7900 GTX to run at 650 MHz with only 24 pipes?

[Leper Messiah]

Both companies are at the top of their game right now. IMO we won't see another NV30/R300 blow out again for a while. Which is good. Competition makes prices lower for us.

 

[coldpower27]

Originally posted by: Hacp

Originally posted by: Rollo
It's still my impression the 7900GTX will be 32 pipes, but time will tell soon enough.

In any case, I don't think a 24 pipe card running at 650MHz with 1600MHz RAM is necessarily a BAD thing either- I'd think it would be pretty competitive with an XTX. If the rumors of lower priced are true, a little less performance in some games, a little more in others, and better multi possibilities for less money wouldn't be a bad thing.

BTW- I know I said I would not post here, but several members have asked that I do. (which surprised me pretty much)

So I'm going to try it out.

As I've said, I don't think that a 650 MHZ 24 pipe G71 part will lose to ATI in more than 1 or 2 benchmarks. The 7800GTX 512 was very competative with the X1900XTX card. Add 100 MHZ, and we will see the G71 beat the XTX convincingly in open GL and win some of the heavy shader games with its pure speed.

Yeah, it should be fairly competitive, not as high as I would of liked, but if the MSRP of the 7900 GTX is only 499US, then that would be pretty good for a high end product, though I don't think 650MHZ is enough to take back the crown in F.E.A.R, as that is only an 18% increase in shader power if were keeping the same pipeline configuraition. But it should be enough to ensure the OpenGL crown.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: coldpower27
Yeah, it should be fairly competitive, not as high as I would of liked, but if the MSRP of the 7900 GTX is only 499US, then that would be pretty good for a high end product, though I don't think 650MHZ is enough to take back the crown in F.E.A.R, as that is only an 18% increase in shader power if were keeping the same pipeline configuraition. But it should be enough to ensure the OpenGL crown.

It will be a good spring to be a high end buyer either way, with the edge on features going to ATI and the edge on speed to nVidia.

In my mind the only question is whether it will be a slight edge on a 24 pipe part or a big edge on a 32 pipe part.

The group is supposed to get the specs of these parts soon, I'll hint again if nVidia will let me. (info will be NDA of course)

 

[moonboy403]

isn't it already coming out on the 9th of march anyway???

 

[coldpower27]

Originally posted by: Rollo
It will be a good spring to be a high end buyer either way, with the edge on features going to ATI and the edge on speed to nVidia.

In my mind the only question is whether it will be a slight edge on a 24 pipe part or a big edge on a 32 pipe part.

The group is supposed to get the specs of these parts soon, I'll hint again if nVidia will let me. (info will be NDA of course)

Rollo mind fixing your quote, as I don't like having people put my name on things I didn't say.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: coldpower27

Originally posted by: Rollo
It will be a good spring to be a high end buyer either way, with the edge on features going to ATI and the edge on speed to nVidia.

In my mind the only question is whether it will be a slight edge on a 24 pipe part or a big edge on a 32 pipe part.

The group is supposed to get the specs of these parts soon, I'll hint again if nVidia will let me. (info will be NDA of course)

Rollo mind fixing your quote, as I don't like having people put my name on things I didn't say.

Sorry about that, I was just trying to get what I said out- done!

 

[DrZoidberg]

This is what i expected, not 700mhz core 32 pipeline card that was rumoured.

650mhz 24 pipe standard on cards.
Then eVGA and XFX and other board makers start releasing 700mhz core factory overclocked versions.

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: Hacp

Originally posted by: Rollo
It's still my impression the 7900GTX will be 32 pipes, but time will tell soon enough.

In any case, I don't think a 24 pipe card running at 650MHz with 1600MHz RAM is necessarily a BAD thing either- I'd think it would be pretty competitive with an XTX. If the rumors of lower priced are true, a little less performance in some games, a little more in others, and better multi possibilities for less money wouldn't be a bad thing.

BTW- I know I said I would not post here, but several members have asked that I do. (which surprised me pretty much)

So I'm going to try it out.

As I've said, I don't think that a 650 MHZ 24 pipe G71 part will lose to ATI in more than 1 or 2 benchmarks. The 7800GTX 512 was very competative with the X1900XTX card. Add 100 MHZ, and we will see the G71 beat the XTX convincingly in open GL and win some of the heavy shader games with its pure speed.

I just dont see that happening. A 24pipe 650mhz g71 will be competitive, and it will win some benches against the xtx, particularly the OpenGL titles, but no way will it win in shader-heavy games. You're basically looking at 100mhz core increase accompanied by a memory clock decrese, which will only hurt it more with AA enabled. What confuses me, though, is that it took Nv so long to release the g71 and all they have to show for it is a 100mhz speed bump? It looks like either they really have a faster card than they're letting on, or they ran into major difficulties with the production of the gpu on the 90nm process.

