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Nvidia Geforce 4 (NV25) Information
msolnik writes: "nV News has a
brief article about the long-awaited NV25-based video adapters. These graphics processors have similar capabilities compared to the XGPU, and are a lot more powerful than GeForce3 Ti500. Since they are manufactured using .13 micron technology, they will probably be clocked at very high levels."
Does anyone know if nVidia has started using the technology that they acquired with the purchase of 3DFX? I know that 3DFX was working on some killer graphics routines and various chipsets before nVidia bought them out, and nVidia at the time was too far along with the GeForce 3 to integrate them. But supposedly they were going to use the technology in their next graphics chip.... which I assume to be the GeForce 4.
Thank you for reading One Man's Opinion. No participation necessary. Offer void where deemed by law or PATRIOT Act.
In case you miss it 3/4 down the page:
NV25 Information
I was browsing nVidia's forum over @ Fools, and there was a link to Reactor Critical. Here's what they have to say about NV25.
Long-awaited NV25 based adapters. This graphics processor that have similar capabilities compared with XGPU is a lot more powerful than GeForce3 Ti500. Since it is manufactured using 0.13 microns technology, it has a lot of chances to be clocked at the very high levels. The GPU comes in January/February 2002, while professional boards should be available in the second quarter.
ELSA is going to launch two boards based on NV25GL processor, both supports two LCD monitors, though, we do not know whether there are two integrated TMDS transmitters or only one and the second is external.
NV25 that works on 275 MHz. 128 MB DDR SDRAM @ 250 MHz.
NV25 that works on 300 MHz. 128 MB DDR SDRAM @ 330 MHz.
So, this is what a high-end NV25 part *might* look like...
* Rumoured 6 Pixel pipelines .13u Manufacturing process
* Core freq: 300 MHz.
* Memory: 660 MHz. (eff) ~ 10.5 GB/sec BW, assuming they stay with 128-bit data paths.
* Supports TwinView
* Supports (finally) Hardware iDCT
* More powerful T&L unit, to include a second Vertex Shader
* Can't find the link, but there's a rumour stating that we can expect Voodoo5 5500-esque Anti-Aliasing feature. The presumption is that the NV25 will bring a Rotated-Grid AA implementation to the table.
*
It really does sound like a pretty amazing chip. I would be willing to bet we'll be hearing a lot more in the way of rumours as the New Year approaches.
Live to be Moderated
The GeForce 3 Ti 200's price is $199 already.
In fact, the Radeon 8500 in most "correct" benchmarks, falls within the speed of the Ti 500 and Ti 200. It is _NOT_ faster than the Ti 500, at least with current drivers. In terms of pricing however, it seems pretty good, as it falls right within the price of the GeForce3 cards.
However, it's currently not the GeForce 3 killer that ATI had made it out to be.
[08:06p] <Gangis> GeForce 4?!?! Pleeeeeease, be original for once
[08:09p] <[stig]> they need to call it an AK47 or something
[08:09p] >[stig]> just so i say to my friends in school "Yeah so I picked up an AK47 the other day, its really powerful!"
[08:09p] <[stig]> in front of teachers of course
"Black holes are where God divided by zero." - Steve Wright
nVidia became so sucessful because of it's short release schedule. They release new products two times a year, every 6 months.
This 6 months, the GeForce 3 Ti200/500 came out. Last 6 months ago, the GeForce 3 came out, etc...
This kind of release schedule is what made 3dfx, an once undisputed leader in 3d technology, lag so far behind. Consequently, it's also what has made Matrox not even really care about the 3d market.
Note to self: Next year, find out what's on sale before hand (techbargains.com works nicely), buy it the wednesday before at full price, then do a price match once it goes on sale at around 11am or so :)
Guru 3D: GeForce4 / nVidia NV25 videochip
GeForce4 Specs
I just want open source drivers and a card with reasonably high performance. I have a lot more X crashes with games than anywhere else using the nVidia drivers, so when it's time to upgrade the graphics card i'll look for something with Open Source drivers. It's nice of nVidia to make Linux drivers at all, but I'd prefer reliable drivers.
They that quote Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety deserve neither.
It's amazing to see NVidia's dedication to forwarding their technology and continually improving a seemingly perfect line of cards, but with all this power, are we running out of an application to utilize this power?
I have a 800 Duron system with a Geforce 2 MX. It plays any new game at 1152x968 flawlessly. The GeForce 3 can pump out perfect refresh rates at even higher resolutions on any of the newest and graphical intensive game available today. There simply is no challenge, whereas years ago there was always room to improve - refresh rates, resolution, bit colour, texture size, etc.
