NV20 Specification

tnaw

Banned
Nov 15, 2000
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the Chinese site (Pcreporter-Online) that posted NV20 pics yesterday, has some more info about NV20 today. To my knowledge, most of the info are quite credible.

here is the translation of those info:
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NV20 will be released on 2001.2.27, the main specification of NV20 are:

Fabrication Process: 0.15 or 0.13-micron
Transistors in the Core: 30~50 million
Rendering Pipelines: 4
Texture Units per Pipeline: 3
Core Speed: 300MHz
Memory Speed: 250MHz (DDR)
Memory Bandwidth: 8G/sec
Pixel Fill Rate: 1200 million-pixels/sec
Texel Fill Rate: 3600 million-texels/sec
Triangles Processing Speed: 150 million-triangles/sec
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may be you would also like to read some more info about NV20 here

http://www.geocities.com/tnaw_xtennis/NV20-1.htm
 

dougjnn

Senior member
Dec 31, 2000
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I suspect it won't make a whole lot of sense to buy a NV20 card until around Xmas time 2001.

Sure, the price will have dropped a lot by then, and probably there will be some sort of more ram ultra nv20 out by then to drive down the price of the initial nv20's. Perhaps Nvidia will introduce more than one souped up version of the NV20 by Xmas time, driving down the basic card price all the more.

But there is another reason, which unlike the above, is somewhat unique to the NV20. I think the main advantage of the NV20 will be when software is written to take advantage of the special features of the card. In particular, the HSR (hidden surface removal) feature. That will allow much more detailed scene rendering with acceptable frame rates. Frame rates on existing games are pretty good on Geforce2 GTS cards now. I don't think the NV20 is likely to make all that much of a useful difference in games like Quake III or Half Life engine games, or anything else out there right now. They'll be even faster, but so what? They won't look tons different.

I think game titles taking advantage of HSF and other features of the NV20, allowing a more photo realistic "Toy Story" style look in PC games, will come out much sooner than is usually the case of software supporting new video card features. That will be because of the X-Box spillover effect. It should be very easy to port X-box titles to PC's with NV20 cards. (In fact, one can imagine it might be possible to write X-box titles that work out of the box with NV20 equipped PC's, although for marketing reasons Microsoft may not want or allow this. Direct X 8.0 is of course tailored around the X-box. And the NV20 is tailored around both, no doubt.

Because of the X-box effect, there will be a lot of game developers who will write to the special strengths of the x-box / NV20, rather than the lowest common denominator of the large base of then installed 3D video cards. In fact, it is possible to imagine some X-Box / NV20 titles that either don't work on other PC video cards, or are dramatically less good on other cards. Because of the X-box effect that will not necessarily be economically unwise for game makers. The port to NV20 PC will simply be an easy add on to their X-box game title sales.

What do you all think of these speculations?
 

Deeko

Lifer
Jun 16, 2000
30,213
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I'm thinkin it will have 4 texture units, not 3, as Dave preached about the uselessness of 3 back before the "great fall" :)
 

MSNY

Senior member
Oct 29, 1999
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dougjnn -

I agree with your general assessment. I'd only add that no one knows with present processors how CPU dependant the card might be. Will a P3-650 like mine bog it down ? Will most of us in this CPU range need to upgrade our systems to really take the full benefit of NV20 ?

Until there is a production model with real world benchmarks its hard to tell if the card will be worth the high price most people are saying it will be.

For me with a GeForce DDR it might be a good time for a GeForce 2 Ultra if prices drop enougf when NV20 comes along.
 

Ajay

Lifer
Jan 8, 2001
16,094
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Hmmm. Looks like the NV20 may have 4 texture units, _if_ ixbt is right. That will be great once games are programed to take advantage of 4 textures in a single pass. I think some DX effects require 4 textures, but I'm not sure - Dave B3B - care to comment?


-AJ

 

frombauer

Member
Jul 9, 2000
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I think any 32Mb GTS is going to run all games very well until the end of 2001 and maybe beyond that... No need to buy a $600 card.
 

Deeko

Lifer
Jun 16, 2000
30,213
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Ajay, according to what Dave told us before, DX8 is built around the idea of 4 textures, so if a card wants to be fully DX8 complient, they will need 4 texture units.
 

dougjnn

Senior member
Dec 31, 2000
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Yeah. 4 texture units.

I think that the NV20 will mark a real point of departure for PC game software.

The key is the X-box sucking in game developers to do a full support of the standard despite uncertain speed of adoption of the cards in the PC market. The expected sell through of the supporting standard hardware in the nearly coding identical X-Box market will suck in the support.

But it will still take until Xmas until there is much PC game product out there which will make the NV20 worth buying for anything much more than bragging rights.
 

JayPatel

Diamond Member
Jun 14, 2000
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babelfish can barely translate that site but what it can it surely does seem impressive to say the least. nvidia will have that page taken down in a few hours....just like they did when ixbt ran their nv15 preview...scary thing was..they were 90% right about it...they even mentioned the nv11 back then.
 

lifeguard1999

Platinum Member
Jul 3, 2000
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MSNY asks "Will a P3-650 like mine bog it down ? ". Remember that the X-box will be using a P3-700. That should answer your question.

dougjnn is correct. Without the software, who cares if the NV20 runs at 300 fps in Quake III. Can you really tell the difference between that and 200 fps with an Ultra? The same problem affects Intel/AMD today: for most people a GHz chip is overkill.

 

DaveB3D

Senior member
Sep 21, 2000
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try 2 texture units.. shhhh.. that is a secret. :)

IXBT is just confused, and I know why.. I'll leave it at that.
 

JayPatel

Diamond Member
Jun 14, 2000
4,488
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u aint saying that the nv20 is only going to have 2 texture unit per pixel are you??? i find that hard to believe. hows nvidia going to market a next generation card based on "old" hypertexel technology :)
 

Soccerman

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
6,378
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you have to realize that you really didn't see any of those fillrate numbers that the GTS gave you in the first place.

the NV20 uses techniques like ATi (AFAIK) to give you access to this fillrate.

the RAM probably won't run at 250, if the pictures we saw a day or two ago have any meaning, more likely 200 or so..

I can see the core speed hitting 300mhz, they will have an improvement in fillrate, just not a substantial one.

the triangles processing speed should be wrong, if nVidia past has anything to do with this video card. NV20 code name stands for 20 million polygon per second video card. 150 million is wayy off.
 

JayPatel

Diamond Member
Jun 14, 2000
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SoccerMan nvidias codenames bear no meaning to its polygon throughput......NV15 has been rated at 25 million polys/sec.

200 mhz ram speed? i dont think so....GTS Ultra is already at 230 Mhz DDR, 250 Mhz is quite likely...

150 triangles a second isnt too far fetched.... that translates into 75 million polygons. i still dont buy the 2 texture units per pixel though.
 

Ajay

Lifer
Jan 8, 2001
16,094
8,112
136
Thanks Dave,

Hmmm, I guess loopback is now a developer's best friend :)
Do you know whether or not the 256KB texture cache rumor
is true?

-AJ

 

Soccerman

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
6,378
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ok then, you find me a box with specs on an NV15, and tell me what the polygon count it says is?

that's what they said they were following in the past (NV5, NV10, etc), I do not know if they are continuing it though.
 

BenSkywalker

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
9,140
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Soccerman-

GF2MX is the NV11 and the GF2U is NV16. fkloster has tested his GF2U at over 20million a second, the GF2MX should be in the fourteen range(I can't recall off the top of my head).