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Nvidia GeForceFX(NV30) Officially Launched
egarland writes "Tom's Hardware has a new article previewing the new GeForceFX chip and discussing its architecture. 0.13 Micron, 16 GB/s memory bandwidth, 128-bit DDR2 memory interface, 125 M transistors, support for 8x FSAA. Sounds like an interesting chip. They stuck with a 128 bit memory bus so ATI's R300 still has more memory bandwidth (19.8 GB/s) but NVidia has new lossless memory compression so we will have to wait for benchmarks to see if NVidia comes up a winner here. The reference card also sports a massive new cooling system which is worth a look."
Readers Oliver Wendell and JavaTenor add links to additional stories at The Register and at AnandTech.
Time to buy a Ti4600 :)
This board is clearly out of spec... since when I need to free up two slots to add a graphics card?
Obviously inserting it wont be easy and expect many breakage and damage returns.
3D graphics are fine and good, I do play enough games to want some polygon-smashing horsepower.
But has nVidia done anything towards improving 2D and multimedia performance yet?
The difference between the Radeons and the GF4's when it comes to watching DVD, using TV-Out, or just plain desktop computing is night-and-day.
The nVidia offerings always seem plagued with washed-out colors, shimmering refresh rates, albeit not nearly as bad as the 3DFX offerings. ATI cards have always been as good as it gets.
Sure I do alot of gaming, but not all of it is in 3D. I also watch movies, write code, surf the net, etc, etc.. Not only does nVidia never pay attention to any of that, nor do any of the review sites.
Video card != 3D Accelerator alone, IMO.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
There's this trend in computing to make everything faster, more featureful, hotter, and more energy consuming.
I agree. We're not getting huge, usable leaps in computing capabilities, we're getting continual, incremental improvements. Even these incremental improvements are not coming for free, we're getting them at the cost of increased power consumption, and millions of people throwing away motherboards and video cards every few years. And the incremental nature of it all keeps developers back a couple of generations. It's just barely getting to the point where you can realistically ignore everyone who doesn't have hardware T&L, several years after the introduction of the GeForce 2. But this is still a questionable choice, as a large number of PCs from Dell and Gateway still ship with generic video chipsets that don't have hardware support for T&L. Doom 3, which isn't even on the release radar yet (2003? 2004?), is the first game that's going to require the pixel shaders of the GeForce 3 and beyond. No other developer is going out on such a limb, as cool as shaders may be.
I'd love to see a quantum leap in desktop PC capability that isn't a one-to-one trade of MIPS for wattage. It's very possible, but we're running down this bizarre path where everyone gets all excited about a 9% increase in raw clockspeed (which translates into maybe 4% in benchmarks), even though it increases power consumption by 9% or more.
I'm at the point where I'd be willing to chuck the historic trappings of desktop PCs--x86, UNIX-like operating systems, C++, gcc, etc--for something simpler and cooler running, whose blatant wrongness doesn't eat away at your soul every time you use it. The whole Windows vs. Linux nonsense is a complete red herring in that regard.
I am the only one with my AGP slot as the first slot at the top on my motherboard? That means there's no open slot on the back of my case for that fan to stick out of. The only way I can see a contraption like that working is if it was taking up two PCI slots, which of course it doesn't... Any ideas?
In a desktop the reference design is already FUBAR - the output vent is below the intake vent.
Oops.
You can't suck in air from the case because you can't be sure that there's enough ventilation to let you suck the air in -- you always want to maintain an equal ratio of input and output airflow. The only way Nvidia could do this is to put the intake and the output on the card itself, which leads to the situation we see currently.
Preventing the output being sucked back into the intake is pretty trivial though - take a piece of cardboard and put it between the two. That will solve the majority of the problem. Yes, it's inelegant. But if the cooling problem has gotten to the point where you need a heat pipe with a blower separate from the rest of the system then you're pretty much SOL on elegant solutions anyway.
4) NVIDIA sucks because it's drivers are closed source.
I could care less if their drivers were closed or open. I just wish they'd make them stable! The Nvidia drivers have crashed my machine 3 times in the last 6 months. That's unacceptable.
From a developer perspective, we're headed for a shader fight between NVidia's Cg, OpenGL 2.0 shader languages (shader assembler, ISL, and Quartz Extreme) and Microsoft's HLSL. It's not enough to have shader languages; they have to be supported in the content creation tools, so the artists can see what they're doing. This will take a while.
Developers need to buy this thing, but everybody else can wait a year.
years after the introduction of the GeForce 2
2.5 years to be precise. The GF2 was released in May, 2000. I wound up having to buy one the 2nd day it was out, so I remember (old V2 setup wouldn't work in new system).
Doom 3, which isn't even on the release radar yet (2003? 2004?), is the first game that's going to require the pixel shaders of the GeForce 3 and beyond
Doom3 is allegedly scheduled for Christmas of 2003. I'd be surprised if they missed that, but id software is usually more focused on getting it done right than on time, so who knows.
As for the features - by that time everyone will be going out on the same limb. As usual, the D3 engine will be licensed by many people and all those games will require the same level of hardware. D3 will take advantage of most of the features present in the GF4/GFFx as well, so now we're back to the games being only a year behind the hardware.
I'd love to see a quantum leap in desktop PC capability that isn't a one-to-one trade of MIPS for wattage
Well, I have no idea what the power consumption of the GF Fx is, but it's not a 1:1 trade of speed to MHz - the GF Fx runs at a 500 MHz core, which is roughly a 40% improvement over the Ti4600. For that speed improvement you get (allegedly) up to 400% of the speed. Not bad.
Realistically, though, you've got to be kidding. Science and technology rarely deal with sudden massive jumps in capability or performance. It's all building blocks. If you want a sudden massive jump then you have to skip a few iterations.
Did I mention that I'm still using the aforementioned GF2? Yes, I'm looking to upgrade right now and I do expect a considerable leap in capability and performance.
I'm at the point where I'd be willing to chuck the historic trappings of desktop PCs
So vote with your wallet and stop buying stuff you don't need. The only blatent wrongness is in buying crap you don't need and then whining about it being evil.
it's definately the time to upgrade
I'll agree with that, but now that the two top dogs are both ready for DirectX9, it's time for them to stop adding proprietary extensions and to compete on speed and price.
Ultimately, creeping featuritis is good for no-one, not for the manufacturers, who have to figure out a way to top each other, not for the consumers, who spend top dollar on cards that get obsoleted by superior technology, and most importantly, not for the game companies, who can't make money with products that only work on bleeding edge tech. Fine, GeForceFX has 63356 maximum instructions per vertex, but what if the gamer "only" has a Radeon 9700 Pro? They're limited to 1024 max instructions. What if they have a GeForce3? They're out of the loop altogether. That's why, despite all the advancements we've seen lately, games are just now coming out that list T&L accelerated cards as a requirement. Programmers (excepting id software, who are in the business of selling their engine more than in actually programming "games") aren't going to use the most advanced features until they can be reasonably sure a large segment of the buying public won't be shut out. So, please nVidia and ATI, slow down on the features, let's lock into what we have now (much as AMD and Intel have pretty much locked their feature set) and let's get these cards down to the price level where one doesn't have to take out a second mortgage to afford them. They're only toys, after all.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Why didn't they name it the GeForce5?
...errr...hey wait a minute...
Remember that company called 3DFX whose "last" card was the Voodoo5? Then a powerhouse called Nvidia took over as highend "King of the Hill".
Funny how that works, eh?
I mean it is not like Nvidia has anything to worry about with ATI taking the performance cro
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Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)