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

bloody 'leet gamerz'

[RobertTaylor]

Glad to see that the difference between 2467 and 2550 frames per second is still very important...

fp?

Re:bloody 'leet gamerz'

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a friend who emailed Nvidia about this rumor (which started on the 3dfx boards btw) and they have stated that there are more than 100k units ready to ship right now and the rumor is false.

Re:bloody 'leet gamerz'

[damiam]

I have a Radeon 9700 and an Athlon 2200+. With AA, AF, pixel shading, etc. turned up I barely get 25 FPS in the complicated outdoor sections of Morrowind - and that's at 1024x768. Sure, I can get 31337 Quake framerates, but the world doesn't play Quake these days - they play newer games, with newer requirements.

Re:bloody 'leet gamerz'

[Afrosheen]

Like Urban Terror or Doom III. One is available, the other one is on the way.

Quake3 is still the benchmark because newer mods require much more powerful hardware.

Re:bloody 'leet gamerz'

[Schemat1c]

I remember a great game called Flashback from about 10 years ago. It advertised that it ran at 60fps because that is the speed that your brain 'sees' motion. I don't know how true that is but the game did seem incredibly smooth. Of course that was 10 years ago, it might not seem so great if I saw it now.

I've been buying Nvidia cards since 3DFX dropped the ball a few years ago. I have the TI4600 and was going to hold out for the next version but I broke down and bought the Radeon All-In-Wonder 9700 last week. I was never a fan of ATI in the past but they seem to have done it right this time.

Now that Nvidia has dropped the ball it looks like they will probably go the way of 3DFX. Gamers are just too finicky to wait for the next card when they can buy ATI's right now. And by the time it does come out I'm sure ATI will have another model that is just as good.

Bye Nvidia, it's been nice knowing ya!

-----

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?

[Patrick May]

I agree that it's important. When I'm MUDding, I need to see that next line of text come up instantly! Otherwise, the next thing I see will be You are looking down at your body from above....

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?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. Linux should aim for >= 60 first-person-shooters before it can be considered a gaming platform. I'm glad to see these projects on Sourceforge.

Re:Important?

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is, you don't want to see the pixels at all. Just wait until the 200ppi lcd's come down in price.

Re:Important?

[moonbender]

That's a bunch of boloney (pardon my language).

That's okay, spelling isn't for everyone. ;)

Re:Important?

[Camulus]

Just a couple of things to add. For me at least, 30 to 40 fps is a minimum requirement. However, that is the lowest it should possibly go. If it gets below 30 fps it starts turning into a slide show.

ALso, aside from just the visual effects, more powerful hardware gives you better performance in game litterally. Example, the quake3 engine. In the quake 3 engine, you can jump much further with 150 fps then you can with 30 fps. The way it was coded if you were to jump, the game checks on a frame by frame basis to see where the jump is going. I think it was designed with a baseline of around 90 fps if I remember right. Which means that if you are going under that, your jumps will be shorter and over it, longer. Also, on Return to Castle Wolfenstein, if you fps ever drops below 30, then you rate of fire actually slows down. So, just FYI, fps can mean more then simply "how pretty" it looks.

Re:Important?

[ergo98]

It's said that you stop seeing the difference at around 30 fps

And 16 million colours is more than the eye can see, and 44,100 samples per second is more than the ear can hear. Throughout the march of technology we've heard these ridiculously arbitrary "limits" of our senses, and invariably they are discounted at a future time. In essence you can consider them a sort of justification.

but so far I've only heard comparisons with movies and TV

Actually I've been paying attention at movies having heard the "well movies are 24fps and they look perfect": MOVIES LOOK LIKE TRASH. Seriously the next time you go to the movies pay close attention to any large movements on the screen and you'll be surprized how horrendous 24fps really is. For instance, my wife recently dragged me to see "Two Weeks Notice" and there is a scene where the camera pans laterally across a shelf full of shoes at a rate of about a screen width per 1/2 second-- It looks absolutely atrocious. For fast action most filmmakers either resort to the action taking a small portion of the screen, or they use slow motion effects, again because the action simply looks terrible at 24fps.

However when you get down to it the root of the "X FPS is more than anyone can see" is people's astoundingly self-centered claims that no-one else can see more than 30fps, or some other metric. This can be disproved instantly via the Q3 command cg_maxfps. Set it to 30 and it looks like a horrendous slideshow. Set it to 45 and it looks like a 1998 computer. Set it to 80 and it feels smooth with a bit of jaggedness. Set it to 90 and it feels nice. You'd think this would disprove the 30fps'ers in an instant, but amazingly they persist.

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.

1600x1200 on a 19" monitor is hardly "microscopic" pixels, however to consider this in a forward thinking manner consider the heavyweight video-card required to do 1080p resolutions on a HDTV set? 1920x1024.

FSAA, BTW, is tremendously difficult for video-cards to do (because they're actually rendering at 2x or greater resolutions): There is no current video card that could dream of doing even Urban Terror (a Q3 mod) at 1600x1200 with FSAA at acceptable frame-rates.

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?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh fine, mock me, mock me why don't you!!! Even on Slashdot I can't find fucking peace. You're just like all the others!

Re:Important?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pet peeve of mine. I can't believe people still believe this rubbish that the human eye can't tell the difference between 30 and 60 fps. Everytime I read it I find myself fighting the urge to scream...

Re:Important?

[Pierre]

seems to me that i heard a number more like 60 fps for simulations.

i know these guys shot for 60 Hz..

http://www.nads-sc.uiowa.edu/multimedia.htm

Re:Important?

[WiPEOUT]

The number is higher than 60, and varies depending upon the individual. For an explanation, go to:

http://www.penstarsys.com/editor/30v60/30v60p1.h tm

Further, it's not the average frames/second that informed gamers are interested in as much as the minimum fps, which if it ever drop below the optimal amount will mean the display goes from smooth to jerky.

My flamebait comment of the day: sure, all the half-blind programmers and sysadmins here on /. may not notice the individual pixels on the screen when running 1600x1200 on a 19" screen, but other people can, and it does not look "real".

Until I can't differentiate visually between what's on my screen and what I see in the big blue room outside my house, 3D graphics are not good enough.

Re:Important?

[nunofgs]

HAH!!! between all your wisdom I found an error!!! the proper q3 command for capping the frame rates is actually com_maxfps! :)

Re:Important?

[ergo98]

You're right. :-) Mea culpa.

Re:Important?

[iotaborg]

Have you tried to watch movies at 30+fps (or in your case, 90+ fps)? They are, in fact, too fast. Real life is too fast, you do not get the dramatic effects without the slower fps. And try watching movies in a digital theater, big difference.

Re:Important?

[furballphat]

Granted, the human eye can see a lot more than 30fps but, look at your monitor refresh rate. Mine is currently 95Hz. Anything more than that is definately overkill.

Re:Important?

[espresso_now]

LOL! Now, how come I never have mod points when I see something that's acutally funny?

Re:Important?

[JebusIsLord]

Actually the reason 60hz is hard to view on a monitor while 24fps on a movie screen is fine, is that the entire movie frame is drawn at once, while each of those 60hz consist of a tiny dot drawing the whole screen. Flicker is therefore much more pronounced on a TV or monitor. LCDs by contrast do not do line-drawing and therefore look smashing at 60hz.

Re:Important?

[Dr. Spork]

Just a simple question: What is the refresh rate of your manitor? If you can do 1600X1200 at more than 85Hz and notice the improvement, I'll be impressed. The difference you report between 80 and 90 fps almost certainly has to do with the fact that your monitor refresh was set so that you show exactly five "dead" screens per second. When you set it above 85, each of your screen refreshes shows a different frame, so of course it looks better, but it's not for the reason you think. Try running at constant 75 FPS and set your refresh to 75, and you will see it also looks great.

Re:Important?

[The Baron (nV News)]

"FSAA, BTW, is tremendously difficult for video-cards to do (because they're actually rendering at 2x or greater resolutions): There is no current video card that could dream of doing even Urban Terror (a Q3 mod) at 1600x1200 with FSAA at acceptable frame-rates."

No. This is bogus. The Kryo2 chip, along with the GF1/2, had a form of FSAA where it basically rendered the image at a much higher res than it was going to be displayed, but these don't exist anymore (at least not in the R300/NV30/NV25/R200). I BELIEVE this is called supersampling--don't quote me on this, I'm not a coder and don't care too much about FSAA modes (I have a GF3. I can't use AA in ANYTHING but the oldest games.). Supersampling takes a much larger performance hit, but a lot of people regard it as looking better than the newer method. This newer method is called multisampling--it actually renders the image multiple times, offsetting it each time. This is why color compression has become so important. 4x MSAA COULD take up to four times the memory bandwidth of normal rendering, but with adequate color compression, you could get it down to two times or 1.5 times the bandwidth. This is part of the reason why nVidia went with a 128-bit bus on the GFFX--it thought it had good enough color compression.

Anyway, moving right along, there are two forms of MSAA (multisampling antialiasing)--ordered grid and rotated grid (once again, do not quote me on this).

So basically, FSAA ain't as simple as rendering at 3200x2400 and reducing that to 1280x960 anymore.

Re:Important?

[WasterDave]

FSAA, BTW, is tremendously difficult for video-cards to do (because they're actually rendering at 2x or greater resolutions

While this was true until recently, there has been some significant progress in this area. The Parhelia for instance (bad example, I know, but stick with me) only anti-aliases the edge pixels of triangles that aren't joined to other triangles - spectacularly reducing the quantity of work needed to at least get the beneficial effects of AA if not true AA itself. There's also been some work on using non uniform sample grids, I believe this is how the GF4's AA.

Go look at some benchmarks, the more modern cards still sweat with AA, but not nearly to the hernia inducing loads that my GF3 would be put under should I ever run AA on it... And this, to me, is what the latest generation of video cards are all about - much the same in terms of framerate, but a better visual quality.

Dave

Re:Important?

[Anonymous Coward]

>>If it gets below 30 fps it starts turning into >>a slide show.

so you regard films seen in theatres at 24 frames per second a slideshow?

Re:Important?

[ergo98]

So basically, FSAA ain't as simple as rendering at 3200x2400 and reducing that to 1280x960 anymore.

That's right it isn't. Instead it's as simple as "take the to left 10x10 and sample it at 30x30 and then downsize it to 10x10...do the next block". Effectively it is exactly the same thing.

Re:Important?

[xigxag]

FSAA, BTW, is tremendously difficult for video-cards to do (because they're actually rendering at 2x or greater resolutions): There is no current video card that could dream of doing even Urban Terror (a Q3 mod) at 1600x1200 with FSAA at acceptable frame-rates.

Sure. Just keep in mind that real-life video images automatically get "FSAA" when displayed on a TV screen, which is one reason why TV phosphors are nigh-invisible at much lower resolution than computer moniter pixels. The other reason is that you typically sit much closer to your computer monitor.

You're absolutely right about movies though. The pan-strobe effect is most noticeable if you're sitting in the first ten rows or so.

Re:Important?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. Theatre projectors are actually pretty awful.

Re:Important?

[Rothron the Wise]

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

Actually, one of the reason why movies are so horribly jerky is that the actual refresh rate is 48fps, even though the frame rate is 24fps. Each frame is projected twice. The reason for this is to reduce flickering and to protect the film.(projector lights are HOT). Unfortunately, this double exposure messes up the brains visual prediction system, much in the same way a 30fps game on a 60Hz screen, only more so. Since there is a tangible delay between capturing an image in the optic nerve and feeding it to the brain, a lot of prediction is carried out to predict what things are going to look like when you receive the visual stimuli.

I agree that even a monitor at 48Hz would look worse than a movie theatre, but I expect this has something to do with the relatively low contrast movie screens have. A darker image takes longer to "see" than a bright one, not unlike how a photographer needs a longer exposure to take a picture in a dark environment.

Ever seen "3d-glasses" that have one dark glass and one perfectly transparent, instead of the normal red and blue/green? Those work on that principle, and the effect is best when the camera rotates clockwise around an object or pans across a landscape from right to left. If you reverse the direction, the 3D-effect is also reversed.

But i digress:

My point is that the human vision is incredibly advanced with a lot of special adaptations. There is no framerate of the eye. Fighter pilots have been shown to be able to not only see but also correctly identify a picture of a plane even when the image is displayed just in a 200Hz flash.

The ideal frame rate is the same rate as the monitor refresh, and to have a constant framerate. I'd much rather have 75fps at 75Hz than 80fps at 85Hz.

