NVIDIA's Lead Scientist Interviewed

rtt writes "bit-tech.net has up an interview with NVIDIA's chief scientist, David Kirk, about the PlayStation 3, next-generation architectures and what to expect in PC gaming. From the article: 'We're going to see the next generation of shader-based games. At the first generation, we saw people using a shader to emulate the hardware pipeline, and finding "Hey - this really is programmable". After that, they tried to do a few things with more lights, using perhaps eight instead of ten. Then they started to write material shaders, and they made great cloth and metal effects that we saw. People are now starting to change the lighting model, and are exploring the things that they can do with that.'"

Comments

Of course

[2.7182]

they don't discuss the bus problems that have been rumored about...

Re:Of course

[eugene259]

how about providing a link to these problems you are talking about? I googled for 'ps3 bus problems' and didn't find much at all apart from a bunch of people in some forums theorizing about with no actual data or numbers to back them up... For now the emphasis should definitely be 'rumored about' because people say all sorts of stuff but if it is not backed up it is not worth much, especially before the product is out.

Re:Of course

[Keith Russell]

What the crap? Unqualified rumour-mongering gets +1 Insightful?!

Dear Moderator, are you an ATI fanboy, an XBox 360 fanboy, or just a moron?

Ha ha, lights.

[robyannetta]

Who cares how many lights the chipsets can emulate when the games themselves still suck?

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[timerider]

word.

it'll be the same games, just with "better" graphics.

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[caluml]

A mod point, a mod point, my root password for a mod point. I'm back playing smaller games that are addictive: www.happypenguin.org

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[paulsgre]

The worst part is that rendering 10 lights instead of two means five programmers instead of one. Rising costs of development and demand for more glorified tech demos is demeaning the art form, and preventing widespread recognition as such. The potential creative geniuses of our time will be turned off games as a medium, or the next Stravinsky may end up coding 5 more shaders for the reflection in a visor instead of writing the algorithm that rocks the interactive world like the next "Rite of Spring"

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[Yusaku Godai]

Gee, how did I know someone would say that?

A kinda unfair blanket statement, don't you think? Sure a lot of game makers are going to focus more on graphical tricks and less on gameplay, but that's almost always been the case, regardless of the level of technology. It's unfair to those who can balance good gameplay and graphics without compromising either. And yes, they do still exist, and there are plenty of them.

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[Threni]

> Who cares how many lights the chipsets can emulate when the games themselves
> still suck?

Such hypothetical scenarios only interest me whilst great games like Battlefield 2 are loading up. Once it's loaded I forgot all about them. If you're pining after all that simplistic retro shit you get bored with after 43 seconds it's gathering dust over there in the corner.

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[mccalli]

He's at nVidea - he's describing his job, and gameplay isn't it. Lack of gampleay is an accusation to be thrown at the software houses, not at nVidea.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[Laser Lou]

Who cares how many lights the chipsets can emulate when the games themselves still suck?

I do. I consider graphics to be an important quality in games. If a game looks bad but plays well, I probably won't play it. I certainly wouldn't pay money for it. If graphics didn't matter, I'd still be playing games on a Commodore 64.

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[theantipop]

It's better than a shitty game with bad graphics.

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[yammosk]

There are only... FOUR... lights...

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[B5_geek]

Excellent obscure refrence.
7 out of 10 stars!

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[quantum bit]

Not that obscure. As soon as I saw the comment title I was waiting for someone to say that :)

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[eric_brissette]

I don't think he's saying that graphics don't matter... just that they might not be the biggest part of what makes a game fun to play.

In other words, Need For Speed: Dumb Ricer Edition is going to be lame no matter how pretty they make it.

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[Kjella]

If that was true then why do they sell as well? Why don't good gameplay sell games? We're spoiled. I admit it, after seeing what a game *could* look like, you want games that *do* look like that. I once thought VGA graphics and 386 speeds rocked too. But if I ever go back there, it sucks. Bigtime. I play old games and wish they'd been done in ultra-super-extra-something-something-resolution. It is for nostalgia I play them, even if the gameplay is good.

Besides, I don't think the games "suck" as such. The reality is there's not that many genres to pick from, and most games are now just fine-tuning the recipe. That also makes it less likely that I'll put down the money for a new version, but they are by no means poor games. It's just that I've essentially played this game before.

Sure you might change a few names and units and whatnot, and there's usually some sort of minor GUI/gameplay tweaks to make it feel more smooth. But most of the time, if you asked someone with no experience with either game they'd usually favor the newer, but it is still the *same* game as far as I'm concerned. This isn't something new. The first clear example I could think of was Wing Commander -> Wing Commander II (1991). It was better than the first, but it was boring because I had all the skills down from WC and finished it in 8 days. To put it that way, it wasn't something I felt like paying for.

Kjella

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[Anonymous Coward]

As soon as I saw the comment title I was waiting for someone to say that

I was hoping that nobody had yet posted the comment so that I could. It would've been even funnier if CleverNickName would've said the "four lights" response first.

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[hackwrench]

Picard is an idiot

From Patch Adams: How many fingers do you see.

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[Have Blue]

Yeah, because every single movie ever made after sound, color, and CGI were invented has totally sucked. Whatever. Technology and creativity evolve hand-in-hand, and Sturgeon's Law holds now as it has held in the past and will hold in the future.

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[grumbel]

### I once thought VGA graphics and 386 speeds rocked too. But if I ever go back there, it sucks.

A few month ago I played XCom:UFO for the first time ever, so no nostalgica involved and suprise, suprise it didn't suck, it was simple one of the best games I have played in the last few years, even by todays standards. An interesting side node it that XCom has completly destroyable terrain, sure its all just 2d tile graphics, but destroyable terrain is something that almost no 3d game these days has gotten right.

I don't mind if graphics are good, but quite often the better graphics actually limit the gameplay in harmfull ways (no destroyable terrain, no huge outdoor szenarios, etc.).

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[Chosen Reject]

Yeah, what is a hardware company doing making better hardware!?! Didn't they know they were supposed to be making better games!?!

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[paulsgre]

I am not saying that the system won't self-correct over an extended period of time. Clearly, at some point we will reach diminishing returns on pure graphical power and more resources will eventually be diverted back to the things that truly make a good experience. However, there is an entire generation of talent that may be turned off by the whole system right now. I agree that technology can enhance creativity, but the technologies that facilitate creativity are not the ones being fostered. Game artists are not exploring the power of manipulating and being manipulated by imagery when they must double the polygons and specular highlights on the 3d-model of an uninspired goth-soldier. It is slowing down the art- there's a reason demon-zombie killing gore fests are still what most people consider a "game". Sure, a few people are struggling to foster true art, but the focus problems in the industry are what will make the difference between calling our era a "reniassance" or a "relic".

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[AvitarX]

Silent storm is very similar and fun, FWIW (well the fight parts anyway).

Also, UFO:AI http://ufo.myexp.de/?id=news is an example of the game with better graphics (though lacking a large part of the game (like randomness and base).

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[pVoid]

Uhm, so can someone clearup what the obscur reference is about?

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[kisielk]

I LOVED destroyable terrain in X-Com! No game has got the concept right since then. It was awesome tossing grenades around and blowing up walls of houses, hopefully taking out some aliens in the process ;)

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[Jugalator]

Who cares how many lights the chipsets can emulate when the games themselves still suck?

So, please enlighten us on what you'd like to see then? Maybe we'd even get a discussion going? You'd like to see Civilization IV? Or what?? You're apparently not pleased with FPS games since the market is choking on them?

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[Hythlodaeus]

There are FOUR lights!

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[skarphace]

1984 or StarTrek. Which ever is more geeky.

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[SpryGuy]

I wish I could mod the parent "+1 Gratuitously brilliant (pun intended) Star Trek reference"

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this nVidea you speak of? I thought the guy worked at NVIDIA.

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[wrecked]

Definitely one of the best squad-based, tactical games ever. Check out UFO 2000 a GPL'd clone of XCOM that claims to have multiplayer support. You need the data files from XCOM, however. Looks interesting, but I haven't tried it.

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[SEGT]

It shouldn't mean more programmers at all. When he is talking about lights he is talking about implementing them with shaders, which an artist can conceptualize and create. Then its essentially drag and drop into the game and it just works. No more programmers required.

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[woah]

Which ever is more geeky.

That would be Star Trek. 1984 is a classic.

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[RovingSlug]

I recently re-played though Star Control 2 -- which has been open sourced. It's definitely still a great game.

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[JLF65]

And of course they got that from Blue Max. Remember that? It was an old 8bit flying game with fully destroyable background. It was also an isometric scrolling game simulating 3D. VERY advanced for the times. It was fun to fly around and bomb roads, and houses, and cars...

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[PsiPsiStar]

Which, in its turn, refered to 1984.

