Originally posted by: Slaimus
Using simpler FSAA and LMA is not going to cut the transister count down from 80(FX5600) to 45mil.
I have heard someone say that the 5200 does certain shader operations in software, can anyone verify that?
Don't people read the articles at Anandtech anymore?
"Remember from our explanation of the codenames in the intro, the NV34 is the successor to the GeForce4 MX but unlike the MX, it is not an overly castrated version of its older siblings. In fact, the architecture of the NV34 is, according to NVIDIA, virtually identical to the NV31; the only official differences being the memory controller and clock speeds.
The NV34 128-bit memory controller is devoid of any of the NV30/31's compression algorithms, mostly to keep die size down on the larger 0.15-micron process. The NV34 is aimed at the mass market, and thus must be as cheap to manufacture as possible. Featuring only 47 million transistors (compared to NV31's 75 million), the NV34 is missing more than just the NV31's compression engine. Because the NV31 is geared for higher clock speeds its pipelines, although functionally equivalent to the NV34's, do have extra stages to help gear the part for higher clocks. Around 15 - 20% of the NV31's die is reserved for the compression engines, with the remaining 10 - 20% of the die difference being reserved for those extra pipeline stages. The combination of the two aforementioned differences make up the vast majority of the 28 million transistor difference between the NV31 & 34."
Information from Anandtech's NVIDIA's GeForce FX 5600/5200 Ultra Performance Review
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