Geforce FX to have 2tmus?

[MUYA]

Link;
http://www.vr-zone.com/#2802
which is further linked to some Japanese Site;


Heres what they say;

TSMC 0.13 micron on 300mm wafers
Estimated die size of 200mm2
Consume up to 35 watts
125 million of transistors
500Mhz Core Clock
500Mhz 128-bit GDDR-II (1Ghz Effective)
AGP 8X
8 pipelines and 2 TMUs

The initial cost of NV30 is expected to be high due to the cost of 10 layers PCB and use of 500Mhz GDDR-II but its performance is expected to be much better than current R300. The high core clock of 500Mhz is attained due to new process technology (0.13 micron using copper wiring) as well as using new package technology (Flip chip package). The NV30 GPU requires a special copper heat pipe cooling unit to cool effective. The current memory frequency of 1Ghz could further improve another 40-50% (700-750Mhz GDDR-II) at some point next year. The cost of a NV30 card can be lowered further when shifted to 8 layers PCB in the future. The earliest possible retail version of NV30 cards (GeForce FX 5800 and 5800 Ultra) will be out by January 2003 from MSI and Leadtek. If everything goes well for NVIDIA, we can expect to see NV35 in mid of 2003 and even NV40 in H1 of 2004.


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I thought it (nv30)was 1 tmu job, what will the extra tmu bring?

and also 35Watts? isn't that a a bit conservative? I thought or was under teh impression that the core was very power hungry...70W maybe? is that molenuex conector for the core or mem..?

MUYA

[Gar]

They are wrong Nvidia announced that it will only have 1 TMU.

[Uttar]

It also states the GFFX uses GDDR-II while, in fact, it uses DDR2

It just doesn't seem to be a reliable source to me... But who knows.


Uttar

[-=DVS=-]

Just another rumor with fake info :rolleyes: nothing new :p

[Joe DeFuria]

GeForce FX will use G-DDRII actually. (In reality I do not believe there is such a thing as DDR-II at this time, and probably won't be until DDR-II makes its way into the system (motherboard) market. All DDR-II chips that will be on graphics cards will be of the G-DDRII variety.

Also, NV30 is indeed 1 TMU. The confusion arises because NV30 is able to sort-of "look at" 16 textures per cycle. It can do something like "apply" 8 textures, and "get ready" for the next 8 textures in the same cycle, but not actually apply 16 textures in one cycle. And many web-sites misinterpret "looking at 16 textures" to mean that "apply" 16 textures per cycle, so they wrongly extrapolate that to 2 TMUs.

[Uttar]

Originally posted by Joe DeFuria
GeForce FX will use G-DDRII actually. (In reality I do not believe there is such a thing as DDR-II at this time, and probably won't be until DDR-II makes its way into the system (motherboard) market. All DDR-II chips that will be on graphics cards will be of the G-DDRII variety.

And the proofs of what you're advancing are? ...
It's not because it's not tradtional DDR-II that it's GDDR-II. I know this might sound strange, but what proofs this couldn't just be something different from both GDDR-II and Jedec DDR-II?
And there's no true Jedec standard for DDR-II yet AFAIK. So that means it could in fact be standard DDR-II if Jedec takes that standard for a reason or another.

I'm not saying it's not GDDR-II. I'm just saying we got *no* proof that it is. Personally, I'd love it to be GDDR-II, that would mean it' s probably even more tuned for graphics. I actually speculated about it being GDDR-II before the GFFX announcement ( that means, about 1 month ago ) and every said it'll be DDR-II and not GDDR-II.
So, if I was right at the time, I get credibility. If I wasn't, well, we both lose credibility. Nice, eh? :) Not like people really care about that those days. And since I only speculate, I don't think I've got too much credibility too :D


Uttar

[sancheuz]

It's gddr2

[StealthHawk]

EE Times (http://www.eetimes.com/semi/news/OEG20021218S0032) says that gfFX uses gddr2, is that official enough?

[Uttar]

Originally posted by StealthHawk
EE Times (http://www.eetimes.com/semi/news/OEG20021218S0032) says that gfFX uses gddr2, is that official enough?

