G80 Specualation Thread

[Cookie Monster]

Link

- "Our next generation product is the combination of 3 years of heavy-duty work. We started architecting it about 4 years ago, and, you know, my best calculations have this investing $250M into it already, and by the time it launches as well as the entire product family, we will have invested about $500M in R&D."

Props to Uttar. :thumbsup:


Looks like the G80 will be one hell of a beast.

 

[moonboy403]

that's what we all said before the 7900 gtx came out =(

 

[crazydingo]

Originally posted by: moonboy403
that's what we all said before the 7900 gtx came out =(

lol

G80 .. a monster that G71 supposed to be .. 32 pipes .. 700MHz clocks .. HDR+AA

I remember that some people adamantly fought that Nvidia would release a 32 piper claiming that "Nvidia will not sit on their asses for 9 months and deliver a die-shrink, they will definitely add more pipes and features" Guess what !

Milking the consumers wallet. (I dont blame Nvidia)

 

[moonboy403]

lol...since x1900 series came with 3x the shader power

then i'd have to go with 3x the pipes with the G80 :thumbsup:

making it a 72 pipes monster destroying everything in its path

 

[Cookie Monster]

Its something more than a mere 32 pipe card. It will have all the stuff we wanted that the G70/G71 didnt have propbably.

GDDR4, S.M 4.0, not sure about unified shaders.
But i think theyll bring back Angle independant AF etc.

4 years in the works. All the money spent on it. Cant wait

edit -

"And, uhm, if I have my way, our next generation GPU will be the first DX10 GPU in the world."

I smell an early release of the G80 compared to the R600. Good news.

 

[jayanath]

lol who could believe this
u know nv said 7900 will have 32 pipes but it only has 24 right
one more thing there will be no dx10 cards this year. think about it windows vista will come at the end of the year

 

[ronnn]

I thought pipes were old tech and will not be part of g80?

 

[DrZoidberg]

i dont think nvidia ever said 7900 was going to be 32 pipes. Only the inquirer and some other speculation sites said that. In fact about 2 months ago I read its going to be 32 pipes from inquirer and i was thinking no way, refresh products is normally just a boost to core/memory speeds like x800 to x850, 6800GT to 6800Ultra...

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: ronnn
I thought pipes were old tech and will not be part of g80?

I think Nv is very hesitant to take this unified approach. There is a good chance it will be a 32 pipe card with a whole lot of shader processors like X1900's have. So maybe 64 shader processors or less likely, 96? Just a guess. I can't remember where I read this, not the specs, but the fact that they didn't think unified was ready for prime time (concerning G80). We'll see.

 

[dguy6789]

It will be faster.

 

[dguy6789]

Originally posted by: DrZoidberg
i dont think nvidia ever said 7900 was going to be 32 pipes. Only the inquirer and some other speculation sites said that. In fact about 2 months ago I read its going to be 32 pipes from inquirer and i was thinking no way, refresh products is normally just a boost to core/memory speeds like x800 to x850, 6800GT to 6800Ultra...

That was not a refresh launch.

Nvidia launched the Geforce 6800 Ultra and 6800GT at the same time. Nvidia never had a refresh for the 6800 series. ATi launched the Radeon X800XTPE, X800XT, and X800 Pro a few days later. The 6800GT was a bit faster than the X800 Pro in most cases, while the X800XT and XTPE were faster than the 6800 Ultra in around 75% of the cases.

A few months later, ATi launched the X850XTPE, X850XT, X850 Pro, and X800XL. The X800XL performs near identical to the 6800GT, and had a price of around $100 less. The X850XTPE only furthered the gap between ATi's flagship and nVidia's.

 

[TecHNooB]

With NVidias IQ, I think I'm starting to look more towards ATIs next gen--when they start to go beyond 16 pipes. Personally, trading off image quality for speed is not my idea of a high end card. Can DX10 cards run DX9 and below games? The old directx's built on each other, but DX10 is pretty much standalone.

 

[Nirach]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
It will be faster.

Best, and probably the most accurate, speculation ever.

 

[Wreckage]

if I have my way, our next generation GPU will be the first DX10 GPU in the world."

 

[RussianSensation]

Based on the link I'd say, nVidia G80 GPU will be 80nm process, DX10 and SM4.0 compliant. DX10 pushes unified shaders and the they talk about flexibility for programmers. Thus, I'll go on a limb and say it will be a Unified Shader Model just like R600. Since SM3.0 and HDR will be all the rage, I'd expect improved static and dynamic branching and especially HDR performance. Memory will likely be 256-bit 2.0ghz + GDDR4 since GDDR3 is end of the line. Since generational leaps have doubled performance in recent years, I would say it'll have 32 pipes minimum. If it won't be unified, 48 is more likely imo. The core will be about 700-750mhz. We should expect 512mb standard and 1 gig high end.

