How easy is it for ATI to beat Geforce FX?

[Fotis]

Since we know ATI is working on 0.13 r350 for a spring release lets do some speculation about equal specs.

0.13 probably 500/500 clocks.
We've seen a radeon 9700 using ddr2.

Geforce fx delivers 350million trianles and r350 500million.

I think thats an Ati strong point since their vertex engine can do 1million triangles per Mhz thus stronger vertex engine.

Bandwidth for r350 goes to 32Gb/s with better crossbar 8x32.Enough said.

Pixel shaders.I don't know if its easy to make architectural changes that fast but lets assume that geforce fx is better, will that show on current games?

IMO there wont be a second TMU in r350 since both sides agree that its not important.

Geforce FX fsaa is more or less the same OGMS(Heard that at beyond3d) and r350 has RGMS which as people have been saying provides better edge quality.With 32Gb/s bandwidth better crossbar 4xfsaa is free and 8x fsaa has a small hit.(if we see radeon 9700 benchmarks 4xfsaa is almost free at 800x600)

Thats some speculation of what we might see this spring.I'm no expert so go easy on me.IMHO this is not just rumol mill since ATI officials have stated that we can expect r350 this spring on 0.13.

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by Fotis
Since we know ATI is working on 0.13 r350 for a spring release lets do some speculation about equal specs.

do we actually know that ATI is releasing a Spring product that will be .13? do we know if they are releasing R350 this Spring? do we know that R350 will be .13?

sounds like a lot of speculation that was made about NV30, and what it would and would not have.

[Fotis]

http://www.reactorcritical.com/cgi-bin/news.cgi?templ=archive.http&id=1209

I think the official announcement of radeon 9700 in japan is not just a rumor!!!There is a small typo directx8.1=directx9.1.

About geforce FX fsaa read this nvidia interview http://www.beyond3d.com/previews/nvidia/nv30launch/index.php?p=3

Geforce FX is using OGMS.

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by Fotis
http://www.reactorcritical.com/cgi-bin/news.cgi?templ=archive.http&id=1209

I think the official announcement of radeon 9700 in japan is not just a rumor!!!There is a small typo directx8.1=directx9.1.

the page doesn't display, and so i can't really make any comments.

but what you say makes no sense. what does the radeon 9700 in japan have to do with R350 or DX9.1

[borntosoul]

we dont know anything for sure but it just makes sence that ati will have something out around that time and i dont think it would be too hard for them to increase the performance of the r300 by too much ,its going to be a hard slog next year for both of these companies and nvidia lost me for now cause the our summer is comin up and im not staying indoors to play video games ,ill have to wait for our winter (june/july)now nv 35 please come early

[Fotis]

The link works for me Stealthhawk.
Anyway,
Quote from www.reactorcritical.com:
Here are the things we have learned from the Japanese announcement of RADEON 9700 and 9000:

ATI will announce their next high-end product code-named R350 and supporting DirectX 9.1 in the first half of 2003. The company wants to manufacture it using 0.13 micron technology. Currently they have no plans to shrink the RADEON 9700 (R300) to 0.13 microns, as there are some problems with this process, particularly connected to isolator breakdowns.

[Joe Cool]

ATI has no proven ability to make anything at 0.13, and furthermore we have next to no info about the R350 or anything else, so no use worrying about it.

The smartest thing for those looking at a high end card, is to look at what's available now, and whether you can't stand to wait any longer.

A lot will depend on what you have now, since the better the card you have, likely the less need you have to upgrade.

Waiting is always better if you can afford to, since something better will always eventually come along, in the computer business.

So take a look at the FX, to be available in a few months. There isn't a lot of solid benchmark info on it, but there's plenty of other info. It certainly seems to be better than the 9700 Pro. Is it enough better to be worth waiting for?

That's a subjective call, everyone would have to make it for themselves.

But waiting for the R350 when we have so little info on it? Doesn't make any sense to me....

[Fotis]

Originally posted by Joe Cool
1.ATI has no proven ability to make anything at 0.13, and furthermore we have next to no info about the R350 or anything else, so no use worrying about it.

