Xbitlabs rumour: NV35 next month?

[DSC]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/display/20030402141724.html

Yes folks, time to start the rumour machines going again..... :D :confused: :argue: :lol2:

[digitalwanderer]

It's gonna be available in stores TOMORROW and only cost $250us!!!!

ARE YOU READY? :p

[GlowStick]

grrr, now the question is, should i wait or dive in : O

[digitalwanderer]

Originally posted by GlowStick
grrr, now the question is, should i wait or dive in : O

DIVE IN!!!

C'mon, you know you want to.... ;)

[GlowStick]

Hm, im gonna raise the deadline to Saturday, or the whole thing is off!

[MuFu]

Well I believe it. Anybody else? :D

I think ATi will be sitting on their R350/DDR-II board until then as well. 3 months after that - kapow! Something special coming. :cool:

MuFu.

[Dazz]

Might be announced next month but will ship 3 months afterthat :p

[digitalwanderer]

Originally posted by Dazz
Might be announced next month but will ship 3 months afterthat :p

No, it's shipment will be announced 3 months after that...but they may experience some delays or only have a limited quantity available for a while. (Yeah, like five..... :p )

[Uttar]

Originally posted by MuFu
Well I believe it. Anybody else? :D

I think ATi will be sitting on their R350/DDR-II board until then as well. 3 months after that - kapow! Something special coming. :cool:

MuFu.

I believe those dates too. And I'd be VERY surprised if nVidia didn't ship products real fast after the announcement too, based on those rumors and the little info I've recieved myself from a generally very reliable source, who nearly never posts rumors under his nickname on forums ( so no, that's not MuFu )

As for ATI's "something special" :

" The Wallet Sucker ( TM ) " :D
They're gonna keep the performance crown, yes, yes...
But they're not gonna have the performance crown at the $299->$449 segment ( which I call "sane enthusiast" - $449+ is "insane enthusiast" ) , though. So who cares?

That is, I'm just saying that based on all the rumors about that "special thing" - because financially, it'll HAVE to be pricy.
The 1 board solution probably won't be able to beat a NV35, thus having to price it around $299 or $349 - and the 2 board solution is gonna cost a lot to produce, thus probably $499 or $549 in retail.
Big gap in their lineup, eh?

It does make sense financially though, because that means they keep the performance crown - and Joe Consumer is quite sensible to knowing that, because that implies to him that their mainstream solutions are faster too.


Uttar

[MuFu]

2 board solution, WTF?

MuFu.

[Steppy]

Originally posted by Uttar
I believe those dates too. And I'd be VERY surprised if nVidia didn't ship products real fast after the announcement too, based on those rumors and the little info I've recieved myself from a generally very reliable source, who nearly never posts rumors under his nickname on forums ( so no, that's not MuFu )

As for ATI's "something special" :

" The Wallet Sucker ( TM ) " :D
They're gonna keep the performance crown, yes, yes...
But they're not gonna have the performance crown at the $299->$449 segment ( which I call "sane enthusiast" - $449+ is "insane enthusiast" ) , though. So who cares?

That is, I'm just saying that based on all the rumors about that "special thing" - because financially, it'll HAVE to be pricy.
The 1 board solution probably won't be able to beat a NV35, thus having to price it around $299 or $349 - and the 2 board solution is gonna cost a lot to produce, thus probably $499 or $549 in retail.
Big gap in their lineup, eh?

It does make sense financially though, because that means they keep the performance crown - and Joe Consumer is quite sensible to knowing that, because that implies to him that their mainstream solutions are faster too.


Uttar Are we talking about the return of AFR...again? Hasn't this rumor surfaced every new generation from ATI and Nvidia(once they acquired the rights to SLI).

[ellroy80]

Originally posted by MuFu
Well I believe it. Anybody else? :D

I think ATi will be sitting on their R350/DDR-II board until then as well. 3 months after that - kapow! Something special coming. :cool:

MuFu.

Any hints on that something special MuFu? I'm guessing it's from ATI? The rumoured dual chip board? Or, could it possibly the NV35 with the PPP? C'mon, give us some sort of hint! :)

[Uttar]

Originally posted by MuFu
2 board solution, WTF?

MuFu.

Oh, you know I meant dual chip, not dual board :)
Or am I getting insane, and that's incorrect too?


Uttar

[GlowStick]

Originally posted by Uttar
Oh, you know I meant dual chip, not dual board :)
Or am I getting insane, and that's incorrect too?


Uttar

since when were you not insane : P

J/K =P

[Paul]

I'm just waiting for someone to make another MAXX pun ;)

As for SLI, you won't see that with the AGP spec. I guess it's possible with PCI-X, but i've seen no definite spec which says such a set up is possible. I assume it will be, however.

But the ATi board mentionned isn't PCI-X :) Also, as far as i'm aware, it's not going to be anywhere near as expensive as Uttar is suggesting. Certainly won't be that much more expensive than the top-end NV35 model.

