Linky
Courtesy of Beyond3D vis way of nVidia's quarterly conference call (which doesnt seem to have made it's way on the net as yet)
Nothing terribly new besides this one point which seems to add credence to the idea that the low end NV34 will be fully DX9 compliant contrary to Digit-Life recent claims. The mere code name of NV 3X would certainly seem to imply that it's dirivative of the DX9 compliant GeForce FX.
Then again, the ocde name may not necessarily mean much... afterall the NV31 is supposedly a higher performance part then the NV31 despite the lower naming.
That the NV31 will be fully DX9 compliant is fully expected of course, as they'll need something to compete in the midrange against ATi's R9500 series which has been on the market for awhile now.
I sincerely hope that the NV34 will be DX9 as well though.... it's disturbing that DX8 still isnt even the lowest common denominator on the low end as yet, let alone DX9. All of their competitors have PS/VS shader capable boards whereas nVidia is left resting on the laurels of the tired GF4 MX line.
Skipping DX8 entirely and jumping directly to DX9 would be quite interesting indeed, it would be a huge boon to the software market in creating a larger installed base of DX9 boards. At a minimum it should propel usage of light PS into the common game.
It may also serve to help push ATi into releasing the RV350 earlier then expected, The RV350 is likely all but finished, just as the RV250 and RV200 cores were finished months before actual release.
It would seem reasonable that they would leave out hardware VS and allow the CPU to handle that, as for now the processor is still quite capable of effectively emulating VS quite well.
The Xabre route of hardware PS, and software VS would seem to make considerable sense on the low end as a means of reducing cost while still maintaining base DX 8/9 compliancy.
Courtesy of Beyond3D vis way of nVidia's quarterly conference call (which doesnt seem to have made it's way on the net as yet)
Nothing terribly new besides this one point which seems to add credence to the idea that the low end NV34 will be fully DX9 compliant contrary to Digit-Life recent claims. The mere code name of NV 3X would certainly seem to imply that it's dirivative of the DX9 compliant GeForce FX.
Then again, the ocde name may not necessarily mean much... afterall the NV31 is supposedly a higher performance part then the NV31 despite the lower naming.
That the NV31 will be fully DX9 compliant is fully expected of course, as they'll need something to compete in the midrange against ATi's R9500 series which has been on the market for awhile now.
I sincerely hope that the NV34 will be DX9 as well though.... it's disturbing that DX8 still isnt even the lowest common denominator on the low end as yet, let alone DX9. All of their competitors have PS/VS shader capable boards whereas nVidia is left resting on the laurels of the tired GF4 MX line.
Skipping DX8 entirely and jumping directly to DX9 would be quite interesting indeed, it would be a huge boon to the software market in creating a larger installed base of DX9 boards. At a minimum it should propel usage of light PS into the common game.
It may also serve to help push ATi into releasing the RV350 earlier then expected, The RV350 is likely all but finished, just as the RV250 and RV200 cores were finished months before actual release.
It would seem reasonable that they would leave out hardware VS and allow the CPU to handle that, as for now the processor is still quite capable of effectively emulating VS quite well.
The Xabre route of hardware PS, and software VS would seem to make considerable sense on the low end as a means of reducing cost while still maintaining base DX 8/9 compliancy.
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