 

[xtknight]

650 MHz with only 24 pipes (ROPs/ALUs/TMUs/Textures/Pixel shaders?)? Boo freakin' hoo. What if it outperforms the X1900 by 2x? (Don't go by specs. There are things you don't see like instruction-level optimizations.)

I don't find much value in the 7900GTX anyway. I'm not buying another chip until they get concurrent FP16 HDR+AA support in there. I really want the HQAF as well. NVIDIA has some catching up to do. The 7800GT at $289 was the best thing to come from them, but they need to convince me again if they don't want me to just grab an X1900 next xmas. I am still waiting for a card under $300 that can perform flawlessly (75 Hz Vsync) at 1280x1024 in every one of today's games at highest settings and supersampling alpha AA. Rather, that is my personal challenge for them (like I said forget me purchasing anything until they also add HDR+AA or until X1900 XTs are <$300). Maybe the G71 series will push down such a possible G70 candidate into that price level.

 

[aznrice54]

Originally posted by: munky

Originally posted by: Hacp

Originally posted by: Rollo
It's still my impression the 7900GTX will be 32 pipes, but time will tell soon enough.

In any case, I don't think a 24 pipe card running at 650MHz with 1600MHz RAM is necessarily a BAD thing either- I'd think it would be pretty competitive with an XTX. If the rumors of lower priced are true, a little less performance in some games, a little more in others, and better multi possibilities for less money wouldn't be a bad thing.

BTW- I know I said I would not post here, but several members have asked that I do. (which surprised me pretty much)

So I'm going to try it out.

As I've said, I don't think that a 650 MHZ 24 pipe G71 part will lose to ATI in more than 1 or 2 benchmarks. The 7800GTX 512 was very competative with the X1900XTX card. Add 100 MHZ, and we will see the G71 beat the XTX convincingly in open GL and win some of the heavy shader games with its pure speed.

I just dont see that happening. A 24pipe 650mhz g71 will be competitive, and it will win some benches against the xtx, particularly the OpenGL titles, but no way will it win in shader-heavy games. You're basically looking at 100mhz core increase accompanied by a memory clock decrese, which will only hurt it more with AA enabled. What confuses me, though, is that it took Nv so long to release the g71 and all they have to show for it is a 100mhz speed bump? It looks like either they really have a faster card than they're letting on, or they ran into major difficulties with the production of the gpu on the 90nm process.

Yeah, it is disappointing, especially considering all the rumors going around earlier that it would demolish the X1900 XT(X). However, this still is a rumor as well, and although a 32-pipe 7900 GTX is not likely at all, it is still possible.

However, if all NV has to show for their months of laboring on the G71 is a 7800 that has a core speed bump, they'll be getting some (or a lot of) flak for it, especially if it doesn't decisively win against the X1900 which has been out for roughly a month now. They will really need to get their game together afterwards because I don't think many people would be happy with that, especially those who waited for the "32-pipe monster with a core clocked at 700+ MHz".

 

[5150Joker]

It will be quite disappointing to those that waited at the behest of nVidia fans and agents promising a 32 pipe beast if it turns out G71 is nothing more than a die shrunk G70 with a 100 mhz increase in core speed and a decrease in memory bandwidth.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: aznrice54

Originally posted by: munky

Originally posted by: Hacp

Originally posted by: Rollo
It's still my impression the 7900GTX will be 32 pipes, but time will tell soon enough.

In any case, I don't think a 24 pipe card running at 650MHz with 1600MHz RAM is necessarily a BAD thing either- I'd think it would be pretty competitive with an XTX. If the rumors of lower priced are true, a little less performance in some games, a little more in others, and better multi possibilities for less money wouldn't be a bad thing.

BTW- I know I said I would not post here, but several members have asked that I do. (which surprised me pretty much)

So I'm going to try it out.

As I've said, I don't think that a 650 MHZ 24 pipe G71 part will lose to ATI in more than 1 or 2 benchmarks. The 7800GTX 512 was very competative with the X1900XTX card. Add 100 MHZ, and we will see the G71 beat the XTX convincingly in open GL and win some of the heavy shader games with its pure speed.

I just dont see that happening. A 24pipe 650mhz g71 will be competitive, and it will win some benches against the xtx, particularly the OpenGL titles, but no way will it win in shader-heavy games. You're basically looking at 100mhz core increase accompanied by a memory clock decrese, which will only hurt it more with AA enabled. What confuses me, though, is that it took Nv so long to release the g71 and all they have to show for it is a 100mhz speed bump? It looks like either they really have a faster card than they're letting on, or they ran into major difficulties with the production of the gpu on the 90nm process.

