Originally posted by: BassBomb
it still baffles me people go to inq
Uh-oh.When we say big, it will be physically big
No.Does having a unified architecture mean that HDR and AA can be enabled always?
That's a game issue I believe.Or another example soft shadows and AA in FEAR?
Also, why do we keep increasing pixel shaders without bumping up the number of actual pipes on new cards? We've been stuck at 16 since the 6800/X800 days. What good is having 64 shaders if there are only 16 ROPS to feed them through?
anyway, i'm of the opinion that the xb360 runs dx10, or something close enough to not matter, so that ati (which worked closely with MS to develop R500, i'm sure) knows what will be in dx10, so they can get a dx10 R600 out pretty easily
In the unified architecture, can more resources be dedicated to to say textures versus shaders and vice versa?? (ie. can it act like a 30 "traditional" pipeline part??)
Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
In the unified architecture, can more resources be dedicated to to say textures versus shaders and vice versa?? (ie. can it act like a 30 "traditional" pipeline part??)
No, it can't. It has general purpose shaders for pixel/fragment- vertex and geometry shading based operations. These can not be utilized as TMUs or ROPs.
Originally posted by: thilan29
Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
In the unified architecture, can more resources be dedicated to to say textures versus shaders and vice versa?? (ie. can it act like a 30 "traditional" pipeline part??)
No, it can't. It has general purpose shaders for pixel/fragment- vertex and geometry shading based operations. These can not be utilized as TMUs or ROPs.
So what exactly is the benefit of the unified architecture??
Originally posted by: josh6079
Originally posted by: thilan29
Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
In the unified architecture, can more resources be dedicated to to say textures versus shaders and vice versa?? (ie. can it act like a 30 "traditional" pipeline part??)
No, it can't. It has general purpose shaders for pixel/fragment- vertex and geometry shading based operations. These can not be utilized as TMUs or ROPs.
So what exactly is the benefit of the unified architecture??
To decrease the amount of idle shaders and increase the amount of ones that are working. There are only a few instances on todays retail platforms where an application is drawing as much vertex shader operation as it is pixel shader. Because of this, there are very few instances where you are utilizing both aspects of a high end GPU. Since the shaders here are going to be unified, meaning that they can process both vertex and pixel, this will create a more efficient work load for a GPU since it isn't wasting architecture or its shaders.
Originally posted by: thilan29
But then what Josh and Fierydemise said goes against what BenSkywalker said doesn't it?? You can't dedicate say 30 texture pipelines can you (wouldn't that then obliterate all the current gen GPUs??)??
This is what BenSkywalker said:
"No, it can't. It has general purpose shaders for pixel/fragment- vertex and geometry shading based operations. These can not be utilized as TMUs or ROPs."
I'm not sure exactly what he meant there. Anyone care to decode??
oh i wasn't expecting much in the way of visuals, after all, PS3 doesn't look that much better than PS2 for visuals. my statement goes more to my thinking that ATi has a leg up for dx10 due to their work with MS on the xb360. so they *probably* have a competitive advantage over nvidia as to the next generationOriginally posted by: BenSkywalker
anyway, i'm of the opinion that the xb360 runs dx10, or something close enough to not matter, so that ati (which worked closely with MS to develop R500, i'm sure) knows what will be in dx10, so they can get a dx10 R600 out pretty easily
D3D10 offers very, very little in the way of new features. It just does things in a superior way as to not create so many bottlenecks. Don't expect much at all beyond D3D9 in terms of features- it is simply a different approach.
Originally posted by: Elfear
Originally posted by: bunnyfubbles
Originally posted by: gobucks
to be honest, I'm not sure how much faster R600 will be than the X1900 series. in terms of total shaders, the X1900 has 48 pixel + 8 vertex, or 56 total, while the R600 has 64. That is hardly an earth shattering increase considering the X1900 almost tripled the X1800's shaders, and yet performance wasn't increased by more than 20% in most cases. Also, from what I've read, because of the additional overhead of a unified shader, each one is slightly less efficient than a dedicated pixel or vertex shader. There are advantages, like the ability to dedicate more vertex shaders in very vertex-shading heavy games, but for traditional games, where there is much more pixel work than vertex work, there won't be much of an advantage.
Also, why do we keep increasing pixel shaders without bumping up the number of actual pipes on new cards? We've been stuck at 16 since the 6800/X800 days. What good is having 64 shaders if there are only 16 ROPS to feed them through? I know that a ratio of 3:2 worked well for nvidia with the G70/G71, but there are obviously deminishing returns with anything beyond that (i'm sure the X1900 can't reliably keep even half its pixel pipes busy with its ratio of 3:1), and I'm sure it'll be the same story with the R600's ratio of 4:1
ATI obviously needs your help.
Lol. What were those dense engineers thinking? ATI could save so much money by just employing gobucks as their design engineer/specialist.
All right, sarcasm aside we still don't know the hard specs of R600 or G80, unless I've missed an official announcement. I'm sure there will be a performance increase, how much is yet to be seen.
Originally posted by: Frackal
Hmm...if they are sticking with 16 texture units they must really believe that's the most optimal allotment out there.
I read an interview on HardOCP w/ ATI Engineering who said they didnt believe more than 16 TMU would be an optimal use of resources as well as being limited by memory bandwidth IIRC