From Wikipedia.

"Chain of Command", a famous episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which Jean-Luc Picard is tortured in a fashion similar to that of Winston Smith. Just as Smith is repeatedly shown a hand with four fingers and tortured until he will agree that he actually sees five, Picard is tortured by a Cardassian sadist and is asked to see five lights when there are only four.

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[slaida1]

No you wouldn't, I dare you. ;) Compare two space pirate games for example: Elite on C64 and Independence War 2 on PC.

Other has newtonian physics model (or something) which means that objects continue on their paths and collisions are accurate. And it has much more gadgets like multiple autopilots, repair priorities, more weapon systems and everything.

Or, compare two RPG/adventure games: Master of Magic on C64 and um, uh ok so you got me there. Maybe Silent Hill comes close but it's not that much better, if any, than MoM.

Re:Ha ha, lights.

[slavemowgli]

I aqgree with that. Good graphics are good, obviously, but good graphics alone don't make a good game, just like good (well-executed) special effects don't make a good movie. One classic example of this is DOOM, probably - it's more than 11 years old now, but there's still a vibrant community, with lots of new levels being released each week, demos being recorded, and advanced versions being worked on. Sure, the graphics of even the most advanced versions suck when you compare them to modern egoshooters. But the game itself just has that "special something" that makes it a timeless classic; everything fits together *perfectly*, and it continues to be loads of fun even after almost a dozen years. This is something that pretty much no other FPS game has achieved that I'm aware of. Earlier games like Wolfenstein 3D do have their following, but it's only a few people that still play them, for the most part; newer games like Quake are also still being played, but not to the same extent as DOOM. And games from the same time, such as Rise of the Triad, Descent, Duke Nukem 3D or Strife, are completely forgotten nowadays.

holy-bad-at-math-batman

[Anonymous Coward]

"After that, they tried to do a few things with more lights, using perhaps eight instead of ten. "

I wish I had more money. Like 50 bucks instead of 100 bucks.

Re:holy-bad-at-math-batman

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I had more money. Like 50 bucks instead of 100 bucks.

Greetings! May I interest you in the myriad of financial services I offer?

Re:holy-bad-at-math-batman

[TomorrowPlusX]

I have to assume that was an honest mixup, either on the part of the interviewer or just absent-mindedness on the part of the engineer.

In my experience, OpenGL ( and presumably DirectX since the two are just APIs for the same hardware, but I could be wrong ) default to a max of eight lights. So, using shaders to emulate 10 or more lights would make sense.

Re:holy-bad-at-math-batman

[Zwets]

Wish I had points, I would mod this up. ;-))

Re:holy-bad-at-math-batman

[Anonymous Coward]

"myriad" == "many", conceptually and syntactically

You meant to say, "May I interested you in the myriad financial services I offer?" (note the lack of "of")

Re:holy-bad-at-math-batman

[Anonymous Coward]

many

n. (used with a pl. verb)

1. A large indefinite number: A good many of the workers had the flu.

myriad
adj.

1. Constituting a very large, indefinite number; innumerable: the myriad fish in the ocean.
2. Composed of numerous diverse elements or facets: the myriad life of the metropolis.

n.

1. A vast number: the myriads of bees in the hive.

Usage Note: Throughout most of its history in English myriad was used as a noun, as in a myriad of men. In the 19th century it began to be used in poetry as an adjective, as in myriad men. Both usages in English are acceptable, as in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Myriad myriads of lives." This poetic, adjectival use became so well entrenched generally that many people came to consider it as the only correct use. In fact, both uses in English are parallel with those of the original ancient Greek.

(note the presence of "of")
Now go away.

Re:holy-bad-at-math-batman

[mikael]

For basic bump-mapping effects with OpenGL shaders you can have any number of single diffuse point or directional light sources, with optional gloss maps and specular lighting. You can skip using the OpenGL lightsource state and just store the light source positions/directions as texture data instead.

But when you want to use hardware-assisted shadow mapping, the number of light sources is limited by the number of free texture units. Since one texture unit is used for the base detail with transparency, and another unit for the bump-map with gloss data, this leaves N-2 texture units available for lighting.

If you want projective shadowed bump-mapped materials, then you will need two textures per light source (shadow map + projective texture map).

So, as the shading model becomes more advanced, you have fewer light sources available for single pass rendering. After that, you have to resort to multiple pass rendering for each lightsource.

Re:holy-bad-at-math-batman

[CityZen]

I believe the previous common number of lights was TWO.

Re:holy-bad-at-math-batman

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out Wikipedia.

Note that classically, myriad was literally "10,000". It can still be used the same way in English, though it is less common.

From the above page, when used as an adjective:
Incorrect Usage: There are a myriad of people outside.
Correct Usage: There is a myriad of people outside.
Correct Usage: There are myriad people outside.

So for the great-grandparent post...

"May I interest you in the myriad of financial services I offer?"

Seems to be technically correct, but awkward. Perhaps he offers precisely 10,000 financial services? If he gains or loses one, though, it's time to call the BBB.

Re:holy-bad-at-math-batman

[ArsonSmith]

so the 10 is actually binary?

Hey! Good thing the PS3 isn't due out soon!

[Chordonblue]

If the XBOX 360 gets a 6 month jump on Sony, the results by the time the PS3 launches will be obvious. Sony's hardware may be more powerful in some respects, but the amount of work that needs to be done by the programmers is daunting.

While actual code is being written on the 360 side, my guess is the coders on the PS3 side are doing what this article suggests - feeling out the hardware. It means that a lot of the development environment is unfinished or at least unkempt. You've got a lot of power there, but learning to wield it is going to take quite some time - ESPECIALLY with the Cell processor.

Re:Hey! Good thing the PS3 isn't due out soon!

[should_be_linear]

The real life picture is, however, exactly oposite. On XBox you will have to re-design your game to use 3 threads(!) (not 2, not 4) to get predictable fluid parallel performance. This is *very* difficult to do (debugging nightmare). Game (and other) developers are very much used to single thread. Sony came up with better idea: Cell chip has parallel vector units that will be used by low-level libs (well tested and stable). Libs will be both provided by Sony and later by engine companies themself. Game programmer is simply writing single-threaded app, as he always did, but using these libs as much as possible (even OpenGL libs will use them). Your app is under the hood running 1-8 way parallel, depending on how much you use those libs. Isn't that better idea then 3-thread SMP approach? For me as a developer yes!

Re:Hey! Good thing the PS3 isn't due out soon!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is somewhat accurate.

The 360 is turning out to be a nightmare to code for. We are most likely going to end up seeing games that are basically one and a half thread, with the half thread being some sound and or physics running for part of a frame, games that perform around the level of current pc hardware.

Reading up on the Broadband/Cell stuff it is clear that the parallelism is of a entirely different nature. You break your workload down into self contained units that know how to load and operate on the data they need and you let them go.

The internal ring bus with each of the internal cores all can DMA data on their own asyncronously. I was reading some guy explain what he was doing with an early PS3 devkit and it sounded amazing how he was structuring his code to cascade game processing from one SPE to the next, resulting in insane throughput and getting a insanely high percentage of the PS3's theoretical power.

If developers are doing stuff like that already, the PS3 is going to be a monster of console. I can't wait to get my hands on one.

Re:Hey! Good thing the PS3 isn't due out soon!

[Anonymous Coward]

God DAMN you're an idiot

Re:Hey! Good thing the PS3 isn't due out soon!

[incom]

Xbox fanboys piss me off too, especially the type who refuse to concede even the remotest of possibilities that the ark of gates(360) will not be the vast superior to all transistor based devices ever to be conceived. And those fags who read the MS pr peice on IGN about how much the ps3 sucks are the most annoying tumourous growths to have ever sat their globular hindquarter in front of a keyboard.

Re:Hey! Good thing the PS3 isn't due out soon!

[Have Blue]

What makes you think the same thing can't be done on the 360? Game developers have been gathering and using libraries for years.

Re:Hey! Good thing the PS3 isn't due out soon!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it was 6 threads. 3 cores * 2 hardware threads / core = 6 hardware threads.

Re:Hey! Good thing the PS3 isn't due out soon!

[ad0gg]

Yawn. Multithreading is future. Its very clueless to state that xbox is handicapped because it has 3 threads. (Actually it has 6 threads) Here's what you use your threads for.

Networking

Network game server

AI

Voice Communication

I sure like to see a cell SIMD handle networking for a game. Most of the hardware sites agrees they will have to do it on the main core. So now your networking is competing against game play. AI is also pretty complicated, and requires random access to memory so thats gonna sit on the main core aswell.

And if you using library to hide the 8 simd processors, you obviously have no control on utilization of all 8 simds and your wasting the hardware. I highly doubt any game developer is going to use a library, its more likely they be handcoding instructions for each simd for performance and managing their own simd utilization.

