Originally posted by: RussianSensation
Originally posted by: Rollo
Your logic is totally flawed.
If you go back through history, there is not an annual doubling of performance going on every year. GF2>GF3 did not double, GF3 >GF4 did not double. 7500>8500 did not double, 9700>9800 did not double.
It's nice when a generation doubles performance, but it's not the rule.
Aha.....Thats why GF3 to GF2 was not a good upgrade. Neither was GF4 from GF3. But the fact that $299 Geforce 4 4200 gave 40% performance improvement isnt the same as G70 giving 40% for $560!!! (based on the 3dmark05 score). 9700Pro doubled over 8500. 9800Pro is not next generation from 9700Pro. It was a simple side-generational enhancement - hence the R
300 and R
350 designations. The first number designates a generation for ATI. Therefore, R200 (8500) --> R300/350/360 (9700Pro/9800Pro/9800xt) ---> R420 (current). Each full generation performance doubled. To me 9800pro/xt were just updates for 9700Pro series.
Those generations were 2 year gaps though, the 9700 came out in 2002 IIRC and the x800s in 2004. It's only been 1 year this time around.
For Nvidia, same thing. NV20 (geforce 3) --> NV25 (geforce 4) - not really full generation interally since they only gave x5 increase. Notice NV30 is full generation ahead of NV20. This is true given that Geforce 4 was nothing but an enhanced 3. 5900 series were totally new though. We also have NV40 - 2x faster than NV30. If G70 is a slightly enhanced NV40, it makes sense that it is NV47 (or what it was supposed to be); and real NV50 wont be out for another year. Thus I am not expecting to see 2x performance increase. But it's also unreasonable to pay $560 for 40-50% given that 6800GT will drop to $250 real soon; and if ATI cards come with 32 pipes, this is even worse.
And finally, the length of videocard releases has changed. Previously cards were out at most every 1 year. NV40 was out in April. It's late June now and G70 is still not out (so we have longer update time and less than 2x performance increase). The situation is even worse in my eyes since Nvidia didn't even have a refresh of NV40 6 months from release - while ATI bumped the clock speeds on all of its card with X850 series. If you think about it, everything ATI was saying became true - SM3.0 was useless this whole year. They saved up a bunch of money on R&D and production costs (and on yields due to less complex core). Now when SM3.0 will start to become important, they'll release R520 (this also probably means now is when they'll invest more money into the design than last time since there was a reason to hold back on development until SM2.0 finally faded).
I agree. Going back to what I just said, since its only been 1 year, this doesn't seem to be a "generation" leap as opposed to an upgrade (ie 9700 > 9800). The gap between the 7800 and 6800 is bigger than that however.
The 9700 had 2 "refreshes"; the 9800 Pro about 8 months past, and the 9800 XT about 15 months past IIRC. I honestly wouldn't expect a doubling of the 6800/x800 generation until 2006.
If what we have seen is accurate, considering this a "leap" the way the 6800s were a leap is flawed IMO, this is far closer to a refresh model (ie the 9800 pro was to the 9700 pro). And 40% is a damn solid refresh.
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