincolnite on 5/21/2008 8:41:18 AM , Rating: 3
The Geforce 4 Ti Series was Direct X 8.1 cards, however they were still limited to SM 1.3, not 1.1 as you claim and still below the level of 1.4 that was required.

The Geforce 4 MX440 was a big killer in the end, it was faster than the Geforce FX 5200, yet it could not do any form of Pixel Shader work outside of the Fixed Function arena, thus even though people got Oblivion to run on the Geforce 3 Ti200 and Geforce FX 5200 - the Gefore 4 MX440 had no hope thanks to it being a Geforce 2 on Steroids. (Direct X 7 class Requirement for Old Oblivion is Direct X 8 class).
Heck, even Id Software said that the Geforce 4 MX440 would hold back games graphics because of it's limited feature set.
Yet because of this, people with a Geforce 256 released in 1999 could play games such as Half Life 2 which came out in 2004, which is 5 years of gaming thanks to probably the Geforce 4 MX, which had a huge market share.

ATI aren't innocent either, with the Radeon 9200 series, although not on as large of a scale as the MX440 was.
Thank goodness nVidia and ATI stopped that practice a long time ago.


RE: No DX10.1?
By PhantomRogue on 5/21/08, Rating: -1
RE: No DX10.1?
By omnicronx on 5/21/08, Rating: -1
RE: No DX10.1?
By afkrotch on 5/21/08, Rating: -1
RE: No DX10.1?
By fikimiki on 5/21/08, Rating: -1
RE: No DX10.1?
By afkrotch on 5/21/08, Rating: -1
RE: No DX10.1?
By DigitalFreak on 5/21/2008 3:55:43 PM , Rating: 2
Well, this sheds more light on the removal of DX10.1 from Assassin's Creed.


RE: No DX10.1?
By overzealot on 5/22/2008 10:02:54 AM , Rating: 2
They said they would remove it in the first patch because it was BROKEN!
They didn't, by the way. They just repaired it.
Funnily enough, it does have improved performance under 10.1 and AA on surfaces that didn't previously. Google it.


RE: No DX10.1?
By Mitch101 on 5/22/2008 11:33:19 AM , Rating: 3
I googled it and here is what I found.

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQ...
Lo and behold, when we enable 4X MSAA, we can clearly see that performance is better with Service Pack 1 installed than without. It is, in fact, right at 20% faster on average.

From the above graph, it is obvious that AMD's ATI Radeon HD 3870 enjoys a considerable performance boost with Windows Vista Service Pack 1. In fact, the Radeon HD 3870 averaged about 34% faster with Vista SP1 at 1600x1200 with 2X MSAA.

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQ...
Clearly, Anisotropic Filtering is not working on AMD hardware in Assassin's Creed using the in-game settings. Aside from that, the only other problems immediately apparent are the Shadow Artifacting which happens equally on NVIDIA and AMD hardware. There is a difference in contrast and perhaps HDR tone, but it is debatable which one looks better. Other than the above mentioned things, all the post processing effects and pixel shader qualities look exactly the same between NVIDIA and AMD hardware.


RE: No DX10.1?
By PICBoy on 5/22/2008 1:42:47 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
They have no need to make the change... Why bother going back to rework it, when you essentially have a chip that has support for nothing out there.


The answer is rather simple: MARKETING and FUD. Those two combined are the main reasons why AMD made their hardware DX 10.1 compatible. It doesn't matter if there aren't DX10.1 games announced right now. Maybe there will be in the future, but you cannot deny the fact that some people are going to prefer AMD's hardware just because they support it.

If it was so simple to change the hardware to DX10.1 then NVIDIA would have done it with their GeForce 9000 series because they know how important is this for marketing purposes alone.


RE: No DX10.1?
By PlasmaBomb on 5/20/2008 4:38:11 PM , Rating: 4
It gives a nice boost in some games, provided Nvidia doesn't help the developer fix "graphical glitches"...


