R600 has 512-bit external memory bus

TheRapture said:
While it may indeed prove to be faster....the R600 will NOT be "double" the performance of G80.....no way.
Click to expand...


Of course not. I don't think anyone anticipates that much improvement. Considering the later launch and probable higher retail price than G80, I think R600 needs to be at least 20% faster
in most situations and bring a few new IQ tweaks to the table or else it won't be considered successful. Bring on the benchies !
 
That would be nice. But lately it seems like their flagship cards always cost more.
 
Well for a reason :)

I am sure they price it depending on how it perform compared to the nVidia video cards. like AMD used to be way more expensive than the Intel CPUs but now when the Duo Core is faster it´s the exact opposite ;)
 
oqvist said:
Well for a reason :)

I am sure they price it depending on how it perform compared to the nVidia video cards. like AMD used to be way more expensive than the Intel CPUs but now when the Duo Core is faster it´s the exact opposite ;)
Click to expand...

Exactly.
If it pwns, it'll pwn your bank account too.
 
phide said:
I'm still of the opinion that G80 isn't terribly efficient. It seems so from one perspective (in terms of power consumption and transistor count), but not so from another (doesn't seem to reach theoretical performance). Of course, you still have to factor in the major changes in the severity of optimizations, and G80 looks good in this respect. NVIDIA over-optimized for the G7x series for a reason.

I did some math a little while ago, and G80 is still transistor-for-transistor more efficient than G71, but not tremendously so (~5%). I assume that later drivers may bring performance up higher and increase efficiency by some moderate amount.

If these R600 rumours are true (and they're shaping up to be), and if ATi can grasp the capability of the hardware through their drivers, the X2800s are likely going to pass the 8800s in terms of performance, and at least match it in IQ. With the excessive memory bandwidth, the performance penalties of multisampling are reduced, and generic multisampling will probably be close to free. But can ATi counter coverage sampling anti-aliasing?
Click to expand...


If die size is used as the performance measure, than you are right, G80 doesn't seem that more efficient. But when you take away all the DX10 specific logic (and there's alot of it) it is in fact a substantially more efficient design. The fact remains that we still haven't seen what these beasties can do.
 
oqvist said:
not really. Doubt it will be like 200$ more ;)
Click to expand...

200 more than what? teh GTX?
if so, then i agree.
however, the GTX still pwned bank accounts.
so at 200 MORE, that's 1337 pwnage.
 
I think it will be priced just a tad more then a GTX. And it´s really cheap if you look back when new models costed 800$ at launch ;)
 
oqvist said:
I think it will be priced just a tad more then a GTX. And it´s really cheap if you look back when new models costed 800$ at launch ;)
Click to expand...

What boards cost $800 at launch?
 
tornadotsunamilife said:
There's always time :D However, I doubt ATi will do that considering they're late out on the scene
Click to expand...

The guy I quoted sounded like he meant board in the past have cos $800 at launch and today's boards at $650 is cheap by comparison. I was asking what boards in the past have cost $800 at launch (beside Quadro and FireGL of course).
 
oqvist said:
7900 GTX did. 7800 GTX also I want to remember. 7950 I think was a bit cheaper.
Click to expand...


If I remember right the 7800GTX and the 7900GTX both had MSRP's of $599 at launch. The quick searches I did somwhwat confirm that. Of course that doesn't account for price gouging due to supply and demand. (looking at you Newegg)
 
I still haven't heard a good answer to how 512 bit is supposed to translate to better performance. Increased memory bandwidth only benefits a card that can actually use it all. A TNT2 with a trillion petabytes / second of memory bandwidth wouldn't be orders of magnitude faster than an 8800 GTX, after all. It's like a California freeway, if you doubled the number of lanes you'd double (or more than double) the speed of traffic, but if you quadrupled the number you probably wouldn't see much further improvement because double was already enough to account for the amount of traffic at the speed limit. Clumsy analogy, I know, but hopefully it gets the point across.
 
arthur_tuxedo said:
I still haven't heard a good answer to how 512 bit is supposed to translate to better performance. Increased memory bandwidth only benefits a card that can actually use it all. A TNT2 with a trillion petabytes / second of memory bandwidth wouldn't be orders of magnitude faster than an 8800 GTX, after all. It's like a California freeway, if you doubled the number of lanes you'd double (or more than double) the speed of traffic, but if you quadrupled the number you probably wouldn't see much further improvement because double was already enough to account for the amount of traffic at the speed limit. Clumsy analogy, I know, but hopefully it gets the point across.
Click to expand...

