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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.
That's nice. Now maybe NVidia will find the time to FIX THEIR FUCKING DRIVERS. Christ, they're becoming the new Diamond when it comes to shitty software.
Anyone know how it works with Doom III?
Not like Tom's would post benchmarks, but maybe "someone" has tried it
I'm not so sure about that cooling system. Why put the intake right next to the output? Seems to me like it'll just be sucking that hot air right back in.
I'd think it would make more sense to use air inside the case and blow it out the back. With a grill/fan on the front of the PC, you're helping to improve the overall air-flow inside the system instead of just recycling your heat-wash.
How many Watts does this monster dissipate?
:/
I'm just thinking of the power economics of the todays 3D accellerators...
So how many watts is this GPU drawing, to require an active cooling system that major? It seems that the latest GPU's from both major manufacturers are favoring a brute force approach to performance, rather than improving their architecture. I wonder what implications this will have for power supplies in your average PC - are we getting to the point that a fast P4 or Athlon system is going to require a 600 watt or more power supply to be adequately stable?
I also would love to hear how loud this video card is..blowers are generally pretty noisy.
You don't need filters if the fan is always blowing out. Besides, there's always going to be dust in the box anyway, you just open it up and blow it out with Anti-static air. Looks like you could blow out that cooling unit too. That's a good thing to do every 6 mo. or so anyway, depending on the environment.
Well, I've had my GeForce2 for almost 2 years now, and with this announcement of the GeForce FX, it's finally a sign to upgrade.
:)
It's funny, practically my entire workstation (P4 2.2GHz, 256MB DDR400, 80GB HD, etc.)has been upgraded in terms of components, however, my video card has remained static. Not that I'm complaining, because I can run pretty much every game out there at (what I consider to be) fairly decent speeds. Take Age of Mythology as an example. It's more than fast enough. Unreal Tournament 2003 is a tad different, as I have to turn down some of the graphics, but it's is still fine for the 'average' game. Plus, my Xbox and PS2 are for my gaming needs
Now, does the theory of diminishing marginal utility apply to video cards, or is it the opposite? How much more powerful can video cards get so that we won't even 'notice' (at least in the loose sense) any difference when playing games? The Radeon 9700 Pro (with a fast CPU) can run pratically every game on the market at max details at most resolutions. Well, so can the GeForce FX 5800. Sure it may be 30-50% faster, but the utility gained for current games is definately marginal.
Since I've held out for 2 generations of video cards, for me, it's definately the time to upgrade. Though, it's not really because my video card is too 'slow'. I suppose it's an issue of just gloating to my friends!
Moreover, in terms of approaching cinematic rendering, nVidia is definately going in the right step. They are quickly approaching the level of "Final Fantasy" in terms of quality of output. Nonetheless, they'll still need to add quite a bit of horsepower to be able to do it all in real-time.
This goofy two-slot setup reminds me way too much of what 3dfx started doing when they couldn't keep up with a "normal" board. We all know what happened next...
Unless they can trim that extra fat off the board I'll stick with ATI's offerings.
Game... blouses.
Basically, yes! The first step toward this trend could be introduction of the nForce/2 chipset. For gaming, PC architecture is moving more toward that of pure video rendering and less general data processing which would normally define a PC.
I would like the think of the future PCs as upgradable console systems.
Doing that is actually not a bad idea. In fact, I do it every winter.
:)
I actually heat my computer room with the computers in it. I close both doors to the room and with only 2 monitors and 3 or so computers I have "free" heat all winter! This hardware has to run all the time anyway so I figured why not use it. Of course the rest of the house is fairly cold, but I work at home and spend most of the day in the computer room anyway.
The day time temp averages 30-40 degrees F in the winter here. Lower temperatures would probably require a little more computing power.
having the computer heat the building is the *intended* method of installation in the old Crays. Check it out on google or cray.com.
This board is clearly out of spec...
/., but most people have video, sound, and network. And nowadays you can do without the network and perhaps the sound - it's called the magic of integration.
Which spec? Would you care to give references? While the heatpipe/blower is indeed massive, I see nothing to indicate that it does not comply to the ATX 2.03 spec.
since when I need to free up two slots to add a graphics card?
Well, with the Voodoo2 I had to clear up 3 - the main video card and 2 more for the dual V2 setup.
