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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.'"
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!
839*929
Actually, they already are considering it. The 7800GTX has 50% more transistors than the 6800 Ultra, but runs cooler.
_ speed/
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
and also at http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=Nzg0LDI=
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.
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.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}