It is not like ATI, or NV, to throw more bandwidth at a card than is necessary; the result would be termed an "unbalanced design". It's a bit early (ie we don't even know R600's core workings yet) to rule 512 bit as excessive. I find it more interesting wondering just what 120-150GB/s bandwidth would benefit most (apart from insane levels of SSAA that is).
 
Anyone know if there is any news on a model of R600 to counteract with 8800GTS? I am not ready to spend more money on a new PSU to power the full R600 so was thinking of getting a GTS due to it being no longer than my current X1900XTX and it requires only 1 PCIE power plug like my current card meaning everything else in my system can stay the same. If ATI has a slightly lower model than that of the flagship I may wait and hold out for that as long as it too is no longer than their current X1900 cards and only require 1 PCIE power plug.
 
cantankerous said:
Anyone know if there is any news on a model of R600 to counteract with 8800GTS?
Click to expand...
I have no idea about the power requirements, but I believe it's a foregone conclusion there will be at least two R600 SKUs.There will be a flagship "no holds barred" card and then a detuned card for $100-200 less. Hopefully pricing will roughly correspond to 8800GTX/GTS. Although if the performance is good enough they will be justified in charging more. That would be awesome if their 2nd tier card is as fast as the GTX. :drool:
 
Stereophile said:
Although if the performance is good enough they will be justified in charging more.
Click to expand...
I would hope not.

Computer shit is getting way too expensive. Even the GTX is too expensive, it's just a video card for cryin' out loud...
 
No it´s getting cheaper. Just look to how it used to be :). It´s of course still a lot of money though
 
My last upgrade was $650. (That was to my current Athlon system) Since then I've put ~$200 really good money into it- additional Ram, new vid card.

My next upgrade to a C2D E6600 is looking like at least $1000- minus an OS and video card. (E6600, mobo, 2gb ram and a new SATA HDD). I'll require a video card since I'm on AGP now. Even on a 3 (now almost 4) year upgrade cycle, it's not worth keeping up. I just want a PC that runs my stuff well for the shortest practical money possible.

All but FSX runs well on my PC, and it's not well threaded. SP1 for FSX should help somewhat. I am surprised at just How well this PC has held up. It's the best ROI that I've seen on any computer hardware. With the shift to multiple cores, the next upgrade should have real legs too- buy c2d tomorrow, in a few years go to Quad just by replacing the processor. Hopefully threading will have caught up by dev houses by then.
 
My longest lasting system was my Athlon XP 3000+/1GB RAM/9700 Pro/80GB x 2

That thing handled even the newest games for a long long time. The 9700 Pro was the greatest card ever made. I remember paying over $550 for it (CDN, not USD) but it was worth every single penny.

My next system will be probably a E6600/2GB RAM/R600/Raptor 150 x 2
Hopfully that will last me for a while, and if not I'll go Crossfire.
 
lithium726 said:
Computer shit is getting way too expensive. Even the GTX is too expensive, it's just a video card for cryin' out loud...
Click to expand...
Nonsense. The GTX is an insanely powerful product for a fairly niche market. Niche products are expensive -- I'm not sure what you expect.

$650 is a totally reasonable price for what you get, in my opinion.
 
phide said:
Nonsense. The GTX is an insanely powerful product for a fairly niche market. Niche products are expensive -- I'm not sure what you expect.

$650 is a totally reasonable price for what you get, in my opinion.
Click to expand...