2.The smartest thing for those looking at a high end card, is to look at what's available now, and whether you can't stand to wait any longer.

3.But waiting for the R350 when we have so little info on it? Doesn't make any sense to me....
1.Neither did nvidia until it launched geforcefx, what's your point?Nvidia stated months ago that they were using 0.13,why did you beleave them?
2.Agreed
3.From the link I've provided we know ATI is launching r350 on 0.13 this spring with DX9.1 support and they sure have had more time than nvidia to refine the prossese.If what reactorcritical posted is true we have an official statement from ATI about these specs.

[DrAkO]

Yup, and nVIDIA said the card when make a 30 or 40 % higher performance then a R9700 in doom 3...

For a revolution, it's not great!

Wait for ATI but i think nVIDIA will be no longer the #1....

[Fotis]

I really hoped that geforce fx would be available this year because I wanted to compare and buy the best.If geforce fx goes for february I might as well wait for r350 then nv35 then r400.I'm a bit confused,as you can see I have a gf2 and I can't wait forever.:(
All that geforce fx is 40% faster on doom3 without any solid benchmarks from tech sites is just vaporware.I mean can I take nvidias word for it? Is that test on a real geforce fx or just emulation?And all those tests on a p4 3Ghz.The more I think about it the more I get confused!!:confused:

[thcdru2k]

the doom 3 benchmarks could be hashed, the graphs on that site are all homemade. however, the nvidia benches, that consisted of doom 3, ut2k3, quake 3, nature test, etc where all real as democoder of b3d forums had said they had the unreal benchies running at comdex for over two hours. yes, the r350 will be faster. the race is so tight ati would never release anything slower. its all about when, and how nvidia responds, and how ati responds, etc.

[jbirney]

I dont put much stock in those doom3 benchies..

what version of software is doom3 at when those were taken?
what driver version?
what map?
what rendering path did the R300 have to take?
did the nV30 use its nv30 rendering path or some other?


And the fact that they come from NV?

Sorry too many unknowns

[thcdru2k]

the nvidia released doom 3 benches / the ones they show at comdex didn't contain any r300 scores unfortuantely. i take the other one at 3dcenter with a grain of salt, doom 3 is still alpha and not worth benching.

[gstanford]

It's not as simple as just releasing a faster R300 for ATI I'm afraid.

ATI would have to implement 128 bit floating point color right through the entire pipeline - that means a serious redesign of R300 which only uses 128 bit in certain places and only calculates to 96 bit in the shaders.

nVidia finally revealed what I would consider one of the most important reasons why the geforce series does so well in the ExtremeTech preview
As is the case with CPUs, excessive state changes can blotto 3D performance. 3D programmers are often advised to make as few state changes in any given scene as possible to keep data flowing and calculations moving along. As pipelines grow ever deeper to push clock rates ever higher, anything that might cause a pipeline flush is also a real potential performance killer. We asked David Kirk if stage changes moving through the GeForceFX could cause expensive pipeline flushes:

For a number of generations now, since GeForce, the state information is pipelined, so that when you do a state change it doesn't stall the pipeline. The state change flows down the pipeline behind the last commands, and doesn't overwrite the relevant register until it can't affect anything downstream. The same is true with a shader. Let's say you have 32 pixels in flight finishing a polygon. There's then a state change or program change and then another polygon. That stage or program change follows the data in to the pipe, flows along with it, and at some point you'll have some pixels from one polygon, some state change information, and some pixels running in the new state flowing through the processor pipe.

Greg

[Bigus Dickus]

Why does ATi need to implement 128 bit FP throughout the pipeline?

[volt]

GFFX is a reply to R 9700 Pro not R350. Geez where do you get those ideas. By the time ATI releases their new card, NVIDIA will have one in their sleeve and the fight never ends. It's just a matter of how long one can hold the crown.

