I've been and QuakeCon the past couple of days with a few dozen working 9700s around the place. And I am utterly impressed. From my understanding from unofficial benchies from touney players and what not the 9700 quite possibley has the potential to easily beat any 4600 by a factor of two.... let me explain.
At least in the same maps/benchies whatever you get almost the same fps no matter how much eye candy you turn on. So around 90s fps in 3d Mark 2001 nature scene (default settings no FSAA etc), and still in the 90s with FSAA and everything turned on to max settings. And at the HardOCP seminar Kyle ran the full benchmark (well at least the ones to give you a 3dmark score) one with nothing on and got 14k (with no FSAA nothing else turned on) and then a second time with FSAA and everything turned on (max settings) and actully pulled another 100pts higher on the 3d mark score!
So that tells us there are CPU limitations since the fps are almost identical, the CPU cannot push enough power behind the 9700 to squeeze off more fps. Given these are top of the line CPUs too! Tourny computers are 2.53 Ghz P4s and Kyle's computer was an undisclosed AthlonXP (presumably the 2600 or 2800). BTW the rig he used is his "Rotten Apple" which funny enough has some serious limitations (KT266A chipset, 4x agp and AthlonXP) on a high end overclocked P4 I bet the 3D mark score would have been higher (because we all know 3D Mark is as much of a CPU benchmark as it is 3D benchmark).
Also these 9700s get really hot, Kyle did an all night burn test running 3d mark 2001 demo in continous loop all night and hit 160s F on the core and 180s F on RAM. Also there are no heatsyncs on those BGA ram chips. Don't know what kind of delta that is, but were are in Dallas, Texas so lots of people keep their A/C in the 80s to keep their power bills under $100 a month.
Another thing is the board is a lot smaller than you would think. Much smaller than a Ti4600. Not a whole lot of capacitors and such. Red PCB real nice. Also as well all know it has a external power connector, anyway Kyle said that if you forget to plug this in its still all good. In the video bios initialzation it will put up a message telling you are an idiot and don't see a big white power connector that you need to plug in. But no damage to the card. Kyle spoke on this at CPL too and the engeneers said they don't really need the connector because power usage is still within AGP spec, but that is was so close to the maximmum they put it in for safe measure.
Also ATI version (dubbed the PRO) with ship with 350mhz core 320mhz memory with OEMs lower (but not sure by how much). Also as we asked questions Kyle said he talked to the ATI prez and that there were intrests to make a more midrange (cheaper) cards based on the 9700 core. Which is good for the rest of us with G/Fs and wifes that won't let us spend a cool $400 for the latest and greatest. There are a lot of numbers between 9000 (which we all know is a joke) and 9700.
EDIT: as hans007 pointed out I got the clock speeds wrong sorrry, I did this from memory I should have tape recorded it.
Also another question was brought up that the ATI rep answered is that the 9700 core has support for up to 256 parallel gpus, but couldn't say if there are any plans to that effect. Also reffered that the 9700 has support for more memory (256MB? 512MB?). Must be at least 256MB because the FireGL version has 256MB, unless they are diffrent cores? The Radeon 8500 debuted at 64mb and went up to 128mb so we may see a 256mb 9700.
I don't think we will know the full power of the 9700 until it hits retail and somebody from Japan cryogenically cools a P4 to 7Ghz+ with a 9700 and runs some benchies.
On the NV30 side, Kyle also made mention of this too. The NV30 HAS taped out and is in early fabrication. However the NV30 uses .13 micron technology and currently Nvidia is getting terrible yeilds. Which means that a large percentage of chips being fabed are defective and useless. Intel had this same problem when they moved to .13 micron tech, and we'll see what happens with this, as Nvidia dosen't have the kind of resourses like Intel has. Because if a large percentage of chips are no good then that makes the working chips more expensive to produce and Nvidia might have to charge more than the 9700 to make money, and the performace differances between the NV30 and 9700 should be rather minor. The NV30 should be out for Christmas release, GF5? who knows what they will call it.
ATI of course won't have this problem since the 9700 uses .15 micron fabrication process which everybody and their mother can do.
Also one of my buddies there has an exclusive video of an impromtu interview with John Carmack. He makes some intresting statments like 8X agp won't be needed for Doom 3 (opposite what Kyle Benett said at CPL a month ago BTW) and lots of his views on VB and graphics card makers. We are working on digitizing it.
