5900se(xt) 4 pipes? or 8?

[blazerazor]

Ive read the reviews and Im still confused. The evga 5900se has 4 texture pipes that do double the work as the 8 in the 5900, so they are the same? And I know it has crap memory.

Im wondering if its worth the extra cash for the full 5900, cause they are so close in the benches I've read.

 

[kylebisme]

they are both 4-pipe cards.

 

[Corporate Thug]

4 X 2 configuration if i am not mistaken

 

[blazerazor]

they are both 4-pipe cards.

really, damn. Think I'll get the se and save the xtra $ for another game.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: blazerazor

they are both 4-pipe cards.

really, damn. Think I'll get the se and save the xtra $ for another game.

it will be 4 in some games 8 in others, its a 4 x 2 design, same as the 5900 ultra

 

[Acanthus]

They are all 4 pipe, NVIDIA doesnt make an 8 pipe card... yet.

By design its 4 pipes, but in optimised situations can do 2 ops per pass.

 

[kylebisme]

you cant just take four pipelines with two texture units a piece and call it an 8-pipe design. if that was the way it worked then we would call the orignal geforce and 8-piper as well as it was also 4x2.

 

[Blastman]

5900SE = same GPU as 5900 with slower memory.

 

[BenSkywalker]

It's a 4x2+4x0 design.

For traditional games it operates as a four pixel pipe part with two TMUs per pipe. In games like DooM3 it can use an additional scaled down set of four pixel pipes that can be used for stencil ops(think of the shadowing in DooM3). So, it does have eight pixel pipes, and it almost always works as a four pipe card with current titles.

 

[videoclone]

Just like the Athlon64 runs 32Bit and also in 64Bit ..
The Geforce FX5900 runs in 4x2 and also in 8x1 pipline mode

And they do say its an 8x1 card on some box's

The main problem with having a mixed 4x2 and 8x1 is that most games default to 4x2 but dont use multitexuring so in the end its only using 4x1 🙂 ....

Newer games will use 8x1 or 4x2 more effectively ... fingers crossed

 

[BFG10K]

All NV3x GPUs are 4 pipe except for Z/stencil ops where they "become" 8 pipe GPUs.

 

[Pete]

Not 8x1, 8x0. It does 8 ops per clock only without color (read: stencil ops). And it can't output more than four pixels per clock, period (color or not). That last "limitation" doesn't seem to be hurting them, but the facts is the facts.

A 5900 will not operate as 8x1 with single-textured games, just 4x1 with the second "TMU" unused.

 

[blazerazor]

And the plot thickens. Why does picking a video card have to be so difficult.

 

[ErikS]

A 5900 will not operate as 8x1 with single-textured games, just 4x1 with the second "TMU" unused

Exactly, not an 8 pipe card by any definition I can imagine. Also, the NV3x core can do either 2 textured unite OR 1 FP unit per clock (it can't do 1 text & 1 fp /clock either - it's either/or).

It is in no way shape or form an "8" pipe card.