The N30 will be on time!!!!

[WyteWatt]

http://www.anandtech.com/news/shownews.html?i=3430&t=sn

 

[bluemax]

Of course, "On Time" means "Christmas at best."

Damn you must hate nVidia not being on top all the time. 😉

Evil, evil ATI and that naughty Radeon 9700 and its nasty R300 core! It may be 50% faster... but...but... it's still not a GeForce! And GeForce is better! It IS! It has to be...... it has to be..... [on haunches, rocking back and forth] *sniff* nVidia just HAS to come out with something faster.... it HAS to! IT HAS TO!!!

😉 😉

 

[WyteWatt]

bluemax no i don't hate nvidia. I knew nvidia would be on time all along. All those rumors out there. Didn't believe any of them. The N30 could be Sept., Oct. or Nov. Hoping Sept. but i won't hold my breath.

 

[RGN]

I am not buying the R300/Radeon9700. I was burned long ago by bad ATi drivers, and it confirmed that Nvidia actually knew what they were doing.

 

[WyteWatt]

RGN yep. I am predicting to see lots of posts after August 19 when people start buying the R300. Like around August 25 and beyond. Like with problems with the R300 and stuff. The ATI 8500 all over again maybe. I hope not but i am not holding my breath.

 

[RGN]

It wasn't just the 8500. It was the first Radeons. ATi cannot write a driver that works the 1st time to save thier lives.



****

That being said, I bought a Radeon 8500LE from Newegg for like $65. At a high res its faster than my GF3ti200. But I had fuggin driver problems. Its a nice card, but do I always have to install the driver like 3 times?

 

[bluemax]

Oh that's right... I forgot. ATI can't make drivers. That's right. No ATI owners can play any games at all. Or only a handful of the most popular.... nVidia never makes a mistake and never releases bad drivers. nVidia cards work in all motherboards too. And the best news is that nVidia leaks out a new driver every second week.... all these revisions are for people complaining about ATI problems!!
Yeah!!

We've heard it all before and it's a pretty thin argument. There's PLENTY of ATI owners that would disagree with you, and rightly so.
The hardware is excellent. The drivers are excellent.
Get over it.

 

[pm]

I didn't see anything in the link about the NV30 being on time. Where does it say that? At the Q2 nVidia analyst meeting nVidia's CEO said that it hadn't taped out yet. nVidia usually takes 4 months to from tape-out to first silicon (which is an amazing accomplishment - especially in light of the consistency that they have achieved with this), but that's not guaranteed. As the mutual funds are fond of saying "Past performance does not guarantee future results". There is no assurance that NV30 will be released on time. Even if nVidia does their usual miracle in the silicon debug side, TSMC has reportedly been having issues with their new 0.13um process, so that's another factor to consider.

The N30 could be Sept., Oct. or Nov. Hoping Sept. but i won't hold my breath.

September? That's literally impossible. There is no possible way that they could qualify silicon for full production release that quickly. October is out of the question as well. Late November is my guess. Possibly early December. My guesses, however, are based on nVidia's past performance and there's always a chance for them to fumble badly this time around.

 

[Wolfsraider]

unless you have tried both you won't understand the driver comments lol

and i only own 1 nvidia card but 3 ati cards(yes i like ati but i am finding that stable drivers are better.also i am planning on getting the ati 9700with the hopes that ati will shine in the driver department lol)

 

[WyteWatt]

pm did you happen to read the article's title? Hehe.

***XP4 in action, R300 soon and NV30 on-time***

 

[RGN]

Originally posted by: bluemax
Oh that's right... I forgot. ATI can't make drivers. That's right. No ATI owners can play any games at all. Or only a handful of the most popular.... nVidia never makes a mistake and never releases bad drivers. nVidia cards work in all motherboards too. And the best news is that nVidia leaks out a new driver every second week.... all these revisions are for people complaining about ATI problems!!
Yeah!!

We've heard it all before and it's a pretty thin argument. There's PLENTY of ATI owners that would disagree with you, and rightly so.
The hardware is excellent. The drivers are excellent.
Get over it.

Hello??!? Have you heard of preference? It works like this: Maybe I like black, and you like pink. Its ok because I am me and you are you.


So, I like Nvidia. They are not perfect. I have had less than fun experiences with ATi's drivers. 4 different cards and 4 different drivers sets ofer a 2 year period. Its enough for me to buy the next Nvidia card, not the next Ati card.

Notice this is not a debate over technology? Simply MY preference.