Re:Important?

[JebusIsLord]

If you enable vsync (all MS certified drives do by default btw) then the system only draws frames in sync with the monitor, so tearing isn't apparent. So the best idea is to set your monitor at the highest refresh it will do and then let the vsync make things look pretty.

Re:Important?

[mvdw]

[disclaimer] I don't game, but I share an office with a guy who does. [/disclaimer]

Another issue that people have not mentioned yet is that 60fps is all well and good, but that's only either an average or a best-case. Once the screen fills with details, you can be sure that the framerate will drop. That's the issue - not so much the framerate itself, but an indication that as the detail goes up (more things to kill, whatever), the framerate won't drop to unusable levels.

But as I said, I don't game, so what do I know

Re:Important?

[Anonymous Coward]

umm
in the united states several dvds come at 29.4 fps
in europe however they have a larger screen size and only 24 fps. From this I would guess most movies are about 30 fps. Unless you have a PAL television. I'm happy for the framerate though.

Re:Important?

[Da Fokka]

[i]However when you get down to it the root of the "X FPS is more than anyone can see" is people's astoundingly self-centered claims that no-one else can see more than 30fps, or some other metric.[/i]

To become consciously aware of information it has to pass through a 'gate'. Once information passes through this gate, it is not capable of processing date for somewhere between 30 and 40ms. So you are simply incapable of being consciously aware of this, that the way our perception system works.
The fact that you are not consciously aware does not mean it doesn't affect the processing of information at all. In fact, research suggests that animation provided at 24fps unconsciously 'reminds' people of movies, which puts them into a suspense of disbelief mindset. People know it isn't real because they know it's a movie because of the framerate

Re:Important?

[Noren]

I remember when Netrek servers went from 5 fps to 10 fps. 1997 or so, much later than strictly necessary. Purists screamed bloody murder, but then again in netrek absolutely any change results in that reaction. The strange thing was that everything seemed to me to be going slowly, and nearly every player had the same reaction. I guess the human brain was using the step size taken between frames to judge velocities. My targetting was off for the first few weeks simply because I'd underestimate the velocity of enemy ships...

To paraphrase a misquote, 'Ten FPS should be enough for anybody!'

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?

[zaffir]

It's around 60FPS. Go find someone with a decent machine for running Quake 3. Type "/sv_maxfps 30" in the console, and play a little. Then try "sv_maxfps 60". I gurantee you'll notice a difference.

Re:Important?

[UnknownSoldier]

> And 16 million colours is more than the eye can see,

Nonsense. With only 8-Bits for the green channel, I still see banding. Create an 256x256 bitmap. Do a gradient blend from RGB: 0,0,0 (upper right) to RGB: 0,255,0 (lower left)

Rest of your post is spot on.

Re:Important?

[Camulus]

it works fine for films, but if my machine runs at 24 fps and it chugs sligtly any thing under 24 and it turns into a full on slide show. I am assume it has something to do with the way it is presented. For instance, last time I checked standard ntsc on your TV was 29.97 fps (with "drop frames" I think). Most movies show at 25 or 24. However, if I am playing a game with 24 fps constant is runs really rough. Try firing up Q3 typing /com_maxfps 24 in the console and play. It will keep it from going over 24 fps.

Re:Important?

[unborracho]

action simply looks terrible at 24fps

The low framerate can also help small flaws actors make from being very noticeable, so it's a framerate that I always use, even when making home movies for spanish class or something.. it makes them look more "professional", if that makes any sense.

Re:Important?

[captaineo]

Yes this is definitely true. A few years ago I was an (almost) tournament-level Quake 2 player, and I definitely performed MUCH better with a 60fps system than a 30fps system.

One wrinkle that creeps in at high frame rates is synchronization with the monitor refresh. Typical monitors run 75-100Hz, and when the video card starts breaking into that range of frame rates, you can get bad stuttering effects where a few consective refreshes show different frames and then one refresh repeats a frame because the video card couldn't quite catch up. (or you can turn off "vsync" and get tearing instead of stuttering).

There is definitely a benefit to an "overpowered" graphics system that can deliver 200fps, because it gives extra headroom for when the action gets intense and the frame rate drops a bit. You might not notice a drop from 200-150fps but you will REALLY notice 60fps-30fps...

(John Carmack talks about this in a .plan from a few years ago, check the plan archives if you are interested)

Re:Important?

[qa'lth]

NTSC television (North America) is 29.97FPS - most movies are shot and displayed at 24FPS. So the DVD hardware has to do (iirc) 3:2 pulldown to get the framerate looking mostly right - and even then you get weird artifacts. PAL is 25FPS, so the 24FPS movies can be displayed almost natively on PAL sets.

Re:Important?

[error0x100]

Just to clarify, Quake3Arena wasn't specifically coded to do this, it was actually a bug, and it only affected the jumping physics, nothing else in the game was affected (it was not intentional behaviour, in fact the game was specifically designed to try to NOT have the physics dependent on the frame rate). (You could jump a little bit higher and in some maps this gave a big advantage, e.g. DM13, since you could take a shortcut to the megahealth). The bug was fixed in one of the last patches (I think they made it optional though).

The jumping performance also wasn't proportional to the frame rate, the bug occurred around specific frame rates, such as 120 fps.

Re:Important?

[be-fan]

Dude. I run 1600x1200 on a 15" LCD, and I can still see the pixels. Maybe when things hit 200-300dpi...

Re:Important?

[error0x100]

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 to clarify, again .. this WAS a bug in Quake3Arena. However, it WAS NOT a bug in the "Quake 3 engine". It was a bug in the Quake3 game code. The "Quake3 game" is separate from (and built on top of) the "Quake 3 engine". The engine is the basic graphics and network system, source code NOT available, while the Quake 3 game itself was built essentially as the "default mod" for this game, and the source code is available for it.

The slightly-frame-rate-dependent jumping in Quake3 was a bug in the game code, and ONLY affected the jumping. The bug was fixed in one of the Quake3 patches. The game was intended to be designed so the physics were NOT frame-rate dependent. As you said, this would be a major flaw in a game design.

If the physics in a game were frame-rate dependent, you would see a HUGE difference in physics performance between 30, 60 and 90 fps. These sorts of rates affect (badly designed) game physics in a big way - you would notice it quickly. No major commercial game intentionally has such flaws.

Re:Important?

[vlad_petric]

Well, the human eye doesn't need more than 30 fps (combined with the sampling rate of the monitor - 60 fps). However, the performance of grafik cards has peaks and valleys (pretty much like the performance of the processor). So I think it's very important to report min-FP ratings besides the avg ones. An average of 30 will very likely mean that it gets to 20fps from time to time; an average of a 100 probably means that you never get under 40.

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").

Re:Important?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Of course its important. Yes, but mostly to people who spend way more time and money than is really necessary trying to squeeze out the absolute maximum number of FPS. I had a good laugh reading some of the comments in this thread hotly defending how vital this pursuit is! I'm not saying that's its not interesting, but the vast majority don't really care. I'm happy to get 30fps because it allows me to a) run the game and b) have fun. When you FPS addicts start admitting that what you are doing has nothing to do with having fun playing a game, maybe you won't get mocked as much.

Re:Important?

[InvaderXimian]

Yeah, I do agree that games look better in higher frames per second. Now, with Full Scene Anti-Aliasing and Antrosopic Filtering, that really decreases FPS. So, if you have all of those settings on max and you're getting over 100FPS you should be fine, but if there are no games to really take advantage of the newer technologies, I don't see why nVidia or ATI should keep forcing new video cards to the consumer.

"oh, well the human eye only sees 30 fps, so anything else is over-kill".

Doesn't the human eye see only 24FPS? Well, that what I heard...

Re:Important?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Human brain doesn't distinguish anything over 60 fps. Douglas Trumbull did a lot of research in this area before designing his ShowScan film process, one of the forerunners to Imax.

Re:Important?

[Brendan Byrd]

And 16 million colours is more than the eye can see, and 44,100 samples per second is more than the ear can hear. Throughout the march of technology we've heard these ridiculously arbitrary "limits" of our senses, and invariably they are discounted at a future time. In essence you can consider them a sort of justification.

You notice that nobody is increasing the number of colors any more, or increasing the samples per second. Remember when the number of colors was a big deal? CGA? EGA? VGA? SVGA? The only reason why people are increasing the resolution is because people's monitors are getting bigger.

As far as FPS, I don't think 30 FPS is "the highest we need", but something between 70-100 FPS should work just fine. 120 FPS? 150 FPS? 200 FPS? Now you're talking overkill.

Re:Important?

[almaw]

16 millions colours is not more than the eye can differentiate. Although I believe that 30 bits of colour information is. I can't find a link to substantiate that, though. I'm just remembering from my Cambridge University lectures... :)

Of course, having more than that is nice when you start to signal process stuff - gamma-correct 24bit images much and you'll soon notice big bands where there's not enough colour precision to cope with changing the scale.

25fps is the *bare minimum* that you can run a video source at and have a reasonable sense of motion. That's why PAL stuff is 25fps (50Hz interlaced) - it's the cheapest that is acceptable, and thus made TVs as cheap as possible. Of course, now we're stuck with it. :(

I'm quite surprised that Hollywood hasn't moved to 50fps or so yet. I guess that will come at some point, but converting back to 24fps is probably very hard (you can't just drop frames - the motion blur, etc. would be all wrong).

I'd say you need 60fps in FPS games for them to be very playable these days. Note that it's pointless being able to do more FPS than the refresh rate of your monitor, as any game worth its salt will synch to the vertical refresh. Note that this is worth more in smoothness than all the FPS in the world. 75 or 85 fps v.synched properly just looks liquid. I'd be *extremely* impressed if anyone could tell the difference above this.

I seem to have very sensitive eyes, in that I can very easily tell the difference between a 75Hz and 85Hz refresh rate. But I can't tell the difference between an 85Hz one and a 120Hz one. They just both look solid.

Re:Important?

[rabidcow]

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).

Movies automatically get perfect antialiasing and (more importantly) motion blur, while in games, even if you have antialiasing on, I haven't heard of any card doing motion blur. So motion on a computer at the same framerate will be much more jerky.

(maybe this is what you were saying anyway...)

Re:Important?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for the record, as I understand it:

There are frames and fields in TV. Frame rate
is 29.97hz for color, 30hz for black and white.
Field rate is twice that. Scan odd field first,
then scan even field. (Ie, scan lines 1,3, etc
then lines 2,4, etc.) So, your eye perceives
the actual rate to be around 60hz. So, TV is
a interlaced scanning method while computer
screens are progressive scan, ie lines 1,2,3,4,
etc.

For movies, each frame is shown twice. So,
actual fps is around 48fps.

These are approximations, and not exactly correct,
but if you want specifics then it would take far
more space.

Re:Important?

[Tuxinatorium]

I don't know about you, but I can kind of *see* the individual frames in a movie. 24fps is the absolute bare minimum.

Re:Important?

[ball-lightning]

Heh, I just bought a new monitor and it can't even reach that resolution (its only a 17") I usually run games at 800x600 4x AA (I have a 1.2 T-bird, and a GF4, cpu isn't fast enough to get all those FPS anyway) I think that the focus for graphics cards will change from FPS to image quality, as thats whats really important anyway. would you rather have a card that could play Quake 3 at 500FPS, and look ok, or a card that could run Quake 3 at 60FPS, in photorealistic quality?

Re:Important?

[Babbster]

The question is whether you're seeing the pixels themselves or the edges of the "stray" polygons exposing particular pixels. If it's the latter, then it's an aliasing question that will be (is being) addressed over time with more powerful graphic cards, increased poly counts and more advanced forms of anti-aliasing. If it's the former, it's either because monitor resolutions [obviously] need to have higher resolutions to be closer to "reality" or you're sitting too close to the monitor. :)

Re:Important?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried to watch movies at 30+fps (or in your case, 90+ fps)? They are, in fact, too fast. Real life is too fast, you do not get the dramatic effects without the slower fps. And try watching movies in a digital theater, big difference.

Is this an attempt at a joke? Slower framerate is not needed for dramatic effects. It gives you choppy crappy video.

Movies in a digital theater... My theater in my basement is digital. DVD to the projector onto a 132" screen is total shit. The framerate and the resolution lack something. HDTV is moving way to slow for me.

90 fps does not mean your video goes faster and your voices all sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks. If you need to show 1 scene like a freeze... the mpeg2 format supports that.