Does improvement in the 2000's merely mean higher resolutions? If so, I don't want it. On average, most consumer level monitors are 17" and support a max resolution of 1280x1024. These new cards can easily support it flawlessly, so there lacks any point in investing a new card, and I see no point in running Max Payne, for example, at 4800x3600 resolution.
There is no "killer app" available today - even with the GeForce 3 being out for some time now - that will even begin to offer these cards a challenge, and with a GeForce 4 on the way, will NVidia be able to intise buyers into believing they need 300fps at 4800x3600 resolution? In the end, I begin to wonder if NVidia is beginning to find itself in a tough corner. Their hardware is revolutionary, but lacks any practical application.
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
according to the inquirer, nvidia is having problems with the foundry that supplies its' chips
Yeah but it's no big deal. You must get 2 year old hardware nice and cheap, seeing as all the new stuff is never even taken advantage of til its about 2 years old.
FiGZ.COM - A waste of perfectly good web space
The Linux Game Tome (happypenguin.org) has been down for a few weeks, and I haven't seen any mention of why.
This isn't really off-topic. The subject is gaming video cards. When a source for those games disappears, the question is worth asking.
That's weird. It works fine on my windows 2000 box. And I thought it was windows that was supposed to be unstable and linux perfectly stable.
They probably put more work into the windows drivers, which is part of the reason I wish the drivers were open source (the other part is that even if they put all the windows developers on the Linux drivers i'd still trust open source more).
They that quote Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety deserve neither.
Planar and SGI. Even FPS games like Tribes 2 run on Planars without ghosting.
Not entirely sure about LG's LCDs, but if they're anything like the CRTs they sell then it's probably some of the best around.
Rod Taylor
Of course, you'll pay real money for the Samsung, but I don't know anyone else selling a 24" LCD monitor these days.
I was wondering -- does anyone know what vendors sell Nvidia cards with TV/Video capture built-in that supports Linux?
/TV functions because I don't ever use windows (except for Minitab and Xilinx. gah.) Now that I'm looking at upgrading my computer again, I want to make sure I get maximum linux compatiblity.
I have an old Asus TNT3400/TV, and I never get to use the
Anyone have any recommendations?
Thanks,
Ian
As a linux and open source purist I only play text based games.
Perhaps this will start to drive down the price of the GEForce 3 to more affordable levels. $300 Plus for a video card is just a bit much. Thats a 100GB hard drive, a new high end motherboard and processor, a ton of memory, or a larger monitor. I don't need to see the pores and zits on on my warrior to have a good experience.
I don't care whether they adapt any of 3Dfx's hardware ideas. What I really wish they'd do is either implement a Glide support into their drivers, or open up the Glide source code to whatever extent they can (some bits and bobs may be proprietary to other companies).
Obviously, I'm wishing for this for compatibility with old Glide-only apps, not so that new ones could be written. No one has written new ones in eons AFAIK, since as soon as more open standards like OpenGL and DirectX came onto the scene people dumped the 3Dfx-only Glide route, thank God. But there are still several older games written in the Voodoo and Voodoo 2's heyday which are Glide-only, or which work significantly better under Glide than they do in DX.
These apps are few but they contain a couple of early PC classics, as well as the first and still-most-compatible N64 emulator UltraHLE and its offshoot SupraHLE. There are several Glide-wrappers that translate Glide calls into standard DirectX calls, but they don't work well or at all for everybody--me included. None of the Glide wrappers will let me play any Glide-only games or any game through SupraHLE. In addition, some older titles like the first *Tomb Raider* look much, much better under Glide than they do under DX.
So, for the sake of compatability with old games I wish they would release as much of the Glide code as they can, if not write a quick-and-dirty Glide implementation into their drivers. Some may remember that Creative Labs had promised a near-perfect Glide compatibility for their TNT2-based cards back in 1999, in a driver they called Unified. But after 3Dfx sued them the project disappeared, and now that a couple years have passed the desire for Glide capabilities has died down since the games are now so old. But some of us like those old games, and the idea of continued compatability. I just hate it when things break unnecessarily. It's funny how, although some of them need CPU-slowdown programs because they lack internal timing routines, I can still run almost any DOS game with the oldest I've run going back to 1982, yet the development of proprietary 3D APIs like Glide and even DX (Microsoft could break backwards-compatibility with older versions any time they wish) takes away that continuity and certainty.
