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nVidia NV3x Sneak Peek
zoobaby writes "Here is a sneak peak at nVidia's upcoming line of cards. No hard specs, but some nice notes on changes from current NV2x to NV3x, also some very nice screenshots to show off what it will be capable of." In related news, Tim_F noticed that memory manufacturer Crucial is entering the video card business with their first card based on the ATI Radeon 8500le.
Most of us aren't Slashdot admins, after all.
Yeah, that's exactly what happened dumbass.
Wow, that's a nice picture of a motorcycle there. It's so well rendered that you can actually see that the designer forgot to render valve caps on the tire valves. Damn!
are awesome. I've not upgraded to a GF4 because of a promise ata 100 bios conflict with the chipset. Maybe its time to hope for some real competition in the graphics market :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
The word 'noticed' sends me to an admin page, and the phrase ATI sends me back to the home page. Please fix.
Why is that link to the crucial memory story pointing to an HTTPS address on slashdot?
/. crew?
And why is the cert. authority "Snakeoil"? Is this some sort of joke from the
I know, I know. You all can't wait to get your hands on the only component that really pushes computer hardware. However, I feel I have to remind you that these are only technical demos, and don't show, among other things, the true performance of the card. What's the point of being able to render objects with that level of realism if you're only pulling 1/2 frame a second to pull it off?
The eye candy is pretty damn amazing, especially that rendering taken from Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within movie. Just a couple of questions though, are those sort of graphics available in existing cards but game developers aren't fully taking advantage of the shaders? If this card intended for consumers/gamers?
aus.music.scrapbook
Did anyone else's brain want to instinctively drink that cup of coffee on the 3rd page?
,
faeryman
As much as I think NVIDIA is an honest, good company, I'll hold onto my GF4 Ti4400 until "NV30" 2.
I'm no longer eating up tech demos. Even if they're damn impressive, they're far too future-oriented to seriously invest in.
"This is intended to allow real-time cinematic effects in real-time"
Today is a great day in computing history: nVidia is the first to bring us "real-time cinematic effects" that actually occur in real time! I can't wait!
If you look at the features that are implimented in the NV 30 chipset, it is just about what the features for dx9 are. As for its capabilities are concerned, I really am excited to see that such technology will be used in games, but I am definately not buying that card, its price is well out of my range, I really do not like how nvidia's implementation of their linux drivers work. It seemed that after their 2802 drivers, their opengl didn't work too well at all with redhat linux, and then when I switched to gentoo recently, it doesn't work at all. So, as a result of that, I threw a Matrox G400 into my box, and will await the first company that creates linux drivers that fricking work. I don't care who it is, Ati or Matrox, or some other bastards, just get it done. Because it is obvious the way Xfree4.2 works, it is a real bitch for me to get my NV card to work, and since it is a GeForce2 mx, I really don't care if it does or not. I have a card that works with my games that I play on the PC, and for doom, or any other high end 3d game, I have an Xbox. So I can wait at least until someone gets decent drivers again.
It will be interesting to see how much of a foothold ATI's Radeon 9700 can get before nVidia's new card actually hits shelves. As this article points out, nVidia has trumped ATI's latest graphics card almost immediately after it becomes available with an even more powerful one of their own. Do people think nVidia will see their pre-orders fewer in number when compared to those made before the releases of their past cards?
third page? screenshots? where are people looking?
Seems like the people over at sharkyextreme.com didnt think that the slashdot crowd were worthy of them lovely pics. Anyone happen to have a mirror
http://www.crucial.com/store/listmfgr.asp?cat=Vide o+Card
Slash insists on the space in the link.
I would be rather surprised if those screenshots represented actual, realtime-rendered scenes.
They look like they have been lifted directly off the ExLuna BMRT (kudos to Larry Gritz for a great renderer) gallery page.
It may be that these are NV30 realtime scenes, with the BMRT Renderman shaders used in the BMRT renders ported to Cg, but it is also possible they are simply the BMRT-rendered examples, given to show what is possible using a shader-based rendering architecture.
Anybody have any more info on whether these examples are actual realtime DirectX/OpenGL scenes?