Re:Important?

[Jugalator]

Thanks for this explanation! Your nick fits that comment. :-)

Re:Important?

[nmg196]

They're bringing out 100Hz televisions (UK) because 50Hz TVs flicker. Even at 50Hz, your eye still sees seperate frames. 24FPS is regarded as the MINIMUM framerate required for humans to percieve something as fluid motion instead of individual frames, but realisticly, unless you get up to about 70-90Hz most people will still be able to see either a flicker or seperate frames - especially on a large screen such as a cinema (your peripheral vision is quicker to sense changes in light than the center of your eye - this is because the center of the eye is mainly concerned with accurate focus and colour and contains less of the more light sensitive 'rod' cells).

So basically, you probably need about 70FPS (preferably 90) and a refresh rate that matches in order to percieve real-life type movement with absolutely no flicker. Obviously your monitor only draws frames up to the value of it's own refresh rate (a 70Hz non-interlaced monitor can obviously only render 70 frames) so there is no reason to ever require more frames than this in a game - your monitor won't draw, your eye can't see them and your brain won't percieve them. People who spend money to try and get 200FPS instead of 120FPS are really quite stupid. They're better off spending their money on a decent sound system or a better screen.

If cards can shove out 100FPS+ by default these days, then it's a sign that the games developers aren't making the most of the hardware and should shove out more detail/more polygons/bigger textures/better lighting etc to make the scenes look better, while keeping the framerate around 70-90fps.

Nick...

Re:Important?

[Puu]

What PowerVR Series 2 (Neon250) and 3 (Kyro 1/2) did was just basic supersampling -- sampling and rendering at a higher rez, then scaling down to the display rez; Voodoo 5, Radeon 7500, Geforce 2 can all do that.

The difference with the PowerVRs is that they can do it a small tile at a time, instead of a full screen, because they sort all polygons into tiles beforehand ("deferred tiled rendering"). (The main reason for deferred rendering -- tiled or not -- is that because you know all polygons beforehand, you can zap the occluded polygons before the time-taking rasterising into pixels, i.e. you can eliminate the needless overdraw.)

The two types of sampling, super and multi, differ only on texture usage. Multisampling reuses the texture data for all samples (subpixels), while supersampling creates truly unique subpixels. Multisampling costs much less performance, but only supersampling helps with texture artefacts (aliasing) -- like the jaggies in the alpha-textured rails in Counter-Strike; however, anisotropic (non-uniform, perspective-adaptive) texture filtering negates texture artefacts, so multisampling is becoming dominant in gaming cards.

Whether the image is rendered larger then downsized (Geforce 2), or rendered into multiple buffers then combined (Voodoo 5), is irrelevant to whether the underlying method is multisampling or supersampling.

Both multisapling and supersampling can "freely" be implemented as ordered grid (fixed subpixel sampling points), rotated grid (fixed but the sample-point grid is rotated some degrees -- just catches the worst, most visible cases better), or stochastic pattern (random points). Radeon 9700 (2X to 6X) uses a clever hybrid, having a repertoire of pre-calculated random sampling patterns.

Hope this helps and doesn't come across as arrogant. I'm just an interested aficionado myself. You were right, FSAA ain't as simple as just as rendering and reducing. :-)

***

I'd also like to comment to the "who needs 2500 fps?" people. First off, 24 or 30 fps is good for movie/TV, because the individual frames are blurry (camera shutter has a measurable open time, effectively blending source data); but 60 fps is enough for computer games where every frame is instantaneous and razor-sharp. Some people claim they can tell between 60 and 75 fps -- I sure can tell between 40 and 60 fps. Second, nobody need 100+ fps, but show me a card that gives me 1600x1200 with 128-sample anisotropic and 16-sample FSAA (the "Holy Grail") in all near future "complex shaders for every pixel" games, and then I'll be satisfied. Not before...

***

But GFFX Ultra with the screaming dustbuster... good riddance. The consumers have spoken and been heard, I guess.

Re:Important?

[Kadagan AU]

Actually, his point is quite true. Not like the video card would help with it, but the less lag you get when mudding, the better. I've been killed by the lag monster WAY too many times. Same thing's happened to me in Diablo online. You'd think my cable modem would fix this, but noooo... I open to door to the butcher's room, things freeze for a second, then I see that I'm dead. MUDding can be just as bad. You're fighting a beastly fido, lag hits, you die. You died to a beastly fido!? Wow, you're pathetic.

~Kadagan~

au

Re:Important?

[Anonymous Coward]

But the photoreceptors still work continuously, which means you get motion information in a single "snapshot" of their state, an effect commonly known as motion blur. Leaving aside the problem that our wetware is not clocked but highly asynchronous, this means that you would have to at least provide correct motion blur to remove any noticeable difference between 30fps and higher rates. There is however a problem with this approach: Motion blur would have to take your eyes' motion into account, which requires expensive sensors. And even if you had that data, you'd have to render the images with insanely low latency. In other words: It's easier to approximate the continuous sensory input by rendering more frames than by rendering "better" frames.

Re:Important?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's not a single correct statement in that comment.

Re:Important?

[jedrek]

Whats more, each frame is shown 3 times, so the actual flicker is 72hz + motion blending + reflected light. People, stop making yourselves look like asses by comparing computer monitors (avg distance away from screen 2-3 feet, static frames, generated light) to movie screens (30-100 feet, motion blur, reflected light). They are *totally* not the same thing. Even a TV doesn't run at 25/30 frames, it runs at 50/60 half-frames + it's motion blured.

Re:Important?

[blazin]

Can you provide a link to any 15" LCD screen that will show 1600x1200? I mean native resolution, not interpolated.

Re:Important?

[lazyl]

And 16 million colours is more than the eye can see, and 44,100 samples per second is more than the ear can hear. Throughout the march of technology we've heard these ridiculously arbitrary "limits" of our senses, and invariably they are discounted at a future time.

You seem to be suggesting that our senses have no limits. That is ridiculous. Our senses most definetly have limits. Here is a good graph showing our sensitivity to colors.

When people say that we can't see 16 million colors, that doesn't mean that the 16 million colors we get with 24 bits includes all the colors that we can see.

Re:Important?

[ergo98]

You seem to be suggesting that our senses have no limits. That is ridiculous.

I'm saying nothing of the sort, but rather that we've seen a long line of people arbitrarily choosing a convenient value and proclaiming it "The limit of human perception!". I've read so many idiotic claims on Slashdot that resolutely proclaim that the human eye cannot detect more than 30FPS (usually in some sort of perverted justification of their antiquated video card), yet I could prove contrary, at least to 3x that frame rate, in a moment. Alas, this myth perpetuates.

Regarding colours I can clearly see banding with 24-bit colour, yet again we've been told time and time again that this is more than the eye can see. While the standard is to select one of the 3 primary colours as the test (R, G, or B), it is actually for these hues that the 24-bit RGB colour scheme has the maximal colour resolution. I'd rather test it with, say, 3R 2G 1B (A hue made up of the additive colours of 3xB=R, 2xB=G, 1xB=B). Now made a gradiant of just that huge to really find how limited 24-bit colour really is.

Re:Important?

[be-fan]

Many high-end laptops can be purchased with a UXGA 15" LCD. Dell ships one (branded UltraSharp) and IBM ships one (branded FlexView). I think the panels are made by Sharp and Hitachi. You can find some info on Alienware's Website.

Re:Important?

[WiPEOUT]

Good points, all. I need a bigger monitor with the same pixel size :)

Re:Important?

[drinkypoo]

Obviously you have never played a "realistic" first person shooter (one that is intended to provide a more-than-usually-real experience) like CheaterStrike, TacticalCraps, MOH[AA], et cetera.

While using a long-range weapon, especially those without scopes, if you have a higher resolution than other players, you can often see and shoot people before they can distinguish you from pixel noise.

1600x1200 makes a big difference over 1024x768 in this fashion. I in fact have a 19" monitor, and I play at 1280x1024 in most games at reduced detail because the increase in resolution allows me to more easily distinguish what someone is at long range.

Remember, the human brain is designed to do this kind of pattern analysis, in many ways the brain is nothing more than a distributed analog pattern analysis system with memory.

"Ultra Cancelation" is lame

[sql*kitten]

They should have called it the UltraCancelotron 5000XX or something.

Re:"Ultra Cancelation" is lame

[Jugalator]

lol, this is funny dammit :-)

I actually had to read the topic a few times before I got that the "Cancellation" wasn't part of the product name.

"Rumors of a GeForceFX 5800 Ultra Cancelation?"

Wow, that's an innovative product name. I wonder how good it is? lol

Re:"Ultra Cancelation" is lame

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the next revision of "GeForceFX 5800 Ultra Delayed"

Re:"Ultra Cancelation" is lame

[scotay]

That should so be the next name of a terminator movie.

Terminator 4: Ultra Cancellation

Re:"Ultra Cancelation" is lame

[Magus311X]

I actually thought it wasn't being cancelled, but it was being "ultra cancelled".

-----

No new vid card for me...

[Anonymous Coward]

If this is true, then i'll stick with my 4400 till Nvidia gets their act together...

Boo to radeon and their ever improving, yet crappy, drivers...

...and...?

[ottffssent]

I see lots of comments predicting doom and gloom for nVidia already. The GFFX has been somewhat of a disappointment, both for consumers and for NV - it's too slow, too hot, and too hard to make. nVidia is not going to go into bankruptcy because of this however - they will still sell a few and will work madly on the next generation aimed for smaller design rules and will learn from their mistakes this time around. The GFFX isn't the death knell for the company, it's just an unpleasant reminder of what minor manufacturing difficulties can do in a nasty business like video card manufacture. They're already hard at work on the next-gen part, and I'm sure they've learned a lot with this one.

Meanwhile ATI will enjoy higher profits and will have a bit of breathing room. Hopefully, they will use this time to extend their product offerings viz the R350 core, continue pouring money into driver development, and keep working on R400 or whatever their next-gen core ends up being called. In any event 6-9 months from now we will see these next-generation parts coming to market, and they will be just that much better.

Re:...and...?

[frostgiant]

I thought the exact same thing with 3dfx, but look what happened to them. Voodoo 3 did not provide much more, and releasing the Voodoo 4/5 at the same time was a mistake. Were they good cards? Absolutely. But nVidia had already taken a good chunk of their market.

Re:...and...?

[fault0]

> nVidia is not going to go into bankruptcy because of this however - they will still sell a few and will work madly on the next generation aimed for smaller design rules and will learn from their mistakes this time around.

People said this about 3dfx right when it released the long delayed, big, noise, power hungry Voodoo 5 5550 (while Nvidia had long taken the lead).

Same thing seems to be have happening to Nvidia, only this time with ATI taking the lead.

Re:...and...?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been mentioning this to a fanatic friend for years. He's always been crazy about nVidia, and with good reason, I suppose. But delays and the likes prompted him to buy an ATi Radeon 9500 of some sort, and he loves it. In the past, though, he'd never have considered it.

nVidia may not go the way of 3Ddfx, but their reign will fall. If more companies like SiS and S3 start producing good, low-priced products (Xabre) with excellent multiplatform drivers (PowerVR), then there will be room for many competitors. ATi has shown that someone else can come out on top (even PowerVR kinda held the best product in the value market for a brief period in early 2002, in my opinion).

3dfx is a good example of what happens when a parts company gets a big head. And the same thing is happening to nVidia. Don't could your competitors out. They're out for blood.

Re:...and...?

[EpsCylonB]

As another poster mentioned, nvidia are branching out, the GFFX may well be a failure (or not even turn up according to this article) but the NForce2 is already a big success, they have a contract with M$ to supply the GPU for the XBox.

I may be a little biased, just finished building my new compy with an NForce2 based mobo and quite simply it rocks.

Re:...and...?

[ImpTech]

I'm sorry, but the Voodoo 5 was an apocalyptically bad card. My roommate bought one before 3dfx went under, and its the most ungodly slow thing I've ever seen. We tested it against my Geforce2 MX, which I bought around the same time (for about half what he payed for his card), and it ran circles around his 5500. In fact, my card in my 500Mhz PIII system beat out his card in his 850MHz PIII system in 3dmark 2000 and 3dmark 2001. I let him try my card in his system, and it at least doubled his 3dmark score. In the end, 3dfx wasn't even remotely keeping up, and they payed the price. Nvidia, at least for the moment, is competitive, even if they're no longer the leader.

Re:...and...?