Just my opinion, though.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
> I'd prefer reliable drivers.
What's so "unreliable" about nVidia's linux drivers? I've had no problems with them (except that Linux performance isn't as good as winXX performace, but that might be because their windows drivers are regarded as best on the market for performance).
This is compared to my horrendous experience with the ATI Rage 128 and Linux, my last non-nVidia card. Granted, this was a while ago, and the drivers for Radeon might be more relibable. However, ATI's main problem is making poor drivers. It always has.. and judging from the first generation of Radeon 8500 drivers, will continue to be so for a while.
Not to mention that Quake3 doesn't exactly stress modern generations of Video Cards anymore. Look how many people play q3 with 1600x1200 with their geforce3's at 32bit. I can with quite reasonable fps :)
IBM's T221. LCD, 22", 3840 x 2560, with a superb viewing angle, and a pricetag to make a grown man weep.
Unfortunately, it takes nearly half a second to get an image onto the display :-(
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
I think while it's nice to be able to run over 60 fps on a GeForce2 MX series, the problem is that you won't get the realistic 3-D look without taking a major hit (pun not intended) in performance.
With the GeForce3 and newer chipsets, you now have the capability to render in real time far more realistic-looking games and still maintain very high frame rates. The current GeForce3 Ti 500 can render DirectX 8.0 and later-compliant games with all 3-D effects turned on at over 60 fps even at 1280x1024 32-bit color on today's faster Pentium 4 and Athlon CPU's.
Actually that would be 6x more -- and it exists now at ISU's C6.
Shut up, be happy. The conveniences you demanded are now mandatory. -- Jello Biafra
I think what you are kind of ignoring is the fact that Quake 3 is no longer the real benchmark for 3-D graphics quality--after all, the game doesn't really take advantage of DirectX 8.x routines.
Try running a game that truly takes advantage of DirectX 8.x routines such as Flight Simulator 2002. If the display driver for your Radeon card properly addresses DirectX 8.x support you should be able to run FS 2002 at around 45-50 fps at 1024x768 32-bit color with no problems even with all 3-D effects turned on (I don't find running above 1024x768 to be useful in most games). That means even very complex 3-D scenes will be rendered with very smooth motion.
By the way, given the fact that memory is dirt-cheap nowadays, you may want to upgrade to 256 MB of RAM. That makes a big difference with the very latest games since you won't have to swap files to and from the hard drive so often.
There is NO video card out today that can handle the latest games at 1024x768 with all the bells and whistles turned up all the way. Sure, it may look ok, but it will still slow down to under 30 fps in many cases. And there is also Doom 3 on the horizon, which will run at under 30 fps on a GF3 according to Carmack.
There is still PLENTY of room for more performance with video cards and it will continue until we have FPSes running at 1600x1200 with completely photo-realistic environments, full anti-aliasing, acheiving 120 fps. And even then, I'm sure someone will have a reason to have even more power in their video card.
Current video cards are not even close to that.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Yes, but film/video/whatever are also exposure over time, where as a computer frame (as in FPS) is a snapshot in time. In other words, on film or video, if an object traves from one end of the screen to another in the space of two frames, you'll see a blur on the film. For something like quake, you'll see the object on one side of the screen, then the other side. More FPS for the same action will allow for a finer granularity; if the two frames show the object on the sides of the screen, left and then right, then five frames per second will show the object at 0, 33, 50, 66 and 100. Ten FPS will show the object at 0, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 and 100; both in the same space of time. This winds up giving you that visual continutity that film gives you automagically.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
They likely have something in development. They have done a pretty good job of catchup, the Radeon was leaps and bounds better than the Rage series, but still nowhere near equivalent GeForce performance.
Now the 8500 chips are showing themselves to be, with decent drivers, at least roughly equivalent to the high-end GeForce3 chips. Though perhaps not quite as feature-rich, performance is quite competitive with nVidia offerings. If they keep up this pace, they may very well not only catch up with nVidia both performance and feature wise, but also pass them.
In a way, the situation right now seems to me reminiscent of nVidia's situation when they brought out the RivaTNT chips. They had been playing catchup to 3dfx, and the Riva128 series would be analagous to ATI's Radeon chips, and the first TNT analogous to the 8500 chips. Then people thought nVidia's progress was impressive, but thought they probably would never quite catch up with 3Dfx, and we all know how that went..