RE: No DX10.1?
By Kougar on 5/20/2008 5:06:24 PM , Rating: 2
Heh, NVIDIA's "The Way it's Meant to be Played" game Company of Heroes had it's sequel/expansion CoH Opposing Fronts launched before NVIDIA finally addressed a dozen small, very problematic "graphical glitches", including with CoH's performance benchmark.

Happened repeatedly enough and got worse to the point I thought my NVIDIA GPU had gone bad, as it happened even under different OS installs. I didn't learn otherwise until I read the driver release notes for 162 or 169 or something, I don't remember the specific driver release anymore that listed the plethora of fixes.


RE: No DX10.1?
By Shawn5961 on 5/20/2008 4:41:10 PM , Rating: 2
While I agree, that they really should start with DX10.1 support, I don't think it's a requirement at the moment. Yes, it would be nice if the usage of it started sooner rather than later, but enough developers haven't even switched to DX10 yet.

Personally, I'm strictly an Nvidia user. I'm not a fan of newer ATI products at all. But I think the whole Geforce 9xxx series has just been a joke. It's more or less Geforce 8xxx-2 than anything. The lack of DX10.1 support and GDDR4 is going to make them go the same way the 8xxx series goes when they do come out with DX10.1/GDDR4 cards.

At least one thing's for certain. If they come out with the 10xxx series over the 9xxx series as fast as 9xxx came out after 8xxx, it shouldn't take too long.


RE: No DX10.1?
By L33tMasta on 5/20/2008 4:42:54 PM , Rating: 2
I completely agree. I've stuck with my 8800GTX but it looks like this 9900GTX will be worth the upgrade simply in power even if it lacks DX10.1 support.


RE: No DX10.1?
By Shawn5961 on 5/20/2008 4:48:49 PM , Rating: 2
I'm the same way. I've kept my 8800GTS when the first wave of 9xxx cards came out because the performance boost was mostly minimal. But we'll see what the benchmarks of the new cards look like, and if it's as much of a boost as it should be, it'll be upgrade time for me.


RE: No DX10.1?
By ajfink on 5/20/2008 10:57:25 PM , Rating: 5
GDDR4 isn't all it's cracked up to be, thus is sparse use (and total neglect by Nvidia). GDDR5, on the other hand, is something else.

RV770 (HD 48X0 series) will have predominantly GDDR3 and GDDR5, if I recall correctly.


RE: No DX10.1?
By bfellow on 5/23/2008 1:27:51 PM , Rating: 2
Even ATI is going away from GDDR4 so why crack at Nvidia for not doing GDD4?


RE: No DX10.1?
By ImSpartacus on 5/20/2008 4:45:23 PM , Rating: 2
It doesn't really matter. It is a few small changes that mostly give dev's more control and set better standards for dx10.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,2168429...

DX10.1 is incremental at best, unnecessary at worst. If given choice, I would obviously get a DX10.1 card over a DX10 is all other things are equal, but it isn't a dealbreaker.


RE: No DX10.1?
By Mitch101 on 5/20/2008 5:39:47 PM , Rating: 1
I would think Microsoft would have more to say about DX10.1 being cut off at the knees by NVIDIA having game development companies not support DX10.1 because of the advantages DX10.1 can provide for ATI based cards even for Futuremark. But I guess Microsoft is a wuss when it comes to what is best for Vista benchmarks.

I guess Nvidia knows that performance degrading Vista's DX10.1 implementation is better for Vista sales and benchmarks than Microsoft.

NVIDIA > BALLMER

Where's your balls Balmer? Nvidia own them? DX10.1 a waste of Microsofts time?


RE: No DX10.1?
By afkrotch on 5/21/08, Rating: -1
RE: No DX10.1?
By ImSpartacus on 5/21/2008 3:10:27 PM , Rating: 1
Yeah, DX10.1 doesn't really change much of anything or have any impact on performance.


RE: No DX10.1?
By Mitch101 on 5/22/2008 11:15:04 AM , Rating: 3
It does make a difference if you have an ATI card.
Up to 20% difference on Assassins Creed.