[praksys]

You are right that their demise is not just around the corner, but nVidia does have only a limited time to respond.

This year's performance card is next year's value card, so it is not just a question of whether they will be able to produce a competitive performance card within a reasonable time. They need to produce a value card that is about as good as the Radeon 9700 within about a year ( a year and a half might be good enough). If nVidia is still playing catch-up a year from now then they are doomed.

Re:...and...?

[sgtsanity]

But did 3DFX have guaranteed revenue from sales of MS consoles? That may actually end up saving Nvidia in the short term, giving them enough time to get their act together.

Re:...and...?

[Darren Winsper]

But nobody actually plays 3DMark. Did you try benching them on things like Quake3, UT and flight sims? For the most part, the Voodoo5 beat the MX by quite a margin, and owned the GF2 in UT and Unreal based games.

Re:...and...?

[startled]

nVidia is in a much better situation than 3dfx was-- that comparison isn't even close. Before the Voodoo5 came out, 3dfx was already strapped for cash, had gone years since its last decently selling cards, and had almost no OEM contracts. nVidia's finances aren't so precarious as leave the company bankrupt after one or two failed cycles.

how about round 2

[jdkane]

So even if the rumours are true and this manufacturing process isn't working, they still have completed months of research, and still have the experience of trial and error. There's no reason they can not take another approach at a similar type of card if the current model doesn't work out. Sure it costs a lot of money, but I assume they have lots of money comparatively. ATI can stay on top for a while. There's no reason that nVidia can't overtake them at another point in time.

Re:how about round 2

[Dr. Spork]

I think you make an important point. If the real problem behind the FX was just manufacturing, and if the designs really were ready to go a year ago, then it stands to reason that nVidia's next chipset design team should be ready to send away for silicon samples any day now. This assumes, of course, that they really did keep the NV35 team working full bore on the NV35 throughout all these problems with the NV30. But assuming they did, and there is no indication to the contrary, then nVidia are not behind at all. They are just going to miss one release, but that's different from falling one release behind. It's worth remembering that the NV30 was supposed to have been out for a year at this point. If they kept to that schedule, it would have indeed been welcomed like a masiah and not a periah.

If we are to believe nVidia, there has basically been no design work on the NV30 chip for at least a year, and their designers have been busy on newer and better GPUs. If the only problem was TSMC and the manufacturing itself, nVidia might actually be technologically ahead of ATi right now. Maybe they're just waiting for TSMC to ramp up their 130nm process. So if they skip the NV30 generation entirely and go straight to the NV35 (which should be about done by now), they are not making a dumb move. The NV35 is a year ahead of the NV30, while the R350 is only a few months ahead of the 9700pro. The NV35 might kick some serious ass, and it might be closer than you think. If anything, the decision to forego an "ultra" version of the 5800 is a sign that nVidia has confidence that their eggs will be safer in the NV35 basket, and that the NV35 is so close that they might as well just focus all attention on it.

Hardly surprising...

[MarcoAtWork]

I mean, the Geforce 5 6000^H^H^H^H^H^H5800 while having A LOT of drawbacks (noise, takes up two slots, probably lots of heat) doesn't seem to have very much going for it over the ATI's offerings. The only thing right now is driver quality, but as far as I am hearing ATI is getting better at this lately...

Note, I'm not an ATI fanboy (actually I'm running a GeForce1 right now) but I'm really appalled at what 3dfx^H^H^H^HNVidia was thinking when they created this card...

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...

Re:Hardly surprising...

[Anonymous Coward]

It still happens to me from time to time. The TERM variable is not always set right when I login on some computers and I do see ^H and it stays on screen. That's good to remember that there is more than one way to delete a caracter.

Re:Hardly surprising...

[Song for the Deaf]

nVidia is NOT 3dfx. while the GeForce FX Ultra won't be the conventional wisdom choice of 'performance experts' everywhere, at least it won't be the monstrous, straight to e-bay, one of kind curio that the V5 6000 was.

not to mention that the GeForce FX isn't exactly getting trounced by the 9700. it's just not the fastest.

i remember V5 5500 benchmarks that were SLOWER than the Geforce 2. this is NOT the same situation at all.

i predict nVidia will be back sooner rather than later.

Re:Hardly surprising...

[Nexx]

not to mention that the GeForce FX isn't exactly getting trounced by the 9700. it's just not the fastest.

But between cost-of-ownership, time-to-market, *and* performance, GeForce FX got trounced. It doesn't matter that the GeForce FX, depending on which benchmark you look at, is 90-110% of the Radeon 9700 Pro. It matters that the 9700 Pro is making money for ATI *now*.

CANCELLATION

[Anonymous Coward]

That's two spelling mistakes in under 2 hours on headlines. What's wrong with you people?

In Business News Today...

[Quaoar]

Video card giant nVidia officially changed it's name today to 3dfx. Five minutes later the company declared bankruptcy.

Re:In Business News Today...

[Anonymous Coward]

At my company, we give our projects codenames after 3d graphics companies. When we code named our project "3dfx" it promptly began to suck and then imploded into nothingness.

Re:In Business News Today...

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever named a project "S3 Virge"

Leave Taco alone...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's hard to type with one hand

3Dfx?

[Trevelyan]

waiting ages for that next gen card, which is never delivered, just new iterations of current technology to fill the gap.
Anyone else reminded of another company?

Gf FX?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should I? I already have a GF4 Ti4600, I shall wait for the GF FX 2 or 3. Nothing uses the power of the GF4 much today. or probably this year.

+1 Insightful!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up!!! Its insightful!!

It gets worse...

[waytoomuchcoffee]

Lack of an "Ultra" type solution from nVidia would leave ATI's Radeon9700 uncontested as the defacto performance part

The Radeon 9900 is expected out next month, with the new R350 core.

I am glad I don't have Nvidia stock right about now.

Re:It gets worse...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nvidia makes very little money from their top end gamer hardware.

The majority comes from OEM, chipsets and pro graphics offerings.

But as the market is fickle, the share price should come down, sounds like a good time to buy. I have no doubt that they will learn from their mistakes and bounce back on the next generation of 3D chipset. If however it looked like they were falling out of the chipset and pro graphics markets, that would be a bad sign

Annoyances

[daaan]

Disclaimer - I'm not a gamer, in any way, shape or form...and could care less about 3D acceleration

However, I have been personally predicting the fall of nVidia for quite a while now, ever since my Diamond Viper 770 Ultra died, to be honest. I replaced it with a used Asus TNT2 Ultra Card (V3800 I think), and had the same kind of issues, which were mostly the system locking up due to heat buildup.

Then I built a machine for a friend of mine, and we put a Hercules GF2 MX440 card in it, with the same kind of issues. Not only that, but the power requirements were what I was considering to be obscene, for the time.

When we replaced that MX card with a Radeon VIVO, all of the stability issues went away, same thing when I replaced my Asus Card with a Matrox Millenium G550. All of a sudden XP Pro was...well..."Stable"

Then, six months ago I finally got so completely sick of The stability issues that I was living with, mostly due to a rather ecleptic mix of hardware, that I switched XP out for Debian. Found that not only did all of my stability issues disappear (which I knew would happen) but, I had better driver support for my Matrox card than I did in windows.

This got kind of ranty, and I forgot where I was going with this...oh well...

Re:Annoyances

[Anonymous Coward]

sounds to me like you're running a cheap motherboard and/or power supply

geforce cards need power, 350w min ps should do (more if you have lots of hardware)... if you dont want to upgrade you could always try going down to AGP2x or AGP1x using tweak programs (like powerstrip, nvtweak etc)

i installed a geforce4 and 3 in my brothers pc and it would constantly lock up, found out it was because of his cheap mboard (pcchips, ugh)... he runs a GF2 now and that works fine, i didnt know about the agp1x/2x tweaks at the time and i heard that made em work for some people.. but anyway, sounds more like a board/ps problem than the card.

Re:Annoyances

[slaker]

I posted a comment similar to the above a couple weeks ago and watched it shoot from score: 5 to 0 and then back up over the next 24 hours. In the end 20-odd people modded it.

But hey, I'll reiterate: nvidia cards get hot, to the detriment of the general stability of their host computers. They seem to do this in 2D or 3D modes. I've replaced a lot of M64s, Vantas and GF2MXs because of this, and found that those replacements FIXED PROBLEMS.

Re:Annoyances

[daaan]

Tyan Tiger 230T, Enermax 431W PS...

Try AGain

Re:Annoyances

[Anonymous Coward]

i love how people automatically assume that it is because someone bought shitty hardware that they are having problems...didn't you notice that this guy said all of his stability issues disappeard when he dumped M$? I've had linux boxes that have locked up because of the heat built up from nVidia cards...the problem was aobviously the cards, looking as how he was going through three of them, and then they all disappeard when nVidia was bitch kicked out

Re:Annoyances

[I Am The Owl]

I'm not a gamer, in any way, shape or form...and could care less about 3D acceleration

How much less?

Re:Annoyances

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got three Diamond TNT2 Ultra in different computers running various games including Ghost Recon. I haven't seen the symptom you described.

Re:Annoyances

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all PS's can actually do what you ask of them. A sticker that SAYS it can do 431W does not mean it CAN do that. Also VIA chipsets are the worst with nVidia. Because nVidia aims its power modes at a intel chipset. I had to fiddle with the driver value forever to get it just WORK in 4x mode. Finaly the drivers just simple will not use it anymore. That says a bunch. Bet I pop this bad boy in a Intel chipset board and it works great in 4x mode.

I have also never been happy with ATI, great hardware lousy support. They are fixing it, it looks like. But it will be awhile before the bad taste is washed out of my mouth.

My scsi hd gives off more heat than this nvidia card...

Re:Annoyances

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I think VIA just sucks. nVidia cards probably work best with nVidia chipsets.

rumor mill

[Anonymous Coward]

Why was this bit of stall-scrawl scribbled on slashdot? It's gotten to the point where someone can write "colin powell likes doritos" on a matchbook in Des Moine, and it'll get posted.

Michael Jackson - SHOCKING Secrets revealed...

[Anonymous Coward]

For the Information of well read /. readers,

Here is the bombshell court document that first raised allegations that the singer was involved in inappropriate behavior with a young boy:

READ THE FOLLOWING PAGES, YOU WILL BE SHOCKED !!

Michael Jackson Sued - Page 1

Michael Jackson Sued - Page 2

Michael Jackson Sued - Page 3

Michael Jackson Sued - Page 4

Also, on CNN:
Female Cheetahs go wild for Calvin Klein perfume

You're a fago^H^D^X^S^6^G^HOMO

[Anonymous Coward]

If I see that stupid ^H shit once more I'm going to burn this place to the ground and pee-pee on the ashes!

Re:You're a fago^H^D^X^S^6^G^HOMO

[Anonymous Coward]

Drop the gay bashing, you homophobic twit.

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nvidia needs some new marketing people. Just as I'm figuring out the difference between a Geforce 4 4200TI and a Geforce 4 4200 MX I read this, that the GeforceFX 5600 Ultra will possibly be cancelled. I don't know if this means the whole next generation of their cards is gone or just some XTREME version of it. Remembering their product names is like memorizing international phone numbers.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bigger Numbers = Better Graphics. Just like CPUs, kiddies. *flings poop at Apple*

Who cares about a video card when...

[jmuzic1]

Did anyone notice the article under that on their site? I guess not because it is soo much more important than that video card article ;) A pill that gives you a 14-minute orgasm...wow... http://www.megarad.com/modules.php?name=News&file= article&sid=1270

Re:Who cares about a video card when...

[Hieronymus Howard]

I guess that most /.ers would care more about the video card. The URL you posted didn't work. Try this:

http://www.megarad.com/modules.php?name=News&fil e= article&sid=1270

Or this:

http://www.globalcomment.com/science&technology/ ar ticle_4.asp

It's a spoof article unfortunately, but a pretty good one.

HH

The fan was a hint

[Anonymous Coward]

This card model was destined blow out. ;)

Best Buy stores only fulfilling pre-orders

[macado]

I work at Best Buy (unfortunately) and we were instructed to stop selling all Preorder GeForce FX's and destory the boxes and give all the free stuff to the employees or whoever wanted them. Apparently at least the pre-orders will be fulfilled but I don't think the card is going to make it to the stores for quite some time do to "extremely limited supplies" (according to the store memo). At least I got a free Nvida t-shirt and Hat out of it. :o)

-macado

Re:Best Buy stores only fulfilling pre-orders

[Anonymous Coward]

I really doubt this. And I love that just because someone says they work for so and so, or has the "inside scoop", they instantly get +5 and everyone believes them.

