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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.'"
Who cares how many lights the chipsets can emulate when the games themselves still suck?
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
Here's the most important word that didn't appear anywhere in that article: OpenGL
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.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Interestingly enough, Matrox did just announce a fanless pcie 1x dual dvi g550 variant with open source linux/unix drivers :)
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.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Have you ever read any of the proceedings from SIGGRAPH? Yes, people do get their Ph.D's in that stuff.
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.
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.
What makes you think the same thing can't be done on the 360? Game developers have been gathering and using libraries for years.
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.
I agree completely. "Whilst" is usually a pretty good signifier that whatever you're reading was written by a pretentious ass.