G80 and R600

[Job]

Ok - so I've read around and it looks like the consensus is g80 will be out by October and r600 by the beginning of next year.

But what can we expect to see from these cards? I've read articles predicting dual-core GPUs, SM4 support, DX10, 80/65nm processes and hugely increased clock speeds - do you think we'll be lucky enough to see all these improvements by October?

With 7900/7950/x1900 series cards selling so strongly at the moment, will NV push back the release dates even further or can we expect the best cards ever to be hitting the shelves in the next couple months?

What do ppl think....and who will lead the market?

 

[Ika]

They're supposed to have DX10 support, but also be faster at DX9 games than current-gen video cards. IIRC, at least one of them also has SM4 support.

I have a feeling NVidia will lead the market, only because they're supposed to be releasing earlier than ATI. However, it all comes down to who screws up the most....

 

[iiii Link iiii]

What is SM4?

 

[Job]

How about unified rendering engines? I do like NVIDIA but would be most pssd off if I forked out for g80 only to be trounced by r600 a couple of months later

 

[Job]

Originally posted by: iiii Link iiii
What is SM4?

Shader model 4 - current cards are shader model 3. Its responsible for the nice lighting effects you get, eg on water/rocks/glass etc

 

[TheRyuu]

Originally posted by: Job

Originally posted by: iiii Link iiii
What is SM4?

Shader model 4 - current cards are shader model 3. Its responsible for the nice lighting effects you get, eg on water/rocks/glass etc

Yup. We really havn't even touched on what SM3 can do. We also havn't really fully utilised Vertex Shaders either (which can add some cool effects).

The Crysis demo that was shown was done all in DX9 cards with SM4 features on SM3 cards, so currently, SM3 and DX9 can produce a game as good looking as Crysis. I figure that at first (like with Crysis), the DX10 cards will probably just run the game faster, but won't really look that much better than the DX9 couterparts (at first)

And I really don't expect to see a DX10 card until Q4 06 or even (more probably) Q1 07

 

[Cuthalu]

Running faster translates into looking better, because that allows to create better visuals with bearable framerate.