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NVIDIA Previews GF100 Features and Architecture
MojoKid writes "NVIDIA has decided to disclose more information regarding their next generation GF100 GPU architecture today. Also known as Fermi, the GF100 GPU features 512 CUDA cores, 16 geometry units, 4 raster units, 64 texture units, 48 ROPs, and a 384-bit GDDR5 memory interface. If you're keeping count, the older GT200 features 240 CUDA cores, 42 ROPs, and 60 texture units, but the geometry and raster units, as they are implemented in GF100, are not present in the GT200 GPU. The GT200 also features a wider 512-bit memory interface, but the need for such a wide interface is somewhat negated in GF100 due to the fact that it uses GDDR5 memory which effectively offers double the bandwidth of GDDR3, clock for clock. Reportedly, the GF100 will also offer 8x the peak double-precision compute performance as its predecessor, 10x faster context switching, and new anti-aliasing modes."
Why more disclosure now? There doesn't seem to be any major AMD or, gasp, Intel product launch in progress...
One that hath name thou can not otter
Anandtech also has an article up about the GF100. They generally have very well written, in-depth articles: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3721
So we've had this long history with nvidia part numbers gradually increasing. 5000 series, 6000 series, etc. up until the 9000 series. At that point they needed to go to 10000, and the numbers were getting a bit unwieldy. So understandably, the decided to restart with the GT100 series and GT200 series. So now instead of continuing with a 300 series, we're going back to a 100. So we had the GT100 series and now we get the GF100 series? And GF? Serieously? People already abbreviates GeForce as GF, so now when someone says GF we can't be sure what they are talking about. Terrible marketing decision IMHO.
Was renamed GDDR5...
Only joking
The wider your memory bus, the greater the cost. Reason is that it is implemented as more parallel controllers. So you want the smallest one that gets the job done. Also, faster memory gets you nothing if the GPU isn't fast enough to access it. Memory bandwidth and GPU speed are very intertwined. Have memory slower than your GPU needs, and it'll be bottlenecking the GPU. However have it faster, and you gain nothing while increasing cost. So the idea is to get it right at the level that the GPU can make full use of it, but not be slowed down.
Apparently, 256-bit GDDR5 is enough.
Now that graphics are largely stagnant in between console generations, the PC's graphics advantages tend to be limited to higher resolution, higher framerate, anti-aliasing, and somewhat higher texture resolution. If the huge new emphasis on tesselation in GF100 strikes a chord with developers, and especially if something like it gets into the next console generation, games may ship with much more detailed geometry which will then automatically scale to the performance of the hardware on which they're run. This would allow PC graphics to gain the additional advantage of having an order of magnitude increase in geometry detail, which would make more of a visible difference than any of the advantages it currently has, and it would occur with virtually no extra work by developers. It would also allow performance to scale much more effectively across a wide range of PC hardware, allowing developers to simultaneously hit the casual and enthusiast markets much more effectively.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Buying now gt200 card is pointless as it is a well known fact that nVidia literally abandons support of previous GPU generation when they release new one.
Such bullshit. For example the latest Geforce 4 drivers date to Nov 2006 which was when the GeForce 8 series came out 4 years after the initial Geforce 4 card. Even the Geforce 6 has Win7 drivers that came out barely 2 months ago and thats 5 series back from the current 200 series.
Graphical hardware power is a problem on consoles not PC. Despite their much touted power the PS3 or Xbox360 cannot do FSAA at 1080p. Most developers have resorted to software solutions (hacks, for all intents and purposes) to get rid of jaggedness.
Most games made for consoles will work the same, if not better on a low end PC (if they don't do a crappy job on porting but Xbox to PC this is pretty hard to screw up these days). The problem with PC gaming is that it is not utilised to its fullest extent. Most games are console ports or PC games bought up at about 60% completion and then consolised.
PC Graphics 1280x1024 upwards tend to look pretty good. Compare that to Xbox (720p) or PS3 (1080p) which still look pretty bad at those resolutions. Check out the screenshots of Fallout 3 or Far Cry 2, the PC version always looks better no matter the resolution. According the the latest Steam survey 1280x1024 is still the most popular resolution, 1680x1050 the second.
If you have the power, why not use it.
Dont get me wrong however, progress and new idea are a good thing but the PC gaming market is far from in trouble.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.