For $650 dollars you get a card that isn't worth a shit until Nvidia releases some decent drivers (or drivers at all in the case of Vista users.) :p
 
Well it seems that the whole ATI CCC .net stuff finally payed off in some form. Atleast their Vista drivers are light years away from Nvidias offering.

So yea, I give sympathy for people who dished out 600$ for a vid card that is not really working with Vista, that blows big time.
 
Come on! Do you guys believe nVidia won´t release Vista compatible drivers :rolleyes:

Vista is not even out yet. If you run beta versions you can´t demand official drivers...
 
oqvist said:
Come on! Do you guys believe nVidia won´t release Vista compatible drivers :rolleyes:

Vista is not even out yet. If you run beta versions you can´t demand official drivers...
Click to expand...

Buying something and getting what you expected is one thing, but buying and getting more than you thought is another. Good drivers for a beta OS is going 'that extra mile'.
 
The thing is, Vista isn't beta anymore. It's release to Corporate partners (which it's unlikely that they'll be interested in the 8800 sereis) and MSDN subscribers (which includes a lot of college kids :p). So there are a good number of people running Vista before it's released to store shelves. Nvidia shot themselves in teh foot on this one by not releaseing AT LEAST a working alpha driver for Vista. As it stands now, people can't even USE the card for more than basic desktop use. And even then I think that Aero is disabled.
 
didn't amd-ati release their last high-end card at $450?(x1950xtx, i believe)

it was completely against the trend of $600+ releases and i for one took it as a good sign that amd was not letting it go any further. i would expect the r600 to be more expensive than the 1950xtx conisdering what i have heard of it (largest die ever, most layers on pcb, 80nm?) but not $800 and certainly not more than the g80 at launch.

the amd-ati merger was made because of alot of promises that amd made to alot of people, like an election. amd will live up to those promises even if it is only in appearance, and price is the easiest way.
 
byne said:
didn't amd-ati release their last high-end card at $450?(x1950xtx, i believe)

it was completely against the trend of $600+ releases and i for one took it as a good sign that amd was not letting it go any further. i would expect the r600 to be more expensive than the 1950xtx conisdering what i have heard of it (largest die ever, most layers on pcb, 80nm?) but not $800 and certainly not more than the g80 at launch.

the amd-ati merger was made because of alot of promises that amd made to alot of people, like an election. amd will live up to those promises even if it is only in appearance, and price is the easiest way.
Click to expand...

x1950xtx wasn't really a new card/architecture, just an update to what was already there. So people would have balked at paying a really high premium for something that didn't have huge gains or a radical change in the architecture. So to get a good idea on what pricing mightl look like one should probably look at the x1800 series launch, or maybe the x1900 series launch.
 
yes, i mentioned that. what i was pointing out; the highest end cards at the time settled at $550 even after launch and this was well below that. there was a new memory architecture (ring bus) and gddr4 added and no real reason (from what i remember) for the "price-point" drop.

the r600 sounds to have great excuses to be so expensive, especially if it is seen as a first gen part. but there are an equal number of reasons that the cost should be inline with earlier generations or even lower than. i already mentioned stockholder perception, so i'll leave that out. technically, this is a second generation part and amd has not had to do as many changes as nvidia has. ati gained all the lessons learned by all the amd engineers from the beginning, from memory architecture to cost optimizations. chronologically the r600 has been the only core to be able benefit from this knowledge. there is no reason that amd would hold back those trademarks now when a good showing with the r600 would easily put any merger doubts to bed for good.

i can guess more reasons if i have to (my opinion, all of it!).
 
byne said:
yes, i mentioned that. what i was pointing out; the highest end cards at the time settled at $550 even after launch and this was well below that. there was a new memory architecture (ring bus) and gddr4 added and no real reason (from what i remember) for the "price-point" drop.

the r600 sounds to have great excuses to be so expensive, especially if it is seen as a first gen part. but there are an equal number of reasons that the cost should be inline with earlier generations or even lower than. i already mentioned stockholder perception, so i'll leave that out. technically, this is a second generation part and amd has not had to do as many changes as nvidia has. ati gained all the lessons learned by all the amd engineers from the beginning, from memory architecture to cost optimizations. chronologically the r600 has been the only core to be able benefit from this knowledge. there is no reason that amd would hold back those trademarks now when a good showing with the r600 would easily put any merger doubts to bed for good.

i can guess more reasons if i have to (my opinion, all of it!).
Click to expand...