-Pete
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
http://www.crucial.com/store/listmfgr.asp?cat=Vide o+Card
HardOCP - Crucial Response
Since the R9000 has already been launched and is supposed to take the place of the 8500/LE, how long will Crucial produce this card?
The length of time we'll sell this and any product is dependant on the market. Right now, the Crucial Radeon 8500LE is an excellent and economical option for anyone looking to improve their graphics capability.
Is the Crucial VidCard made in the USA?
The Micron DDR memory used in our Crucial Radeon 8500LE video card is manufactured in the USA. But the video card itself is assembled in Hong Kong.
Astute [H]'er, Robin Schwartz, pointed out that the Crucial driver downloads page points to Sapphire Tech in Hong Kong, apparently the folks building the card.
How much will it retail for?
Currently, the Crucial Radeon 8500LE is available for $134.99 through Crucial.com and it comes with free shipping in the contiguous US.
Will the 9000 chipset follow closely?
We'll consider offering other video card options in the future. Whether we do depends on what our customers want and need.
Where will is sell through?
As with all our products, any new Crucial video cards would be available direct through our Web site at Crucial.com. We would also expect to offer new products through our European Web site at Crucial.com/UK. In fact, the Crucial Radeon 8500LE should be available through the UK site shortly.
- HeXa
Does anybody know where they are? (Again really sorry for asking this. But you know the story is already sec^H^H^Hbroken).
I don't see any, just some lame Doom III logo.
- sigs are for wimps.
They took the pictures out - my god, first they want all the publicity they can get, then they get a cold turkey when it comes.
Where are those screenshot? I don't see any link on either "page 1" or "page 2" of the Sharky Extreme article. I'm using Internet Explorer under Windows. Thanks.
If you consider a comparison table and a Doom 3 logo to be screenshots, then well...
Ace's Hardware also has a short but very informative article about the NV30.
You make a lot of assumptions for someone who has absolutly no idea who I am, and appearently no ability to catch a rather critical form of humor.
Perhaps you should take a long look in a mirror, and re-evaluate who the 'dumbass' in need of a 'clue' actually is, here.
LoL... from page 3...
>We are limited in exactly what can be covered regarding the actual NV3x architecture, but there are a few interesting facets that we can examine. One is the confirmation that the NV3x core will use a 01.3-micron die size, which should translate into a higher-clocked, cooler-running core, than would be possible using a 0.15-micron process.
here.
That's a kick @@s doom III screen shot!
It doesn't matter how earth-shattering the NV30 will be. It's complete feature set won't be utilized anytime soon. The GF3/4 cards still has long lives ahead of them.
Personally, buying an ATI is not even debateable until they put out Linux drivers. We'll see if the rumoured move to a unified driver architecture is true. So by my scorecard, ATI takes this round 10-9, but nVidia still leads by two rounds. (Judging by a 10-point must system, no standing 8-count, the fighter can't be saved by the bell in any round)
I'll second that mirror.
Nice to see they're taking tips from the Department of Redundancy Department
It's 'peek'.
God damn. This is the first time in more than a year that I wish I had moderation points to throw at someone. : )
NvNews
Given this "nVidia rendered image" and this BMRT rendered image, I see three possibilities.
One - the guys at nVidia painstakingly translated each aspect of the original image to Cg.
Two - the guys at nVidia have some technology that translates RenderMan to something they know how to render. It could be RenderMonkey-like technology. It could literally be RenderMonkey, with some nVidia back-end. It could be they contacted the original artist, John Monos, and took his original data and reformatted it (skipping RenderMan, entirely).
Three - the images are a forgery.
I'm betting on Three.
Education is the silver bullet.
If you like BMRT, you may also like Aqsis. It is a GPL, Renderman compatible renderer.
Yeah, they're pretty. But still... it doesn't look real. Everything is overly smooth and plasticlike. But I guess that's a problem of the people who make the graphics. The motorcycle tire is a step in the right direction, but most of it is still status quo.