Re:Hey! Good thing the PS3 isn't due out soon!

[Anonymous Coward]

I was reading some guy explain what he was doing with an early PS3 devkit ...

Link, please?

Re:Hey! Good thing the PS3 isn't due out soon!

[KDR_11k]

Can't you split entity behaviour into multiple threads? Games consist of so many independent objects, is it not worth the tradeoff of harder debugging to let all entities run in their own thread or bunch them together so you don't kill the load handler?

Re:Hey! Good thing the PS3 isn't due out soon!

[Anonymous Coward]

well, obviously _you've_ got all the answers

so when's the game coming out?

opinion?

[kc0re]

I am still of the opinion that Doom 3 was the finest lit and rendered game to date. I believe that Doom 3 will change the face of games.

The other game that did alot with lighting was Spliter Cell.. I'd like to hear other's opinions...

Re:opinion?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doom3 is not a game. It's a slightly interactive lighting simulator.

Re:opinion?

[RealityMogul]

My opinion, you're trolling... but I can't resist...

Doom 3 had some decent static lights in it. But they screwed up soooo much with the light that mattered - the flashlight. I don't mean not being able to hold the flashlight and gun at the same time. I mean that the flashlight was technically poorly implemented. For starters, the realism was killed for me immediately by the fact that I could look through the SIDE of the light beam, and the wall I was looking at was illuminated even though the flashlight wasn't even pointed at it.

However, the wall that the light was pointed at was totally black. And don't try to use the flashlight in a large room or long corridor, or on anything up close. You need to be within a certain distance range for it to work acceptably, and even then you also have to be at the right angle.

Re:opinion?

[FidelCatsro]

It will indeed change the face of games , ala sticking a Porsche body kit on a Lada

Re:opinion?

[Psiren]

I am still of the opinion that Doom 3 was the finest lit and rendered game to date.

Which bit? The dark bit at the start, the very dark bit in the middle, or the super dark bit at the end? While there were a few glimpses of very nicely rendered scenes, for the most part it was just too dark to see anything. Plus the game was crap, but that's another matter.

Re:opinion?

[Foolomon]

Doom 3 is like a prostitute. You may think she looks good if you squint but the only memorable thing about her is that her play sucks.

Re:opinion?

[MaestroSartori]

Doom 3 had excellent lighting tech, but did virtually nothing with it coz the levels were all dark.

Deus Ex 2, on the other hand, was rubbish but had a use for good lighting - seeing bad guys round corners because of the shadows they cast, etc. Similar tech, less good looking, rubbish game, but I reckon that's where this kind of thing is taking us :)

Re:opinion?

[saur2004]

Who really GAFs about eye candy when game play sucks?

Re:opinion?

[double-oh three]

Gamma?

Re:opinion?

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding...Doom3 is very disappointing. I've put it on the shelf. For sheer fun and pretty excellent graphics, I'm a big fan of FarCry.

Got it for $14.99 at BestBuy a few weeks ago and I'm a rat on crack for it. Speaking of which, I'm in the Regulator level and can't find the 3rd valve...and I keep getting killed by the escaping steam in the floor. :o)

Re:opinion?

[Anonymous Coward]

OH Please,
you can always turn up the contrast on your monitor!

Re:opinion?

[Shaper_pmp]

And not enough bloody light, at that.

The PS3 Stuff Is Just The Beginning

[Anonymous Coward]

He is pretty tight lipped about what they are doing with Sony and the PS3 in the article. But if you talk to them in person or in some other interviews the NVidia guys are almost gushing with excitment. And they don't hide their relief to be rid of Microsoft.

Slapping a big fat pc video card into a x86 box and then trying to welch out on the contract price when their losses started to mount is now just a painful distant memory now that they are working closely with Sony. Let the guys at ATI take care of that waste of time, there are really exciting things Sony and NVidia are planning together that go beyond the hideous and outdated x86 bus/machine architecture.

The PS3 stuff we are doing now is fucking amazing, I shudder to think what Sony and NVidia are hinting at to come in the future.

Hype or real

[mfloy]

It is going to be interesting to see if this can live up to the hype. As with most technologies, what the developers claim will be possible is usually only possible under restricted circumstances (or not at all). I do expect some great things graphically, since alot of the power from these consoles is from the graphics cards.

The issue of power consumption

[Wills]

What I would like is for nVidia (and ATI) to start making lower power consumption a big goal for their new products. Can't we leave the era of 100-110Watts being the norm for new graphics card such as the GeForce 7800 GTX?

Re:The issue of power consumption

[asliarun]

IMHO, low power consumption might never make sense for nVidia or ATI. Unlike CPUs, cutting-edge GPUs are primarily targetted towards the avid gamer, who's playing his/her game on a desktop. Given this usage model, do you think that ATI or nVidia would refactor their entire design strategy to put power consumption ahead of performance? I don't think so, unless we're talking about mobile GPUs.

For both these companies, their technology leadership is currently defined by the performance of their top-end graphics card. They're also perpetually playing catch-up with each other to reclaim the performance throne, on roughly a 6-month cycle. There's no way that nVidia would be able to command a $600 price tag for their 7800GTX if it gave the same performance as a 6800GT AND only consumed say, 30W. Nobody would buy it.

Re:The issue of power consumption

[Chirs]

Actually, they already are considering it. The 7800GTX has 50% more transistors than the 6800 Ultra, but runs cooler.

Basically they're shutting off portions of the chip when not in use to cut down on power consumption.

This is mentioned briefly at http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/07/07/g70_clock_ speed/
and also at http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=Nzg0LDI=

Re:The issue of power consumption

[Kjella]

Top of the line cards? What are you smoking, if you can lower power output, increase performance. It's the same as Intel/AMDs flagship space heaters. But it all trickles down to us that don't need the bleeding edge of performance too. However, because they can sell low-power chips to laptops for a premium, expect to pay extra for it being very cool. Personally I'm quite happy with a mainstream card, not a huge power drain, but too much to put into a laptop. For a desktop, the value is clearly best there.

Kjella

Re:The issue of power consumption

[Jugalator]

I wouldn't worry about these kind of optimizations really; won't they run into trouble if they don't try to keep down power consumption and heat these days? Or maybe not now, but pretty soon...

Re:The issue of power consumption

[Molochi]

I see your point. I for one don't relish the electricity bill for a pair of 150W (max for pci-e, IMS) video cards running sli with another 130W or so going to the CPU. I don't look foward to the expense of buying an 800W (combined 450-500W OMG!) PSU, or a 200-300 dollar mobo that can handle it all. However, if 150W per slot is possible (i'm not really sure it is) I expect someone to hit it and someone else will pass it by using 12v aux plugs... again. I've learned to make sacrifices in my quest to ay my bills and still be able to buy good scotch (I meant save the environment.) My main computer is now a notebook. It consumes about 17w per hour in max battery mode and I run it that way almost all the time,even when it is plugged in. If I need extra muscle the CPU(PM) and GPU(r9700) are set for full speed. What I would like to see, in addition frequency and component power scaling currently avalable in the hardware, is a piece of monitoring software that would be a combination of Fraps, Rivatuner and SoftFSB. I could set it at say 30FPS and the hardware would scale back whenever it passed that mark.

Re:The issue of power consumption

[Anonymous Coward]

I play video games, and I buy a new nVidia card every few years when there are games that I want to play that benefit from them. I also don't want to play in a space heater, or need to upgrade to a better air conditioner just to play a video game for a few hours. I don't want to have incredibly loud fans in my computer, or have to buy a computer specifically for use for playing video games and not using it most of the time--that's an incredibly expensive game console. There's no requirement that these GPUs reduce performance--Intel and AMD are finding power-saving gains for top-of-the-line products. But I'd definitely buy a 30W 6800GT instead over a volcano, which is by and large why I'm not buying a new video card until they do something about the noise/heat/power of their processors.

Something is missing. . .

[Zobeid]

Here's the most important word that didn't appear anywhere in that article: OpenGL

Re:Something is missing. . .

[Rycross]

I wouldn't say its a niche, since its still in very wide use. Research, special effects production, etc. use it primarily.

The issue is that the game industry is incredibly massive now, so much that its the primary driver in developing new graphics cards. And of course, since DirectX is used by the overwhelming majority of computer games, of course is going to be focused on by nVidia. Gotta sell your product.

Re:Something is missing. . .

[strider44]

lol, easy bullshit. Visible GFX development is run by games, but real GFX development is run by animation and coorperation. Besides, DirectX doesn't actually rule games since it only runs on Windows and XBox, not PS or Nintendo or humble Linux!

Re:Something is missing. . .

[darkwhite]

As far as I know, NVidia's OpenGL drivers contain access to all the exact same features as DirectX (with non-standard extensions to OpenGL if there is no standard for a particular feature, obviously) and are all developed, maintained, updated and released simultaneously. So at least the current market leader appears to disagree with your assessment.

