NVIDIA Upcoming Products Speculation

[NFS4]

http://www.penstarsys.com/

 

[Chadder007]

Kinda off topic, but not......Here is the reason why the NV30 is going to be delayed ....and its not to yeild problems

As for the company?s NV30 chip, industry sources revealed that the postponed launch is due to a design change, not a yield rate problem in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company?s (TSMC) 0.13-micron process as market rumors suggested. Hoping to enhance the product?s overall performance to compete with ATI?s top-end Radeon 9700 PRO, the sources suggested that Nvidia may alter its original six-pipeline architecture to an eight-pipeline one.

Looks like NVidia saw ATI's benchmarks and went... "D'oHH!"

 

[thorin]

Well I get a 403 response from that link, however if that quote is from the link it's old news (speculation).

Thorin

 

[NFS4]

Originally posted by: thorin
Well I get a 403 response from that link, however if that quote is from the link it's old news (speculation).

Thorin

Works for me...anyway, here it is:

With the fall season fast approaching, NVIDIA appears to be getting ready to unleash their latest chips to the market. The NV-30 is now quite well known, and it will be the top offering when it is released in late Fall. This will replace the GeForce 4 Ti 4600 at the very top end, and it appears that the Ti 4600, 4400, and 4200 will step down a notch. In fact, the Ti 4400 and Ti 4200 may be discontinued after a fashion due to the price of the chips themselves as compared to what the cards will be selling at. The Ti 4600 looks to stay around the $200 to $250 mark, and will still be an enthusiast level card. Where then does this leave the bottom end?

I have a feeling that the NV-28 chip from NVIDIA will not be an advanced refresh from the current NV-25 chip. In fact, it is looking to be a cut down version of the NV-25, which will give the mainstream and low end full DX 8.1 compatibility for NVIDIA. Unlike the ATI Radeon 9000, which has 4 pipelines with a single texture unit per pipe, it appears that the NV-28 will only have two pipelines, with 2 texturing units per pipe. Instead of the dual Vertex Shader units on the NV-25, the NV-28 will feature one. All of the other parts look to be about the same (LMA II, AA engine, nView), but I am pretty sure the Video Processing Engine will be added to the NV-28 (such as the one in the NV-17). This chip will probably be as fast overall as the Ti 4200, but it will be much, much cheaper to produce. The NV-28 would weigh in around 36 million transistors, while the NV-25 core is around 64 million transistors. Die size would be approximately half of what the NV-25 is, assuming that NVIDIA will use the .15u process for this new chip. If NVIDIA goes ahead and uses the new .13u process, then the die sizes will be nearly 1/4th that of the current NV-25. This would make each chip substantially cheaper to produce, and they would be able to easily clock to 350 MHz or so. The NV-28 would of course also be a AGP 8X part. The die shrink and redesign would also allow the NV-28 to be used in high end notebooks, providing competition with ATI's recently announced Mobility Radeon 9000. It would then include all of the power saving tricks that NVIDIA has used in the NV-17M chip. The NV-28 appears to be the mainstream warrior for NVIDIA this coming season, and will provide excellent competition to ATI's lineup.

This leaves the NV-18 in a very interesting situation. Where exactly will it be placed in the lineup? It looks like the NV-18 is a slightly modified NV-17 core, with AGP 8X functionality as well as some other tweaks. It will still not be a DX 8.1 part, but its transistor count is reportedly around 17 million or so. In question is if it will be produced on the .13u process also. If so, then this will be an incredibly small die as compared to the rest of the products, and there will be hundreds of them per wafer (making each die very, very cheap). The new process would make it ideal for the extreme low end desktop (replacing the GeForce 2 MX series entirely) as well as thin and light notebooks. The clock speed would gain another boost, and notebook performance would also improve.

Remember, this is all speculation based on NVIDIA's past performance as well as rumors I have been hearing. This overall philosophy does seem to fit nicely into the big scheme of things, but I could easily be very, very wrong. Take a large bucket of salt with this one, but something about it just rings true to me.

 

[andreasl]

I have a feeling that....

Does he base his speculation on any facts at all? If not, what is the difference between reading his speculation compared with the rest of the gazillions of speculations on places like this board? Is it official just because it's printed on a website?

 

[GTaudiophile]

Unlike the ATI Radeon 9000, which has 4 pipelines with a single texture unit per pipe, it appears that the NV-28 will only have two pipelines, with 2 texturing units per pipe. Instead of the dual Vertex Shader units on the NV-25, the NV-28 will feature one.

I expect more out of their value/mainstream part than that, especially with ATi's Radeon 9500 expected to be released in Q4 2002.

 

[thorin]

Originally posted by: andreasl

I have a feeling that....

Does he base his speculation on any facts at all? If not, what is the difference between reading his speculation compared with the rest of the gazillions of speculations on places like this board? Is it official just because it's printed on a website?

There's no difference ... as he said "Remember, this is all speculation based on NVIDIA's past performance as well as rumors I have been hearing. This overall philosophy does seem to fit nicely into the big scheme of things, but I could easily be very, very wrong. Take a large bucket of salt with this one, but something about it just rings true to me."

Thorin

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: Chadder007
Kinda off topic, but not......Here is the reason why the NV30 is going to be delayed ....and its not to yeild problems

As for the company?s NV30 chip, industry sources revealed that the postponed launch is due to a design change, not a yield rate problem in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company?s (TSMC) 0.13-micron process as market rumors suggested. Hoping to enhance the product?s overall performance to compete with ATI?s top-end Radeon 9700 PRO, the sources suggested that Nvidia may alter its original six-pipeline architecture to an eight-pipeline one.

Looks like NVidia saw ATI's benchmarks and went... "D'oHH!"

anand said that was completely false in the other thread.

 

[Anand Lal Shimpi]

Let me clarify, there was never any 6-pipe NV30. Architecturally, NV30 will be very much like R300.

Take care,
Anand

 

[glen]

So, it is 8 and always has been 8?

 

[jbond04]

Woohoo! Anand has over 500 posts! 😛

Anyway...thanks for clearing up that rumor Anand. The more rumors you can debunk, the better. 🙂

 

[ultimatebob]

Quote

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As for the company?s NV30 chip, industry sources revealed that the postponed launch is due to a design change, not a yield rate problem in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company?s (TSMC) 0.13-micron process as market rumors suggested. Hoping to enhance the product?s overall performance to compete with ATI?s top-end Radeon 9700 PRO, the sources suggested that Nvidia may alter its original six-pipeline architecture to an eight-pipeline one.
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NVidia is already taped out the NV30, so they're committed to the design whether it's better than ATI or not.

Besides, the whole idea of changing the design of the NV30 at the last minute to make it faster is total nonsense. It takes many months to design a processor this complex, and they can't just "throw in" some improvements in a couple of days to improve performance. It's a freakin' microprocessor, not a Honda Civic!

 

[jbond04]

Originally posted by: tdas2
No real personal offence meant to anyone - but why are you lot still wanking over the NV30 ?

I dunno about most other people, but I'm looking forward to making 3ds Max renderings that used to take weeks to render on my 2.53GHz P4 render in a couple days on the NV30. Oh, and that thingy about playing games fast with AA and Aniso on might have some bearing, too. 😉