ATI r600

[Jbirney]

From my perspective, nVidia's shader processing is a bit more efficient. Fewer transistors performing, for the most part, the same work at the same clock speeds.

.....

On the flip side, ATi needs a controller (a load balancer) to handle some duties in R600, which nVidia does not, so that may be the one major negative aspect of the unified design. I'm certain they've figured things out with Xenos, though.

Two things,

first of all I would advise catuion when you say that about the transistors. Remember there are some things that the ATI part does better than NV parts. Things like the HDR on AA, Ring Bus and better branching does eat into the overall transistor budget. I have seen peole try to eastimate how much trasnister were used up by these and they seem to be all over the place. Again I am not saying one is better, faster, more efficent, just as they say nothing is Free in 3D and everything cost transiters

And on the 2nd point, I wonder if ATI being on their 2nd version such a scheduler would help?

 

[razor1]

And on the 2nd point, I wonder if ATI being on their 2nd version such a scheduler would help?

As the arrays get bigger or more arrays the more control silicon is neccessary though. So the number of transistors we see with xenos will be higher then the 25% increase in ALU's + Avivo and any other changes, + dx10 specs.

To answer your question on the schedular, it will undoubtably change, can't speculate about performance though.

Its not purely the schedular that held back the xenos chip. Its fairly powerful, but the x1800xt had much higher clocks 25% Higher, so its ALU's were working 20 xenos ALU's and then it had 8 more vertex shaders at higher clocks again, and its TMU's and ROP's are at higher clocks.

 

[Trimlock]

All good points, it seems that ATi is taking a fairly big risk, we'll see how it pans out


makes it a bit more exciting though, taking something in a different direction like this

 

[trxjw]

All good points, it seems that ATi is taking a fairly big risk, we'll see how it pans out


makes it a bit more exciting though, taking something in a different direction like this

QFT. It's always fun to speculate, but I'd rather get some first hand experience as opposed to getting my hopes up for a flop. Although given the performance of the X1950, I can't see ATI going wrong with R600. I think this next gen release from ATI is going to give a certain other company a swift kick in the backend.

.. and no thats not flamebait, I just think ATI is going in the right direction with new technologies. I can't compare to anyone else given no real information has been released.