Ring bus was not new for the X1950, The X1800 had a 256bit Ring topology bus and the X1900 had an (internal) 512-bit ring bus. The only real thing the X1950 improved on (memory wise) was GDDR4.

The introductory price of R600 I can't comment anymore on since it's all just speculation until AMD annouces something officially. We see what happens when it happens I guess.
 
ryan_975 said:
The X1800 had a 256bit Ring topology bus and the X1900 had an (internal) 512-bit ring bus.
Click to expand...

Actually both had a "512 bit" internal ring bus, which was in fact 2x256 bit in nature.
 
both had 2 bye-directional 256bit paths, so it was 512bit internal, but still only had 256 external

the big difference between the R520 and the R580 (and it was pretty huge) was the decoupling of the shader units, while the X1800 was a typical pixel/vertex style GPU, the X1900 ran it in a different direction, applying 48 shader units (thingies :D ), blowing the doors off of games like Oblivion and F.E.A.R.
 
phide said:
Nonsense. The GTX is an insanely powerful product for a fairly niche market. Niche products are expensive -- I'm not sure what you expect.

$650 is a totally reasonable price for what you get, in my opinion.
Click to expand...
Hardly a reasonable price! Remember when new generation of video cards cost $400, tops? We're talking generation to generation here. $650 is an insanely high price for something that will cost nearly half that in six months or less. And what do you get for it? How much of a boost in performance compared to the money you spent on your last video card? If you bought a 6800 ultra when it was new, it was a huge generational jump from the abominable FX series of cards. Now, compared to the 8800GTX, it's ABOUT the same performance difference, so figure a two generation gap in performance numbers. Night and day performance increases, in other words. But really, how much of a boost do you get going from a 7800 or 7900GTX? 20%? 30? It's hardly justifiable to charge a customer more than $600 for something that doesn't even offer something significantly better than what you bought last upgrade, if you're the one to teeter on the bleeding edge.

I spent $460 on my X850 XT in June of '05, and upgraded this october to an X1900 XTX for $310, minus the $115 I got for selling my X850, so a total of $195 spent upgrading to current gen performance, shader model 3.0 (which is an extremely infrequently used feature), 512MB of 1.1ns video memory. What do you get with an 8800? what features does it offer that would win you over from buying something $300 cheaper if you had to buy a video card today? DX10 support? pshaw, UT2007 has been delayed, crysis has been delayed, hellgate: london isn't until fall of 07, who knows when all the supposed patches for the other games nvidia has listed that add DX10 support will be implemented and properly debugged?

So, to sum it up, you'd spend $650 for epenis bragging rights, a marignal performance increase, and the ability to use the Aero interface the day Vista releases?

In any case, to end my rambling, I do not think that it is acceptable to keep raising video card prices to the ridiculous levels that they are now at. $649 MSRP? nVidia can stuff it.

Edit: More wonderful news of the 8800 series not being PCI-SIG certified

List here
Story here
 
Tytanium said:
Hardly a reasonable price! Remember when new generation of video cards cost $400, tops? We're talking generation to generation here. $650 is an insanely high price for something that will cost nearly half that in six months or less. And what do you get for it? How much of a boost in performance compared to the money you spent on your last video card? If you bought a 6800 ultra when it was new, it was a huge generational jump from the abominable FX series of cards. Now, compared to the 8800GTX, it's ABOUT the same performance difference, so figure a two generation gap in performance numbers. Night and day performance increases, in other words. But really, how much of a boost do you get going from a 7800 or 7900GTX? 20%? 30? It's hardly justifiable to charge a customer more than $600 for something that doesn't even offer something significantly better than what you bought last upgrade, if you're the one to teeter on the bleeding edge.