 

[pm]

Oops. My mistake. Sorry, imtim83.

But I stand by my comments regarding the time to qualify silicon, and my guesses as to the release date. I have debugged silicon - I know how long it takes. And there is no way that nVidia has first silicon yet. It takes about at least 3 weeks - in an ideal world - to take a taped-out database and produce a chip with that information. So, like I said, there's no way that anyone - Anand included - can be certain that the NV30 will be released on time. But it probably will.

If I was going to worry about anything, I'd be more inclined to worry about the volumes that we will be seeing.

 

[WyteWatt]

pm yeah but you are not nvidia. Lots money can speed things up a whole lot. Wouldn't you all be surprised if Nvidia released their N30 in August or Sept. 😉

 

[pm]

pm yeah but you are not nvidia. Lots money can speed things up a whole lot.

Huh? No it can't. Imtim83, I may be blind when it comes to reading the titles on news articles, but I'm a chip designer. I'm telling you that there is no possible way that they can get silicon back in less than 3 weeks from a fab. It simply is not possible no matter how much money you have. And it takes at least 90 days to qualify silicon. That's the minimum.

No offense intended, but how much experience do you have in debugging silicon?

[Edit] The comment about the NV30 having not taped out was made by nVidia's CEO during a conference call at the Q2 preliminary earnings release announcement on July 31st. I would imagine that they have taped out by now. Huang said that they were very close. That might be why Anand that wording in the title of the news article. But still, there's no guarantee that the silicon won't have some problem, or that TSMC won't have some problem, or whatever.

I'll qualify my comment above about it taking 90 days minimum to qualify silicon. It can be faster on shrinks and other silicon quals that use a leveraged/ported database. But in the case of the NV30, it will most likely take 90 days or more. It's not a ported design.

It's not a function of money, but simply how long it takes to complete the debug/qualification/testing flow. You can't skip steps and the critical path for them can't be done in parallel. And that critical path is going to be about 90 days. Plus or minus a little.

I have nothing but the utmost respect for nVidia's ability to execute to a schedule, but there's a fundamental limit to how fast you can do these things.

 

[Aquaman]

Originally posted by: pm

pm yeah but you are not nvidia. Lots money can speed things up a whole lot.

Huh? No it can't. Imtim83, I may be blind when it comes to reading the titles on news articles, but I'm a chip designer. I'm telling you that there is no possible way that they can get silicon back in less than 3 weeks from a fab. It simply is not possible no matter how much money you have. And it takes at least 90 days to qualify silicon. That's the minimum.

No offense intended, but how much experience do you have in debugging silicon?

I agree........... I remember reading somewhere that it usually takes nVida 100 +/- days to tape the silicon. I think that the card will be out in Q1 of next year.

Cheers,
Aquaman

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: imtim83
pm yeah but you are not nvidia. Lots money can speed things up a whole lot. Wouldn't you all be surprised if Nvidia released their N30 in August or Sept. 😉

Sure it'll be released in September - it's called a "paper launch". By the time anyone can actually buy it, it'll be December. 😉



🙂


And define "on time". Nvidia needs to reassure their investors.

 

[Wingznut]

Originally posted by: imtim83
pm yeah but you are not nvidia. Lots money can speed things up a whole lot. Wouldn't you all be surprised if Nvidia released their N30 in August or Sept. 😉

Sorry man... pm is definitely right. Semiconductor manufacturers work 24/7 on these things. Manufacturing tools are set aside for projects like this. There is no way throwing a few more bucks at it will speed it up any.

 

[Anand Lal Shimpi]

September is out of the question (our AT Forums Fab Engineers - pm & Wingznut - can explain why in greater detail 😉), I've already mentioned when NV30 will be ready in an earlier article...

Take care,
Anand

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Anand Lal Shimpi
September is out of the question (our AT Forums Fab Engineers - pm & Wingznut - can explain why in greater detail 😉), I've already mentioned when NV30 will be ready in an earlier article...

Take care,
Anand

The definitive answer.

And good luck on your final.

 

[AmdInside]

NVIDIA said in a CC that it will be available in October. NVIDIA has generally taken around 90 days to go from tapeout to production. I think it will be worth the wait. I think the 9700 is a great card and ATI has taken care of alot of their flaws however there is no rush for the 9700 since all of my games play perfectly smooth on my Ti 4400 so I will hold out and see which one is the best one to purchase. I am upset at ATI at their previous releases of their Radeon cards (crappy drivers, smoothvision not enabled in their drivers, quack, etc.) so I am not in a rush to embrace their products. I am also upset at their sleezy moves to try and deceive the end users:

ATI engineer lies about NV30 release

In this link, Arshad from ATI claims that since NVIDIA had not taped out since their last CC, that "Realistically, this means that it is probably 6-8 months from production" for NV30. NVIDIA has never taken more than 3 months to go from tapeout to production. Just another tactic from ATI to fool customers.