Nvidia owns Ballmers Balls.
http://www.freshscoop.com/modules.php?name=News&fi...

Assassin's Creed DX10.1 - Addendum
http://rage3d.com/articles/assassinscreed-addendum...

Lo and behold, when we enable 4X MSAA, we can clearly see that performance is better with Service Pack 1 installed than without. It is, in fact, right at 20% faster on average.
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQ...


RE: No DX10.1?
By ImSpartacus on 5/22/08, Rating: 0
RE: No DX10.1?
By Mitch101 on 5/22/2008 11:41:15 AM , Rating: 5
quote:
DX10.1 is incremental at best


Sure if you buy an NVIDIA card and believe what NVIDIA tells you.

I understand justifying and defending a purchase and without 10.1 the NVIDIA card if faster however Crippling game companies and benchmarks to win an advantage because your hardware doesnt support it but the competitor does is pretty freaking low. NVIDIA fanboys serve their masters well.

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQ...
performance is better with Service Pack 1 installed than without. It is, in fact, right at 20% faster on average. This is with a ATI Radeon 3870 Video Card.

the Radeon HD 3870 averaged about 34% faster with Vista SP1 at 1600x1200 with 2X MSAA.

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQ...
Other than the above mentioned things, all the post processing effects and pixel shader qualities look exactly the same between NVIDIA and AMD hardware.

Tell me again how DX10.1 is incremental at best?


RE: No DX10.1?
By Totally on 5/20/2008 7:21:46 PM , Rating: 2
RE: No DX10.1?
By Spoelie on 5/21/2008 3:50:48 AM , Rating: 4
http://rage3d.com/articles/assassinscreed/
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/14707

In short: better performance, better anti-aliasing
"[..] demonstrated some instances of higher quality antialiasing—some edges were touched that otherwise would not be—with DX10.1 [..]"


RE: No DX10.1?
By mcnabney on 5/20/2008 4:30:25 PM , Rating: 5
Because they thought that ATI/AMD was going to continue to suck and didn't think too hard for the new generation. Surprise, it looks like there will be competition this summer. Good me. Good for you. Good for the consumer. And best of all, good for PC gaming.


RE: No DX10.1?
By Etsp on 5/20/2008 4:33:43 PM , Rating: 2
It's too late for competition to occur this summer... if ATI is supporting it and Nvidia is not, ATI is going to have the advantage, and Nvidia will need to catch up to compete, which in the GPU world, that's a 6 month cycle. So it will be a competitive year, not just the summer =D.


RE: No DX10.1?
By allnighter on 5/20/2008 4:43:36 PM , Rating: 3
Competition? What kind of competition/catching up are we talking about here?
In features?
Clearly ATi will have the lead by virtue of nV not supporting dx10.1, which is extended current api,hardly a brand new one.
How much good will it do and how much edge will it bring to ATi? - That would be on that other side of the coin, where, again, the competition will be a little one-sided, since ATi will continue to play catch-up in what matters more to the masses - performance.


RE: No DX10.1?
By Shawn5961 on 5/20/2008 4:45:26 PM , Rating: 2
The competition that's going to be going on is going to be between two different markets, as these things usually are. AMD (ATI) will be targeting more of the budget and mainstream users as it has as of late. The ATI cards are great cards for someone looking for a decent video card that will last a year or two, at a decent price. Nvidia on the other hand has always been more for the enthusiast. People who don't mind spending $500+ to get the best performing cards, and then spend another $500+ when the next card comes out.


RE: No DX10.1?
By RamarC on 5/20/2008 5:10:57 PM , Rating: 2
competition: ati's new lineup should debut by the end of june. the top card should slightly outperform a 9800gtx.


RE: No DX10.1?
By Strunf on 5/20/08, Rating: -1
RE: No DX10.1?
By ok630 on 5/20/08, Rating: -1
RE: No DX10.1?
By L33tMasta on 5/20/2008 11:15:45 PM , Rating: 2
Wow. He was only telling the truth. Intel's line is still better than anything AMD has come up with so far.


