What new features on next gen cards?

[monkeydust]

I haven't heard of any new features that we will be seeing on the cards coming out this Spring. Are we just looking at a speed bump for NVIDIA and ATI adding SM 3.0?

[retsam]

I haven't heard of any new features that we will be seeing on the cards coming out this Spring. Are we just looking at a speed bump for NVIDIA and ATI adding SM 3.0?
well ati in gonna add sm 3.0... this is a given.. and from what ive heard theres gonna be 4 more pipes and 2 more texture units ... nvidia is moving in the same direction here also ..
there is a rumor of the next sound storm integrating into the gpu itself... but that one might be hard to believe... oh and also ati is moving into the sli arena with the next gen stuff.

[jolle]

MIght be adding some PCI-E features aswell, such as HyperMemory & (forgot NVs counterpart)..
Those seems vital to bringing lowend cards into spec for "Avalon" as it has some requirements on Onboard RAM, which can be bypassed by using System RAM efficiently on ex a 128mb card to store textures (as avalon draws windows in Longhorn and XP when it comes as textures)
Prolly gonna be within specs of WFG1.0 (its a bit more then DX9 right?), dont know about WFG2.0 tho, would ofcource be neater then just the 3rd generation DX9 Cores..

I dont put much stock in that Soundstorm in GPU rumour either, from what I understand it comes from the statement that SS2 will come in a unexpected form, which I would assume would be standalone PCI and/or PCI-E soundcards.

[Lezmaka]

A pizza oven! And when you use SLI, it cooks it twice as fast!

[superklye]

well ati in gonna add sm 3.0... this is a given.. and from what ive heard theres gonna be 4 more pipes and 2 more texture units ... nvidia is moving in the same direction here also ..
there is a rumor of the next sound storm integrating into the gpu itself... but that one might be hard to believe... oh and also ati is moving into the sli arena with the next gen stuff.
I thought they were adding 8 to bring it up to 24 pipes?

[-=DVS=-]

Speed and that all i care for , we already got more features then we need :D hopefully we gonna get some awesome speed boost in dealing with shadows.

[retsam]

I thought they were adding 8 to bring it up to 24 pipes?
opps your right i was thinking in terms of quads but ya 8 more pipes is it.

[jolle]

Speed and that all i care for , we already got more features then we need :D hopefully we gonna get some awesome speed boost in dealing with shadows.
Features often = performance..
faster shadow rendering could be via new features for example, IE new dedicated bits for doing just that, instead of just ramping up overall speed.
SM3.0 is a feature that speeds up handling of shadercode a bit, 3dc is a feature that allows more efficient use of normal mapping, UltraShadow is a "feature" (group of OpenGL extentions) that speeds up stencil shadow useage in OpenGL etc..
So they are often the same, provided that they are put to use ofcource..
and pure speed, well you always get more of that in refreshes and more so in new generations..

[monkeydust]

The reason why I ask this is weighing the pros/cons of SLI vs. upgrading video card next year.

[retsam]

The reason why I ask this is weighing the pros/cons of SLI vs. upgrading video card next year. well think about it this way .... if this gen cards with sli is amazing just wait for next gen cards with sli.... thats gonna be incredible ....

[Dazz]

Well i know the R520 supports Shader model 3.0a

[nutball]

Features often = performance..

Not if the games don't support them they don't.

[jolle]

yeah, like i said..

So they are often the same, provided that they are put to use ofcource..