Re:Something is missing. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

>>DirectX doesn't actually rule games since it only runs on Windows and XBox, not PS or Nintendo or humble Linux!

My avatars in the directx games I play on linux would disagree with you. I get faster frame rates on linux too... Cedega does direct x.

While tempermental (some crash when alt+entering out of full screen), the games are actually more stable on linux too, if you don't commit the obvious fouls. There are still a few rough edges on cedega, but it's come very far in the last 6 months even...

I had an Eve-Online instance survive my computer going into sleep mode, while taking my son to Na Na night. Windows XP didn't even survive sleep mode on my desktop, when I was still running it, let alone a direct x game.

I wish people used opengl to do games tho... It's more cross platform, and if Gates and Co. wanted to stop monopolizing the industry, they could make it work as well as it does on linux and focus on an API we can all use, not just MS products. This would make writing drivers easier, coding games easier etc etc etc.

DX needs to go away or become an open standard so everyone can implement it.

Re:Something is missing. . .

[Spy Hunter]

PlayStation 3's development environment is based on OpenGL. That alone makes it hardly a "niche" API. I believe the GameCube also uses OpenGL and Revolution probably will too.

Preach on

[Quiet_Desperation]

Have to agree here. So much of PC gaming seems to be a wankfest between the 3D engine designers to see who can make the coolest effects, and gameplay is treated like afterbirth.

"Wow, this game is pretty! What do I do? Shoot those demons over there? OK. Woo! Now what? Shoot the other demons? ... OK. Um, whee. Now what? ... More demons? Um, ok..."

Then along comes something like Ratchett & Clank or Sly Cooper with cartoony graphics, silly characters and more raw *fun* packed into a single level than most FP shooters have in their entire spans.

Re:Preach on

[ergo98]

Have to agree here. So much of PC gaming seems to be a wankfest between the 3D engine designers to see who can make the coolest effects, and gameplay is treated like afterbirth.

Have you ever thought that perhaps that just isn't your genre? There are a lot of people who get tremendous entertainment out of the latest 3D shootfest (Battlefield 2 is tremendous, Half-Life 2 was superlative, and Doom 3 was pretty good overall). Just because you don't find it fun doesn't mean it isn't fun for other people.

Re:Preach on

[bleckywelcky]

Or you could not get all bent out of shape and realize that the development of Doom 3 was for an engine, not a real game. Sure, they produced a game and marketed it that way. And I was happy when Doom 3 came out, but I had no intention of ever playing it. I was just waiting for someone else to come out with a great game based upon their engine.

But there is also engine work that produces great games. The battlefield series is great, sure all you do is kill other players, but the team play and strategy based genre is fun.

Re:Preach on

[drsquare]

In that case, why did they market and sell it as a game? Surely that's fraud? I know I'd be pissed off if I paid a huge amount for a game just find out it's merely a demo for an engine.

They should have said on the box: "Warning: this game is less fun than tetris, and only has nice graphics that get old in 5 minutes."

Personally, I think if a game's good enough, it's immersive no matter how crap the graphics are. Eventually you get used to them, and when you're really involved in the game you don't notice the framerates or shoddy lighting. With a shallow game like Doom 3 all there is to think about is the graphics, and then you're going to notice all the imperfections because that's what you're playing for. And once the novelty of the graphics wears off, you've nothing left.

Re:Preach on

[Quiet_Desperation]

Who's bent out of shape? Some of you people need to learn not to read so much into text. I was quipping, not complaining. Honestly, I think anyone who actually gets emotional about a video game needs to see a shrink.

So since Doom 3 wasn't a real game, id's marketing it as a game is fraud, then?

Re:Preach on

[Quiet_Desperation]

I never said it wasn't fun for other people. You might want to learn to focus on what a person actually said before responding. I said the gameplay was weak and not well though out compared to the raw technology. Anything beyond that is your own fevered imagination.

I'm sure there's people who like Barbie's Horse Adventure and Tomb Raider Angel Of Darkness, but there's people who like all sorts of inferior crap. That doesn't mean it's not crap.

Re:Preach on

[ergo98]

I never said it wasn't fun for other people....I'm sure there's people who like...That doesn't mean it's not crap.

I understand entirely what you're saying, and the egotism and selfishness in the statement is extraordinary. The point, which you so amazingly missed, is that the gameplay is great for other people. Your definition of "good gameplay" doesn't mean shit to the guy who likes a different kind of game.

Re:Preach on

[Nefarious Wheel]

...Personally, I think if a game's good enough, it's immersive no matter how crap the graphics are.

Yep. Still playing Everquest I, won't give it up. Yes, I will eventually get my epic weapons, nerfed as they are, because the game incites a rare form of stubbornness in me. Graphics are weak, but there are lots of them. --Lewerd

Re:Preach on

[oldwolf13]

>> I'm sure there's people who like Barbie's Horse Adventure and Tomb Raider Angel Of Darkness, but there's people who like all sorts of inferior crap. That doesn't mean it's not crap.

Ewwww!

I'll take Barbie's Horse Adventure please.

Re:Preach on

[Quiet_Desperation]

the egotism and selfishness in the statement is extraordinary

Jesus Tap Dancing Christ, sport, it's discussion of video games, not a think tank debate on how to combat global nuclear terrorism. Switch to decaff.

Believe it or not, there is an objective universe out there where A is A, and value judgements of something like a video game can be made stripped of subjective factors.

ATI interview

[AngryScot]

They also had an interview with Richard Huddy from ATI a little back

Re:ATI interview

[Anonymous Coward]

Read Huddy and Kirks positions on unified shader architecture. I comment below. I have no affiliation with either company.

David: Its hard to get USA right.

Yes. Damn true but also, its *impossible* to design a non-unified architecture that will load balance difference games correctly. One needs geometry, one needs shader. NVidia is relying on the programmer to do this by not having a USA. I'd take hard over impossible thanks.

David: The API says nothing about the hardware.
My arse it does. OpenGL exists in its form today because thats what the hardware guys needed. Its a freaking state machine in code. Sit on an OpenGL ARB meeting and what do you know - its not the software writers defining the standard, its the hardware guys. Why? You go away from the standard with your hardware (or the standard goes away from you) and suddenly your performance is much miuch harder to get. Thats why pixelplanes type architectures failed in a nutshell.

David: Right now the 7800 is doing ok.

Yes it is. Throw as much power as the price points can accept at the problem, ramp up the watts, add two boards, increase the die size to the limit of the process until your yield is ridiculously low. Sure it works ... for now.

Huddy: NVidia will do USA.

Absolutely right they will.

Huddy: They'll say they cracked it as a marketing exercise.

Yep.

Huddy: ATI will be on version 2 as NVIDIA reach version 1

Yes but Davids right, this is damn hard to do right so watching your mistakes and planning longer may prove the right strategy

I call NVidia bullshit, even the tone of Davids answers seem defensive and dubious to me. If NVidia doesn't move with the API, they'll fail. Right now the API doesn't require USA ok, but thats today. Even so, soon using non-USA will be like knocking a nail in with a banana. Sure its possible but its slow, possible painful and one hell of a mess.

Scientist?

[jayhawk88]

Isn't that overstating the job title a little bit? Engineer sure, but scientist? It's not like increasing the number of bump maps is going to lead to cold fusion or the cure for cancer.

Re:Scientist?

[Anonymous Coward]

"A person having expert knowledge of one or more sciences, especially a natural or physical science."

Computer Science.

Fucking dunce, got it?

Re:Scientist?

[agent dero]

Sure, it's plausible, engineers do production work, and scientists do research.

It's fathomable that this fellow does research for Nvidia, i.e. researching new ways to increase performance, etc...

Re:Scientist?

[Foolomon]

And I suppose that BSP sprang forth from the head of Zeus?

He's a scientist as much as he is an engineer because I'm sure that, in his position, he is responsible for the development of new means of achieving realistic results from nVidia's product line. Sure, he doesn't develop the actual algorithms, but I'm sure he can explain every one of them to us in..graphic detail (pun fully intended).

Re:Scientist?

[CynicalGuy]

Have you ever read any of the proceedings from SIGGRAPH? Yes, people do get their Ph.D's in that stuff.

Re:Scientist?

[i7dude]

among other things, designing next generation graphics cards is a serious exercise in computer architecture, vlsi design, and algorithm development; these people arent just system integrators or product engineers...next generation stuff has to come from somewhere other than a reference design...these people are absolutely scientists.

you dont need a beaker and a lab coat to be considered a scientist.

dude.

Re:Scientist?

[Anonymous Coward]

Genuine Computer Scientists absolutely do exist, but my opinion is that the graphics area is not currently sufficiently novel to classify those people as scientists as opposed to engineers.

