NV30 Should ROCK at 400 MHz

[neomits]

Link

Announcment expected November 18th-22nd and be on shelves possibly december

 

[boyRacer]

...and it'll rock your wallet too ...

 

[cmdrdredd]

let's see if they can ship it at 400Mhz. Also notice that the 9700Pro isn't all the much faster in clock from the Ti4600, but spanks it utterly.

 

[Metalloid]

Keep in mind also that the NV30 will only use a 128-bit memory bus.

 

[spanky]

Originally posted by: Metalloid15
Keep in mind also that the NV30 will only use a 128-bit memory bus.

it does?

 

[ScrewFace]

Yep, that's right. It'll have 8-pixel pipelines, though, and have 2 texture units per pixel pipeline and have more than sufficient memory bandwidth.

 

[cmdrdredd]

we will have to wait and see, but I have a feeling that ATI is ready with an announcement around the shipping date for NV30...not anything big just a revision to the 9700 that places it ahead of the NV30 if indeed the NV30 beats the 9700Pro.

 

[43st]

Here's what I want to see...

Nvidia announces the new NV30 and the next day ATI announces the .13 micron 9700 and a 9700 Pro price drop. Talk about sweet irony, hehe.

 

[BFG10K]

At this stage 400 MHz really means nothing in terms of trying to estimate how much faster it'll be than the 9700 Pro.

Yep, that's right. It'll have 8-pixel pipelines, though, and have 2 texture units per pixel pipeline and have more than sufficient memory bandwidth.

That flash fillrate means nothing if the card will be starved for memory bandwidth. The NV30 will have real problems if the memory is only 128 bits wide compared to the 9700's 256 bit memory interface unless nVidia has something special up their sleeve to get around this issue.

 

[Rand]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
At this stage 400 MHz really means nothing in terms of trying to estimate how much faster it'll be than the 9700 Pro.

Yep, that's right. It'll have 8-pixel pipelines, though, and have 2 texture units per pixel pipeline and have more than sufficient memory bandwidth.

That flash fillrate means nothing if the card will be starved for memory bandwidth. The NV30 will have real problems if the memory is only 128 bits wide compared to the 9700's 256 bit memory interface unless nVidia has something special up their sleeve to get around this issue.

I'm expecting nVidia to use some of Samsung's 800MHz DDR or perhaps a bit faster, to push theoretical memory bandwidth up to around 13GB/s. It'll still be a good 7GB/s or so lower then what the R9700 is capable of, but I figure nVidia will try to use some of GigaPixel's technologyto boost bandwidth efficiency to somewhat off-set the advantage ATi will have in sheer theoretical bandwidth.

Even now a good couple years after, some of GigaPixel's patents are quite impressive and could really benefit the NV30.
I'm not sure it'll be quite enough to fully match up to the R9700's real owrld memory bandwidth, but I don't think it'll fall -too- far below.
I don't expect it to be too badly memory bandwdith limited though, except in extreme cases.
Of course this is all speculation on my part...

The second TMU should of course help out to considcerably varying degrees depending on the scene being rendered.. if sufficient bandwidth is there of course.

 

[ErikaeanLogic]

Isn't NV30 the part nVidia claimed would utilize technology acquired from 3dfx, some years back (SuperSampling FSAA, etc.)?

 

[Killrose]

It will be interesting to see what Ati comes up with to combat the NV30 Launch. Though I doubt the R300 core at .15 and 325MHz has much more to give, the DDR II ram capability could give them something to launch with.

Or at least a paper launch with .13 micron and DDR II.

 

[HardwareAddicted]

I just saw the ATI rep on TechTV showing off the 9700 Pro version with DDR-2....

Link to more info on this card

This seems to be where they will open up more bandwidth.... I wish they would have thrown some benchies up..... but nothing yet.

This guy hand carried this thing right from the lab.... so it will still be a little while B4 we can get one or even read the reviews.

This war I will be watching closely.... I have a Ti 4600 to sell

~ Mark

 

[Metalloid]

Wow that will be very nice, but Im not sure if I can wait that long.