"Oh no, 3 horny women and only 2 condoms...Thank god I read slashdot"
Every halfway decent raytracing package can produce images of the same consummate quality (using only the cpu) at, say, one frame per minute. nVidia has yet to produce some proof that their new chip can even do that.
Remember, all the renderings are with almost 100% certainty taken from a static model, i.e. no animation, no being busy with matrix translation. Now, what's the likelyhood that NV3x can actually render 25 of those in one second? Comparing 99's sneak peak screenshots with today's (or yesteryear's) games: Very Low.
Hopefully, nVidia will provide a video clip of their creation in action sometime soon.
Imagine the Creator as a stand up commedian - and at once the world becomes explicable. -Mencken
An https connection and a certificate which says:
.slashdot.org
Issued by Snake Oil CA
Issuer:
E = ca@snakeoil.dom
CN = Snake Oil CA
OU = Certificate Authority
O = Snake Oil, Ltd
L = Snake Town
S = Snake Desert
C = XY
Subject:
E = brian@tangent.org
CN =
OU = Slashdot
O = Slashdot
L = Nowhere
S = Denial
C = US
Umm, yea sure I'll trust that.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Yes, the screen shots are gorgeous, but it's all just eye candy.
Once we have hardware that can render realistic scenes and humans in real time, there's going to be a sudden realization that for all this prettiness, there's nothing behind it.
imho, it's time we started really looking at interactive and reactive programming. Yes, AI research is a step in the right direction, also realtime english parsing stuff, but we need systems that can at least pretend to comprehend and react to realtime and infinitely variable human input.
Imagine kings quest, with those graphics, and when you type something in it will understand it no matter what it says (short of l33t sp34k) and the game will react accordingly.
Graphics are pretty, but with nothing behind it the graphics are just empty shells.
"You worthless post!"
-Shakespeare, 2 Gentlemen of Verona, 1. 1. 147
It's not a forgery, it's cG. And yes, SGI started work on something like this 7 years ago, so it is hardly surprising that the same people have managed to make it work at nvidia....
"This is intended to allow real-time cinematic effects in real-time"...and after the show, the nVidia staff went out for pints of beer filled with beer.
<P>Is this the kind of writing we get when buzz-words collide?
http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/cinefx/defa ult.asp
Joy.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Thanks for info, that's some good detective work.
Those are amazing
If the nv30's memory interface is only 64 bit, the main reason to wait for the card is its die shrink. DDR-II is a nonissue.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
they dont have open source drivers
I went the desktop replacement notebook road not long ago which carries a Geforce4Go 440, the equiv. of a Geforce4MX 440. It lacks the vertex and pixel shaders which will really hurt DOOM3's performance.
I'm more or less interested to see whether Dell will offer the same format and keep the new NV3x mobile GPU module compatible with their existing machines - the ATI Mobility 7500, GeForce2Go and GeForce4go all share the same card format so you can easily drop a GeForce4Go in the older Inspiron 8000 series which has been around for over a year now. That is, assuming that you went for the higher res screen which seems more compatible with everything.
I like nVidia's products, great cards with great drivers. But I think that ATI has done the market a big favor reminding nVidia that there are competitors not just in the value market but also in the performance market.
One year ago it looked like the video processor industry would go the same way as the CPU industry 4-5 years ago, one giant corp. delivering the only viable alternative.
http://www.intellipool.se/ - Intellipool Network Monitor
"Today is a great day in computing history: nVidia is the first to bring us "real-time cinematic effects" that actually occur in real time!"
End-user notice:
Distortions in timespace continuum, traveling faster than lightspeed, blackholes and other factors may apply to subjective "real time" perception
Back in my day, the internet had only one hyperlink, and it worked... and we liked it that way.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Didn't he said that the next generation chip (NV3x) could render Shrek/Final-Fantasy-quality images at 30fps? That would be pretty amazing, because the studios needed a rendering time of 10-100 minutes for *one* frame.
0 07
Here's a link to what he said (in german): http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/anw-25.07.02-
the person who hosted it was doing it as a free favour and needed the resources for paying customers.
this isn't only the worst edited story I've ever seen on slashdot, this is also the the worst fake I've ever seen...