The REAL reason it was cancelled

[Anonymous Coward]

it was cancelled because Hoover sued them for anticompetitive practices. Black and Decker was not available for comment.

Remember the Apple Lisa?

[Chordonblue]

nVidia's plans for the FX were greater than what actually happened. If this had been released with support for 256 bit memory, I think it would've stomped ATi big time.

Sometimes it takes a brilliant failure like this to catapult R&D to the next level. Let's hope that happens here.

sqrt(2.1)

[Anonymous Coward]

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154506

Re:sqrt(2.1)

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that's precision! Did you do that with your GeForce FX 5800 Ultra GPU?

Visiontek jabs from beyond the grave

[doormat]

http://www.visiontek.com

Make sure you have your speakers on..

Vendor Confirmation

[l33t-gu3lph1t3]

[H]ardOCP has confirmation that GeforceFX5800 Ultra graphics cards will not make it to retail, and are available as pre-order items only, for a limited time. However, the GeforceFX5800 non-ultra model *will* make it to retail, sans the elaborate cooling mechanism, and running at 400MHz GPU / 800MHz RAM.

Additionally, it seems the "Radeon9900" information at Xbitlabs might be less accurate than it appears.

This isn't the greatest news for Nvidia, but it doesn't exactly break the bank: Nvidia still has the lion's share of the graphics market, and will probably continue to keep that market simply due to Tier 1/2 OEM sales, as well as their reputation - even though ATI has faster hardware, Nvidia has had a history of rock-solid drivers 4 generations back. Although ATI's driver quality has improved significantly in recent times, they're still not up to par with Nvidia's. And be sure that Nvidia will capitalize on that, since they don't have bragging rights for their hardware currently.

Re:Vendor Confirmation

[delus10n0]

HardOCP doesn't confirm anything, other than the fact that Best Buy is holding off on pre-orders for now, because they've already presold their quantity so far. There is no official statement anywhere that says that the GeForce FX Ultra is no more, not is there any statement saying the GeForceFX Ultra will not be available again for pre-order (or regular order) soon.

Chicken little, the sky is not falling.

OT - Worst employer ever

[Anonymous Coward]

"We don't make a commission, so we'll be honest with you. Now please bend over as I force these service plans up and in. Don't forget the gold plated USB cables because they transfer data faster! Don't believe me? Ask my manager who is 6 years younger than me!"

*shudder* That was the worst 10 days of my life. You're a stronger person than I.

Re:OT - Worst employer ever

[Anonymous Coward]

You never worked for Fry's. Worst. Job. Ever.

Re:OT - Worst employer ever

[Milican]

I used to work for Best Buy in the computer department back when I was 19 or so and it wasn't bad. Yes, they asked us to pimp out the service plans, but I didn't force it and my managers didn't breathe down my neck about it either. I do remember being asked to try and sell dust covers for PCs, but I never did. All in all it wasn't a bad job and I learned a little too.

JOhn

You to check out the concept of. . .

[kfg]

significant digits.

Please note the extra zeros at the end of 2000 as opposed to 30.

Believe it or not, they make a difference.

No, not the sort of difference you're talking about, the sort of difference that means the difference between 2467 and 2556 doesn't make a difference, even though the difference between 30 and 60 does.

Get the difference?

KFG

Hoax?

[Zeinfeld]

Hmm. Take a look at the next story in the list about 14 minute orgasms and an alleged compound caled Retalanaline. Strange thing is that the term Retalanaline only appears twice in Google even though the article that is linked to says it was written in 2001. One would think that such a compound would have more comment than that if it actually existed.

While one fake story does not prove the other is fake it does indicate that the journalistic standards are somewhat lax.

Re:Hoax?

[netsharc]

Who cares! Who needs to play videogames when you can get 14 minute orgasms! ;-)

What's wrong with them

[kfg]

Well, for starters, I'd guess they can't spell. Was that really so hard to figure out?

KFG

re

[binarie]

Oh wow... a new video card.. yay!

hmm the article bellow is a lot more interesting.

NVIDIA over did it this time!

[XplosiveX]

I think NVIDIA was so power hungry to release a card that would have such extremely high core/clock speeds but without factoring in the technology aspects that it takes to get there. For instance the chip runs very hot even at their transistion to the 0.13nm manufacturing process and so the card is very unstable. The dust buster they used to cool the chip in the first place was a bit over overkill but I guess NVIDIA hadn't planned for the chip to run at such a high voltage. In my closing statements I will say that NVIDIA really needed to come up with something that could compete with a Radeon 9700 Pro but obviously they would have to release it in order to compete and that doesn't look like it's going to happen. I think ATI would be pleased about this because not so far in the distant future the R350 core will emerge and ATI has pleased many in the past. We will have to wait and see...

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:What is the yield problem caused by?

[Anonymous Coward]

Insightful my ass. The basis of this article is Nvidia's low chip yields, not faulty capacitors.

Re:What is the yield problem caused by?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where did he mention faulty capacitors?

Re:What is the yield problem caused by?

[user32.ExitWindowsEx]

I heard that the FX 5800 Ultra wasn't on low-K dielectric - and that's why they needed the absurd fan.

(I know nothing about chip fabrication, so I could have all my details backwards for all I know. I'm just going on what I recall hearing somewhere.)

not good for nvidia

[MagicMerlin]

NVidia's future looks quite uncertain. It appears they might be headed for a free fall. You can blame their problems with some bad business decisions, like backing AMD, but the real problem is that ATI's tech team is pulling ahead. The 9700 simply had a better designed core. Their position is remarkably similar to that of 3dfx during the introduction of the tnt2. The handwriting was on the wall, and there was nothing they could do about it, having sunk millions into technology consumers were just not interested in.

Re:not good for nvidia

[Junta]

Backing AMD a bad business decision? If they are hurting in that area (I have not heard), it is not because they make chipsets for AMD motherboards, it is because their chipset is nothing special. Their experience with graphics card hasn't translated that well to motherboards, so the chipsets aren't worth any premium. Maybe if they put GPUs on the motherboards more frequently that weren't underpowered, they would have done better. I really haven't been keeping close track of nVidia and the nForce (hell, I still have a Voodoo3 running in this thing), but AMD has been doing well as far as I can tell, so there is certainly a market to exploit.

uh oh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Betcha they'll reintroduce it, only losen reliablity standards so that there will be a thousand or so irate owners of this chipset some four months after the cards first appear in circuit city. Wish these manufacturers would design some cards that have some sort of VESA-like compliance and more applications than just gaming.

ATI Still Not There

[N8F8]

My most recent video card purchase, an ATI OEM 8500LE just died a little over a year after I bought it. Add too that the fact that the Mobility M4 in my $3K laptop still doesn't do all the tricks ATI promised. Not very impressive considering my TNT2 has been chugging away for years.

hmph. not really surprised

[netwiz]

I kinda figured that with the way nVidia's hardware likes to pop like lightbulbs, eventually they'd release a card that was dead out of the box. To date, I've had a grand total of seven nvidia products die on me. The first was a TNT2 Ultra, followed by a TNT, followed by the replacement Ultra, then two TNT2 ultras at work, then my Geforce4 4400, then it's replacement, another 4400. This doesn't include the number of cards that my friends have had fail. The number would then be into the twenties.

If the 4200 I'm using as a replacement for the 4400 dies, I'm going to ATI, and not looking back.

Re:hmph. not really surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you ever think that maybe some other piece of hardware (like the mother board of power supply) might be the problem? And, assuming the impossible (you just got 7 bad cards in a row), why wouldn't you have switched by now? Do you like suffering?

About the loss of that PCI slot...

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone and their brother seems to be bellyaching about "losing the PCI slot" to the cooling system, and how horrible this is.

How stupid.

On practically every motherboard out there today, PCI 1 and the AGP slot share resources, so you're crippling your system performance by putting a card in each.

As I remember it, PCI has four specific special IRQ channels allocated for it, and thus the original spec is for one IRQ for each. Modern motherboards get away with this by having different slots share the bus mastering, so that two devices can piggyback on one slot. Usually, the onboard IDE controller piggybacks on one slot, and the last two slots (usually PCI 5 and 6) are often coupled together. By the same token, the AGP slot often shares an IRQ with PCI 1.

So, in short, if you're going to complain about the cooling system, complain about it being loud. You weren't losing anything on your motherboard that you could even use to begin with.

Re:About the loss of that PCI slot...

[The Baron (nV News)]

I can't use the first PCI slot even with my GeForce 3. You can't use it with a GeForce 1, either, if I recall correctly--the heatsink (just the HEATSINK) is too big. Now, if you had some insanely shaped card, it would fit, but the whole PCI slot cooler thing is making something over nothing.

Now the noise... THAT is the problem. But, apparently, a closer-to-retail revision of the card that [H]ardOCP got had a much softer cooler than the original reference card. Plus, if Gainward makes its 7dB GFFX cooler, that's not going to be a problem at all. Still, it won't be on a 5800 Ultra after all, which is kinda too bad.

Re:About the loss of that PCI slot...

[espresso_now]

Made the mistake of putting a nic next to my GeForce 3 Ti200... the nic prevented the fan from turning on the video card, luckily, I noticed after about 2 minutes.

Re:About the loss of that PCI slot...

[La Temperanza]

Bwahaha. I wouldn't lose a PCI slot, I'd lose my AMR slot or whatever that crappy little one is called. What a pity :)

Re:About the loss of that PCI slot...

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't understand how PCI IRQ sharing works; typically you will NOT be sharing an interrupt between the AGP slot and the PCI slot next to it. Furthermore, interrupt sharing doesn't necessarily "cripple your system performance".

PCI does have 4 IRQ lines, INTA#, INTB#, INTC#, and INTD#. However, each card has access to all of them, and is allowed to use any of them if it likes. Furthermore, the spec leaves it up to the motherboard implementor how to connect the lines up. You can tie all four together and service them via a single interrupt if you like. PCI is designed to allow almost any interrupt architecture.

In PowerMacs for example, each PCI slot has a single dedicated interrupt line. It is connected to all four PCI interrupt pins. There is no IRQ sharing between slots in a PowerMac no matter what.

Most PCs have 4 IRQ lines from the interrupt controller going to PCI slots. As the lines pass through each slot, the order is swizzled:

int 1 --> slot1 INTA# --> slot2 INTB# --> slot3 INTC#
int 2 --> slot1 INTB# --> slot2 INTC# --> slot3 INTD#
int 3 --> slot1 INTC# --> slot2 INTD# --> slot3 INTA#
int 4 --> slot1 INTD# --> slot2 INTA# --> slot3 INTB#

Most cards use only one of the four interrupt lines, INTA#. Therefore, interrupt sharing (if it happens on your motherboard -- as per above, on some it does not, especially not on architectures not hobbled by backwards compatability with the IBM PC AT interrupt controller) takes place with a periodicity of 4 slots. Meaning that the AGP slot and the PCI slot next to it probably do NOT share an interrupt in most cases.

Re:About the loss of that PCI slot...

[llin]

The first poster isn't really that far off. While each card has access to all IRQ lines, in practice, most only use 1 IRQ (off of Pin 1). Here's a chart of how VIA south bridges map 'em: http://images.sudhian.com/faqs/kt7/irqs-figs.gif

More info can be found here: http://www.sudhian.com/showfaqs.cfm?fid=2&fcid=26# 55

Oops

[Hieronymus Howard]

Slashdot seems to be inserting a space in the URL, between file= and article, and in the middle of 'article' in the second URL. Remove the spaces and they should work.

Production Problems?

[Exanerd]

"...Production Problems..." Maybe Nvidia should check their caps...

Yes, it's real, but NV30 lives on

[The Baron (nV News)]

Yes, 5800 Ultra is gone. 5800 will be for sale, but at 400/800, it's not going to win any speed awards (unless drivers manage to improve its performance by 20%, which won't happen by the time R350 (successor to the Radeon 9700) comes out). The chips used for the Ultra will still be used, however, in the QuadroFX 2000. ATI's R300-based FireGL cards are still poor performers, and even with relatively poor drivers from nVidia, the FX 2000 will beat it handedly (the Quadro4 is beating the FireGL cards as well, according to Tom's Hardware).