The improvements are incremental, not revolutionary, and the techniques are well-known, and merely being tweaked.

Except for the relatively infrequent occasions when somebody comes up with an entirely new way of modeling something, most improvements in 3d graphics are just based on ongoing improvements in chip density (Moore's law) enabling more to be done with algorithms that are not particularly innovative. I'm not saying that it isn't worthwile and admirable, but the kind of tweaking in question is still more representative of engineering than science.

Coming up with new algorithms is engineering, coming up with new concepts or models is science.

Re:Scientist?

[sexylicious]

I know several mathematicians that would disagree with your assessment that coming up with new algorithms is engineering. Algorithm development is typically in the domain of scientists working on better computational tools.

If astrophysicists, computational fluid dynamicists, and/or computational plasma physicists (all of them are scientists, by definition), all got together with game developers and swapped algorithm ideas, I guarantee that there would be improvements seen in games. Those scientists are constantly developing new techniques and algorithms to refine their computations.


An engineer would come along, read the papers those scientists published, gain an understanding of the algorithms and techniques discussed, then go implement them in some code.

Not to diss any engineers out there (I am one), but that's basically what engineers do: take the work of others and implement it, usually in a practical manner. I've worked the other side of the situation as well, working in CFD and controls (amongst other computational things).

Re:Scientist?

[IdahoEv]

is a serious exercise in computer architecture, vlsi design, and algorithm development;

Architecture ... design ... development. All words about the creation or design of something new, which is engineering or applied science.

"Science", used alone, means the use of the scientific method to discover new information about the nature of reality. (Or, in the case of mathematics or computer science, the nature of abstract logical contrstucts ... which makes it debatable depending on your precise definition).

You don't need a beaker and a lab, but you need to be discovering something, and using the scientific method to do so. These guys are primarily designing new things, which is engineering; the grandparent poster was correct.

That doesn't mean they're not smart, of course: engineers and applied scientists are generally extremely bright people.

Re:Scientist?

[Anonymous Coward]

and most scientists (that you would call real scientists) wont be doing those things either.

many are not doing anything of real importance either.

Re:Scientist?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not engineering, and it's often not science. It's applied mathematics.

Science involves the application of the scientific method. If you aren't using the scientific method, then what you're doing isn't science.

Engineering is the application of science to the solution of problems. The scientific method is used to methodically determine the best means of solving a problem given constraints on risk, cost, production realities, and so forth.

Research into computer imaging without specific applications is applied mathematics. Creating applications using algorithms from the research in graphics is engineering.

Re:Scientist?

[BFaucet]

Yeah seriously!

It's not like designing systems and algorithms that can render a scene with millions of polygons, accurate shadows, bump maps specular shading takes any special knowledge... What's next?! John Carmack being called a rocket scientist!?

Re:Scientist?

[Noose For A Neck]

That is not science, it's engineering. It may be research engineering, but he's not discovering fundamentally new ways in which the universe works.

Calm down buddy!

[Chordonblue]

Let's not get in a tiff over pre-rendering, ok? Plenty of THAT to go around!

Quite frankly (and don't take this the wrong way), I don't give a shit WHO comes out on top - although keep in mind that history has shown that the best designs usually lose.

All I'm saying is while I think it's just great that programmers have this wonderful, liberating machine, it IS significantly more complex and even alien to code for - don't try and BS people into believing otherwise.

The article suggests to me that the programmers are still 'playing' and 'discovering' with the hardware and that suggests to me that Sony hasn't done it's job in the software department. Like the PS2, a lot of stuff is probably going to have to be done from scratch.

Re:Calm down buddy!

[Chordonblue]

Uhmmm.. Would you not agree that the Cell processor is a different processor than most? Figuring out how to keep 8 separate processors full (but not TOO full), is going to be bitch. Stop lying.

As to the DirectX rant, yeah.. Didn't work for the PC or Xbox, right? So... What MS should've done is completely start from scratch (like Sony again)? Are you really that stupid? Why not give the programmers stuff they understand?

Again, no reason to be upset. I'm sure the PS3 will do fine... Once the machine is actually released... Once polished game appear... Hmmmm...

Re:Calm down buddy!

[theantipop]

Aparently its fun to code for the PS3, but not as much fun as swearing at people in a /. news story...

Re:Calm down buddy!

[Skye16]

Actually, there was a review out on Anandtech (which I'm too lazy to look up) who quoted various developers as saying the Cell architecture is going to be a pain in the ass for them.

Why is this being fanboy-esque? Oh. Because it contradictory to your own fanboy position, and thus, has to be falsely labeled, just so you feel like you have a bigger dick.

(I decided to look it up afterall - it apparently was pulled from Anandtech, but it still resides on Google Groups. Interesting that it was pulled. This is all from an old /. article.)

Re:Calm down buddy!

[Skye16]

I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but you're still talking. You might want to look into that.

Re:Calm down buddy!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the real problem is his propensity for spewing shit and vitrol, neither which he is very good at.

You haven't played Battlefield 2, then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe you have. But I LOVE it. And check out the streaming videos of Age of Empires III at gamespot...this game is gonna rock.

Re:You haven't played Battlefield 2, then?

[tgrimley]

oooh, that's nice. I may have to get a new video card. I can't wait til Holiday 2005 ;)

Here's a link for the lazy.

I would like to see _one_ sane PC graphics card...

[Florian]

It seems all development efforts goes into 3D gaming and no brains into vanilla PC requirements. Why is it impossible to find a reasonably priced, fanless graphics card with two DVI connectors? Why can't I have dual head graphics with hardware video acceleration/overlay on either monitor? Why don't Nvidia and ATI at least take care that the non-3D features of their cards are fully supported under Linux and X11? Yes, Matrox's cards come close, but even their vintage G550 require buggy binary X11 drivers.

Once again we are missing the points

[suitepotato]

First, as others have noted, games still tend to suck overall so who cares how beautiful the graphics are? Beautiful crap is still crap.

Second, now that GPUs are competitive with CPUs for heat generation and electrical energy waste, are we giving up altogether on efficiency and just consigning ourselves to needing ever better coolers, paying more electrical costs, etc., just to play some beautiful crap?

Not me. Gone are the days of being able to stick all these game machines, DVD players, media PCs, etc. in a small enclosed space of an entertainment center. Now I'll have to place my TV near to a window and buy a standalone air conditioner so I can pipe the hot air flow out and cool all my stuff to keep it from immolating my living room.

I don't think so. If we're going to use up so much horsepower for this, we might as well at least get someone to use it as the power source for a lava lamp. That might be more fun to watch than Doom 3.

Re:Once again we are missing the points

[Anonymous Coward]

Missing the point, you cocksucker? It's an interview with an engineer. Maybe you're the one missing the point. He just supplies the tools.

Re:I would like to see _one_ sane PC graphics card

[Anonymous Coward]

Because whining socialists aren't their target market.

With the PS3 being Linux...

[wowbagger]

With the PS3 + disk drive being a Linux machine, are we STILL going to be stuck with closed-source binary-only kernel modules, or will NVIDIA actually start to make good drivers.

(of course, I already know the answer.)

Re:With the PS3 being Linux...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't be suprised even if they don't release binary drivers for PS3.

No drivers from nvidia _at all_. Just those nv 2d only ones.

Re:With the PS3 being Linux...

[Anonymous Coward]

NVIDIA's Linux drivers are a damn sight better than ATI's...

Re:I would like to see _one_ sane PC graphics card

[nagashi]

Interestingly enough, Matrox did just announce a fanless pcie 1x dual dvi g550 variant with open source linux/unix drivers :)

Re:I would like to see _one_ sane PC graphics card

[Foolomon]

Graphics card manufacturers make reference drivers only. After that, it's the responsibility of the OEM or OS manufacturer to ensure that the specific implementation of the drivers for the target OS's contain all of the features necessary.

In other words, I think you're barking up the wrong tree.

Out of date view of video cards.

[Shivetya]

You need to look at cards for what they are, not what video was.

Today's video cards have much higher transistor counts than the processors of the systems they go into.

A standard P4 is around 60million, the Extreme Edition with all its built in cache is 180million

A 6800 series is 220+ million. The X800 is 160+ million.

A 7800 is over 300 million.

What you really have in a video card is a computer within your computer complete with its requsite power and cooling requirements.

NVIDIA moving to OpenGL

[Anonymous Coward]

Its good to hear that NVIDIA is also moving from DirectX 9 to OpenGL. This was long overdue and will make many developers happy and users alike since they will benefit from the improved support and the increased performance it brings with it.

Re:NVIDIA moving to OpenGL

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, this was about time. DirectX 9 is still popular but its patchwork while OpenGL is a real standard. This will help cross-platform portability of games tremendously. NVIDIA will not even need to advertise their support as much as they did with DirectX because we've been waiting for this to happen for a long time.