And who uses all their slots anyway? Excepting micro ATX systems like Shuttle how many people actually have an AGP card and 4-5 PCI cards? Oh, sure, there will be some here since this is
Another poster made some good comments about why you should leave the PCI slot next to your video empty anyway.
Oh, and would you like to take a guess at how many current cards prevent use of the adjoining PCI slot because of the normal fan/heatsinks? Most of the high-end Ti4600 designs fall into this category.
Obviously inserting it wont be easy and expect many breakage and damage returns
Doubt it. About the only problem with inserting it will be the mass - it's going to be rather ungainly compared to a normal card. The distance between slots is spec'd, so actually lining it up is a non-issue. And it's not actually plugging into the PCI slot either, so alignment isn't a problem there either.
Of course, if this whole thing scares you, or makes too much noise (which it probably will - sigh), then don't buy it. There will be a slower version available that has a more normal profile. I still wouldn't recommend utilizing the PCI slot next to it though.
Right now I'm on a project where we are reluctantly (well, I'm reluctant: others are quite happy) using SGIs: we just dropped mid-five figures, and will probably come close to six before we're done (on this machine, we have about another $500k or so worth already). A lot of this is because of SGI's graphics pipe: we're doing some convolution and other stuff where we use pretty much all of the 512MB of texture memory that we have.
I believe that current Nvidia Ti4600s have 128MB (256?) of memory, so I hope that a professional level of this new card might scale to the half Gig we need.
Additionally, the SGI is 12-bits per color channel, which is a bummer since the interface it is simulating is 16-bit monochrome. Sure, you can try and do tricks, but from a quick glance over the FX's specs, I see 32 bits per channel, which would be very nice.
With this FX card, a reasonably setup AMD Clawhammer system, and the scalability and preemption stuff that's going into 2.6/3.0 Linux kernels, we might be able to move from SGI within the next year or two, thus saving taxpayers on the order of $40-80k or more per system. A lot of development is already done on Linux, but it sure would be nice to move over fully.
Why didn't they name it the GeForce5? That sounds soo much cooler than FX. FX doesn't sound powerful at all, especially when their low end chip is called the "MX." Pronouncing the two isn't that different, too. Which sounds faster: Radeon 9700 Pro or GeForce FX? Sheesh.
ATI is very good about keeping products hush-hush until they are close to shipment.
Bull. ATI has only recently stopped sucking in many areas, and that used to be one of the worst areas. Ask anyone who had a ATI Rage Pro or other card that very clearly stated OpenGL support on the box but a visit to the website merely announced upcoming support. For nearly a year it was "Soon to be released" until finally support for the card was almost totally dropped.
Hush hush my ass. ATI have always made some good products with some bad features, and they've always talked a whole lot more shit than they should have been able to get away with.
In the past year and a half things have been going really well for ATI, but I'm very convinced ATI would still be breaking promises if they hadn't bought ArtX.
I would also like to say I never really thought ATI's older cards sucked, because on paper they should have been excellent cards, but crappy drivers almost always seemed to be the limiting factor. I owned a few ATI's but broken promises several times over drove me to NVIDIA. Yes, ATI currently makes the fastest card, but you know what? I still get plenty of satisfaction out of my current NVIDIA card and I feel no need to replace it just quite yet, not even with another NVIDIA card.
When the time comes to upgrade, I'll look over my options and decide then. But NVIDIA hasn't let me down in the past, and I still haven't forgotten what ATI was like just a very short time ago.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
I don't quite follow. Wouldn't even-numbered ones be the new cards to buy? Give everyone else a chance to mess with the bleeding edge when they come out with a GeForce 5 or 7, and then snap up a technology-perfected GeForce 6 or 8 for half the price of the original 5 (or 7) series, with more features, more memory and many small improvements.
I've done this for the GeForce series up until now, sticking with my Riva TNT until GeForce 2 came out and then keeping my GF2 until I could afford a Radeon 9000 (which is a GF4 equivalent). I've always been happy with my affordable, yet cheap graphics performance (my last three cards have been less than $100 apiece).
I'm suprised noone has commented on NVidia's change to flip-chip technology yet. It's the first time that I've seen it used in consumer computer technology. Instead of having small legs like surface mount chips, the chip has blobs of solder underneath it, and the solder bonds to the PCB when the chip is pressed against the board during manufacturing. It's important because it lowers the capacitance of the external pins, which means that the chip can interface to the outside world at higher clock rates. It's an important shift in packaging technology.