Can I too send in raytraced images and sell them as rendered in realtime?
There's precedent for this too. Remember the faked X-BOX screenshots with the lens flare? Whose graphics chip runs the X-BOX?
It seems to me that not only are all these new cards eye candy generators but that they are also helping to decrease the quality of the games that are being produced (not on purpose, of course.)
For each new iteration of GPU that comes out, every coder in the industry that has five minutes to spare is going to do her best to learn and experiment with the new technology. Then, by the time they begin to get a grip on the stuff, the accellerated GPU Moores' law kicks in and then there's a whole new load of things to learn. We're not all Carmack, you know..
The term 'cinematic' also implies a linear story in pictures to me, and that really doesn't coincide with my vision of video games, y'know? Whether or not we agree on this, production managers in charge of game design are doing to strive for cinema and leave us with games that are more like Myst than Zork or Nethack.
And it's rather comedic, I feel, that there's not a game in my local gaming shop for PC that takes full advantage of a GF2.. not to mention my GF4ti.
Perhaps this is all just a great gap for all of the opensource/shareware kids out there to fill with games of value and content; without masses of eye candy and production values.
(imho)
Keen
It appears that Nvidia is finally behind someone in this race (atleast for this leg of it). They specs they are quoting for the NV30 are nothing over what ATI is about to ship already with the Radeon 9700. The only advantage the NV30 has is the smaller die size and the DDR-2 (but memory bandwitdh traditionally hasn't been the issue with video card performance). So while Nvidia would like to steal some hype away from ATI...they aren't releasing the next best thing since sliced bread this time around. They are releasing the second product to the market for the first time in a long time...this is gonna get interesting :)
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
"My current work on Doom is designed around what was made possible on the original GeForce, and reaches an optimal implementation on the NV30. My next generation of work will be designed around what is made possible on the NV30."
When last week he was saying all his work is revolving around the Radeon 9700!?!? Does every company have their hand in his wallet?
note: I do know that the Radeon 9700 and the NV30 have the same feature list (DX9.0) but which does he really like the most...
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
Out of the whole very interesting article, this one sentence jumped out to me: "This is intended to allow real-time cinematic effects in real-time, and has several key components."
I kept having the urge to ask 'But does it do it in real-time?' throughout the article.
-Styopa
It says capable of rendering , see. That means the chip has the same rendering capability in its vertex shader as the high powered rendering engine that rendered these original pictures. It does not say they actually rendered this picture on this chip.
Get it now....?
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
I wonder if that might be because nVidia recently bought ExLuna...
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Looking at a difference of the two knight images in Gimp show very few differences. You can reproduce this proof through the following steps:
1) save the two knight images. The first from nvidia, the second from Exluna.
2) Open both images in the Gimp.
3) Scale the image from Exluna to be 400x270, almost exactly the same dimensions of the nvidia image which is 400x271
4) Copy the Exluna image and paste it as a layer on top of the nvidia image.
5) Change the layer properties in the Layers/Channels/Paths dialog to difference. You will notice that there is almost zero difference between the two images. What subtle difference is there can easily be explained by jpeg compression.
While this isn't definitive proof that these images aren't from an nvidia board, it sure makes it seem likely!
something clever
It doesn't matter how earth-shattering the NV30 will be. It's complete feature set won't be utilized anytime soon. The GF3/4 cards still has long lives ahead of them.
And that's exactly the reason that Nvidia is pushing Cg, so that these advanced features could be used almost immediately by game designers. Instead of programming in support for those new advanced features from the beginning, you can now just add them in when you compile it. That's a huge difference, especially in games like DNF and Blizzard titles.
So, if all goes as planned by Nvidia, you'll be able to run games great on that old computer, but utilize the advanced features like pixel & vertex shaders on your new computer to get those 100+ fps that everyone wants.
1. It shows that you have never created a SSL certificate with OpenSSL. The snakeoil stuff is defaults. No big deal.
2. Trust the certificate. Just don't send any information you want kept secret. It's just encrypting the request/reply, not installing anything on your computer.