[GlowStick]

Originally posted by Paul
I'm just waiting for someone to make another MAXX pun ;)

As for SLI, you won't see that with the AGP spec. I guess it's possible with PCI-X, but i've seen no definite spec which says such a set up is possible. I assume it will be, however.

But the ATi board mentionned isn't PCI-X :) Also, as far as i'm aware, it's not going to be anywhere near as expensive as Uttar is suggesting. Certainly won't be that much more expensive than the top-end NV35 model.

With PCIX mutlipe video cards is easily possible.

[nutball]

Aren't there some IP issues surrounding the implementation of (true) SLI? Or am I mis-remembering? IP that was owned by 3DFX and (therefore, presumably) is now owned by the owners of 3DFX.

(Could be B/S of course).

[Uttar]

Originally posted by Paul
Also, as far as i'm aware, it's not going to be anywhere near as expensive as Uttar is suggesting. Certainly won't be that much more expensive than the top-end NV35 model.

Would that imply that the chip it's based on ( R390? ) is less efficient per clock than the R350?
That's the only way I imagine you could do such a thing...
Unless ATI is going to do it very, very low volume and is okay with making very, very little money with it :)

Uttar

[GlowStick]

Originally posted by nutball
Aren't there some IP issues surrounding the implementation of (true) SLI? Or am I mis-remembering? IP that was owned by 3DFX and (therefore, presumably) is now owned by the owners of 3DFX.

(Could be B/S of course).

I think Nvidia holds the patent on the technology of 'haveing a more powerfull card by adding more chips, ala Voodoo4 and 5'

but i think patents like that are ghey because there is also a patent on "a program that allows users to communicate with eachother' ala AOL, but it wont hold up in court IMHO.

Also SBC (a phoneline company) has a patent on "structed web document", they tried to sue websites that had 'frames' on them, they claim though they didnt invent the code behind it (wc3 did that) they OWN the idea of putting the frame on a web page. its a whole lotta bs.

[nutball]

Originally posted by GlowStick
I think Nvidia holds the patent on the technology of 'haveing a more powerfull card by adding more chips, ala Voodoo4 and 5'


To elaborate, I thought 3DFX held a patent on the implementation of true scan-line interleaving (ie. one chip renders the even scan-lines, the other chip renders the odd scan-lines).

Some other company (forget which, ATi?) brought out a multi-chip solution which got round this by splitting the screen vertically (one chip rendering the top, the other chip the bottom). The load balancing caused from problems if there was high-level structure in the complexity of the screen (eg. complex outdoor scene with simple sky).

[DadGT]

Originally posted by nutball
To elaborate, I thought 3DFX held a patent on the implementation of true scan-line interleaving (ie. one chip renders the even scan-lines, the other chip renders the odd scan-lines).

Some other company (forget which, ATi?) brought out a multi-chip solution which got round this by splitting the screen vertically (one chip rendering the top, the other chip the bottom). The load balancing caused from problems if there was high-level structure in the complexity of the screen (eg. complex outdoor scene with simple sky).

I thought there was also a dual chip rendering scheme where each chip processed every other frame?

But the point is still that SLI is a technique to use two chips each processing every other scan line (hence the name). Unless the IP is more general than just SLI, other schemes (top of frame bottom of frame, etc) should be completely legal.

But just think, two r350's. Doesn't one pull a huge amount of current and produce a lot of heat? What kind of aux power and cooling would they need for that?

[StealthHawk]

Rage Fury Maxx didn't use SLI....i'm pretty sure it used AFR(alternate frame rendering). so if ATI still used the Maxx technology why would there be a problem?

[MuFu]

Originally posted by Uttar
Oh, you know I meant dual chip, not dual board :)
Or am I getting insane, and that's incorrect too?


Uttar

See, I dunno... there have been a few hints from certain parties regarding such a product, but the source could just be somebody getting over-excited about a couple of multiple-ASIC samples knocking about the lab (this happened with R200 - they were probably just POC boards for a 3rd party). I was thinking perhaps a dual-RV350 board, but that'd be a bit odd since RV350 lacks a few high-end features that they might want to incorporate - Hi-Z buffer, PS/VS 3.0 compliance, hardware HOS etc. I think they'll probably hold of development on the SLI/AFR front until PCI-X is widespread.

No idea what R390 is at this stage. My best guess would be an R350 migration to 0.13u + 2nd TMU per pipe, fixes/tweaks and *very fast*. Like 500Mhz, at least.

MuFu.

[nutball]

Originally posted by StealthHawk
Rage Fury Maxx didn't use SLI....i'm pretty sure it used AFR(alternate frame rendering). so if ATI still used the Maxx technology why would there be a problem?

That was it! That's why there wasn't a problem!

[nutball]

But just think, two r350's. Doesn't one pull a huge amount of current and produce a lot of heat? What kind of aux power and cooling would they need for that? [/B]

Presumably nothing worse that FlowFX!:D