Rumors of a GeForceFX 5800 Ultra Cancelation?

chris_oat writes "It seems that nVidia's GeForceFX 5800 Ultra may never see the light of day after months of super-hype and annoying delays. This article on megarad.com suggests that poor manufacturing yields are causing nVidia to rethink plans for its (new?) flagship part. Lack of an "Ultra" type solution from nVidia would leave ATI's Radeon9700 uncontested as the defacto performance part."

Comments

Important?

[Amsterdam Vallon]

Of course its important.

I'm sick && tired of reading that people say "oh, well the human eye only sees 30 fps, so anything else is over-kill".

That's a bunch of boloney (pardon my language). People want *clairty* and *SMOOTHNESS* in their gaming performance, and although 30 fps delivers clarity from frame to frame, the transitions of frames only achieves a good smoothness above 60 fps.

Most Linux apps aim for >= 60 fps. Go checkout Sourceforge for more details.

Re:Important?

[Jugalator]

It's said that you stop seeing the difference at around 30 fps, but so far I've only heard comparisons with movies and TV. Other "rules" might be in effect when you display the same graphics on a screen much sharper than a movie, where each frame is clearly transitioned to another without any blur inbetween, like on a movie (at least I assume the transitions between frames on a movie screen isn't as defined as on a monitor).

Would be interesting to know if 30 fps *is* enough (of course only *minimum* 30 fps) or if monitors need an even higher frame rater for humans to not see the transitions.

What I'm more annoyed about is those who must run games in 1600x1200 and not 1024x768 on a typical 19" monitor, and then complain that a gfx card sucks since it doesn't perform good enough in 1600x1200. It's not like you have enough time to spot the microscopic pixels anyway. :-) And then there's FSAA to remove the pixelation even more.

Re:Important?

[Jugalator]

Actually I've been paying attention at movies having heard the "well movies are 24fps and they look perfect": MOVIES LOOK LIKE TRASH.

Yes, I know what you're saying and have noticed it myself, although I'm sure it doesn't look as bad as 24fps on a monitor. Again, perhaps the only reason movies are watchable at all is that the bluriness at the frame transitions might make it easier for the brain to "add in" the extra information to interpolate. Yes, movies look kinda jerky to me but at least I tend to forget about it after a short while when I get into the movie story line more. I think I'd have a harder time with a monitor at 24 fps.

I didn't know that Q3 had such a setting and if it properly fixes the frame rate it might be a decent tool to see the actual "when-you-don't-notice-the-difference" rate, although I'm sure it's individual.

1600x1200 on a 19" monitor is hardly "microscopic" pixels

Wow, I'd like to have your eye sight. :-)

I use 1280x1024 on my 19" usually and even then the pixels are pretty small to me. :-) Sure, they are noticeable on a static display, but I wouldn't notice them if they changed at a rate of something like 70 fps. But that's just me of course. I guess ATi and the likes fear me since I don't need a 1600x1200 res on 19" to not get disturbed by the graphics. :-)

Re:Important?

[CircaX]

If a higher framerate allows a player to jump farther, run faster, or shoot more rounds per second in a game, it means that the programmers have no clue as to how to properly implement a physics engine. Frame rate ought to be completely independant from any other function the game engine has to handle; a player should jump the same distance no matter how well the graphics card can keep up with the game's world environment. Having a physics engine be dependent on the current framerate shows a flaw in the game's design, and it is just one more reason to stop using the sorely outdated Q3 engine to benchmark new hardware.

Just imagine if this 'physics tied to framerate' applied to connection speed: people with Radeon 9700s would have gigabits of bandwith to play around with, while people stuck with a RagePro would have to deal with 28.8K rates.

Re:Important?

[error0x100]

One reason is that Quake3 suffers far worse at 24 fps than a movie is that your camera pan rate is typically MUCH quicker than you'll ever see in a movie. When playing Q3, you often need to pan your camera up to 180 degrees horizontally in less than a quarter of a second (I'm being generous, thats if you're slow). So thats a camera pan rate of 720 degrees/sec. At 24 fps, that means a delta of 30 degrees per frame; those are pretty big jumps, each image will be quite different, and your brain has to work pretty hard to perceive the motion. I doubt you'll ever really see a camera pan that fast in a movie, except in very rare and particular cases.