But, it's not just a rumor anymore. When it first came to [H], everyone regarded it as BS. It was a rumor posted on a board that spread incredibly rapidly. But, apparently it's been confirmed by either OEMs or nVidia itself to those with good contacts. BFG has stopped taking preorders, AFAIK, because...

"According to an e-mail John Malley sent out a couple of days ago, BFG is concerned that pre-sales may exceed their allocation of units."

So, yes, the 5800Ultra is gone. Oh well. NV35 in June, according to some.

"Ultra" market is tiny anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget guys, the top-of-the-range cards make up only a small proportion of sales compared to the mainstream MX cards. This might mean nVidia lose their lead, but they certainly won't be losing out too much financially.

Re:"Ultra" market is tiny anyway

[Hellasboy]

It's not about how many they can sell. Right now ATI is known as king of the hill and the press is pretty positive about it. Look at all this negative press that has been circulating because of this nvidia debacle. Word gets around and when people look to buy a new card they are going to remember how ati whooped up on nvidia (not true, but that's how they will remember it) and they will buy the ati brand because of its reputation (lets ignore the better 2D... =)

Now you have nvidia who are releasing a card several months late that will not surpass (ultra version barely did better, non-ultra won't do it) the current leader, ati 9700 pro.

anyone know how much of the Art-X technology is incorporated into the current ATI high end models?

Check your system RAM

[Anonymous Coward]

run memtest86 on your dimms.... my bet is either you have a bad dimm or your power supply is fucked.

-G

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.

Re:hmph. not really surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that balances out the fact that 90% of the people in my dorm at college have NVidia cards, and not a one has failed.

suggestion...

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember that elite "case mod" you did, the one with the 2000 watt floodlights and case-mounted space heater?

That uh.. might have something to do with it.

Re:suggestion...

[Kadagan AU]

ROFL!! That's great!!

I'm glad I'm not the only one that thought to mount dual-space heaters on their system! I figure it's already pumping out tons of heat, why not use it to warm my house?

Hardly 3dfx

[Namarrgon]

3dfx alienated their OEM customers, and had no other income apart from their consumer gfx cards. When that was delayed & out-competed (again), it was inevitable that they'd go under.

nVidia are a larger company with a string of huge successes to date. They have a much more diversified income, including some very popular OEM chips, the successful nForce2 (and less-successful Xbox) chipsets, a well-regarded pro card line, and a significant share of the Apple market too. Not to mention quite a bit of cash in the bank.

A single high-end chip(which is a small % of their total revenue anyway), even if it failed completely, is not going to impact their bottom line that much. It'll have more impact on their image as graphics leader, but they have the resources to learn, move on, redesign and try again.

Re:Hardly 3dfx

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't say the nForce? line was successful at all. They have a minority share of the AMD market, and the AMD market has pretty much tanked in the last year, and tends towards stripped down 'value' chipsets anyway.

Re:Hardly 3dfx

[Anonymous Coward]

The importance, as in real monetary impact, of their new chip is much greater than you portend here.

Re:Hardly 3dfx

[Splab]

I think youre right, back when 3dfx died, we had the .com boom - Now people are getting a bit more realistic about things. Maybe nvidia does have some money in the store etc. but theyere imho doomed as 3d card maker for some years to come. They have given over the crown to ATI, if they dont ship out something usefull (cars @ 77db isnt qualified for that) within the next 3-4 months people are going to associate ati with high end boards. nVidia is going to survive, however I think theyll end up like matrox having their own nitche and dust up on the shelfs. Btw. If this is true, I do think it was the right move, better to do some damage control than ship the crappiest card ever... (voodoo 6000 never made the shelves afaik)

Re:Hardly 3dfx

[Namarrgon]

The original nForce was more interesting than successful, but clearly you haven't been keeping abreast of nForce2. Every single review has been praising it - it has virtually every feature under the sun, including some no other manufacturer has (dual DDR on AMD, Dolby Digital encoding), and its performance blows everything else away. They're walking off the shelves.

I think that could be called "successful".

Re:Hardly 3dfx

[Namarrgon]

Standard short-sighted view. People said the same about ATi not long ago, and there was a lot less reason to think they'd ever turn themselves around like they did. Gamers switched to ATi's camp pretty quickly; they'll switch back even quicker if nVidia pull ahead again.

Besides, although the FX Ultra may not sell well, the effort was definitely valuable. The Quadro FX (based on FX 5800 non-Ultra) is the easily the fastest professional card out there - it destroys the ATi FireGL X1 (9700 PRO-based) in speed, quality, precision and programmability (and yes, it's quiet). The standard 5800 also has a fair chance of success, if they can price it against the ATi 9500 PRO.

Also, nVidia have doubtless learned a lot about the 0.13um process, whereas ATi have yet to jump that hurdle (R350 will still be 0.15um). Rather than being behind, nVidia might just have a headstart...

Limits to human perception.

[Christopher Thomas]

And 16 million colours is more than the eye can see, and 44,100 samples per second is more than the ear can hear . Throughout the march of technology we've heard these ridiculously arbitrary "limits" of our senses, and invariably they are discounted at a future time. In essence you can consider them a sort of justification.

These limits aren't arbitrary. You can test them the same way you proposed that frame rate limits be tested.

For colour gradations, make a picture that has a very gradual colour ramp from 0-255 in each colour (or one that sweeps across colour tones, but that changes at most one component by at most one between adjacent bands).

When I tried this with an old VGA card that used 18-bit colour, I could see banding. I had to stare for a while to let my eyes adjust, but I could see it.

When I try it on a modern card with 24-bit colour, I see no bands if the monitor's gamma correction is properly adjusted.

A monitor without gamma correction will end up expanding some brightness ranges and compressing others, with the result that gradations will not be visible at all in some areas and will be (barely) visible in others. Check your configuration before complaining.

The 24-bit argument applies to distinguishing colours. Similar experiments (not performed by me) have shown that you get about 10 bits of depth in greyscale, as humans have more sensitive black and white vision than colour (which is why everything appears in shades of grey at night with poor lighting; go for an evening walk and look for badly-lit stop signs some time).

You can do the same kind of tests with sound. It's actually more difficult with modern sound cards, as they have low-pass filters that cut off everything above about 22 kHz (nyquist rate of 44 kHz), but a PC speaker works. Or use a piezo buzzer and a signal generator if you're worried about the speaker efficiency dropping at high frequencies. My hearing, last time I tested it (and last time it was tested by a doctor), dropped out about about 18 kHz.

The reason why higher frequencies are relevant at all is because of nonlinear behavior both in the speakers and in the human ear. Beat frequencies between high-frequency tones can turn into audible frequencies when interacting with nonlinear systems (this is how that two-tone ultrasonic speaker linked to a while back worked). However, the key is that the final tone you hear is in the audible frequency range. This means you can duplicate the sound perfectly by using a microphone that acts more like the human ear when recording (i.e. that has similar nonlinear effects), or by recording at high frequencies and applying appropriate transformations before downsampling.
The fact remains that if I played a 20 kHz pure tone at you right now, you wouldn't hear it. And this is easy to verify by experiment.

In summary, while you're most definitely right about frame rates, your other objections about limits are unfounded.

Re:Limits to human perception.

[Rothron the Wise]

When I try it on a modern card with 24-bit colour, I see no bands if the monitor's gamma correction is properly adjusted.

If you have 1 color change per pixel in a gradient, no banding can be seen, but try to repeat a color once or try to fit a 24-bit gray gradient across 300 pixels, and you'll see bandling galore. (unless you dither, something which is not always practical to do)

Regarding the nyquist rate of CD-Audio:
How do you represent a 22kHz sawtooth wave?
Answer: You can't. It's sine or nothing.

How can you accurately represent a 18kHz wave
without harmonic distortions?
Answer: You can't, because you get an interference /moire like pattern since 18kHz doesn't fit properly into 22kHz.

I agree that limits exist but your methods to
find them are flawed. Most likely there are hard
limits which are very high, and a more flexible limit which has to do with the experience and genetics of the listener/viewer.

Re:Limits to human perception.

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact remains that if I played a 20 kHz pure tone at you right now, you wouldn't hear it.

I would. Up to approx 22 kHz.
But 44kHz? No.

Re:Limits to human perception.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I have heard different. Experiments done at NASA demonstrated the ability for humans to distinguish between billions of colors when presented samples done on an output device that was actually capable of producing this many distinct colors.

All you have demonstrated is that 24 bits is enough to "satisfy" the monitor which is dependent on the characteristics of the amplifiers and signal processing going to the gun.

Although humans have more sensitivity to grayscale, the dynamic range of color vision is higher than for distinguishing shades of gray. Sensitivity has nothing to do with dynamic range in this context.

I am too lazy to look it up, but the reference is in the color chapter in Computer Graphics.

24 bits is used because there are three channels and a byte of 8 bits is convenient on most architectures.

Re:Limits to human perception.

[Christopher Thomas]

If you have 1 color change per pixel in a gradient, no banding can be seen, but try to repeat a color once or try to fit a 24-bit gray gradient across 300 pixels, and you'll see bandling galore.

Not when I tried it. These were images that didn't cover the whole gradient, and had tens of pixels per band (Mandelbrot sets with fun colour maps to iteration counts, if you're curious).

Regarding the nyquist rate of CD-Audio:
How do you represent a 22kHz sawtooth wave?

A sawtooth wave is a sine wave at the fundamental frequency plus a bunch of harmonics at higher frequencies. If you can hear the difference between a 22 kHz sawtooth wave and a 22 kHz sine wave, you're not from this planet, because the harmonics are about a factor of two out of human hearing range.

By all means get a signal generator and try it. Or bring a piezo speaker into your local university's electronics lab to perform the test.

If you can hear a 22 kHz *anything*, you have exceptional hearing to begin with.

How can you accurately represent a 18kHz wave
without harmonic distortions?

Answer: You can't, because you get an interference /moire like pattern since 18kHz doesn't fit properly into 22kHz.

Nope. Break out that signal theory book - as long as the original signal was a pure tone, you have no aliasing. Sampling aliases higher frequencies down to lower on recording (which is why you need a low-pass input filter on any digital recording device). No high frequencies, no aliased signals at lower frequencies. Reconstruction causes higher-frequency harmonics if your output filtering is bad, but a) output filtering on sound cards is decent, and b) the harmonics are above your hearing range unless you're playing back at less than 10 kHz.

In summary, you made an assumption that I didn't re. colour, and don't seem to be working through the math re. sound.

Re:Limits to human perception.

[JebusIsLord]

Actually 44khz was chosen for more practical reasons. Since audio signals at 44khz were originally designed for recording TV video to tape. To squeeze audio into a video stream:

3 samples * 490/2 lines (interlaced) * 60hz = 44100
Hz.

How is that for arbitrary?

Re:Limits to human perception.

[Christopher Thomas]

You make a good point re. non-ideal hardware; I hadn't thought of that. However, after thinking about it, I don't see how the monitor or graphics card could have removed banding.

There are three types of artifact that could be imposed: quantization, low-pass filtering, and slew-rate limiting. Quantization would result if the DAC on the video card could generate fewer than 256 levels. While this could make any given pair of bands the same colour, contrast between other bands would have been worse, so I think it can be dismissed without further consideration.

Slew-rate limiting occurs if there is a limit to the speed at which a signal can be changed. However, this would affect high-contrast edges first. The fact that I can see a grid pattern or the text I'm typing suggests that it is not a factor in seeing or not seeing banding on smooth gradients.

The more important artifact is low-pass filtering. This tends to average the colours of adjacent pixels, smoothing gradients. This would indeed remove or reduce banding. As the eye does differential processing, the perceived effect would be worse for low-contrast edges (the type I'm trying to measure). However, two factors suggest that this is not what limits my ability to perceive banding. Firstly, the DACs on modern video cards are rated to 300+ MHz sampling rates, while conventional desktop modes use far lower sampling rates (1024x768x85 has a dot clock of around 95 MHz, even after adding the horizontal and vertical blanking interval contributions). This means that if there is filtering, it's unlikely to be in the graphics card (leaving the monitor and monitor cable as options). Secondly, I can see banding with 18-bit colour even at high resolutions (where filtering problems are worst, due to high dot clocks), but I can't see banding with 24-bit colour even at low resolutions (where filtering problems are least severe). If low-pass filtering was limiting contrast at low resolutions, the problem should be bad enough at high resolutions to be noticeable with higher-contrast edges. Ditto for varying refresh rates with a low-resolution mode instead of varying resolution, though that only lets you change the dot clock by a factor of two or three due to monitor vsync limits.