RE: No DX10.1?
By Ringold on 5/21/2008 12:28:38 AM , Rating: 5
Someone needs a hug.

And counseling.

http://www.google.com/search?q=counseling


RE: No DX10.1?
By Belard on 5/21/2008 1:14:05 AM , Rating: 1
Heeeeeeey now.

I'm an AMDer, but we gotta face facts. AMD has not made the fastest chips since C2D came out. This is somewhat AMD's fault, but also Intel and its back-room deals with companies like Dell. For the past few years, with AMD selling CPUs that murder the Pentium4/D CPUs, people were still buying the "intel inside" crap. You'd have intel fanboys blowing $1000 for the PentiumEE (Extreme Edition) which we on par against $200 AMD64 3200/3500 CPU. Imagine if more people bought AMD powered computers, which would have helped in a bigger and better R&D budget and talent.

At least AMD CPUs are only slower, rather that horribly slow and hot like the P4s. Cost with CPU + mobo is still cheaper than an Intel setup. But if I want to build the fastest thing with money I don't have, it'll be an intel CPU. Luckily, a $110 AMD 5600 is more than fast enough for me.

PS: With such anger... what are you like with someone to really hate? ;)


RE: No DX10.1?
By pow1983 on 5/21/2008 5:16:58 AM , Rating: 4
As far as im concerned the CEO needs to be replaced. It's the only way AMD can move forward.


RE: No DX10.1?
By psychobriggsy on 5/21/2008 10:26:45 AM , Rating: 4
I think that AMD are doing the right thing by concentrating on selling the overall package. Their integrated graphics are a great sell for the mass marketplace, and their discrete graphics are good value. Their CPUs are good enough. Their chipsets run cool and are reliable, even if they're not best in breed in every aspect.

The marketing is poor. Even good ideas, like the GAME! concept, come across poorly, and don't matter anyway because the potential end users never know about it. They need to fix this. Get some software houses to agree to code to the GAME! specifications and put splash screens in the games, etc.


RE: No DX10.1?
By afkrotch on 5/21/08, Rating: 0
RE: No DX10.1?
By evident on 5/21/08, Rating: -1
RE: No DX10.1?
By timmiser on 5/21/2008 4:05:49 AM , Rating: 1
This loser posts the same message in every one of his posts. If ever someone should be banned from DT, this is the one.


RE: No DX10.1?
By BrownJohn on 5/22/2008 2:03:52 PM , Rating: 1
Yeah, I looked up his history to see if you were right, and he has posted this in almost all of his comments:

By user OK360:
quote:
Die painfully okay? Prefearbly by getting crushed to death in a garbage compactor, by getting your face cut to ribbons with a pocketknife, your head cracked open with a baseball bat, your stomach sliced open and your entrails spilled out, and your eyeballs ripped out of their sockets. Fucking bitch


Has DailyTech ever banned someone?


RE: No DX10.1?
By winterspan on 5/21/2008 5:59:59 AM , Rating: 5
woah... See, Jack Thompson was RIGHT! Gamers are violent, crazed uber-nerds..


RE: No DX10.1?
By robinthakur on 5/21/2008 12:27:13 PM , Rating: 1
Spot who just came from the Scream 4 auditions...

This is possibly the most disturbing fanboi post i've seen on the net, at least regarding hardware!! The worst thing is that he's probably only 8!


RE: No DX10.1?
By PWNettle on 5/21/2008 4:34:51 PM , Rating: 1
Wow, so much for thinking that semi-intellectual and semi-mature people posted here.

Lighten up, Francis!


RE: No DX10.1?
By DingieM on 5/21/2008 8:48:13 AM , Rating: 1
Was there an expectancy that Phenom would be faster?


RE: No DX10.1?
By theapparition on 5/20/2008 10:57:23 PM , Rating: 2
Correction.......
ATI's new lineup will most likely be announced in June, without a single product to sell. 3months later, you may actually be able to pre-order one.

I really hope ATI get's thier act together here, because thier previous releases have been the definition of paper launch.