So what does this mean?

[DroopyStonx]

Oh, that millions of dollars will be spent to make someone's CLOTHES look realistic as opposed to putting some decent R&D into what actually makes a game GOOD.

Nice.

Re:So what does this mean?

[Jonny_eh]

How will R&D improve games?

Think of all your favourite classic games. How many were made great due to R&D?

R&D is good for making games more 'techincally' advanced (better graphics and sound). To make a game 'good' requires a certain talent similar to the talent of a good film director or music composer.

A good game can be technically advanced or not, although being technically advanced is always pleasing to the senses.

Sometimes, a certain level of technical advancement is required, as a pre-requisite, for the 'good game' to be made at all. Tetris required 2D-bitmaps, Super Mario Brothers required scrolling backgrounds, Mario 64 required 3d rendering, Everquest required internet connectivity. You get the point.

Back to your original point, maybe more realistic clothes will ALLOW for the creation of some kind of revolutionary clothing design game that'll get all sorts of new people into gaming?

Re:So what does this mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

" How will R&D improve games?"

Wow, I take it you have never had any experience with game development.

Pick any game ever made and it was either:

1) Made fun due to one or more game engineers doing R&D

2) Made fun due to one or more game engineers reimplementing the R&D someone from 1) did

You really are demonstrating nothing but your ignorance of the underlying technologies of games.

Re:So what does this mean?

[Azarael]

It isn't nVidia's job to make games more entertaining or 'GOOD'. That is more the developer's job and I don't see why so many posters are ignoring this fact.

Re:So what does this mean?

[graphicsguy]

I do wonder how much R&D went into Tetris. :-)

Re:So what does this mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoah. That's horrible news! When did game characters start wearing clothes?!?

Re:So what does this mean?

[mikael]

Which may not be a bad thing if you are developing interactive shopping catalogues rather than games.

Re:So what does this mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you saying Tetris was a great game?? Only to rabid pong players...

Re:So what does this mean?

[graphicsguy]

> Are you saying Tetris was a great game?? Yes.

Re:So what does this mean?

[graphicsguy]

Actually, let me go one step further. It still IS a great game. :-P

Re:So what does this mean?

[jinzumkei]

You're at slashdot, where posters don't read the articles posted, and the editors just don't care about the articles posted.

Re:So what does this mean?

[DroopyStonx]

I never said it was nvidia's job to make games better.

I'm saying that game developers will continue to get deeper into the "eye-candy is better than gameplay" mentality that games seem to be headed towards lately.

Some games have amazingly beautiful environments, but completely lack the key element to make it entertaining. What's the point in that?

Look at how much Doom 3 was hyped with its brand new engine. Sure, it looked good, but... it didn't bring anything new and innovative to the table. The game wasn't horrible or anything; I did enjoy it, but I just feel that had they put as much effort into the gameplay itself as they did with making it look pretty, it could've been something much more amazing.

Take a look at Quake 4. The screenshots look amazing, but unless they offer up something new to the multiplayer FPS genre, it'll be "just another FPS".

My point is... people get too caught up in how beautiful or realistic the rendered graphics look. If the game itself has no life or value, and 80% of the time spent creating it was to make it look good... then what's the point?

Engl 203: Introduction to Middle English

[Ferromancer]

Anybody else notice the large number of times the word "whilst" was used? I thought my Firefox translation plugin was accidentally set to English->MiddleEnglish. It's like author just got done cramming for an exam on Shakespeare and feels compelled to write the same way, but then gives up halfway through sentences and goes back to regular english:

Whilst their relationship with Microsoft has become publicly tenuous, what about NVIDIA's relationship with their new console partner?

Re:Engl 203: Introduction to Middle English

[Anonymous Coward]

"Whilst" is still in common usage in the UK, though the author does seem to use it more freely than most. (And, in any case, a natural-language parser fed the sentence you quoted would probably seize up and start speaking Esperanto.)

Re:Engl 203: Introduction to Middle English

[queezle]

What's wrong with using whilst? Are you American? I find the differences between American and British English quite interesting. In British English they are both normal to use, although whilst could be considered to be more formal.

Re:Engl 203: Introduction to Middle English

[sbma44]

I agree completely. "Whilst" is usually a pretty good signifier that whatever you're reading was written by a pretentious ass.

Re:Engl 203: Introduction to Middle English

[Ferromancer]

Technically, it's not wrong, since whilst==while, but it looks like the author did a find-replace for while with whilst to look more savvy. Whilst is reserved for elegant discourse or poetry, not a goddamn video card interview. You would NEVER hear it in spoken conversation in the United States. And yes, I'm American.

Re:Engl 203: Introduction to Middle English

[james_marsh]

Whilst it may seem strange to American readers used to their simplified version of the language, the use of "whilst" is very common on the English side of the pond!

Re:Engl 203: Introduction to Middle English

[queezle]

Well next time I go to the states I'll know not to use whilst then. Any idea as to why it's regarded as pretentious over there? Whilst is less common to be spoken than while over here, but it's not unusual, it just seems a normal word to me.

Okay...

[mcc]

And, uh... just curious... is this any different at all from how things work with ATI chips right now? It doesn't really sound like it...

One Sane video "cards": GMA 900 and GMA 950

[Anonymous Coward]

Nvidia does make sure that 2-d support is their for Linux.

They have the nv driver, which they helped develop and maintain, and it is under the BSD license, or the old XFree86 license...

IF you realy want a fully supported Open Source card.. Buy a Intel motherboard.

Yes. A Intel motherboard.

With the new GMA series you get reasonable performance (333mhz core in some versions) with fanless support, and if you look around you can find one that has DVI support and vga support.

Advantages to GMA 900 and GMA 950:
1. Worlds better then Intel Blaster Extreme. It's up to around ATI 9200-9600 territory.
2. Comes free with some 915 and 945 motherboards. Look for the ones with 'g' in the chipset names.
3. Is documented by Intel to the DRI project and DRM support is in Linux kernel 2.6.12 and DRI supports the GMA 900 with GMA 950 in CVS. They use the 915 driver.
4. Is completely fanless.
5. Has low electricity usage.

Disavantages:
1. Shared memory archatecture.
2. takes over the PCIe 16x channel. (leaves others alone)
3. Not as fast as other nvidia cards.

For a Linux workstation for a experianced Linux user it's a steal. Pentium Ds support AMD's 64bit extensions, they are cheaper then dual core AMD64s at the moment. The downside is that it's only supported in 945 and 955 chipsets, the 945 can come with the GMA 950.

Think about it:
It's reasonably fast. It's silent. It's energy efficient, and it has support from Free Software Drivers.

I know it's not as sexy as AMD, but it's a damn nice setup.

Also Celeron D's (single core) are a STEAL right now and can be used withj the 915g and 945 series chipsets. A 3.0ghz cpu is pretty cheap and very fast.

If you don't want something that energy-hoggish. Check out the Pentium-Ms....

Re:One Sane video "cards": GMA 900 and GMA 950

[chill]

Like http://www.commell.com.tw/Product/SBC/LV-672.HTM which is Mini-ITX form factor, if you're also into space-saving designs.

-Charles

Re:One Sane video "cards": GMA 900 and GMA 950

[Anonymous Coward]

That is an awesome board. But where can you buy it? Found nothing on pricewatch.

Also, good luck finding a power supply for a mini-itx case that can crank out enough juice for that thing (my mini-itx case has an 80w power supply...)

Re:One Sane video "cards": GMA 900 and GMA 950

[chill]

That is an awesome board. But where can you buy it? Found nothing on pricewatch.

http://www.logicsupply.com/product_info.php/cPath/ 55/products_id/409

$325, though. Ouch.

Re:I would like to see _one_ sane PC graphics card

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Why can't I have dual head graphics with hardware video acceleration/overlay on either monitor?

You can have this on either monitor (I'm sure you can pick which one), the real problem is that they might not do it so well on both monitors at the same time.

Feeding this troll for the hell of it...

[Chordonblue]

"Anandtech??? Give me a fucking break. x86 peecee fanboy site posts garbage article about console hardware."

Er... Anandtech has ALWAYS been even handed - and I've read that article. It was a step by step dissection of the Cell - mostly positive - but REALISTIC.

PS3 scene demos aren't full blown games. Time will tell but just don't be surprised if you're still playing the same three games six months after the PS3 launch.

Re:Feeding this troll for the hell of it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever else being a PS3 developer requires, it sure doesn't seem to require a lot of time actually working, or a very secure personality...

I don't disagree with you...

[Chordonblue]

Except that I don't trust Sony to come through with well documented, well written libraries - especially if the past is any indication. I think the 'reality' is that it will take time for all this to come together. A long time.