The fact that I can't see banding in low resolution modes also suggests that dot pitch of the monitor is not an issue (I buy monitors with overspecced resolution capability out of habit anyways).

In short, I'm not convinced it's the hardware that prevents me from seeing banding. If you can think of a source of smoothing that I'm missing, I'll certainly reconsider my view.

I can believe that there are exceptional humans able to perceive contrasts more accurately, but I'm not one of them, and I doubt most other people are either.

Although humans have more sensitivity to grayscale, the dynamic range of color vision is higher than for distinguishing shades of gray. Sensitivity has nothing to do with dynamic range in this context.

Good point. However, I do recall being told that the dynamic range for greyscale was higher as well.

I am too lazy to look it up, but the reference is in the color chapter in Computer Graphics.

Thank you for the reference. I'll look it up if this thread drags on for more than a week :).

24 bits is used because there are three channels and a byte of 8 bits is convenient on most architectures.

If the quality change was noticeable enough to be useful for marketing, I'm confident we'd be using an 11/11/10 mode for 32-bit colour by now (with alpha channels stored somewhere else, or not used at all, outside of game mode). Remember the whole 32-vs-16 PR battle between 3dfx and nVidia a while back.

Re:Limits to human perception.

[Christopher Thomas]

Actually 44khz was chosen for more practical reasons. Since audio signals at 44khz were originally designed for recording TV video to tape. To squeeze audio into a video stream:

3 samples * 490/2 lines (interlaced) * 60hz = 44100 Hz.

How is that for arbitrary?

Like 8-bit colour components, it represents a convenient value. But, like 8-bit colour components, it hasn't been replaced because it's close enough to perception limits to be indistinguishable for practical purposes. This is especially true for sound, as there would be no reason not to go to 4 samples per line if needed (while making higher-fidelity colour components requires sacrificing either ease of use of graphics cards (non-power-of-two sizes for RGBA pixels) or sacrificing the alpha channel).

[ObDisclaimer about high-fidelity equipment being needed for sound/image processing/compositing, where errors stack and sounds and colour values are rescaled/resampled.]

Re:Limits to human perception.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never been on a street corner too poorly lit to tell what color the stop sign is. Red is a Very Easy to see color, Even at night and under poor lighting conditions. Unless you suffer from a form of color blindness, that is. yes, under poor lighting conditions the ability to guage color drops sharply. That doesn't mean it goes away entirely. I personally have never been in a situation nor can I create one where everything appears only as black or white gradients.
As for your hearing droping out at 18Khz that's pretty sad because I can hear a pure 20Khz in fact my range Starts cutting off in the 21100-21200 Hz using a simple tone genenrator to test (albeit, it could just be a malfunction in the equipment I'm using) it doesn't even completely cut off there, it just becomes harder to tell if it's a tone or just the buzz of the speakers I'm hearing. I also start noticing at around 6-7 hz, but that's probablly because of the subwoofer. Oh hey don't forget, just because you can't 'hear' it doesn't mean it can't effect how you 'hear' the 'audible' portion of the audio spectrum. many people can tell the difference between a 'set of speakers playing a recorded guitar' and 'a real live person, playing guitar' Why? because speakers don't reproduce the whole effect of the sound. They only immitate it. We mount speakers inside wood boxes to mask the tinny effect of using vibrating metal to reproduce sounds.

Re:Limits to human perception.

[Sycraft-fu]

I dunno. I can hear a 20khz tone played through my speakers. I have to boost it to a significantly higher volume than likea 1khz tone, of course, but I can hear it.

Re:Limits to human perception.

[Rothron the Wise]

You assume that the highest harmonics used to
"sharpen" the sawtooth wave is indetecable to
the human ear because the highest sine component
cannot be heard alone, is unfounded and probably
an oversimplification of how human hearing works.

Just because you CAN model sound as a sum of sine
waves of different frequencies and amplitudes does
not mean that this is what sound _is_. Nor does it
mean that that is how human hearing works.

I would not be surprised if some people can hear the inadequacies of CD-audio, altough it probably requires a trained ear.

nooo

[handsome_robot]

Damn! I had several dozen of these things on pre-order, too.

My plans to build a hovercraft are smoot!!

*shakes fist upwardly*

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.

Re:hmph. not really surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt what he's saying. I've got three Diamond TNT2 Ultra from way back (1999) and they're all working fine up to this day running XP and games like Ghost Recon.

I think there's a propaganda to spread fud and tarnish Nvidia.

From my experiece I've had much better luck with Nvidia than ATI. I gave up on their drivers way back. Also, when I was working at a major distributor/manufacturer, ATI managed to stop PC production. They sent us a batch of video cards that caused a scrambled display at a certain resolution. It turns out they switched memory vendor and didn't perform adequate regression testing.

This is what happened to ATI with Rage 128

[Anonymous Coward]

Back a few years ago, ATI had the lead in first sampling with the Rage 128 over the Nvidia TNT. ATI had an amazing launch in Toronto and blew away the press. Nvidia was quaking in its boots.

However, the change to .25 micron technology (along with some interesting - read poor - design decisions) caused ATI a delay of 6 months before it truly got any production quantities out - and these were chips that weren't performing at expected clock rates.

This is when Nvidia seized the lead and never looked back - until now. They killed ATI with their rock solid 6 month new product launch cycles.

Now ATI has the chance to be in front for the foreseeable future.

Both Nvidia and ATI have great teams of people and this battle of the champions benefits everyone interested in graphics.

Finally, the secret's out!

[Brown]

So this is why they bought 3DFX's IP. Presumably 3DFX had patented this business model? :-)

Maybe this way they can change name to 3DFX as well before the end...

- Chris

Re:hmph. not really surprised

[Ziviyr]

Maybe you just use really nasty power supplies?

Thats alot of dying you're seeing...

Ultra cancelation.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just love this part of the headline :-)

Facts for the Board of Directors

[Anonymous Coward]

My uncle is the Chief Financial Officer of Nvidia, and he is quoted saying "The card is going to retail, no need to worry"
Now get over it. Next Thread please

Re:Facts for the Board of Directors

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting, so how can we confirm this? or is this another rumor to add to the list's?

ATI drivers

[ThurstonMoore]

Even without the Ultra card nVidia will be fine. Hardware is not the only thing that makes a card, drivers are more important. Anyone who has ever owned an ATI card knows just how hideous the drivers are. (hideous is almost too kind)

Re:ATI drivers

[La Temperanza]

Yes, us FreeBSD users all love how dedicated NVidia is at keeping our cards supported and ultra-stable under the latest versions, compared to that lazy drm-kmod guy and his crappy Radeon drivers :)

Drop dead^H^H^H^H that stupid shit

[Anonymous Coward]

^H^O^M^O

Re:ATI Still Not There

[Anonymous Coward]

3 grand for a mobility m4?!?

They are up to mobility M9, and soon M10. Don't blame ATI because you paid too much money for an outdated product. A m4 is older than your TNT2.

Pure poetry

[badasscat]

Am I the only one that sees how freakin' poetic this is? This card was touted as the first real tangible result of the marriage between NVidia and 3Dfx (one of the reasons for the "FX" moniker, supposedly), and the company's having the exact same problems as 3Dfx did with their Voodoo 4 and 5's. Namely, that they're not as fast as people expected, they use too much power and generate too much heat. And their competition is passing them by.

Still, I don't see NVidia in the same precarious position as 3Dfx was at the time. NVidia likes to point out that after the latest Radeons were released by ATI, NVidia's market share actually went up, not down. The super-performance market is actually a very small market, and NVidia still offers the best value out there for mainstream users in the GeForce 4 Ti4200. For most people, the extra $250 they'd spend on a Radeon 9700 Pro vs. a Ti4200 is just not worth it - the extra few frames per second you'd get in most games are generally not even that noticeable, and there are a lot of better ways to spend that money. I don't really think NVidia's got a lot to worry about, then - unless the performance gulf and manufacturing problems become so pronounced that public perception (or misperception) filters down to even the mainstream products (as has been ATI's bugaboo over the years).

Still, it looks like the GeForce FX has been NVidia's first real dud in some time. No doubt the "stock" FX 5800's will be a good value once the NV35 is released (just as the Ti4200's are a good value now), but at the moment the card doesn't seem to really fit in any niche. Performance gamers will choose the Radeon 9700 Pro, mainstream gamers will choose the Ti4200, and low-end or business users will continue choosing ultra low-cost but perfectly capable cards like the GeForce 2 Ti.

Re:Pure poetry

[Anonymous Coward]

plot by nvidia to offload 3dfx personel who were a requirement of the deal to get 3dfx tech? Declare this chip as first venture between nvidia and 3dfx peoples, point out it was their most expensive development period to date: 500M, have it mirror the failings of 3dfx's last chips before expiring, actually build it with it's unrealistic characteristics and then pull from market before arriving. last step: all fingers point to 3dfx as cause, fire them all. result: now have 3dfx tech without the baggage? ...

Re:Pure poetry

[Anonymous Coward]

EXTRA $250US????? I got a 9700 for $350 Canadian and we all know that Canadian bucks are 60% of US bucks, right?

Re:Pure poetry

[Splab]

What a load of bullshit!
How can you compare the ATI flagship with nVidia's "not-so-high-end" card? shouldnt you be comparing it with TI-4600? Which as I write this is still costing more than 9700 pro... Shouldnt you compare 9500 pro with ti-4200? (9500 tags in about 100$ cheaper than ti-4200 here)

Re:Pure poetry

[Grip3n]

NVidia still offers the best value out there for mainstream users in the GeForce 4 Ti4200

Then you obviously haven't heard of ATI's Radeon 9000 Pro which performs exactly like a GeForce Ti4200 but is actually lower in price.

Re:Pure poetry

[Sycraft-fu]

Not sure it is really a dud. We'll see how the consumer 8500 does (non Ultra). There are plenty of people that like and will only use nVidia products. I happen to be one of them. I, at this point, feel that nVidia cards offer stability that ATi card cannot so I use and recommend them for bussiness or gaming.

Also, they now have their DX9 platform. If their tradition holds true the next several cards released will be refinements on the current technology, rather than redesigns.

I think we are seeing something kinda of like the Athlon-P4 battle on the processor side of things. nVidia has slipped up for the first time really, but that doesn't mean they are out of it. Also one thing that noone seems to really notice is that the FX is far more programmable than the Radeon 9k series. It may end up that this doesn't matter, but it may also be a distinct edge.

Re:Pure poetry

[Anonymous Coward]

Following your link to toms discredits your statement. Based on the benchmarks, it's closest to a gf4 mx 440 8x.

Re:Pure poetry

[PCBman!]

Holy Cow man!!! Where do you live?!? The 9500 Pro should be more like $25 to $50 more then the Ti4200.

Quote

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nvidia thought they were buying 100 3dfx engineers, little did they know it was the management team in disguise."

wow..

[Anonymous Coward]

People still play games on PCs? How.. quaint.

Good thing ATI got their act together.

[Kong99]

I am not a Nvidia or ATI homer. I do have 2 GeForce cards that have performed well. It is too bad that the GFFX Ultra is a bust but I am very glad that we have competition in the video market. That is what we the customers want. Good products at fair market prices. Imagine what the press would be on the GFFX if the Radeon 9000 family had been a bust??? Not to mention the price.

Try this (and mod me up even tho i'm A.C. himself)

[Anonymous Coward]

Create a black picture at your screen resolution. Now draw two big filled boxes, exactly adjacent to each other, with colors (150,150,150) and (151,151,151). See the difference? Thought so. Could you imagine an intermediate color? Yessir.

Re:Important? (NOT)

[frovingslosh]

Of course its important.

Do any of you insightful people understand that you just can't display 2000+ fps on a video monitor (and LCD displays are even slower than CRT's)? OK, just maybe a frame rate above 30 fps might help a little, but if your system is actualy spending cpu power on rendering any more than the useful number of video frames, then it's really wasing time that it could be better spending on user input or data transfer or something else that really does matter in the game. Of course, this delay is also very small, so only hair splitting fanatics would care about it, but those are just the people going after unrealistically high frame rates.

Of course, more video power can be applied other ways that do help the user, such as higher resolution, better lighting effects, and so on, but that isn't the issue that many here seem to care about - they just want frame rates that their video display is never going to show, so even if they foolishly think their eye can extremely high frame rates, they miss the basic truth that vido cards could get 100 times faster, but more frames will never reach their eyes.

