CharlieHarper
Weaksauce
- Joined
- Jul 18, 2008
- Messages
- 125
The shader core used on the RV770 is pretty much identical to the ones used on the RV670. But the main difference is that Anti Aliasing is resolved on the ROP instead of the shader like the RV670. So it would benefit better of the additiona bandwidth than the RV670 which was more ROP bound. ATi was in great disadvantage before, because in reallity, the RV670 had only 64 Stream Processors (They would work as 320 when it was possible to execute 5 Operations per Cycle, since is a Super Scalar Architecture), against 128 from nVidia (Which would perform 128 Operations per Cycle no matter what, because is a Scalar Architecture), now the difference is less, ATi has 160 (Which would work as 800 when it is possible to perform the same 5 operations per Cycle) while nVidia has 240 (Can execute 240 instructions regardless), so having a Super Scalar architecture will give you more raw power to process shaders without using lots of transistors, but since not all the shaders in games are equal, maximizing the Shader Core usage on ATi hardware requires optimizations on the game and driver level and it's performance is unpredictable, while the nVidia GPU which is a Scalar design, has a fat shader which will requires little or no optimization and it's performance will be more consistent and predictable, even though it's raw power will be lower. And yes, the CFAA is useable in many games, specially on the HD 4800 series (Even though the RV670 has a more optimized datapath to perform all anti aliasing operations on shaders, that explain why the HD 4800 has a bigger impact in performance when CFAA is enabled compared to previous generations and specially, when Edge Detect is used which makes the HD 4800 series to perform almost identical to the HD 3800 series.
Just quoting this because you like to post without reading, ihira.
So read this and be quiet. It will explain how your sarcasm just failed horribly. The way the cards handle the aliasing is different.
The drivers do matter for the GTX 280, but if you read my hypothetical situations chameleoki, you would see that the extent to which the drivers affect the GTX 280 vary, I only said that because some of the drivers were downclocking the card and thus adversely affecting performance.