"memory bandwitdh traditionally hasn't been the issue with video card performance" I'm not sure that this is true. I guess it depends on your definition of "traditionally", but those of us prone to overclocking know that the biggest benifit comes when you overclock the RAM. It definitely serves as the bottleneck on my card.
It's gonna be a fun couple of years coming up here :-)
Cheers!
Rob
those images are raytraced, and this is not something that anyone is claiming to do in realtime yet.
I beg to differ.
I would have claimed the same before last week's Siggraph conference. But at that conference, I went to a panel discussion entitled something like "When will ray tracing replace rasterization?" The answer was "we'll do a hybrid approach instead". The first presenter showed an app (which was also running at RackSavers on the show floor) that was actually doing real time raytracing. It was rendering a conference room scene. You could dynamically change the viewpoint anywhere you like, move the furniture around, and it would even recompute a diffuse reflection solution progressively. Very impressive! He also showed another app that rendered the reflections of a car headlight at something like 5 fps.
I would also suggest that you check out the paper that someone pointed out from Stanford. They have written a raytracer that uses the pixel shader of the nVidia hardware to render triangle-based scenes at interactive rates. Very impressive.
I wouldn't discount those images as forgeries quite yet. With the new pixel shaders and vertex programs, the GPUs are rapidly becoming very versatile stream processors.
I am thinking of getting a dual AMD box. I want to get a decent video card that I can play games and give me nice 2D images. Something under $200. I am leaning towards NVidia, as they are 'linux friendly'. What card ./ers using?
thanks
...because there are no NV30s yet. It was confirmed in an NVDA conference call yesterday that NV30 has not taped out yet.
.13um card it *should* achieve higher clock rates. Performance in bandwidth-bound situations depends on whether it uses 128-bit or 256-bit DDR-II; if the former, then it will have ~20% less bandwidth than the 256-bit DDR Radeon 9700, if the latter, it will have a hell of a lot more. AA/aniso performance depends both on that bandwidth question and on the particulars of the AA/aniso hardware. The Radeon's is really really good (which is why its lead over Ti4600 becomes so dramatic in AA/aniso situations), but NV30s could be that good too.
.13um and DDR-II) very close at hand. This is the first time in a long time that Nvidia has screwed up big time like this (in fairness, it seems more the fault of their fab partner TSMC), and it comes just as ATi is releasing a truly excellent product. Again, NV30 will still be an awesome card when its released, despite the delay, but leaking info about it now is just a way to string people along on a wait which will be longer than most realize.
All of these previews are just PR leaks to distract from the Radeon 9700 launch. Assuming NV30 tapes out today, Nvidia will be very very hard pressed to get a card in stores by Christmas Day. They have already missed the Xmas season.
Having said that, the NV30 will be quite amazing, and (from what we know of it) should best the also-amazing Radeon 9700 by quite a bit. To be more specific: it should be better for non-realtime hardware rendering of scenes that are currently rendered in software--like those Exluna pics that were shipped out in their PR--because it has more flexible shaders (we dunno if they're faster too, but this is also likely). Yes, it will be able to render those images, in "near-realtime", though certainly not actual realtime. It should offer better texel fillrate, especially in multitexturing situations, because it has an 8x2 pipeline organization instead of 8x1 like the Radeon, and because as a
But Nvidia is desperately late with the card, and by the time they get it out ATi may have a successor to the Radeon 9700 (perhaps
And these "previews" are nothing more than rehashes of Nvidia PR pdf's; they are vague not because sharkyextreme performed any difficult investigation, but because they are simply regurgitating teaser PR for a card which doesn't even exist yet.
Back in my day, the internet had only one hyperlink, and it worked... and we liked it that way.
And here it is, still alive since 1994!
No sig for the moment.
The Geforce4ti4200 is the best performance/value on the market at the moment. 64M versions can be had for $160ish, 128M for $180ish (newegg.com is the place to buy, BTW). A lot of these cards ship with very fast memory and can be OC'd to near, and sometimes beyond, 4600 speeds (that's a good thing).
Linux drivers aren't great, but better than ATI at the moment (that ain't saying much).