"nv40 Exclusive"

[Geforce4ti4200]

if they arent pipelines what are they called? 8x2 isnt the "8" called pipelines or is it now called shaders? :confused:


How is 8x2 compared to 8x1? is it as good as 12x1?

[Hanners]

Originally posted by Geforce4ti4200
if they arent pipelines what are they called? 8x2 isnt the "8" called pipelines or is it now called shaders? :confused:


How is 8x2 compared to 8x1? is it as good as 12x1?

I think the point Uttar is trying to make is that there is no such thing as 'pipelines' in a modern graphics architecture - At least not in the sense that the word 'pipeline' infers.

[Uttar]

Well, as I said, ATI still uses traditional pipelines in the R3xx.
The NV30 is the card which begins the industry's move to distributed processing, exploiting parallelism in more complex ways than pipelines.

But obviously such a dramatic move can't be done in one day, so using pipelines can still describe the NV3x pretty well.
With time, however, such a representation will become less and less accurate. I don't know how true of a representation pipelines will be for the NV4x, but IMO, it's certainly very risky to say things like "8x2 is inferior to 16x1" or "4 pipelines can't be as good as 8" and so on - it's also fairly risky with the NV3x, and with the NV4x, it'll likely be even more risky.


Uttar

[Geforce4ti4200]

ok how bout parrallel processing subunits? we all know 4x1 is inferior to 4x2 or 8x2 but it becomes uncertain when we compare 4x2 to 8x1 for example. Reguardless, 8x2 must be better than 8x1. Maybe when Nvidia and ati go to .09 microns we will see 16x2 parrallel processing subunits. I did hear that the r420 loci might be 12x1 while Nvidia will choose 8x2 for their nv40 and bought ought to be .13 microns

[suburbanguy]

for NV50 (and XBox2 if Nvidia powers it) I am hoping for something stunning like a 32x4.

heh, 32 pipes and 4 texture units per pipe.

[AngelGraves13]

Originally posted by suburbanguy
for NV50 (and XBox2 if Nvidia powers it) I am hoping for something stunning like a 32x4.

heh, 32 pipes and 4 texture units per pipe.

new cards won't use pipelines.

[suburbanguy]

ok then the equivalent processing power to 32 pipelines.
I understand everything will be unified in the R500 / NV50 generation.