NV3x: VSA influences & strategical advantages

[Uttar]

Originally posted by rwolf
I am not sure what point you are trying to make here.

-The radeon 9000 was redesigned to save cost. The core is half the size of the 8500 with slightly less performance. I think this core is the same as the mobility chip as well (not 100% sure).

AFAIK, it's 40M for the Radeon 9000 and 60M for the Radeon 8500
And I've never said that isn't the case. My point is that ATI insisted they did some major redesign for the part. And yet, little was changed. So I'm supposing it wasn't easy to change so little ( although they probably didn't disclose everything they changed )

think you are right when you say that nvidia will probably keep this design and tweak it for the next two years. The Geforce 1 through 4 are pretty much the same chip except for the addition of pixel shaders, enhanced AA, and process tweaks. This allowed them to use the same drivers for years and gave them a good reputation for driver quality.

Indeed. But still quite much ( not a lot ) was changed with the GF3. What I want to say, however, is that I don't think anything as major as GF2->GF3 will happen in the next two years.

ATI is a bigger company than nVidia

Interesting employee figures you give us here. Never knew that, so thanks for pointing my attention at them :)
However, that statement isn't sufficently precise to be true.
ATI indeed seems to have more employees than nVidia. However, nVidia is still a bigger *corporation*: higher profits, higher market value and more equity.
So, it's hard to say which is bigger...

Textures are still going to be critical and pixel shaders aren't going to be as beneficial as you might think.

Where did I say textures aren't going to be critical anymore?
I can't find any such quotes...
And what makes you think Pixel Shaders won't be that beneficial?


Uttar

[Kruno]

And what makes you think Pixel Shaders won't be that beneficial?

Games are VERY slowly changing to take advantage of PS. Even a lot of games coming out are not going to use them.
Blades of Avernum won't ( www.spidweb.com ).

That's why IMO PS aren't going to be as beneficial as better texture handling,compression and storage.

[Uttar]

Originally posted by K.I.L.E.R
Games are VERY slowly changing to take advantage of PS. Even a lot of games coming out are not going to use them.
Blades of Avernum won't ( www.spidweb.com ).

That's why IMO PS aren't going to be as beneficial as better texture handling,compression and storage.

I believe his statement meant that PS wouldn't even be useful if programmers used it a lot. Or did I misunderstand that?


Uttar

[tamattack]

IMO, PS will be beneficial for graphics quality when properly implemented. However, they will likely be detrimental for framerate. Therefore, texturing will still be the key to high benchmark scores for the time being (ie: until PS use becomes widespread for more than just a few effects here and there, which won't happen until DX9 class cards hit the low end).

[rwolf]

Uttar, Here is a picture showing the core....

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1655&p=2

Keep in mind that chips are developed by writing code and timing is important and that changes when you move stuff around on the core, change the process, or shrink the core.

I would imagine that they made the driver interface the same as the 8500 so it would take less recoding to get stable drivers.

"nVidia is still a bigger *corporation*: higher profits, higher market value and more equity" -- You might be right on this one, however I am not certain. ATI has been busy aquiring companies and technologies (like nextwave,artx) and it has made their balance sheet look worse than it is. I know that for the longest time nvidia stock was over valued and I think right now ATI stock is undervalued. I can't say who is the bigger company equity wise.

I think one of the comments from nvidia was that the pixel pipeline was becoming less important and programmability was becoming more important. My comment about textures was that in reguard to that statement. A pixel shader is good for programming things like objects with fur or wood grain, but I don't see pixel shaders replacing enough textures in an application to reduce the importance of the pixel pipeline.

[suburbanguy]

Uttar - so from what I gather, with the NV35, Nvidia could easily increase the number of processors to make a beefer version of GFFX (more than the increase from NV20 to NV25) kinda like 3DLabs can add (or take away) functional units from the P10 architecture.

Assuming NV35 comes out fall 2003, that will be 1 and 1/2 years after GFFX originally should have been released (spring 2002)
and 1 year after GFFX was ment to be out according to Nvidia's own admittion (fall 2002)

There might be a speed bump of both GFFX and NV35 to stretch out NV3X for the two years that Nvidia was talking about.

With NV4X being a 2004 product at the soonest, that architecture will probably last another 2 years, so a variant of that should be in Xbox2 should MS stick with Nv.

[Kruno]

A pixel shader is good for programming things like objects with fur or wood grain, but I don't see pixel shaders replacing enough textures in an application to reduce the importance of the pixel pipeline.

Not yet. :)
Wait a decade or so. :)
You will be surprised at the leaps in video card/display technology. :)

[Riptide]

Originally posted by K.I.L.E.R
You will be surprised at the leaps in video card/display technology. :)
I wonder how far LCD technology will have advanced in even 5 years.

I would like a 57" display. Now there's one you'll have to sit back from a bit eh?

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by Riptide
I wonder how far LCD technology will have advanced in even 5 years.

7ms response time in a few years!

[Riptide]

Wow, very nice. I don't notice much ghosting with my 25ms display but you can never have to much speed eh?

[Uttar]

Originally posted by StealthHawk
7ms response time in a few years!

That new 16ms response time for the Hitachi CML174 seems really nice.
http://compare.monitorsdirect.com/hitachidisplays/productinfo.jsp?id=853

BTW, I finally put a front page to http://www.notforidiots.com - there's only the NV3x speculation & AA Analyzer on it right now. Ah well, better than nothing :)


Uttar

[StealthHawk]

Originally posted by Uttar
That new 16ms response time for the Hitachi CML174 seems really nice.
http://compare.monitorsdirect.com/hitachidisplays/productinfo.jsp?id=853
personally i'm still waiting on a 19" LCD with 16ms response time or better. i don't want to downgrade my monitor size :(

[gemini1313]

Uttar you da man, but can you change the colors on your nv3x bible please, it hurts my eyes and im going blind. each day my eye site gets worse and i have to get glasses soon and the letters seem blurry and bouncing around from the black on white gig.

peace

[Steppy]

Originally posted by kingsna
now with this i say that NVIDIA is on the right track and if they can make a good parallel architechture(INTEL haven't or couldn't do it so far!) they're gonna rule the 3D world for Many years to come! Intel HAS made a good parallel architecture...the IA-64 processors. It's not well suited to home use(because highly parallel CPU's don't typically do as well on the more random computing tasks of desktop users).