I think ATI will win this match

[Alkali]

There have been murmorings from a certain discussion board, (which I'm not naming for legal reasons - love NDA's - [I've been waiting for an oppurtunity to say this for so long ]) that:

the X800 will be on par with the 6800Ultra, (remember 475Mhz/900Mhz vs. 400Mhz/1100Mhz)
and the X800XT will be a 'suprise' to many, (remember 600Mhz/1200Mhz vs. 400Mhz/1100Mhz)

Do the math.
Its looking to me like ATi's quick decision to ramp up the 6 month cycle right down to 10 days after the X800Pro launch is a good one...

 

[MDE]

Just wait, I know a couple of guys at STB and they say their new chips will suck twice the power of NV40 and still outperform a GeForce 256.

 

[Insomniak]

Originally posted by: RussianSensation

2. ATI isn't gonna be faster? well you might be right by based on the assumptions revolving around its clock speeds it appears to be faster on paper even with its old architecture. 600/1200 16 pipes vs. 400/1100 nv hmmm....

Just like NV30's mega clocks were going to wipe the floor with the 9700 pro?

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: Insomniak

Originally posted by: RussianSensation

2. ATI isn't gonna be faster? well you might be right by based on the assumptions revolving around its clock speeds it appears to be faster on paper even with its old architecture. 600/1200 16 pipes vs. 400/1100 nv hmmm....

Just like NV30's mega clocks were going to wipe the floor with the 9700 pro?

This could be a totally different situation, the big bottleneck on the FX5800U was memory bandwidth on the 128bit bus.

 

[RussianSensation]

Originally posted by: Insomniak

Originally posted by: RussianSensation

2. ATI isn't gonna be faster? well you might be right by based on the assumptions revolving around its clock speeds it appears to be faster on paper even with its old architecture. 600/1200 16 pipes vs. 400/1100 nv hmmm....

Just like NV30's mega clocks were going to wipe the floor with the 9700 pro?

Exactly, like Acanthus has noted 5800Ultra vs. 9700Pro was not a comparison of all things being equal. First of all, 5800Ultra only had half the memory bus at 128 vs. ATI's 256 and half the pipelines at 4x2 vs. 8x1 thus losing once again in single textured games.

Now the situtation is much different as both ati and nvidia top end cards have equal pipes and equal memory bus so what determines the final speed? Per clock efficiency and GPU/memory speeds. Since we do not have a confirmation of ATI's exact speeds yet, we cannot make a fair assumption of how fast it will be just yet but some speculation can be made if ATI reaches 600/1200 speeds -- then it will be impressive. But i highly doubt it considering x800pro is only 475/900.

 

[Insomniak]

Yeah, I know all that, I was just making the point that clockspeed certainly isn't everything, and until a card is released, all bets are off.

I agree however that there should be a good showing from the ATi camp. 1200 Mhz RAM doesn't seem difficult, but the 600 Mhz core is....sketchy...to me.

 

[nRollo]

Originally posted by: Acanthus

Originally posted by: Insomniak

Originally posted by: RussianSensation

2. ATI isn't gonna be faster? well you might be right by based on the assumptions revolving around its clock speeds it appears to be faster on paper even with its old architecture. 600/1200 16 pipes vs. 400/1100 nv hmmm....

Just like NV30's mega clocks were going to wipe the floor with the 9700 pro?

This could be a totally different situation, the big bottleneck on the FX5800U was memory bandwidth on the 128bit bus.

That's "sort" of true. Clock frequency also is part of the memory bandwidth equation. The 9700 Pro did indeed have double the the bus width (256 vs 128) but it only had 62% of the clock speed (620MHz vs 1000Mhz) so the end memory bandwidth ended up about the same- 19GBs 9700P vs 16GBs 5800U.

Russian Sensation:

Exactly, like Acanthus has noted 5800Ultra vs. 9700Pro was not a comparison of all things being equal. First of all, 5800Ultra only had half the memory bus at 128 vs. ATI's 256

See above. Twice the bus is a somewhat moot point at half the speed.

and half the pipelines at 4x2 vs. 8x1 thus losing once again in single textured games.

Of course, there haven't really been single textured games since about 1998, so this is sort of a moot point as well. Also, even on single textures where they may still exist, frequency is again part of the equation, and the the 9700Pro creeped along at 325MHz while the 5800U is at 500MHz.

So these answers are misleading at best, you can't say something is bad because of it's lower performance at one aspect of an equation, and ignore the other aspect of the equation that offsets the weaker one and levels the playing field.

 

[Regs]

Originally posted by: Rollo
You are all wrong. The S3 Delta Zinc will be the card to have in 2004.

What a joke.

Yeah, "incremental increase" - the increment is 50% in some benches.

Since your "opinions" have no basis in fact whatsoever, you'll pardon me if I join everyone else in saying, "This thread is pointless. You have no facts. We don't care what you guess will happen."

Actually, sometimes over a 100% increase in some benches.

Halo 1280 x 1024 8XAF
6800: 67 FPS
----
5950:30
9800 XT: 36


Enough said.

And what really hurt the FX series was the front end of the shader pipe line. The new core sporting an extra math unit in their pipeline can now execute 2 instructions per clock per shader offering 2x the shader throughput compared to the FX series.

People over looked this on the FX's because there was no shader intensive game out yet for people to care. Nvidia certainly learned from their mistakes. Better AF performance and better pixel shading performance. Just what the doctor ordered.

My feelings towards ATI is optimistic, but only fair to the information we currently have. ATI all ready established they can offer good AF performance and Pixel shading from their 9700/9800 cores. A new core design that can offer more calculation/math throughput to process these instructions (their 12x1/16x1 design) and AF/AA bandwidth saving techniques could give them the edge that they need if their pipeline proves to be more efficient. Plus, rumors of improvements of their Cat drivers circulating say that they'll offer superior stability and performance. But this only comes from an interview from one of ATI's executives which could mean anything. It should be really interesting to see what ATI has to offer. I have little doubt that they'll be able to match the NV40 pound for pound. However surpassing the NV40's performance would be a very difficult task without a revolutionary new GPU core design. And from rumors all ready gathered, we likely won't see that until the next generation. These will actually just be "the real" DX9 cards.