Price: $999 for mid-range

 

[jim1976]

G80 = geometry + vertex shaders unified, PS separate. That's is what Nvidia seems to be following.. 8 quads x ? clockspeed with GDDR4.. And finally SM4.0 ..

 

[potato28]

Wheres Dug... hes in the future and sh!t. He'd probly no this...

 

[Cookie Monster]

bump.

 

[crazydingo]

Originally posted by: jim1976
G80 = geometry + vertex shaders unified, PS separate. That's is what Nvidia seems to be following.. 8 quads x ? clockspeed with GDDR4.. And finally SM4.0 ..

Ugh

Unified is vertex and pixel unified, you might see a new geometry shader as a separate unit. G80 is confirmed to be unified. Its funny that Kirk kept bashing the unified approach until recently and they were working on it for the past 3 years.

My guess is that G80 wil feature 32 "pipes" that can do either pixel or shader work plus adding all those features missing in their current generation (HDR+AA, HQ AF).

ATI on the other hand I think is in a much better position, leveraging most of thier work from the Xenos gpu in the 360 plus thier memory controller is already damn good and it also supports GDDR4.

I think the efficiency will decide the winner between the two.

 

[fierydemise]

A month or so back I posted rumors from xbit that G80 wouldn't be unified shader but R600 would be, if thats true it might explain why G80 will be the first DX10 card out

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: jim1976
G80 = geometry + vertex shaders unified, PS separate. That's is what Nvidia seems to be following.. 8 quads x ? clockspeed with GDDR4.. And finally SM4.0 ..

All signs point to this.

From the speculations ive read (ive been following this for all 4 years):

48 shaders (unified)
unknown quads (it will still use quads)
unknown clockspeeds
unknown memory (XDR?)
unknown logic

The only thing they have actually leaked is that it will feature unified shaders, and that it has been in development a very very long time.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Remember that this GPu has been in the works of 4 year. Plus about 250M USD poured into it. Im sure this GPU will be pretty different to what we are using now.

 

[DeathReborn]

Originally posted by: Acanthus

Originally posted by: jim1976
G80 = geometry + vertex shaders unified, PS separate. That's is what Nvidia seems to be following.. 8 quads x ? clockspeed with GDDR4.. And finally SM4.0 ..

All signs point to this.

From the speculations ive read (ive been following this for all 4 years):

48 shaders (unified)
unknown quads (it will still use quads)
unknown clockspeeds
unknown memory (XDR?)
unknown logic

The only thing they have actually leaked is that it will feature unified shaders, and that it has been in development a very very long time.

I read reports not long ago saying it wouldn't be unified Shader Architecture as it didn't provide enough benefit for that gen to consider.

G80 I think will be:

32 Pixel Pipelines (possibly with 64 Shader Units)
10+ Vertex Shaders
80nm Die Shrink
512MB-1GB GDDR4 (256MB GDDR3 on mid (256bit) or low (128bit) end cards)
PureVideo 2 (possibly)
HDMI (incl Audio) & DVI Outputs

Possible Clocks:

700-800MHz on Core
2.0-2.4GHz Memory


Now having set my expectations there I fully expect to be disappointed but i'll still consider the card if it does disappoint.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: dguy6789

Originally posted by: DrZoidberg
i dont think nvidia ever said 7900 was going to be 32 pipes. Only the inquirer and some other speculation sites said that. In fact about 2 months ago I read its going to be 32 pipes from inquirer and i was thinking no way, refresh products is normally just a boost to core/memory speeds like x800 to x850, 6800GT to 6800Ultra...

That was not a refresh launch.

Nvidia launched the Geforce 6800 Ultra and 6800GT at the same time. Nvidia never had a refresh for the 6800 series. ATi launched the Radeon X800XTPE, X800XT, and X800 Pro a few days later. The 6800GT was a bit faster than the X800 Pro in most cases, while the X800XT and XTPE were faster than the 6800 Ultra in around 75% of the cases.

A few months later, ATi launched the X850XTPE, X850XT, X850 Pro, and X800XL. The X800XL performs near identical to the 6800GT, and had a price of around $100 less. The X850XTPE only furthered the gap between ATi's flagship and nVidia's.

Actually, you're both wrong... To be precise, NVIDIA launched the 6800 Ultra and the 6800 initially. The 6800GT was launched about a month later. It was speculated at the time that the GT cores were basically Ultras that didn't cut it.

 

[Jules]

who cares