Basically, I would say that since the release of the first GeForce chip that nVidia development has slowed down and not made nearly the significant strides seen between the Riva, TNT, and that ended with the GeForce, since the market didn't pressure them enough, and ATI is taking advantage and may take the crown in the somewhat-near future....
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
If you want to look at the scenery, sure, 30fps at 640x480 is ok. But when it somes to making a railgun shot across a map, 1600x1200 vs. 640x480 is like foreplay with oven mits on. Sure you can do it, but you can do it a LOT better the other way.
Same with framerates. If, at a distance, your head is only 3-4 pixels wide (which would be only one at 640x480), the more FPS I am getting, the more opportunity I have to register (visually) that my crosshairs are on you, and thus I am a better player.
Plus, there are many a "documented anomaly" at higer FPS that the l33t gamers use in Q3 (and I guess other games, but since everyone plays Q3 or Counter-Strike, who cares =)
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
Games such as RTCW Scream for this much power...
For example, I'm running a highly overclocked radeon 8500 (64Meg), equiv to a slow geforce 3 or fast geforce2:
with all the graphical settings turned up to thier max in the game (extra-high character texture detail, max everything else), and only 2xAA, I CANNOT PLAY THE GAME at 800x600 (the framerate falls to 4fps durring combat); If I turn things down some, I can get away with playing at 800x600. Even with weak settings though, 1024x768 is out of the question unless I turn AA completely off. The only way around this is to switch to vertext lighting (as opposed to lightmaps - which are wonderfully beautifull)...
Anyway, the point is, there is at least 1 game out Now, in which a card like this would be useful. Since games only get more and more complex, by the time a NV25 based card hit the market, many games would want/need this sort of speed.
man is machine
That said, I think nVidia is playing with fire in simultaneously building "NV2A" chipsets for the XBox and trying to push the envelope on the PC. I understand they're covering their bases: games on PC are wiltering in comparison to console games (at least for now -- this is a recurring cycle with every new console that comes out). However, by creating one standard that users can lock in to, what's the impetus to purchase a PC and upgrade to a higher video card?
Wired magazine had an interesting take on the "secondary benefits" to Microsoft making the XBox successful. One was the obvious possibility that they will leverage the living room as a new monopoly (which, rightfully so, they agreed was simply conspiracy theory). However, another "benefit" is getting console developers familiar with the (admitally not that bad) DirectX 8 interface, and bringing them back to the PC to develop quality ports. This, in my mind, is the only way nVidia is going to honestly stay in the computer video card game at the growth rate it's been going.
I'm wondering, perchance, if this will release the other extreme: eventually, people just kind of settle on a certain type of technology "good enough" for their present needs. The internal combustion engine was pretty much finalized 60 years ago, and very real modifications have taken place since then. Televisions, likewise, were pretty much finalized in technology 30 years ago. Outside of a few fringe stragglers, very few people now make the jump to "upgraded" tech. I wonder if PCs will be the next.
And if it is, where's nVidia's future in all of this?
ATI has had hardware iDCT support since the Rage128 series.
Historical Footnote: nVidia's NV1 and NV2 chipsets used Quads instead of Triangles. The NV2 chipset was never produced, due in part to chronic bugginess.
http://firingsquad.gamers.com/features/nv2/
Hello wideangle, the human Archeologist, welcome back to NetHack!--More--
You see here a shiny nvidia card.
.
A geforce for 599 zorkmids. Pay? [yn] (n)
y
You bought a geforce for 599 gold pieces. --More--
"Thank you for shopping in Tom's discount hardware!"
R
You remove the heatsink.
You feel like you've done something bad.
#pray
A Large voice booms: "Thou hast angered me." --More--
The geforce explodes! You are blinded by the smoke!
It hits! It hits! --More--
It hits! It burns! --More--
It bites!
You die.
The shopkeeper gratefully inherits all your possessions.
Goodbye wideangle.
You were Microsoft-aligned.
You were inspired by user 31387.
You were unlucky.
You were broke.
A GeforceXP to go with AthlonXP and WindowsXP? God, what an unholy alliance.
C//
When I can play a game that looks as good as the Final Fantasy movie, at a consistent 100 FPS that's when it's fast enough for me :)
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Generally, I don't play games much, which is why I also don't care much about 3D performance (it doesn't hurt to have it though :p ). I care a lot more about 2D quality and the Nvidia based cards isn't exactly known to be the best there...