RE: No DX10.1?
By Spoelie on 5/21/2008 3:54:54 AM , Rating: 2
Have you totally missed the 8800GT launch versus HD3870/50??


RE: No DX10.1?
By theapparition on 5/21/2008 7:41:05 AM , Rating: 2
Nope,
One time doesn't make a trend. You have to admit that Nvidia has pretty much consistantly met launch dates where ATI has slipped or "paper launched". ATI did good on the last round, but remember that they were already 6mos late on R300 and the 3870/50 is just a mild respin.


RE: No DX10.1?
By 4wardtristan on 5/20/2008 7:35:11 PM , Rating: 2
consumer sees "intel" badge on front

consumer sees "nvidia" badge on front

consumer buys pc

thats pretty much how it rolls unfortunatly


RE: No DX10.1?
By Elementalism on 5/20/2008 8:39:04 PM , Rating: 3
Well first lets see how the real world performance is between these two cards. If lets say the ATI card is much slower than the Nvidia card. Then the technical details will mean very little. Can you name a single game being developed right now that will even take advantage of 10.1 in the next 8 months?


RE: No DX10.1?
By ajfink on 5/24/2008 11:41:42 AM , Rating: 2
Since it's becoming more widespread, I can see further support for 10.1 being nurtured along. It doesn't require massive programming changes to implement, and can add a good bit of quality. Seeing as a lot of graphics cards this year and next will have 10.1 enabled, it makes sense for them to at least get a toe in the water.


RE: No DX10.1?
By pauldovi on 5/20/2008 4:39:25 PM , Rating: 5
Because now it can release a rebranded version of all these cards for 25% more with official DX10.1 support.


RE: No DX10.1?
By Elementalism on 5/20/2008 8:35:00 PM , Rating: 2
I'd venture a guess the cost of silicon for the performance gain at this time is not worth it. No purpose in complicating your design if it wont add anything we will see in quantity over its lifetime.


RE: No DX10.1?
By DeMagH on 5/21/2008 4:25:53 AM , Rating: 5
Guys, please before spreading this non-sense about DX 10.1, do some research or even ASK before declaring it useless.

DX 10.1 is important, it provides quality with LOWER performance hit and it was proven useful through assassin's creed patch in this link: http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQ...

quote:
There should be no doubt that Assassin's Creed contains DirectX 10.1 technology, and that that technology provides AMD's video cards with a solid performance boost.


Also, it was rumored that Nvidia's new generation die will hold around 1 to 1.5 billion transistors and i REALLY DOUBT that supporting DX 10.1 is as costy.

Nvidia's card was also rumored to consume around 240W, which is expected with this 512-bit memory interface "if i remember correctly this caused some power leaks within the previous ATi generation, 2900 series" + massive number of 65nm transistors.

To sum things up, looks like Nvidia is providing pure performance boost, some card show off muscle show, i DOUBT they'll be making GOOD use of the 512-bit memory interface which provides unbelievable increase in the memory bandwidth, but we'll have to wait and see.

On the other hand, ATi is providing:
- New crossfirex fix enabling GPUs to share memory
- 7.1 audio support through hardware HD decoding
- integration of physics capabilities in mid-range cards
- 55nm 6 months ago
- dx 10.1 6 months ago

IMO, ATi is providing something new, something fresh as always, may be it will not hold the performance crown but it will be holding the development one, but as always, we'll have to wait and see.


RE: No DX10.1?
By DingieM on 5/21/2008 8:51:48 AM , Rating: 2
Even the firm S3 is getting on the DX10.1/SM4.1 bandwagon.


RE: No DX10.1?
By Elementalism on 5/21/2008 9:27:33 AM , Rating: 3
Where did I declare it useless? I simply said my opinion is at this time Nvidia didnt feel the silicon necessary to make DX10.1 happen was worth it. Silicon real-estate is expensive. Why add complexity to your design if a small % of your users will ever use it and see a benefit from it? By the time 10.1 is useful we will probably be 1-2 generations down the road and nobody will remember nor care that this GPU didnt support it.