Yeah, it is disappointing, especially considering all the rumors going around earlier that it would demolish the X1900 XT(X). However, this still is a rumor as well, and although a 32-pipe 7900 GTX is not likely at all, it is still possible.

However, if all NV has to show for their months of laboring on the G71 is a 7800 that has a core speed bump, they'll be getting some (or a lot of) flak for it, especially if it doesn't decisively win against the X1900 which has been out for roughly a month now. They will really need to get their game together afterwards because I don't think many people would be happy with that, especially those who waited for the "32-pipe monster with a core clocked at 700+ MHz".

I think most people were simply waiting for it to come out so they could make an objective and informed decision. I don't think most people expected it to desecrate the X1900XT.

These chips should be very cheap to produce for nVidia if they do only have the 24 pipelines. Hopefully that will make for some cheap and fast cards at least.

 

[Regs]

Originally posted by: MADMAX23
Some web pages have contacted nvidia for a preview of the 7900 cards and this is what they could note down after watching the card:
Both the GTX and GT version will be released on 9th of March 2006, being inmediately available on stores.

The 7900 GTX:
Will be released with 256Mb and 512Mb of Ram.
CORE: 90nm, range from 650 Mhz to 750Mhz, not confirmed yet, only nVIDIA knows.
Pipelines: 32 Pixel Pipelines
RAM: Samsung GDDR3 1.1ns chips clocked at a range of 800-900 Mhz, so 1600 to 1800 Mhz effective.
The 7900 GT:
Will be released with 256Mb of Ram.
The PCB layout is different from the 7800GT and the PWM area is slightly different too.
CORE: 90nm, clocked at about 450Mhz.
Pipelines: 24 Pixel Pipelines
RAM: Samsung GDDR3 1.4ns chips, 700Mhz possible, so 1200 to 1400 Mhz effective.

From this specs I think the new 7900 GT will be very similar, if not identical, to a slightly overclocked 256Mb 7800GTX.

Nivdia opening up 8 more pipes in a rehash? Not going to happen, so get that out of your head. It takes a lot more than you think to open up 8 more pipes . Sure anyone could triple the hardware and transistors, like ATi did, but more importantly it's the balance of texture and shader processing. At the most they will make tweaks within the existing pipeline for efficiency.

 

[5150Joker]

My prediction for G71:

nVidia hard launches a very limited edition and expensive 32 pipe card clocked at 700+ mhz, all the fanboys along with reviewers eat it up and use it as a basis for declaring nVidia the winner. In reality, nVidia launches the 650 mhz 24 pipe G71 as a mass available part at $500 but reviewers and fanboys alike ignore this fact. If I were working for nVidia, that is the tactic I'd be pushing for anyway - thats exactly what they did with the 512 GTX.

 

[ronnn]

Originally posted by: 5150Joker
My prediction for G71:

nVidia hard launches a very limited edition and expensive 32 pipe card clocked at 700+ mhz, all the fanboys along with reviewers eat it up and use it as a basis for declaring nVidia the winner. In reality, nVidia launches the 650 mhz 24 pipe G71 as a mass available part at $500 but reviewers and fanboys alike ignore this fact. If I were working for nVidia, that is the tactic I'd be pushing for anyway - thats exactly what they did with the 512 GTX.

This is one prediction I don't get. I can see a 32 pipe card with fairly good yields at say 550mhz and a pe edition at 700mhz. But I don't see a 32 pipe card with so much scrap - as no guarantee that the faulty cores would make a fast 24pipe card. Anyways I think it will be either 24 or 32 pipes, not both - unless they need to disable pipes to meet the mid high range. Also I predict that this card will be faster than the x1900xtx - so will see if Ati can respond. With the G80 only a couple of months away - the 7900 high end varient may have a very short run.

 

[MADMAX23]

If the 7900GTX has only 24 pipes, it will be rather dissapointing from a technical point of view although it is clocked at higher frequencies, we are getting more of the same, nothing new. The only progress they may have made is to get more speed from the core due to the 90nm process, that's the only thing absolutely "new" from the nVIDIA engineers. The rest will keep like it is today, no HDR+AA...etc.

The good part is that prices will be lower because of a lower production cost of the cards. I think that's the only appealing point of these new series. Quite Low prices and a reasonable but already known/expected power and quality.

What I don't like is that the "new 7900GT" will be a slightly overclocked "old" 7800GTX...I mean, that shows us nVIDIA has developed nothing new during this time...it has only overclocked an existing model and changed its name...that's dissapointing talking about leading technology.