At least in the same maps/benchies whatever you get almost the same fps no matter how much eye candy you turn on. So around 90s fps in 3d Mark 2001 nature scene (default settings no FSAA etc), and still in the 90s with FSAA and everything turned on to max settings. And at the HardOCP seminar Kyle ran the full benchmark (well at least the ones to give you a 3dmark score) one with nothing on and got 14k (with no FSAA nothing else turned on) and then a second time with FSAA and everything turned on (max settings) and actully pulled another 100pts higher on the 3d mark score!
So that tells us there are CPU limitations since the fps are almost identical, the CPU cannot push enough power behind the 9700 to squeeze off more fps. Given these are top of the line CPUs too! Tourny computers are 2.53 Ghz P4s and Kyle's computer was an undisclosed AthlonXP (presumably the 2600 or 2800). BTW the rig he used is his "Rotten Apple" which funny enough has some serious limitations (KT266A chipset, 4x agp and AthlonXP) on a high end overclocked P4 I bet the 3D mark score would have been higher (because we all know 3D Mark is as much of a CPU benchmark as it is 3D benchmark).
Also these 9700s get really hot, Kyle did an all night burn test running 3d mark 2001 demo in continous loop all night and hit 160s F on the core and 180s F on RAM. Also there are no heatsyncs on those BGA ram chips. Don't know what kind of delta that is, but were are in Dallas, Texas so lots of people keep their A/C in the 80s to keep their power bills under $100 a month.
Another thing is the board is a lot smaller than you would think. Much smaller than a Ti4600. Not a whole lot of capacitors and such. Red PCB real nice. Also as well all know it has a external power connector, anyway Kyle said that if you forget to plug this in its still all good. In the video bios initialzation it will put up a message telling you are an idiot and don't see a big white power connector that you need to plug in. But no damage to the card. Kyle spoke on this at CPL too and the engeneers said they don't really need the connector because power usage is still within AGP spec, but that is was so close to the maximmum they put it in for safe measure.
Also ATI version (dubbed the PRO) with ship with 350mhz core 320mhz memory with OEMs lower (but not sure by how much). Also as we asked questions Kyle said he talked to the ATI prez and that there were intrests to make a more midrange (cheaper) cards based on the 9700 core. Which is good for the rest of us with G/Fs and wifes that won't let us spend a cool $400 for the latest and greatest. There are a lot of numbers between 9000 (which we all know is a joke) and 9700.
EDIT: as hans007 pointed out I got the clock speeds wrong sorrry, I did this from memory I should have tape recorded it.
Also another question was brought up that the ATI rep answered is that the 9700 core has support for up to 256 parallel gpus, but couldn't say if there are any plans to that effect. Also reffered that the 9700 has support for more memory (256MB? 512MB?). Must be at least 256MB because the FireGL version has 256MB, unless they are diffrent cores? The Radeon 8500 debuted at 64mb and went up to 128mb so we may see a 256mb 9700.
I don't think we will know the full power of the 9700 until it hits retail and somebody from Japan cryogenically cools a P4 to 7Ghz+ with a 9700 and runs some benchies.
On the NV30 side, Kyle also made mention of this too. The NV30 HAS taped out and is in early fabrication. However the NV30 uses .13 micron technology and currently Nvidia is getting terrible yeilds. Which means that a large percentage of chips being fabed are defective and useless. Intel had this same problem when they moved to .13 micron tech, and we'll see what happens with this, as Nvidia dosen't have the kind of resourses like Intel has. Because if a large percentage of chips are no good then that makes the working chips more expensive to produce and Nvidia might have to charge more than the 9700 to make money, and the performace differances between the NV30 and 9700 should be rather minor. The NV30 should be out for Christmas release, GF5? who knows what they will call it.
ATI of course won't have this problem since the 9700 uses .15 micron fabrication process which everybody and their mother can do.
Also one of my buddies there has an exclusive video of an impromtu interview with John Carmack. He makes some intresting statments like 8X agp won't be needed for Doom 3 (opposite what Kyle Benett said at CPL a month ago BTW) and lots of his views on VB and graphics card makers. We are working on digitizing it.
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