Will R520 kill 7800gtx?

[ChrisRay]

I dont think Josh makes up stories. I think he is misled from time to time however.

[Razor1]

Its upto the developer whether they want bloom adding on or not. I'm just saying HDR and bloom are quite seperate things. You dont have to have bloom in an HDR engine, and you dont need HDR to do bloom effects.

You previously talked about doing HDR via textures. Thats basically a hack because X800 and pre NV40 cards dont support FP16 frame-buffers. So you have to render everything to a floating point texture, then convert down at the end to a standard 32bit frame-buffer.

NV40 and NV50 on the other hand do support floating point frame-buffers, so you can do an entire engine with HDR throughout the whole pipeline without resorting to render to texture hacks.

They are seperate up to a certain point, but without bloom HDR is pretty much worthless. and HDR really doesn't need FP buffers. Only OpenEXR's method needs FP 16 buffers.

[serenity]

I think he is misled from time to time however.
My point exactly. I dont doubt he has sources inside Nvidia but anything he claims about R520 is as good as making up sensational stories to get website hits.

[Nutty]

They are seperate up to a certain point, but without bloom HDR is pretty much worthless. and HDR really doesn't need FP buffers. Only OpenEXR's method needs FP 16 buffers.

I would argue against that. Theres loads of other cool tricks besides bloom that HDR enables.

Show me an HDR engine that doesn't use float buffers? I've never seen one. HDR in fixed point is pretty much impossible. Might be possible in 16bit fixed point, but then you may as well just use 16bit floating point.

[jolle]

They are seperate up to a certain point, but without bloom HDR is pretty much worthless. and HDR really doesn't need FP buffers. Only OpenEXR's method needs FP 16 buffers.

I think the coolest thing about HDR is when you use autoexposure, like Farcry does..

And yeah while HDR is possible with other methods, those have only been used in techdemos, RTHDRIBL for example renders to a FP texture format..
I think those methods arent very good for games tho, since without FP blending capabilities you cant use Alpha blended textures, which pretty much every game does.. the demands the content sets is alot different with a techdemo (a few geometrical objects with a texture background) then it is for a full game..

Valve is using a INT16 format for their HDR on cards without a FP16 capable framebuffer, that might work good and it should be compatible with alphablended textures, but I think it will be somewhat limited since its still only Integers..
Pretty much all HDR formats have been Floating Point sofar, and there is prolly a good reason for that..
But while it may not be AS good, its prolly going to work pretty ok anyhow.

[c4c]

Some very interesting bits being posted on this thread: http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=23600&start=320&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=

Hints at possibly only 16 pixel pipes for R520?

Baumann saying ATI may have initally had problems with the new memory bus???

Hmmmmm....

[ninelven]

Could just be support for GDDR4, though it would certainly be nice to see a 512bit bus. I wonder how the AIBs would feel about that though cost wise.

[killahsin]

My point exactly. I dont doubt he has sources inside Nvidia but anything he claims about R520 is as good as making up sensational stories to get website hits.

Josh actually does a god job at what he does. which is take all the info out there combine it look at the real world facts and try to analyze the situations from there. When dealing with pre-launch items, alot of the stuff out there is mumbo jumbo. For instance .90nm is still quite possible, but it may just be on a lower end version, and the person who leaked the .90 info might have been taken out of context. when dealing with market analysis on future products that are nda'd. You have to take all the info you get from every channel posisble and try to rationalize it all. Josh does all this very good. When josh first stated the 520 was delayed back a while ago he was correct. He does what he does well. not to say all his facts are correct, but to say that his analysis of the situations based on the facts(or not so facts given to him) are correct.
(Sorry for derailing the topic). Now on the otherhand inquirer is a sensationlist site. They just spout things usually with no logic behind them, lol. But thats what the inquirer is about.

[serenity]

Ok Josh might have got mislead through his sources but he is just like Paul Thurrot; In the know-who but will do anything for website hits.

Dont even talk about Inquirer. :D

[Razor1]

I would argue against that. Theres loads of other cool tricks besides bloom that HDR enables.

Show me an HDR engine that doesn't use float buffers? I've never seen one. HDR in fixed point is pretty much impossible. Might be possible in 16bit fixed point, but then you may as well just use 16bit floating point.


Unreal 3, Cry Engine, and mine, all do HDR without FP 16 support on ATi and pre gf6 lines. We all use a similiar technique we blend through a pixel shader in a 3rd pass. Its quite simple to do actually, and ends up around the same % performance drop as if doing fp 16 blending on a GF6 with a compairable ATi card.