The other issue is WinXP install base. It is simply huge and DX10 is irrelevant in that space.

And quite frankly if it doesnt hold the performance crown? How can it be worth it? About all it provides is a test platform for devs who will use it for games coming out in 18-24 months.


RE: No DX10.1?
By DeMagH on 5/21/2008 5:03:26 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
I'd venture a guess the cost of silicon for the performance gain at this time is not worth it . No purpose in complicating your design if it wont add anything we will see in quantity over its lifetime.


Well, the parts in bold is what made me think you declaring it useless.

Also, holding the performance crown in games is not everything.
- ATi has been dominating the HTPC world for as long as the HD series was newly introduced from the HD 2400 pro till the HD 3870X2.
- ATi allowed crossfireX on intel platform or ANY platform.
- ATi folding@home capabilities with their latest drivers and cards .. etc.


RE: No DX10.1?
By larson0699 on 5/22/2008 12:02:00 PM , Rating: 1
quote:
512-bit memory interface "if i remember correctly this caused some power leaks within the previous ATi generation, 2900 series"
For real man, ATI's wasn't a 512-bit bus, but two 256-bit rings.

The HD 2x00 series was shit anyway, power hungry and not even close to competitive. If you bought one, you effed up awfully bad.

Now quit quoting yourself and state some hard facts.


RE: No DX10.1?
By drafz on 5/22/2008 4:36:46 PM , Rating: 2

On the other hand, ATi is providing:
- New crossfirex fix enabling GPUs to share memory

is it better of worst ? i mean , we don't care. we just want 70 - 90 % performance boost in dual gpu context. nothing more. i don't want to know how they reach it .

integration of physics capabilities in mid-range cards

huh ? where ? when ? How much ?
3 years ago , they alread ytalked about it . since this day, i however never see a single game using that.

55nm 6 months ago
what is it for ? for myself i means.

dx 10.1 6 months ago
Good point here, nothing to say.

actually, the most great thing with my GF8800 is the fan noise. since i unplugged my X1900XT , my ears came back to normal .


RE: No DX10.1?
By DeMagH on 5/24/2008 8:59:08 AM , Rating: 3
About new crossfire:
well, at the very least we should expect a tiny boost over current crossfirex card available and better compatibility with low performing games in crossfireX mode.

About physx:
well, if it was proven useless when it is included in a useful package, who cares?! you still got the option available for everybody for a decent price. Also, i think it is about time this technology be made useful. Nvidia bought Ageia, ATi integrated physics capabilities within the mid-range cards, what we need is 3 good game titles to support this technology coming within 3-6 months to join/support the currently available titles.

P.S:
performance may vary from dual to quad core though based on reviews comparison a few months ago, so if you are reading reviews about physics dropping gaming performance, it was probably running on a dual core processor, if it increased performance, it is probably a quad core processor.

about 55nm:
manufacturing processing technology, UNIT == NanoMeter "10^(-9)" (i.e: One billionth of a meter) it represents the distance between the source and drain within a transistor. The lower the number, the smaller the transistor, the cheaper it is to be produced in mass production, the lower power it consumes and finally the higher frequencies it can reach.

Nvidia is still @ 65nm, ATi was @ 55nm 6 months ago.


RE: No DX10.1?
By drafz on 5/24/2008 11:09:15 AM , Rating: 1
" about 55nm:
manufacturing processing technology, UNIT == NanoMeter "10^(-9)" (i.e: One billionth of a meter) it represents the distance between the source and drain within a transistor. The lower the number, the smaller the transistor, the cheaper it is to be produced in mass production, the lower power it consumes and finally the higher frequencies it can reach."

okay, so why ATI gpu aren't as fast as nvidia's one ?


GDDR3? ARE YOU JOKIN
By GhandiInstinct on 5/20/2008 5:10:12 PM , Rating: 2
My 1950XPro has GDDR4 for AGP!!!

What is going on? Why are we getting hotter slower cards because a company doesn't want to transition memory chips?

GDDR5 is out now for dice sake.