Besides that, I care about driver quality - AFAIK the NVIDIA drivers are generally great, both for windows and Linux (although they are closed source). I also care a lot about noise. I don't want a card that need a huge noisy fan. No active cooling, thanks!
AFAIK, the Geforce3 Ti200 doesn't *need* a fan (the NVIDIA reference card doesn't have one), but most cards comes with a fan anyway - if the heatsink is good enough, it should be safe to disable the fan.
I've heard Leadtek cards is some of the only NVIDIA cards that actually have good 2D quality.
Grip3n: I have a 800 Duron system with a Geforce 2 MX. It plays any new game at 1152x968 flawlessly.
I too have a Duron 800 and Geforce 2 MX, and until last week I would have totally agreed with you.
Last week I installed 3D Mark 2001 .
Try it yourself. Wait for the scene with the trees... suddenly your system will drop to 1-2 FPS.
Trees. That is why we need a better CPU & graphics card.
Notice how all the "good" games are set indoors, in cities, or in deserts? Yet all the fun army combat films take place in rural areas?
Think of all those war or commando films where you've got a lone gunman sneaking around using trees for cover. Now when you look at games, you're always sneaking around using crates and boxes for cover. That's why we need better hardware.
The games run fast on our Duron 800 / GEF2MX systems because those games are set in an environment which is specifically designed not to challenge our hardware. It's always a sewage system, a couple of city blocks, an underground base, a desert airport. It's never a forrest, a farm, a suburb.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
Actually seing the zits on the warrior would probably spoil the whole ambiance...
...
Unless you were playing Hercules The Teenage Years or something
To quote one of the comments in the original /. article:
/. article was from the same period when 3Dfx was suing Creative Labs for working on their Unified driver which would have offered Glide compatability for Creative TNT2 based cards. Today, all mention of the Unified driver has been removed from Creative's site except for a few old press releases, which link to pages which no longer exist.
> it isn't the complete Glide library that older applications (such as Quake II) depend on.
> Rather, it is a subset of the Glide API that allows Mesa and their new OpenGL driver to
> access the Voodoo3.
They never, ever, ever opened the Glide libraries. Instead, they released the source for the part of their Linux driver that hooks into Mesa. That's all. The rest has always been, and unless nVidia can be persuaded to do so will always remain, binary-only and hence not easily hackable (no successful efforts so far) to work with all video cards.
Note also that this
The Glide code is still closed and proprietary and hence old Glide games will probably be unplayable unless one uses an old Voodoo card, which will be increasingly difficult as time goes on for obvious reasons. After all, right now how many Voodoo 1's do you see floating around? There's the occasional one on eBay. In a few years, the same will be the case for Voodoo 2's through Voodoo 5's.
Doubtless there are a few tiny bits of Glide which are proprietary to third parties and hence unreleasable. But from what I understand most of Glide was developed in-house by 3Dfx, so most of it should be releasable. The only question is whether nVidia can be prodded to release it.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
Pixar gnerally uses its software package called Renderman with sub-pixel polygons. This facilitates temporal and spacial anti-aliasing and detailed texture maps.
Actually, with NV25, they are abandoning the 6-month cycle. NV25 will come out a year after GeForce3, while Ti500 was just an overclocked revision of the same chip (that used to be the "Ultra" version that would come out 3 months after a new chip release).
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
Since we broke into the conversation, Has anyone used the IBM 275 20" (19.8) Flat
1920x1440@75Hz I found one good review on it but nothing else. I would like one for christmas?? but I haven't been able to get a review from a source I know.
I was comparing it to the Mitsubisi 200 Diamond Plus Natural Flat
22" (20") 1800x1440@72 Hz
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
Is it just me, or does it seem like we're down to only the "Big 3" (nVidia, ATI, and Matrox -- and I could be wrong about Matrox).
You used to have all sorts of chipset makers... S3, Matrox, ATI, WesternDigital, Tseng Labs (whatever happened to them, anyway?), 3dFX...
What happened? Is this consoldiation a good thing or a bad thing?
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Well, truform I'll give, though in practice any "guessing" about what the game intended the geometry to be produces some problems (puffy characters come to mind). I think there are GeForce boards out there that can push dual monitors. As far as smoothvision goes, that is just a really hyped up supersampling AA solution, dog slow and even at highest quality doesn't do much better than nVidia w/ Antisotropic filtering, which is much faster. Now when they release the All-In-Wonder 8500DV, then you have some kick-ass features. That is what I'm holding out for, great 3D and Multimedia :)
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.