In Quake, your brain is also trying to do a lot more work to analyse the image its getting, while in a movie you are normally fairly relaxed and don't concentrate that hard on the image.

Its easier to pick up image "choppiness" in your peripheral vision. If you sit fairly close to the screen in the cinema, and you're looking at the center, you can fairly easily pick up jerkiness in motion at the sides of the screen (out of the "corners of your eyes").

What is the yield problem caused by?

[kludger]

Does this have anything to do with the Low-K dielectric yield problems that many (all?) fab vendors have been having in their .13u processes?

Re:Hardly surprising...

[Anonymous Coward]

Drop the ^H junk. It was funny 15 YEARS ago. Now its just stupid... On todays computers it looses its point (happesn to fast), and does not display correctly ANYWAY in html. Unless your using a vt-100 based terminal. Even then like I said it happens to fast. Because we are not using 1200 baud modems anymore...

Gaming resolution.

[Christopher Thomas]

1600x1200 on a 19" monitor is hardly "microscopic" pixels

Wow, I'd like to have your eye sight. :-)

I use 1280x1024 on my 19" usually and even then the pixels are pretty small to me. :-) Sure, they are noticeable on a static display, but I wouldn't notice them if they changed at a rate of something like 70 fps.

In first-person shooters, you're typically looking for small visual details in known locations (when you're not just in a twitch-reflex situation). In Tribes 2, at least, it's nice to be able to spot an enemy without having to pick out the one off-colour pixel in a grainy mountainside texture map, and even better to see what kind of gun he's holding, or that he's repairing something.

Features like zooming help you with the latter case but not the former (noticing the enemy in the first place).

While high-resolution displays aren't vital, they definitely are helpful.

These are just rumors

[X-Guy]

Nothing but rumors. Sites like the Inquirer post every rumor they hear, even when it's ridiculous. Remember when they were saying NV30 was definitely a two-chip solution. Remember people saying it definitely had a 256 bit memory interface? All it takes is one bozo posting to a forum and claiming he has inside information and the Inquirer will post it and you get dozens of fan sites acting like it was true.

Canned milk for canned cows

[Graymalkin]

If this rumor mongering is all true, as I'm not convinced, it is yet another eerie 3Dfx parallel attached to the GFFX (E3DP?). Since the Radeon 9700 was released I've been really anxious to see what nVidia was going to answer with in the form of the NV30. I'm not one to buy the high end obsolete within a week video cards but I really want to know what chip I'm going to see in discounted cards in six months.

I was seriously unimpressed with the GFFX. This is an odd feeling as new nVidia cards have in the past been truly impressive and something to lust after.

"I sense something. A presence I've not felt since..."

While 3Dfx was not in the exact same position as nVidia is market penetration wise and financially it seems nVidia is pulling a technological page from their book. The GFFX 5800 Ultra Megazord seems a great deal like the Voodoo 5. It is a power hungry beat of a video card that doesn't live up to all of the hype that's been surrounding it since August when the Radeon 9700 needed an answer by nVidia.

Of course the GFFX will improve and in six more months they'll have a GFFXMXKY that comes as the toy in a box of Count Chocula. Sharing many similarities with the Voodoo 5 isn't going to necessarily Doom the card (get it?) but it is giving ATi a huge shot in the arm. They've got a 5 month old card that performs about as well as nVidia's latest offering, that is something they haven't been able to boast before. All ATi has to do is not screw up and they will get back a bunch of users who abandoned them when the GeForce smoked the Radeons like fat chronic blunts with a mere driver upgrade.

Even though ATi has the advantage now I think nVidia will come back with a really strong chip PDQ. They aren't going to accept defeat because their card requires an onboard RTG to run decently. If ATi keeps their momentum going they could top even the next NV chip nVidia will release. Do I care one way or the other? Hell no. I don't want to see either of them lose out, I want as much competition as possible to I get more frames with excellent visual quality for the buck. It will be great to be able to enable all of Doom 3's visual effects with AA and still be able to play the game, especially after people like Raven or Rogue license the engine and build the next Jedi Knight or Alice with it.