I am afraid that if the new GTX doesn't have 32 pipes, we'll have to wait for the nVIDIA 8th series to see something really new, with an unexpected power and a new or improved set of graphic-quality-related features .

 

[Sable]

Update from the Inq.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=29821
BFG 7900 GTX 512 to launch on the 9th of March

WE learned that upcoming G71, Geforce 7900 GTX comes with an additional 512 in its name. A friend told us that you will be able to place your orders quite soon.

We know that 7900 GTX 512 is set to have a MSRP of $599 we don?t know why Nvidia priced this product cheaper, it makes us happy for the consumers but it also makes us wonder about the performance. The last flagship card was MSRP at $649. 99 resulting with at least 699.99 retail price at most of the etailers.


So it took them one day to change there mind that the price was gonna be $499. Gotta love the Inq.

(Unless that's for the 256MB version of course?!)

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: Metr0
you shouldnt believe the inq, i've been told by ati them selfs that they called fuad just to fool him 50% of the time

Oh, if I do a ICANN/Network Solutions lookup, I will find you own the ipulleditoutofmybutt.com, right?

 

[yacoub]

Originally posted by: 5150Joker
My prediction for G71:

nVidia hard launches a very limited edition and expensive 32 pipe card clocked at 700+ mhz, all the fanboys along with reviewers eat it up and use it as a basis for declaring nVidia the winner. In reality, nVidia launches the 650 mhz 24 pipe G71 as a mass available part at $500 but reviewers and fanboys alike ignore this fact. If I were working for nVidia, that is the tactic I'd be pushing for anyway - thats exactly what they did with the 512 GTX.

Hahah, so true. I hate that crap.

 

[Keysplayr]

In 16 days, all will be known. This kind of exactly reminds me of the R520. Remember?
All those articles about what speed ATI was shooting for but could only reach a certain number. And that ATI themselves announced that their R520 will be "competitive" with the 7800GTX? De' Ja Vous.

 

[Steelski]

Originally posted by: 5150Joker
It will be quite disappointing to those that waited at the behest of nVidia fans and agents promising a 32 pipe beast if it turns out G71 is nothing more than a die shrunk G70 with a 100 mhz increase in core speed and a decrease in memory bandwidth.

I'm not sure about that. when you consider the true retailable speed was much lower than the 550 core of the 7800GTX 512 then you could say that its a 200mhz core bump with the same yields....that seems rather good.

 

[BenSkywalker]

Has anyone really thought this through? A 650MHZ 24pipe G71 would be ~20% faster then the 512MB 7800. Compare 7800GTX+20% and based on AT's review of the XTX(using the highest a to a setting tested for each game)-

BF2
XTX- 54.1
GTX- 55.3

B&W2-
XTX- 15.1
GTX- 26.4

DoD-
XTX- 54.8
GTX- 60.1

FarCry
XTX- 58.6
GTX- 56.0

FEAR
XTX- 36
GTX- 24

SC:CT
XTX- 39.9
GTX- 36.6

Q4
XTX- 47
GTX- 57.7

The parts would be neck and neck through most of the games with ATi taking one by a big margin and nV taking two(although one of them should be fixed via an ATi driver update). Overall nV wins more benches then it loses. If I had money invested in nVidia as an investor I would be quite upset if they brought out some 700MHZ 32pipe part- reduced yields and hence margins while a part with two less quads and a drop in clock would still be quite competitive.

 

[darXoul]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
FEAR
XTX- 36
GTX- 24

... and this is exactly what worries me :/

 

[BenSkywalker]

... and this is exactly what worries me :/

Six months ago FEAR was the poster child of poor coding by the ATi faithful- now it is the harbinger of all games to come. B&W2 and SC:CT are also extremely shader heavy games. Now it may well end up being that FEAR is a better indicator then the others- but try to keep in mind that it was a great example of poor coding according to the same posters touting its prophetic abilities now.

 

[DeathReborn]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker

... and this is exactly what worries me :/

Six months ago FEAR was the poster child of poor coding by the ATi faithful- now it is the harbinger of all games to come. B&W2 and SC:CT are also extremely shader heavy games. Now it may well end up being that FEAR is a better indicator then the others- but try to keep in mind that it was a great example of poor coding according to the same posters touting its prophetic abilities now.

Funny how the tables turn on these things, FEAR sucked whe nit was working against them but now it's working for them they treat it like god, lol.

The 7900GT looks like a waste of Silicon unless it's priced at around £200 (like current 7800GT's). 7900GTX looks like it could do well in most games outside of FEAR but at present i'm leaning towards waiting for G80/R600 more than anything else.

Edit: Good to see ya back Rollo, we've missed ya.