[junkbond-jones]

Good points, and some average ones.

Because of nVidias very, very good setup of availability at launch, ATi really is under alot of pressure to put out soon. Late Aug I can see, but Sept is too far.

I can imagine nVidia knowing that ATi will come out with a SM3.0, 90nm low-k chip that will have higher clocks than what nVidia will have, so they made a good assumption that ATi will probably have to work out some kinks and therefore have some availability probs. nVidia knew if the cards were released at the same time they would probably lose, so they hammered ATi, not by releasing a "better" card (time will tell), but by making ATi look as if they didn't even show up for the fight!

Very smart. This launch really is much better than I've seen nVidia, ATi, or even AMD and Intel do within the last 4-5 years.


didn't ATi say the R520 was coming in july?

[Karma]

didn't ATi say the R520 was coming in july?

Yes, a few months ago. After ATi's announcement it may be launched in July, but most likely instead launched Aug and available in Sept.

My original post was before ATi's announcment. Check the dates before making assumptions.

[junkbond-jones]

Yes, a few months ago. After ATi's announcement it may be launched in July, but most likely instead launched Aug and available in Sept.

My original post was before ATi's announcment. Check the dates before making assumptions.
you sure like that word dont ya "assumptions" :p

the post i quoted was 2 days old when i quoted it

and last rumor i read said it's coming out july 26th
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/10/nvidia_ati_launch_dates/

13 days is not months ago ;)

[LBJM]

13 days is not months ago ;)

But it feels like it! we've all been waiting for new cards it's a disappoint that ATI is once again dropped the ball.

[OWA]

Maybe the title should be, "Will the R520 kill ATI?" :) j/k

[Tacitblue]

Long thread on B3D also on the very real possibility G70 was designed to be 32 fragment pipes. The die size and the stated transistor count is very much not in synch. And it certainly explains why they had so many GTX at launch, if it was designed to be 24 only from the beginning, I doubt they'd have the apparent yields they're getting to ship thousands of cards around. Something is definatley up.

[bkswaney]

Long thread on B3D also on the very real possibility G70 was designed to be 32 fragment pipes. The die size and the stated transistor count is very much not in synch. And it certainly explains why they had so many GTX at launch, if it was designed to be 24 only from the beginning, I doubt they'd have the apparent yields they're getting to ship thousands of cards around. Something is definatley up.

I agree 100%.

I've been saying this since before the 7800 come out
that Nvidia had an ace.

They only needed a 24pipe to beat the top ATI card
hands down. Plus they had the added plus of being
able to put it out high volume.

The trans count is up there to have 32 pipes
with ease. :)
I see nvidia hitting back hard after the 520 is released
this fall. ;)

[wshadow]

can someone say $50 downloadable bios flash to 32 pipes:P LOL!!!

[Vagrant Zero]

can someone say $50 downloadable bios flash to 32 pipes:P LOL!!!

Can somebody say ARG MATEY! :P

[retsam]

I see nvidia hitting back hard after the 520 is released
this fall. ya i have to agree with your statement... i see ati paper luanching the r520 then the very next week or two nvidia anounces the g7x ubber part..with amediate availbiliy....bam... instant rain on ati's parade .... wooohhhh remind me never to piss off nvidia ... they really know how to play chess..,.

[bkswaney]

ya i have to agree with your statement... i see ati paper luanching the r520 then the very next week or two nvidia anounces the g7x ubber part..with amediate availbiliy....bam... instant rain on ati's parade .... wooohhhh remind me never to piss off nvidia ... they really know how to play chess..,.


They sure do know how to play.
Man after the whole FX mess nvidia's not
playing around with ATI anymore.
They stand ready to fight it out toe to toe. :)

I remember emailing nvidia saying PLEASE give
us nvidia fans a card to run with ati back
when my 5800u and 5900 were getting there ass
kicked.
Man did they come through big time. :D

[retsam]

ok if there are 32 pipe cards waiting in the wings.. we are gonna need some very fast memory...1.4 or 1.5 gddr3 ...are these even availible yet ?.....anyone know what the status of these memory chips are ...

[PeterJensen]

uhmmm Rivatuner :) Can we make our 7800GTX babies into 32pipe monsters :)

[ChrisRay]

unwinder said the 7800GTX doesnt have any pipes to be unlocked.

[PeterJensen]

ChrisRay : where did you read that :(