RE: GDDR3? ARE YOU JOKIN
By xeizo on 5/20/2008 5:19:50 PM , Rating: 2
HD4870 _will_ have GDDR5, and 1GB of it, according to official AMD launch-documents leaking to a German website.

1GB GDDR5 @ 3870MHz över a 256-bit bus ~128GB/s bandwith. It should be enough.


RE: GDDR3? ARE YOU JOKIN
By DeMagH on 5/21/2008 4:35:01 AM , Rating: 2
i read somewhere if ATi reached 1.5Ghz @ core clock speeds the 256-bit would be a limiting factor, but i guess that won't be the case anytime soon.

Unless some hardcore overclocker brought his liquid nitrogen to break a world record or something.


RE: GDDR3? ARE YOU JOKIN
By AmazighQ on 5/20/2008 5:21:44 PM , Rating: 1
I Think they made a mistake in the newspost
as i read in on the interwebz ATI will useGDDR5 that runs at 3.92ghz and skip gddr4
so im wonder where dailytech get its info
great you got GDDR4 on your AGP but where is the bandwith?


RE: GDDR3? ARE YOU JOKIN
By xeizo on 5/20/2008 5:30:44 PM , Rating: 2
Here is one reference to the ATI-document:

http://www.sweclockers.com/nyhet/7734-amd_bekrafta...


RE: GDDR3? ARE YOU JOKIN
By AmazighQ on 5/21/2008 12:16:00 PM , Rating: 2
dont see them using it for the RV770 cards
they also could have used Gddr4 instead of Gddr3
Xeizo where is the Gddr4 on that link
only see Gddr3 and gddr5


RE: GDDR3? ARE YOU JOKIN
By KernD on 5/20/2008 6:16:56 PM , Rating: 5
They can't be skipping gddr4 if they already have been using it for some time...


RE: GDDR3? ARE YOU JOKIN
By B3an on 5/20/2008 6:12:10 PM , Rating: 1
I wondered how long it would be before some unenducated idiot stated that.

The new NV cards have 512-Bit memory interfaces. So they will have more than enough memory bandwidth. In comparison the 9800GTX/GX2 have a pathetic 256-Bit memory interface.


RE: GDDR3? ARE YOU JOKIN
By KernD on 5/20/2008 6:33:57 PM , Rating: 4
While I agree that GDDR4 for the new card is a bit risky, the 9800GTX reigns at the top with GDDR3 while the competition uses GDDR4, so don't give me that BS.

What really matters is the bandwidth and latency, and in graphic latency has always been hidden by the very long pipeline.

You have to keep in mind the cost of the cards relative to it's performance. If the wider buss(256 vs 512 bits) cost difference is less then the memory(GDDR4 vs GDDR3) cost difference and you still have enough bandwidth, it's a good thing for the chip and card maker.

Quite frankly, why the hell do you think you know better than some guys that does this for a living? The NVidia guys seem to know where there going. And if this ends up being a bottleneck for these cards, then good, we'll finally have some real competition in the high end.


RE: GDDR3? ARE YOU JOKIN
By panfist on 5/20/2008 7:52:35 PM , Rating: 5
quote:
Quite frankly, why the hell do you think you know better than some guys that does this for a living?


Because they are in business, and everyone in business does one thing for a living: try to suck every last dollar out of your wallet. Everything else they do is secondary to that principle.


RE: GDDR3? ARE YOU JOKIN
By KernD on 5/20/2008 11:36:52 PM , Rating: 2
Thats exactly my point, it's about efficiency, if it cost less for the same, than it is not only good for the company but also for it's customer. But are you in the GPU business? You know what they are trying to do, like all business, but do you frankly know how to get there better than NVidia or ATI experts?


RE: GDDR3? ARE YOU JOKIN
By B3an on 5/20/2008 11:24:14 PM , Rating: 2
Not another idiot...

As already pointed out Nvidia is a BUSSINESS, they most probably gave the GX2 a 256-Bit bus to save money on the PCB as then it's a lot less complex.