 

[wesman]

Before you go around calling people liars, perhaps you should know something about what your talking about. One search on Google of the terms "nvidia tape out to production" brang this article as the first result:

Chris Malachowski, vice president of engineering at Nvidia, described the GeForce 4, the latest in that company's line of high-end graphics chips. At 63 million transistors and a core clock frequency of 300 MHz, the chip is ambitious by any measure. But considering that 78 per cent of the die is logic places the undertaking in perspective.

Compensating somewhat for the sheer size of the design, the chip is based on an existing architecture. Yet Malachowski said that nearly 50 per cent of the RTL had been modified from the previous family member, so the complexity was not reduced that much by reuse.

....(some chip features described)...

Malachowski said that by their metrics the design had been a great success. First silicon had 19 reported functional problems, only seven of which required repair. All seven were corrected in the metal, allowing the team to meet its target of approximately 9 months to tape out and 100 days between tape-out and production ramp.

This is on a chip which was only 50% new design, with half the transistors of the nv30, on a proven .15 process and it took 100 days. 90 days is the shortest time Nvidia has taken, and that was on a simple die shrink, it is not the average time. So to say they always take less than 3 months is bull****.

 

[Adul]

define ontime? ontime for the holiday shopping season? my guess is nov-december time frame.

 

[Insane3D]

Originally posted by: wesman
Before you go around calling people liars, perhaps you should know something about what your talking about. One search on Google of the terms "nvidia tape out to production" brang this article as the first result:

Chris Malachowski, vice president of engineering at Nvidia, described the GeForce 4, the latest in that company's line of high-end graphics chips. At 63 million transistors and a core clock frequency of 300 MHz, the chip is ambitious by any measure. But considering that 78 per cent of the die is logic places the undertaking in perspective.

Compensating somewhat for the sheer size of the design, the chip is based on an existing architecture. Yet Malachowski said that nearly 50 per cent of the RTL had been modified from the previous family member, so the complexity was not reduced that much by reuse.

....(some chip features described)...

Malachowski said that by their metrics the design had been a great success. First silicon had 19 reported functional problems, only seven of which required repair. All seven were corrected in the metal, allowing the team to meet its target of approximately 9 months to tape out and 100 days between tape-out and production ramp.

This is on a chip which was only 50% new design, with half the transistors of the nv30, on a proven .15 process and it took 100 days. 90 days is the shortest time Nvidia has taken, and that was on a simple die shrink, it is not the average time. So to say they always take less than 3 months is bull****.

I think AmdInside was just officially OWNED. 😀 😀 😛

 

[randomlinh]

on time or not, it's still gunna cost an arm and a leg 😛

 

[Aquaman]

Originally posted by: Insane3D

Originally posted by: wesman
Before you go around calling people liars, perhaps you should know something about what your talking about. One search on Google of the terms "nvidia tape out to production" brang this article as the first result:

Chris Malachowski, vice president of engineering at Nvidia, described the GeForce 4, the latest in that company's line of high-end graphics chips. At 63 million transistors and a core clock frequency of 300 MHz, the chip is ambitious by any measure. But considering that 78 per cent of the die is logic places the undertaking in perspective.

Compensating somewhat for the sheer size of the design, the chip is based on an existing architecture. Yet Malachowski said that nearly 50 per cent of the RTL had been modified from the previous family member, so the complexity was not reduced that much by reuse.

....(some chip features described)...

Malachowski said that by their metrics the design had been a great success. First silicon had 19 reported functional problems, only seven of which required repair. All seven were corrected in the metal, allowing the team to meet its target of approximately 9 months to tape out and 100 days between tape-out and production ramp.

This is on a chip which was only 50% new design, with half the transistors of the nv30, on a proven .15 process and it took 100 days. 90 days is the shortest time Nvidia has taken, and that was on a simple die shrink, it is not the average time. So to say they always take less than 3 months is bull****.

I think AmdInside was just officially OWNED. 😀 😀 😛

Ha Ha Ha 😀 😀 😀

Cheers,
Aquaman