I spent $460 on my X850 XT in June of '05, and upgraded this october to an X1900 XTX for $310, minus the $115 I got for selling my X850, so a total of $195 spent upgrading to current gen performance, shader model 3.0 (which is an extremely infrequently used feature), 512MB of 1.1ns video memory. What do you get with an 8800? what features does it offer that would win you over from buying something $300 cheaper if you had to buy a video card today? DX10 support? pshaw, UT2007 has been delayed, crysis has been delayed, hellgate: london isn't until fall of 07, who knows when all the supposed patches for the other games nvidia has listed that add DX10 support will be implemented and properly debugged?

So, to sum it up, you'd spend $650 for epenis bragging rights, a marignal performance increase, and the ability to use the Aero interface the day Vista releases?

In any case, to end my rambling, I do not think that it is acceptable to keep raising video card prices to the ridiculous levels that they are now at. $649 MSRP? nVidia can stuff it.

Edit: More wonderful news of the 8800 series not being PCI-SIG certified

List here
Story here
Click to expand...

The 6800 Ultra and the x850 were selling well above 400 when they first came out.

At least you can buy a 8800 :p. Nvidia almost always has hard-launches. The same cannot be said for ATI. :p
 
Tytanium said:
Hardly a reasonable price! Remember when new generation of video cards cost $400, tops? We're talking generation to generation here. $650 is an insanely high price for something that will cost nearly half that in six months or less. And what do you get for it? How much of a boost in performance compared to the money you spent on your last video card? If you bought a 6800 ultra when it was new, it was a huge generational jump from the abominable FX series of cards. Now, compared to the 8800GTX, it's ABOUT the same performance difference, so figure a two generation gap in performance numbers. Night and day performance increases, in other words. But really, how much of a boost do you get going from a 7800 or 7900GTX? 20%? 30? It's hardly justifiable to charge a customer more than $600 for something that doesn't even offer something significantly better than what you bought last upgrade, if you're the one to teeter on the bleeding edge.

I spent $460 on my X850 XT in June of '05, and upgraded this october to an X1900 XTX for $310, minus the $115 I got for selling my X850, so a total of $195 spent upgrading to current gen performance, shader model 3.0 (which is an extremely infrequently used feature), 512MB of 1.1ns video memory. What do you get with an 8800? what features does it offer that would win you over from buying something $300 cheaper if you had to buy a video card today? DX10 support? pshaw, UT2007 has been delayed, crysis has been delayed, hellgate: london isn't until fall of 07, who knows when all the supposed patches for the other games nvidia has listed that add DX10 support will be implemented and properly debugged?

So, to sum it up, you'd spend $650 for epenis bragging rights, a marignal performance increase, and the ability to use the Aero interface the day Vista releases?

In any case, to end my rambling, I do not think that it is acceptable to keep raising video card prices to the ridiculous levels that they are now at. $649 MSRP? nVidia can stuff it.

Edit: More wonderful news of the 8800 series not being PCI-SIG certified

List here
Story here
Click to expand...

Its a totally reasonable price, being that its way ahead of its time as nothing right now really even pushes the card

It offers better support for lower end AA over MSAA, CSAA which looks the same and can be enabled at much higher settings, further support for higher resolutions, and an unbeaten AF quality thats always on

under your reasoning of non DX10 games, we'd still be using FX5900's and 9800's, every game you listed are fully coded in DX9 and will be patched to use some of the benefits with DX10, we won't see DX10 games for years (or maybe sooner, who can really tell with these things). The fact is, who cares if it supports DX10, its so fast it pulls the braws off of the ladies :cool:

also, for Aeroglass, all you need a DX9 card, a FX5200 will give you the option to turn it on, its not a DX10 requirement

so all in all, Nvidia didn't jump the gun, there just isn't any demanding content out there to really push it, they were ontime, the games were not, so now they have alot of old hardware out there that is selling cheap and they wanted to stay on schedule, only their hardware is considered "ahead of the curve" so ... they charge more for it, if you want to run half life 2 in 32xCSAA mode you are going to have to pay for it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top