The wait for R600

[Lord_Exodia]

Every time pending a new Nvidia launch I find myself in a similar bind. Wait for ATI's hardware or jump on Nvidia's new technology when it comes out. It's really hard to wait at times as it can be more than 1 month. With the Geforce 6 series the X800 was just a few weeks away so I had a chance to see what they both offered and opted to go with SM3.0 hardware. With the Geforce 7 series... and the problems in developing the X1k gpu I jumped on Geforce 7 for the fact that it was the fastest and most importantly it was available. SLi geforce 7's were the fastest setup for months and months.

Here we are again. Another launch and nvidia is beating ATI to market by a few months now. I believe the R600 is scheduled for early February and I'm wondering if I'll be able to wait for Xfire R600 as I told myself I would to compare side by side and choose what I want best. I have a feeling I wont be able to wait especially when I see what new stuff nvidia brings to the table and the performance numbers of G80 SLi.

Anyone thinks they will stick out the wait or have any thoughts on this. Competition is good but at times it's hard to be competitive when brand X beats brand Y to the market.

 

[sam0t]

Well Iam not sure about your rig, but current top cards can pretty much handle everything out there with "normal" resolutions. As the next gen will be just a speed bump over current top end cards as long as there is no Vista or DX10 games, I have no difficulties of waiting.

And ofcourse there is the eternal wisdom in not jumping the first gen bandwagon as DX10 is a major things, I think people are safer waiting the second generation cards. Just my opinion

 

[Lord_Exodia]

A very interesting opinion. The only thing is... Man when I start seeing everybody with their G80 running DX 10 patched Flight sim X and Unreal 2007 and native DX 10 Crysis all that with SLi, it's gonna be hard for me to get away. I dont think it will only be a speed bump I think there will be some amazing image quality to go with the speed. I would like to wait but it's oh so hard

 

[R1ckCa1n]

this is going to be a tough one, if Nvidia fixed their piss poor AF. I am leary of NV releasing a card so quick after tapout and have to wonder if they are pushing too hard and make major mistakes.

that isn't to say if the G80 is faster than two X1900's and has much improved AF I won't buy one, or two.

 

[Silus]

Well Iam not sure about your rig, but current top cards can pretty much handle everything out there with "normal" resolutions. As the next gen will be just a speed bump over current top end cards as long as there is no Vista or DX10 games, I have no difficulties of waiting.

And ofcourse there is the eternal wisdom in not jumping about the first gen stuff as DX10 is a major things I think people are safer with second generation cards. Just my opinion

I don't think next gen will only be a speed bump. I think the G80 and R600 will be a revolution in graphics hardware.

To the OP:

I think when the G80 benchmarks come out, you will be able to take your conclusions if it justifies upgrading your current graphics cards.
If the rumored specs are true, then it's really going to be a monster and the wait for R600 will not be justified IMHO.

 

[razor1]

this is going to be a tough one, if Nvidia fixed their piss poor AF. I am leary of NV releasing a card so quick after tapout and have to wonder if they are pushing too hard and make major mistakes.

that isn't to say if the G80 is faster than two X1900's and has much improved AF I won't buy one, or two.

the g80 was finished at least design and first sample chips and cards 10 months ago, there has been 2 respins since that period for what ever changes that nV wanted.

 

[sam0t]

I don't think next gen will only be a speed bump. I think the G80 and R600 will be a revolution in graphics hardware.

No doubt your are right, but as history shows us, software support is always lagging behind hardware development. Best example I remember is SM2.0 support and Nvidia being the first to support the standard. When the time came that games really started using SM2.0 new generation of GPUs were alrdy in market and first generation cards seemed like poor buys. I just don´t see the point paying big bucks from features you cannot use immidiately.

Ofcourse Iam no future teller but if you look at the past, its always been like that. New monster hardware comes in blasting with new features and when the features are used in real life (not in tech demos) those cards are yesterdays news. I have learned from the past and have no problems waiting. Also I have no trouble waiting since Iam poor beggar

OP:

Sorry for not checking out your sig, there is your rig With a rig like that, I would not have trouble waiting couple more months.