Re:I would like to see _one_ sane PC graphics card

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you (or anyone) provide a link to this? I'm interested to know what board this is, and where we find the driver sources and stuff.

Indeed

[mcc]

In order to see what will happen in this upcoming generation, we simply have to look at the last generation, when the Dreamcast came out nearly a year before the PS2; and the Dreamcast was released with a programmer-friendly focus, while the PS2 (at and around launch) had an unclearly documented and byzantine architecture which required writing large chunks of assembly code to get many basic things done. And so what happened?

Of course, the Playstation 2 failed horribly and Sega went on to dominate the market for four years.

Considering what happened to the PS2, we can only imagine what will happen to the PS3-- which incorporates such horrors as "having to write in 256k code/memory chunks when you want to use the auxilliary processors", and "a GPU".

What will the market look like by the time that PS3 programmers finally learn to use this newfangled "shader" technology nvidia is pushing (well, newfangled except that it has been present in the Gamecube and XBox for their entire respective lifespans, but you know what I mean)?

Re:Indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

So, other than showing that you are clueless, what was the point of the bunch of garbage you posted?

Re:Indeed

[Chordonblue]

But my point is that it took a while - and let's not forget Sega's history. The Dreamcast happened right on the heels of the Saturn, a dismally designed failure.

The PS2 succeeded in spite of itself because game companies had more faith in Sony's ability to stay afloat and support (however poorly) it's machine for the long haul. That's a success of marketing more than anything.

RTFA and you'll see that the programmers are 'playing' with the new shader tech - it IS different in that it offers so much that coders will need to 'play' to figure out what can be acheived. That process takes development time.

And Anandtech's article on the Cell goes into great detail on the complexities of Cell's design. It's not insurmountable, but it IS going to take more dev time to get things right.

The good news for Sony is that their new baby is more balanced in power than the PS2 (4 MB GFX RAM - WHAT were they thinking?!) was.

Re:Indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

"WHAT were they thinking?!) was."

Please stop.

It is painful to have to listen to someone who is relishing in their ignorance.

Do the world a favor and go back to playing Halo.

like using coal instead of oil

[clayasaurus]

"After that, they tried to do a few things with more lights, using perhaps eight instead of ten." Is that like president Bush spouting coal as a replacement for oil? http://www.publicintegrity.org/report.aspx?aid=80& sid=200

Re:I would like to see _one_ sane PC graphics card

[3dr]

One example of a reasonably priced, fanless GPU is the FX5200, which can be had at electronic stores for $50-$70. The plain FX5200 is passively cooled, and most manufacturers include only one video output on it. The slightly faster FX5200 Ultra requires a fan for the increased heat, and would probably include two video outputs. The ones I've seen with two outputs had one VGA and one DVI. Surely someone is producing one with two DVIs.

I just purchased a FX6600GT for $165. For its performance, I'd call that reasonably priced, and it includes two DVI outputs, but has a fan.

I'd prefer to see video cards with passive heat sinks too, but the silicon process just isn't there yet. It is getting closer, however.

Re:I would like to see _one_ sane PC graphics card

[Kjella]

Matrox Intros PCIe x1 Graphics Card

Re:I would like to see _one_ sane PC graphics card

[hackstraw]

I don't know what you consider "reasonably priced", but http://www.apple.com/powermac/graphics.html does what you want.

Re:I would like to see _one_ sane PC graphics card

[MrNemesis]

Don't know if they're available in the states, but XFX make a passively cooled nVidia 6600 (non-GT) with dual DVI ports and TV-out. Retails here for about £80 (~$140), so prolly availble in the US for about $100. Whether this is "reasonably priced" for you I don't know, but it's a good little card for 2D work and the odd bit of OpenGL eye-candy, and will hold it's own in games.

NVIDIA's other Tech

[creativity]

Here's an article on Extremetech discussing Transparent Anti-Aliasing coming from NVIDIA. http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1836786 ,00.asp They did a study with a bunch of games and found that the performance benefit is not that great.

So this begs me to ask are these graphics companies solely concentrating on having a great fast GPU that can take these loads. Or are they simply pushing the market to adopt more expensive cards that have these GPUs.

Re:NVIDIA's other Tech

[be-fan]

A study like that strikes me as kind of stupid. Of course the performance benefits aren't that great. Current games are written for current cards. If a certain technique performed poorly on previous cards, game developers wouldn't use it extensively. What I'd really like to hear is whether game developers find the technique useful enough, now that its accelerated, to use it more in games.

Personally I'm baffled

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm baffled at hearing people bicker over "oh, but the Cell will be so confusing and hard to program for!" versus "oh, but the Xenon will be so confusing and hard to program for!". The confusing aspects of both the Xenon and Cell are optional. You don't want to or don't know how to take advantage of a three-core CPU, or the Cell SPEs? Well then, you probably just won't. Look at how few developers really took advantage of the Emotion Engine. It's going to be eventually necessary to fully use all of this hardware to get the kind of performance that a top-of-the-line game demands, but we aren't going ot be seeing those kinds of games in the first year anyway. We're going to be playing next generation's equivalent of "Fantavision" or whatever. For those, one core, one thread, never mind the fact we're wasting 80% of the machine's potential is certainly enough.

Re:Personally I'm baffled

[Anonymous Coward]

How few developers took advantage of the Emotion Engine? WTF? If you didn't take advantage of those VUs, you wouldn't have a game worthy of being published.

If you don't take advantage of that hardware, your game will look like crap compared to the developer that does use it. Or it will run at a slower framerate. Basically, if you aren't using as much as you possibly can, you're not competing well. The days of good gameplay are over and where graphics and other simtuli are the selling points (just look at the top sellers or ask any game developer).

But great graphics enhance great games.

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider a simple 2D shooter like, oh, Touhou Eiyashou - Imperishable Night. The gameplay itself is similar to any other danmaku shooter: you've almost certainly played stuff similar to it in arcades a decade ago. But there's something else... it's beautiful to look at as well. The backgrounds make excellent use of modern 3D cards to render simple, stylised scenes that turn the game into a work of art. The sequence flying through a bamboo forest towards the giant blood-red moon is nothing short of breathtaking.

On balance, I think I prefer this sort of thing - modern games that draw both on the tradition of excellent gameplay and stunning visuals.

Sorry if you have some condition that makes you unable to appreciate anything with post-1985 graphics. The rest of us are busy enjoying all the incredible new games that take modern chipsets and use them to give us amazing experiences.

Cg

[News for nerds]

is the answer. Duh.

Just curious

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming you're "real" and not just making up an identity as a PS3 programmer to troll slashdot with:

How hard/easy is it to vectorize stuff using Sony's development kits? As in, how hard is it to take advantage of the VMX in the CPU or the VMX-like instructions in the SPEs. Does the compiler do it automatically to some extent, or do you have to use special "vector add" functions or whatever? Whatever the mechanism is, is it simple/"natural" enough to use it that you think the vector units will get used to something approaching their full potential?

I ask because the vector extensions look like they ought to be crucial to good PS3 performance, but from my previous experience working with programmers on this kind of thing (with altivec on dsp apps for the mac-- not doing game programming) people get these very ingrained behaviors about how to write code. If you ask them to marginally change this (for example, using veclib vadd() and similar functions instead of writing a for loop) they will scratch their heads and ignore you, even if the new way is just as easy as the old way, just because it's not what they're used to. (The upshot being that the aforementioned altivec winds up getting unused even in code that could take advantage of it easily. It would make me sad if the VMX in the Cell met the same fate.)

- please remember -

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking positively about the PS3 = troll

Speaking negatively about the PS3 = insightful!

Parroting analysis of non-PC hardware which you read on a PC hardware site = especially insightful!

Re:I would like to see _one_ sane PC graphics card

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd prefer to see video cards with passive heat sinks too, but the silicon process just isn't there yet. It is getting closer, however.

Actually, if you go over to NewEgg and query up Gigabyte graphics cards with the GeForce 6600 and 6800 chipsets you'll see a decent heat pipe solution.. with no fan. I believe XFX has a series of cards like these as well.

I believe this is an up and coming market as there are those of us who need/want decent performance, but don't wish having our cases enter a 6" hover due to fans.

I like a relatively silent machine... I'll bet Steve Buscemi does too. Silence.. total fscking silence..

Dark, darker, and yet darker

[Animats]

With the new high dynamic range lighting systems and 12-bit output to monitors, even more shades of black will be possible.

Re:Dark, darker, and yet darker

[coopex]

Good news, iD has already released a screenshot using this feature. See here.

Whipping out my Atari

[dbucowboy]

I think I'm going to get Nvidia to customize my atari so that it can support the next generation of shaders...

Re:Whipping out my Atari

[ShortBeard]

And which newer games does your Atari run? Also, which model?