I actually have a 9800GX2 so i DO know what i'm talking about. The 9800GTX/GX2 are very bandwidth limited with the 256-Bit bus. I can cripple this thing at 1920x1200 on certain games with enough AA/AF, it will get to a point where things will become a slideshow because of the memory issues. Turn things down one step and eveythings fine.
Forums have picked up on this when a lot of reviews fail to mention it ... suspicious.

Anyway, next time, STFU fanboi and stop acting like you know anything.


RE: GDDR3? ARE YOU JOKIN
By KernD on 5/21/2008 12:04:51 AM , Rating: 1
Only an idiot would try to play any recent games at such a resolution with very high AA/AF settings. You just think that the small group of customers you belong to matter more than the rest, they force you to buy 2 cards to reach those settings, this way normal people can pay less to play in 1600x1200 without any AA/FF.
Lots of reviewer failed to mention this? They probably forgot about you, whine some more next time.
Suspicious!?! there goes the worst kind of idiots in the world, the conspiracy theorist. NVidia must have payed key reviewer to hush it all up!!!

They made a business decision and your here crying over it... get a life.

And I'm no fanboi I just stated the name of the company that is in the current discussion. I'm pro-competition, and sadly there hasen't been much of that at the high end since the GF8800GTX came out.

Ho and by the way owning any card doesn't mean you know anything about there job and how to do it right.

You sound like an ass, but I give you this, your amusing.


RE: GDDR3? ARE YOU JOKIN
By Noya on 5/21/2008 12:42:54 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
You sound like an ass, but I give you this, your amusing.


And so do you.

quote:
Suspicious!?! there goes the worst kind of idiots in the world, the conspiracy theorist. NVidia must have payed key reviewer to hush it all up!!!


Yes, payed. Just like every other company that sends out review samples. "If you say this or point out that, you don't get the inside on our next release or we pull ads, etc., etc.".

It's all politics idiot. Just like the guy that got fired for blasting that game recently (Kane & Lynch?) while the biggest banner ad on the site was for said game.


RE: GDDR3? ARE YOU JOKIN
By KernD on 5/21/2008 8:19:34 AM , Rating: 2
Fine, prove it?
Ho and just so you know, rumors are no proof.


RE: GDDR3? ARE YOU JOKIN
By B3an on 5/21/2008 2:10:19 PM , Rating: 2
I dont know if you realise but people buy cards like the GX2 for these high resolutions. So when a card cant run them well with AA/AF it's a big deal.

1920x1200 was just an example. I actually have a 2560x1600 monitor, and games like Crysis, even with no AA will still be a slideshow because of the 256bit memory bus. For example even my 8800GTX runs Crysis better at that res because it has more usable vRAM and 384bit bus.


RE: GDDR3? ARE YOU JOKIN
By KernD on 5/21/2008 6:40:24 PM , Rating: 2
Why don't you look at the cards review and see what frame rate you should get at whatever resolution they show? And if your is not in there, extrapolate!

You pointed to the one game we all know won't run at high res on any card, just look at all the benchmark with that game, couldn't you predict what kind of frame rate you would get on your huge computer screen's resolution? I'm pretty certain there are some graphic settings you can tweak to make it run fine at your preferred resolution.

Why should the latest high end graphic card be able to play that game or any other game at a good frame rate and at any arbitrary resolution you chose?

I'm a game developer myself, it's my job, and graphics on PC is my specialization and I can assure you that any developer out there could max out any card out there at a 640x480 resolution in no time if they wanted too. But as it was mentioned earlier, it's a business, they don't care about the 0.1% of gamer who have such screens, they care about making the game good enough for the majority.

Now the guys who make Crysis always seem to like showing that they can make things look even better, if we had more power in our computers, future proofing there game in a way. They don't do that so it can be played like that right now. So stop your ranting and wait for the next gen card, anyway you seem to have enough money to buy a top end card every time there is a refresh.


RE: GDDR3? ARE YOU JOKIN
By B3an on 5/22/2008 5:52:02 AM , Rating: 2