Re:Try this (and mod me up even tho i'm A.C. himse

[Anonymous Coward]

That was never in question. The question was (150,150,150) vs. (150,151,150) (we are most sensitive to green).

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.

Re:Canned milk for canned cows

[delus10n0]

Good god people, 3D/FX died because it clung to it's own proprietary graphics interface. Overpriced hardware didn't help things, but it's main downfall was not embracing Direct3D and OpenGL when it had the chance.

Re:Canned milk for canned cows

[Graymalkin]

Glide's problems were the icing on the cake for 3Dfx, not the cause of its troubles. Their Glide/OpenGl problems stemmed from the larger problem of the company wearing blinders with regard to their competition. They couldn't bring themselves to see nVidia and ATi were releasing chips that blew the Voodoo3 out of water. They seriously overestimated the loyalty of their customer base and the volitility of the market. They were competing in a market where a six month delay means a serious ass kicking. Now nVidia seems to be following suit, they have aggressive development strategies but they really seem to think their customers will stick with whatever crap they decide to throw them even if its six months late and under performing. This is why I draw parallels between 3Dfx and nVidia.

New video cards = quality first, *then* speed

[robson]

We'll be pushing the performance barrier for a long time to come. Sure, nobody needs to run GlQuake at 300 fps, or Quake 3 at 120 fps, but Doom 3 will only run at 30 fps (for example.)

New video card technology means speed in old games and features/visual quality in new games. I can guarantee you that no matter how advanced video cards have gotten in 5 years, artists and designers will still be able to generate content that slows the game to a crawl ;)

To those who think card's are fast enough

[be-fan]

1) Take a look at the polygon counts of a PS2 game. Even brand new games like Battlefield 1942 still have really blocky (polygon-wise) graphics. Until the average polygon is about the size of a pixel onscreen (taking into account LOD meshes) then the poly counnt will be high enough.
2) Try doing a realistic lighting engine. Even Doom III cheats. The best algorithms available right now for doing realistic shadows requires re-rendering the scene once from the perspective of each light. In a cathedral-type scene (with as many light sources as windows) would absolutely crawl.

that's too bad

[spazoid12]

I love the ATI 9700, but ATI seems to be in need of some pressure (ie. competition) to keep up work on the still buggy drivers.

Re:hmph. not really surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes I recently got a Radeon 9700 but I used an Nvidia TNT, GeForce 2 MX and GeForce 3 ti200 without ever having any heat or death problems.

Re:hmph. not really surprised

[tvadakia]

I've had three nVidia cards - all of them worth it - none of them died on me. In fact, two of them got overclocked and didn't even flinch. No lockups, nottin'.

1. GeForce 2 MX
2. GeForce3
3. Elsa Gloria DCC

After working on a large number of customers machines for four years, no one will be able to convince me to buy ATI. Of the three nVidia cards I've owned and all the OEM nVidia cards our company has put into machines (hundreds), only one card came back with a problem and it was from an overclocking issue.

WHAT IS THE REFRESH RATE OF MY MANITOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

90 twinks per second!

Re:ATI Still Not There

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, I have never had a single graphics card die.
I have used multiple cards from both ATI an NVidia, as well as #9, trident, cirrus logic...
I have at least 10 computers with graphics cards that are older than 5 years and NONE EVER DIED.
Your statement only tells me that you probably dont know what you are doing with hardware maintenence.

Haven't I heard this somewhere before...?

[TheDealer]

Anyone remember the much-hyped VooDoo5 6000? Supposed to be a beast of a card, but its sheer complexity required so many layers in the PCB that it was almost impossible to build them successfully in any kind of quantity.

Was planning one of the 3Dfx "assets" that NVIDIA acquired?

Take a look at the bigger picture

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations, you have all clearly been sucked into the Nvidia hating. If the Ultra is cancelled, it will be the best possible thing for Nvidia to do. Why? Because their profit margins on even high end cards like this are insignificant compared to their Quadro cards. Look at the latest benches from www.xbitlabs.com. Cancellation of this card will mean more chips that can be used for these killer workstation cards. So yes, they are behind in gaming for now, but that doesn't mean the company is going bankrupt. Just look at Matrox. Why haven't they gone under? Because they recognized the need for a market that they could provide for, and they are surviving today.
That said, I'm buying a Radeon 9700 or greater for my next gaming machine.

Obligatory Beavis & Butt-Head ref...

[Anonymous Coward]

Butt-head: Huh huh huh...you said 'nads.

Beavis: Yeah! You said...heh heh m heh heh...you said...heh heh m heh heh...

Not surprising really.

[Performer Guy]

This all started with the inquirer, but even they said NVIDIA had requested 100,000 parts before they stop production. NV35 is due in less than 6 months so this isn't too surprising. NV30 is late and theyr'e going onto the next part sooner. It seems the story is getting more hysterical and distorted by each subsequent report.

Not 3DFX, 3dfx.

[Namarrgon]

Actually, 3DFX changed their own name to 3dfx, before the end...

Motion Blur

[OzRoy]

The other thing not taken into account is Motion Blur. In a movie which plays at approx 25fps if anything moves quickly then you get natural motion blur in the frame, so to the eye it looks natural, no stuttering, and all smooth. In a game however you can't do that. Every frame is a clean crisp frame with no motion blur at all. So if anything moves Really quickly, then it will get noticably jittery. Like a strobe I guess.

well....

[xintegerx]

Wow, that's an innovative product name. I wonder how good it is? lol

We might find out really soon. Clearly, the Editor knows something we don't, and mistakingly announced nvidia's latest FX card version "Cancelation" (TM) without realizing it.

HA HA HA! This is /., so the two conclusions are false:

1) slashdot announcing something new instead of duplicates from other tech sites (and /. own articles)

2) an editor who edited the title correctly

3) ???*

4) Profit* :)

*=Required items on numerical lists posted on /.

Re:hmph. not really surprised

[netwiz]

well, I also know people who have really good luck w/ their products. All I'm saying is that in several years, I've had lots of stuff fail. Now, I leave the machine on constantly. And I do know that each time I get weirdness (polys dropping out in games, screen corruption in Windows) a new card fixes it. It's not possible to simply replace a piece of hardware and have the problem go away w/o it being the hardware that was replaced. The killer for each of these cards was to move them into a different system (and I mean completely. Like going from Intel to AMD), and the problems follow the card. I've never had thermal problems with any other bits of hardware, neither have I run into stuff that's this touchy.

In any event, it's probably that fact that my job function in the computer industry is primarily troubleshooting. Hardware hates me. I just lost _another_ supervisor module in a Cisco 6509 (this is the eleventh), in a datacenter environment. Best thing is that it looks like it may actually be the back plane this time, making it the second in two years. And this is for ENTERPRISE-CLASS hardware. I won't go into the details, but let's say that in those same three years, we've had 40 RMAs for major components, at a cost of around a quarter mil to Cisco. But I digress.

I guess to be honest, I've got the worst luck with video hardware my friends have ever seen. And I'll leave it at that.

In related news...

[demonbug]

Nvidia today announced the release of the Geforce FX 5801 Extreme Insane Machine, to be released soon after the 5800. When asked what improvements this would carry over the regular 5800, a spokesman replied that it would be much better than the 5800, and only the shiniest and bestest FX cores would be marked with the sought-after 5801 EIM logo. In addition, rather than the 5801 will feature a larger, more powerful cooling solution that "really unlocks the potential of the Geforce FX core". When a clerk in the local COmpUSA was asked by a spoiled rich kid what was better about the 5801 than the 5800, the reply was (of course), "well, its one higher, isn't it."

FYI: bug isnt fixed...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.quake3world.com/ubb/Forum9/HTML/000811. html#14

Re:FYI: bug isnt fixed...

[error0x100]

This appears to be a different or related bug. The original 125 fps bug is most definitely fixed: you cannot use 125 fps anymore to jump up to the megahealth in dm13.

Re:hmph. not really surprised

[Duds]

My Geforce 1 has a truly bizzare fault.

It works fine until you try to do anything 3D. I.e - you can pootle around Windows or Linux as long as you like and it's rock stable.

The second you start a D3D or OpenGL app? BLAM. PC Hangs.

And I've tried it in 4 totally seperate PCs now with the same result.

Still, nice server card :p

Oh nooooo!!!

[supergiovane]

I was waiting for this card to switch from my 3Dfx Voodoo 5 6000!

Re:outdated Q3 engine?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm curious about contemporary game engines and how they supercede Q3's. The only ones I know of would be the latest Unreal and whatever drives BF1942. What features do these engines have that Q3's engine doesn't? MOHAA certainly doesn't look like "Asteroids" in comparison. Does anyone have a list of all the games that use the Q3 engine?

GFFX chip design was finished 5-6 months ago

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah, in defense of Nvidia, the Gforce FX design was pretty much solidified 5-6 months ago. When it would've beaten the Radeon 9700 to market by a few months and by this time we would have had a new set of drivers which would solidly secure the performance lead for Nvidia for yet another product cycle. Unfortunately for Nvidia, they chose to go with the untested .13 micron process, which unfortunately screwed them in the ass. TMSC, the fab company they contracted too has been struggling with refining and getting the bugs outta their .13 production process for over a year apparently. Now granted, had they gone .15 micron, they would not be able to clock as high, and the Radeon 9700 would have given strong competition but regardless, had the chip come out when planned, we would be looking at an entirely different situation.

FUD Alert!

[delus10n0]

You care to post some evidence or official statement or ____ to back this up?

Re:hmph. not really surprised

[delus10n0]

Sounds like you're either letting your hardware burn up (not enough case ventilation?) or you have power issues, or something unrelated to the nVidia card.

I'll match your list. I've owned a TNT2, a GeForce1, two Geforce2's, a GeForce3 (and GF3 Ti500), a VantaLE, and I have never once had a problem with them.

Re:hmph. not really surprised

[delus10n0]

Sounds like you had some software issues, or a hardware conflict.

There's also the possibility that maybe you don't have a large enough power supply. When the GF1 first came out, people were trying to run it on dinky 150/200watt PS's, and that just doesn't cut it. Especially with older motherboards that don't properly handle AGP voltages.

Re:Try this (and mod me up even tho i'm A.C. himse

[andrewscraig]

But if you can imagine a difference in between (150, 150, 150) & (151, 151, 151) then there is still room for improvement in the graphics cards -- as this indicates that there isn't enough room in the greyscale world (indeed, with only 256 shades of grey, there is certainly scope to improve!)

Re:hmph. not really surprised

[Duds]

Again, 4 computers, from the K6-2 that was its home and another K6-2 to a Celeron to a Duron some time later. Same issue.

And it was a 300W PSU :)

I will buy an nVidia product even if it is slower

[EMiniShark]

than the competing ATI product (of the same generation) and I will wait for the nVidia product if nVidia is a generation behind, for one reason: drivers. nVidia improves their products by leaps and bounds by the timely and frequent release of supporting software. Makes me feel like im being taken care of as a customer.

Last Post!

[alpg]

`Lasu' Releases SAG 0.3 -- Freeware Book Takes Paves For New World Order
by staff writers

Helsinki, Finland, August 6, 1995 -- In a surprise movement, Lars
``Lasu'' Wirzenius today released the 0.3 edition of the ``Linux System
Administrators' Guide''. Already an industry non-classic, the new
version sports such overwhelming features as an overview of a Linux
system, a completely new climbing session in a tree, and a list of
acknowledgements in the introduction.
The SAG, as the book is affectionately called, is one of the
corner stones of the Linux Documentation Project. ``We at the LDP feel
that we wouldn't be able to produce anything at all, that all our work
would be futile, if it weren't for the SAG,'' says Matt Welsh, director
of LDP, Inc.
The new version is still distributed freely, now even with a
copyright that allows modification. ``More dough,'' explains the author.
Despite insistent rumors about blatant commercialization, the SAG will
probably remain free. ``Even more dough,'' promises the author.
The author refuses to comment on Windows NT and Windows 96
versions, claiming not to understand what the question is about.
Industry gossip, however, tells that Bill Gates, co-founder and CEO of
Microsoft, producer of the Windows series of video games, has visited
Helsinki several times this year. Despite of this, Linus Torvalds,
author of the word processor Linux with which the SAG was written, is
not worried. ``We'll have world domination real soon now, anyway,'' he
explains, ``for 1.4 at the lastest.'' ...
-- Lars Wirzenius
[comp.os.linux.announce]

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