[Fotis]

Originally posted by volt
GFFX is a reply to R 9700 Pro not R350. Geez where do you get those ideas. By the time ATI releases their new card, NVIDIA will have one in their sleeve and the fight never ends. It's just a matter of how long one can hold the crown.
I think r350 is much closer to GFFX retail(2-3months) than radeon 9700(7 moths) so its safer to say GFFX will go against r350 rather than radeon 9700.;)
It doesn't matter which card it was supposed to go against but the card that it will really go up against.
At fall nvidia will probably release nv35 but that is also the time for r400.
IMHO its not a problem of who was supposed to go agianst who but its that nvidia really lost a product cycle.
Although the qoute from reactorcritical looks official its a few months old and I'd like it to be verified to see if anything has changed.

[pelly]

I'll be surprised if ATI has a .13 part out before summer...

:eek:

[Fotis]

Originally posted by pelly
I'll be surprised if ATI has a .13 part out before summer...

:eek:
Why is that?They have already mentioned that they are moving to a more aggressive product cycle.Do you really think they showed that radeon 9700 with ddr2 just for fun or are they working on something?
Its really very simple.Nvidia lost a product cycle and we think that ATI is moving very fast but consider how many months old radeon 9700 will be by spring time.9-10 months actually so I'd say ATI is late rather than early.

[Bigus Dickus]

Originally posted by volt
GFFX is a reply to R 9700 Pro not R350. Geez where do you get those ideas. By the time ATI releases their new card, NVIDIA will have one in their sleeve and the fight never ends. It's just a matter of how long one can hold the crown.

For the past three years, nVidia has released a new core (NV15, NV20, NV25, NV30) about every 11 months, with a clocked bumped refresh in between.

I would expect the NV35 to be a late fall/Christmas part, based on their track record over the last several years.

However, it looks like they are releasing the clocked bumped "refresh" (Ultra or Ti) alongside the initial product launch. There will probably not be faster memory available for quite a while (1GHz is even pushing it for February), and the core likely has very little room past 500Mhz... I don't think their original plans called for an external power connector and a nuclear powered cooling device. Those were probably added to push clock speeds to a level where it would compete with and beat the 9700Pro.

It may well be the case that nVidia does not have another product to release before late next year. In that case, any ATi part that retook the speed crown would probably keep it througout 2003.

[Quinn1981]

with ATI and nVidia at each others throats, i dont think we will ever see a totally faster card. both have their better points and have their certain bragging rights... but we knew this already, right?

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by Fotis
The link works for me Stealthhawk.
Anyway,
Quote from www.reactorcritical.com:
Here are the things we have learned from the Japanese announcement of RADEON 9700 and 9000:

ATI will announce their next high-end product code-named R350 and supporting DirectX 9.1 in the first half of 2003. The company wants to manufacture it using 0.13 micron technology. Currently they have no plans to shrink the RADEON 9700 (R300) to 0.13 microns, as there are some problems with this process, particularly connected to isolator breakdowns.

ok, it was working now, but the link to their source is not ;)

we've seen the language barrier rear its ugly head before, when the Inquirer quoted a Japanese rumor site as being something other than total guess and fabrication.

[borntosoul]

nvidia is aware of what ati has planned so dont expect them to follow the same release pattern they had for the last few years ,the nv30 is late and they dont want to be playing catchup with ati ,they will be more aggressive than ever now ,so the nv30 might be a very short lived part ,less than 6 months !

[Dr_Colossus]

People keep saying Nvidia missed a product cycle but do you really think Nvidia stalled NV40 development just because there were fab problems a TSMC? I don't think so. The GFFX was delayed yes but does that affect other product schedules? Probably not as much as most of you think. Nvidia is beating ATI (yet to be “proven” but it does) without using a 256bit bus, can you imagine how fast the GFFX while be running on one (it’s inevitable with the NV35, a higher clocked GPU will need the bandwidth). ATI will have a hard time releasing anything very competitive because the NV35 will be right around the corner now that the problems GFFX faced no longer exist. I also have doubts about how well ATI can ramp up there architecture in the case of the R350, I wouldn't expect much considering the GFFX only uses 17 million more transistors and delivers incredible numbers in terms of features. I expect the R350 to use more transistors to accomplish the same tasks as the GFFX.

[borntosoul]

thats what i mean ,nvidia has not stopped developing ,and yes youre right now that they jumped the hurdle we can expect some big things from them