Woah, hold on a sec

[vlad_petric]

The Cell processor still has two general-purpose threads. As for the SPEs - sure, you can use them in libs and stuff, but that means you'll be limited by Amdahl's law. If, let's say, half of your CPU resources were consumed by library stuff, and you achieved an infinite speedup on this half, you'd only have a program that's twice as fast.

Cell is, in fact, more difficult to program than the Xbox, because the worker threads have a different instruction set then the main threads. IBM was, at some point, promoting CELL as a general computing device. Now they kinda' stopped.

Re:Woah, hold on a sec

[JLF65]

Why do people keep spreading this FUD? First, having a different instruction set doesn't make it harder to program. That's pure bologna. Any REAL programmer will tell you that. I can program in assembly on the 680x0, x86, PPC, Alpha, MIPS, and a number of other processors. Then remember that compilers make the ISA a moot issue in any case. C++ on Cell is no different than C++ on a DEC Alpha or on a Dell Centrino Laptop.

Second, IBM hasn't stopped promoting the cell. From the cell web page:

"CELL is not limited to game systems. IBM has announced a CELL-based "blade" leveraging the investment into the high-performance CELL architecture. Other future uses include HDTV sets, home servers, game servers, and supercomputers."

http://www.research.ibm.com/cell/

Please stop spouting MS XBox propaganda - you sound like a fanboy. I really hate how people with no knowledge or experience in real life programming somehow become knowledgeable experts after reading an article on ZDNet.

Just so you know

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a sequel of sorts to X-COM coming out this summer for the Game Boy Advance. It's made by the same people and it has similar graphics.

It's kind of interesting, really. The old days of gaming haven't gone away, they're just hiding, in handheld land where the machinery is still weak...

Re:Just so you know

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, that ain't no sequel. It's just a new game by the people that made the old one and they're throwing around the name X-Com because it was a classic.

Re:Just so you know

[eggsome]

I had a good look at the images on that link (and the ones on GameSpot), it looks pretty dissapointing to me. No multi-hight within levels, no world view, no base management...lame. Not worthy of the XCOM name.

Not missing.

[PixelSlut]

What is there to mention? When talking about the unified shader model, I got the impression that this guy's focus is more on NVIDIA's hardware design and not so much on how its features are exposed via its APIs. If you want someone from NVIDIA to talk about OpenGL, you probably want an interview from Mark Kilgard.

Re:quality

[PixelSlut]

Bullshit. OpenGL 2.0 is not really any different than the previous versions of OpenGL except that some of the extensions are promoted to features.

You think GLSL is more risky to use than HLSL? Bullshit. It's not really that fundamentally different. Neither is Cg. It's like comparing C and Pascal. In fact, NVIDA's shader compiler is the same for all three languages. It's abstracted into a backend and a set of frontends for each language: Cg, GLSL, and HLSL. So, for NVIDIA hardware all three basically perform identically.

Re:I would like to see _one_ sane PC graphics card

[PixelSlut]

But what about the open source drivers? I still haven't found anything about those.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

All I want to know is...

[mi]

Where the heck are the FreeBSD/amd64 drivers for NVidia?

At least 2D would be good for starters. And no, do not reach for the "Reply" link below to point me to the open source driver (nv) -- it does not support secondary heads...

Re:All I want to know is...

[qcubed]

Nobody uses FreeBSD anymore!

Just replace Ska with FreeBSD. ;)

Re:All I want to know is...

[Anonymous Coward]

You've learned the lesson: Buy proprietary hardware and sooner or later it will bite you in the ass. Get a Radeon 9250 and enjoy full 2D + 3D support with 100% open source drivers. To make things worse NVidia has dropped support for older cards which means if you have a TNT2 and want basic stuff like Xv acceleration you're stuck at old and buggy drivers. Screw the proprietary nvidia hardware.

Re:All I want to know is...

[mi]

Get a Radeon 9250 and enjoy full 2D + 3D support with 100% open source drivers.

I can't find a supported model, with dual-DVI output. The DVI-VGA Radeon 9200 I have, gives horrible flicker on the VGA head, when connected to LCD monitors.

Re:All I want to know is...

[mi]

Get a Radeon 9250 and enjoy full 2D + 3D support with 100% open source drivers.

Also, the drivers suck -- one can only have DRI enabled for one instance of X-server. My partner and I grew accustomed to using Ctrl-Alt-F9 (and F10) to switch between our simultaniously running X-sessions. It worked great with NVidia on PentiumII, but on amd64 with Radeon it does not work.

"use 3 threads (not 2, not 4)"

[ElMiguel]

These people must be Monthy Python fans:

First, shalt thou take out the holy pin. Then shalt thou count to three. No more, no less. *Three* shall be the number of the counting, and the number of the counting shall be three. *Four* shalt thou not count, and neither count thou two, excepting that thou then goest on to three. Five is RIGHT OUT. Once the number three, being the third number be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade towards thy foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.

Mosaic

[yo5oy]

I dont' remember netscapre being present when the web was born. I do remember mosaic, though.

Re:I would like to see _one_ sane PC graphics card

[Molochi]

The primary market for dual DVI is willing to pay for the privilage, rather than do without. The same used to be said for just plain old dual vga. Feature creep should hit us on cheapo cards once cheap lcds have DVI inputs. I don't know why VGA inputs are used on LCDs to begin with, unless it is somehow cheaper or just preserves a price point.

Appian sells a dual dvi radeon 7000/VE (4 year old tech) for ~$190. The Matrox 2xDVI G550 cards (again, about 3-4 years old) go for ~$130. A DualDVI XFX GF6600 PCI-E goes for less than $140 but the AGP version is $160+. Both are full sized cards, but they do use a passive heatsink. Perhaps more importantly they should continue to get less expensive if they sit on the shelf a bit, should provide access to better drivers, and give you superior hardware to boot.

The cheapest way to go is (ironicaly) to use two cards. Specificly a pair GF4MX4000 (vga+dvi out). AGP and PCI for around $35 and 45 each respectivly.

Why do games suck????

[ponos]

I've been playing games for approximately 20 years, including classics like the "Elite", "Lemmings", "Space Quest", "Monkey Island" etc etc. As a matter of fact I like to collect older games, often sold in low prices. Have you ever tried going back (instead of remembering) and actually playing these games now? There has been considerable progress which we like to forget. I fondly remember finishing Eye of the Beholder I/II/III, for example. Now, compare this with Baldur's Gate I/II and Neverwinter Nights (or Morrowind, that r0x0rz). Or try to play the original Prince of Persia, for example.

I agree that the progress does not necessarily come from the shaders or the lights, but when modern games get it right (which they sometimes do) they are excellent. The technical sophistication does make a difference in the end, when all these means are used properly.

Take Need for Speed Underground 2 as an example: this is a great game... huge amounts of content, great graphics and sound, easy to drive but difficult to master. Could you have made something like that without the graphics or the sound? Maybe you like to play brain puzzles or text adventures. I respect that. I have played them, too. But that is not the whole world of gaming. Realism and graphics can contribute immensely to an immersive gameplay experience!!

P.

Re:Why do games suck????

[AuMatar]

Yes, I have. Lemmings is still fun. Original Prince of Persia was still awesome (although I admittedly did not play the new one much, so I won't compare). I thought Baldur's gate and Morrowind were awful. NWN had potential, but the default campaign sucked and the mod community took too long to get running.

I find realism and graphics to be inversely proportionate to game experience. Realism isn't fun. A game should only try and be real if the point of the game is to emulate the real world- a historical sim set in WWII for instance. Other than that, forget reality and give me fun.

Graphics- nice graphics are good, but they were good enough years ago. They were good enough back on the SNES. Given a limited budget, I'd rather see them spend it on gameplay, storyline, controls, etc than graphics. Of all of those, graphics are probably what adds the least to the game.

Middle English? Hardly

[aftk2]

That would be more like:

Whan Noble NVIDIA hath newer cards to showe Thanne Prices risen higher thann the lowe And smale cryes comme from Slashdot kin That Linnux driveres wolde be no sin

A decade of progress

[DrCode]

1995: Walk around shooting monsters.

2005: Walk around shooting monsters with more realistic-looking clothing.

Sure...

[pantherace]

$1999 for a VIDEO CARD?! And that's the default that's only 70% of the fast card's performance?

I knew macs were expensive but...

;)

Re:I would like to see _one_ sane PC graphics card

[batkiwi]

Announced 2 days ago:
http://www.matrox.com/mga/media_center/press_rel/2 005/millennium_g550_pcie.cfm

-PCI-E 1x slot
-You can stick as many in your system as you have 1x slots
-fanless
-fully open source drivers!!

Re:I would like to see _one_ sane PC graphics card

[sznupi]

They in every recent X...
(for the whole G series)

Re:I would like to see _one_ sane PC graphics card

[sznupi]

Excluding P series Matrox cards...