Are we looking at an exponential speed boost this January?

[SickBeast]

So, are either of the new cards from ATI/nVidia predicted to be twice as fast as a 7800GTX? If that's the case, then I'll enjoy a massive upgrade in a month. Cheers.

 

[destrekor]

not twice as fast, i definitly wouldn't expect that... maybe up to a 50% increase over the 7800gtx 512 though. Refreshes typically dont provide double the performance over its predecessor, but it could be nice to wish, right? I certainly am.

 

[jiffylube1024]

R580 certainly looks like it's more than just a refresh from a design perspective. The memory controller is the same but isn't the whole pipeline architecture different?

 

[otispunkmeyer]

Originally posted by: jiffylube1024
R580 certainly looks like it's more than just a refresh from a design perspective. The memory controller is the same but isn't the whole pipeline architecture different?

im not sure...theyre sticking with 16 guns, but im under the impression that R580 isnt what R480 was to R420.

R580 is on time, R520 was horrendously late......its easy to presume R580 is just a refresh, but i have a feeling it may not be

 

[Sc4freak]

Would be nice if it was a unified architecture.

 

[Zenoth]

That's for R600. That'll be its major discussed feature and selling point (just a personal guess).

 

[JBT]

It is tempting to dump all my hardware and grab a GTX or 1800XT but in reality my X800XT is running CSS and BF2 just fine. I play a level of FEAR every now and again and it plays that alright too albiet at less than great settings but acceptable.

I think if both NV and ATI are going to put out new cards in Jan it would definatly be a good idea for me to wait no matter how much of a performance improvment they may have. It would be pretty sweet if it was a ginourmagantious amount though.

 

[Munky]

The most educated guess going around is that r580 will have 16 pipes, but with 3 pixel shaders per pipe. So in a purely synthetic benchmark that's shader-heavy it could be roughly 3x as fast as the r520. But in most real life games it would no doubt be a much lesser improvement, I'm guessing somewhere around 1.5-2x as fast. Of course in a future app that uses a 3:1 shader/texture ops ratio we could see an improvement very close to the theortetcal 3x. But this is assuming the rest of the card is the same, which will likely not be the case, as there could be other improvements in the memory speed/efficiency, gpu clock speed, and driver improvements.

 

[Dethfrumbelo]

If they can run Oblivion at 1600x1200 4xAA/6xAA with everything set to max at over 40 frames/s then the next gen may be worth the inevitable $500 - $600 pricetag.

 

[nitromullet]

Whatever the performance is, I seriously doubt that anybody is going to be buying R580, G71, or G80 in Jan. Even if they launch in Jan, it will be paper. IIRC, the availability on R580 and G71 was said to be by the end of Q1 2006 and G80 in Q3 from the board partners.