Thanks, that was the kind of proof I was searching for :)
Really annoying people can't post a link to proof it when they got such claims... After all, if they're so sure, it probably isn't speculation.

Anyway, found the thread where I did an insane theory about GDDR-II and the NV30
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3703&highlight=GDDR

I made a fair bit of insane theories there, all wrong. But I was right the NV30 was going to use GDDR-II :D Only the reasoning was wrong.


Uttar

[PreservedSwine]

Do you know if the DDRII on the NV30 is going to be running in "DDRII compatability mode"? Remember some unknown source claimed the R9700 demonstrated w/ DDRII cliamed it was running in ddrI compatability mode.

What does that mean, exactly? And why use DDRII in DDRI compatability mode, when you can just use the new Hynix less expensive 500MHZ DDR1 ram. What are the advantages of DDRII to DDRI if both are running in DDRI compatability mode, and what are the differences if the DRII is running in its native compatability mode?

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by PreservedSwine
What does that mean, exactly? And why use DDRII in DDRI compatability mode, when you can just use the new Hynix less expensive 500MHZ DDR1 ram. What are the advantages of DDRII to DDRI if both are running in DDRI compatability mode, and what are the differences if the DRII is running in its native compatability mode?

above all else there is always the marketing advantage.

[gstanford]

Originally posted by PreservedSwine
Do you know if the DDRII on the NV30 is going to be running in "DDRII compatability mode"? Remember some unknown source claimed the R9700 demonstrated w/ DDRII cliamed it was running in ddrI compatability mode.

What does that mean, exactly? And why use DDRII in DDRI compatability mode, when you can just use the new Hynix less expensive 500MHZ DDR1 ram. What are the advantages of DDRII to DDRI if both are running in DDRI compatability mode, and what are the differences if the DRII is running in its native compatability mode?

No, the GeForce FX certainly will not be using any compatability modes with DDR-II memory. Tony Tamasi (a nVidia employee) explains that in an ExtremeTech article.

http://www.extremetech.com/print_article/0,3998,a=33705,00.asp
Tamasi went on to explain how nVidia takes advantage of DDR2:

"There are fundamental differences between DDR1 and DDR2, and if you want to make good use of DDR2, you have to design around longer burst lengths on the memory, because that's how they're going faster. So the entire memory subsystem has to be designed to handle that. You might be able to hook up a chip that's built for DDR1memory to DDR2 memory, and even run it at a high frequency, but you get horrible utilization out of the memory, because that DDR1 memory subsystem is all built around Burst-Length 2 accesses. So you'll get a half the efficiency accessing the Burst-Length 4 memory device."

That quote also explains that it's possible to interface a DDR-1 memory controller to DDR memory, but it will perform exactly as though it were DDR-1 memory (only two accesses per cycle instead of 4). Here is a little more on DDR-1 compatability mode:

http://www.ami2.com/shownews.asp?num=991
As with all previous generations of JEDEC Standard memory, DDR II is sufficiently backwards compatible to allow controllers to support both it and the previous generation for maximum adaptability and reuse of existing infrastructure. With initial specifications set for DDR 400 (PC 3200, 3.2Gbyte/sec) and DDR 533 (PC 4300, 4.3Gbyte/sec), DDR II Devices (Modules) will have the headroom to expand and meet the requirements of the industry.

lastly, the source was unnamed, and the rumor published by EE-Times, which is a highly respectable journal which would not jeapordise it's professional reputation by publishing something likely to be untrue/incorrect/scandalous.
http://www.eetimes.com/semi/news/OEG20021115S0028
... ATI Technologies Inc., which launched its competing Radeon 9700 graphics chip earlier this year.

Although the ATI part has been demonstrated running with DDR-II memory, sources said the DRAM was running in a DDR-I compatibility mode. The part was not designed for use with DDR-II, according to sources.
...

[Bigus Dickus]

People just misunderstood the statements as made by EE Times.

[Kruno]

Originally posted by Bigus Dickus
People just misunderstood the statements as made by EE Times.

People misunderstand everything. :)