 

[Stereophile]

I would definitely wait 2 months before dropping $600 or $1200 on new videocards.
Will there be any DX10 games released in between G80 and R600 ?

 

[Lord_Exodia]

I would definitely wait 2 months before dropping $600 or $1200 on new videocards.
Will there be any DX10 games released in between G80 and R600 ?

See I'm sorta like R1ck in that I don't really have a loyalty to either brand. Whatever I think is better for my $$$ I will go for. The problem is that I get sucked in when I start seeing the new stuff kick all kinds of a$$ in benchmarks and the image quality improvement.

to answer your above question, I believe Crysis and ms flight sim X will be DX 10 capable via a patch that is supposed to be available when vista launches. Until then I think it will be all dx 9.0c stuff. Maybe I'll wait and bennefit from my patience but if history repeats itself I might cave in and buy G80 oblivious as to what R600 will really bring to the table. Man it's hard being a enthusiast.

 

[drizzt81]

Every time pending a new Nvidia launch I find myself in a similar bind. Wait for ATI's hardware or jump on Nvidia's new technology when it comes out. It's really hard to wait at times as it can be more than 1 month. With the Geforce 6 series the X800 was just a few weeks away so I had a chance to see what they both offered and opted to go with SM3.0 hardware. With the Geforce 7 series... and the problems in developing the X1k gpu I jumped on Geforce 7 for the fact that it was the fastest and most importantly it was available. SLi geforce 7's were the fastest setup for months and months.

Here we are again. Another launch and nvidia is beating ATI to market by a few months now. I believe the R600 is scheduled for early February and I'm wondering if I'll be able to wait for Xfire R600 as I told myself I would to compare side by side and choose what I want best. I have a feeling I wont be able to wait especially when I see what new stuff nvidia brings to the table and the performance numbers of G80 SLi.

Anyone thinks they will stick out the wait or have any thoughts on this. Competition is good but at times it's hard to be competitive when brand X beats brand Y to the market.

Depending on your current graphics card, do you really need to upgrade NOW? honestly, I think there is little reason not to wait until R600 launches, which ought to be close to the vista launch.

 

[Tigerblade]

I'm waiting till the refresh before jumping on the DX10 bandwagon, I've got more than enough power to play with till then. Aren't all the screenshots/pics of ut2k7 and Crysis running on dx9 based hardware anyways? They are the only games I think I'll be playing mainly and I reckon anyone with a current top end rig now will be able to play them pretty sweetly.

Only an e-penis lengthener to start with IMO.

 

[MrWizard6600]

my upgrade road map (current 6600GT) ---> X1900XT (in a few weeks) ----> X1900XT liquid cooled (a few months down the road) @ 740? 750? ----> R620/G81 (a few years down the road)

im waiting for second gen, i want a die shrink on the G80 b4 i go buy it, i wont be able to afford a $500 (CDN) 8800GTS (or w/e the cheapist ver is), and im sure as hell not going with a G83.

and from what i understand, the G80 is more of a bummer anyways. i know the Inq likes to rag on it...

but anywho, im weighing that for more then its worth, ill consider whats byond my X1900XT when the benchies for both the R600 and G80 are confirmed.

 

[Drexion]

Last time nVidia rushed to push cards with a new DirectX they released the FX series, and we all know how that turned out to be.

I would definitely wait.

 

[PRIME1]

Last time nVidia rushed to push cards with a new DirectX they released the FX series, and we all know how that turned out to be.

I would definitely wait.

This is no rush. Last I heard the G80 was ready months ago (Check the Inq for tape out dates back in like June?). They just sat on it because the delay of Vista and the R600 have allowed them to not only tweak the G80 but keep selling the 7 series.

It's going to be tough to wait because Christmas money just burns sooooooo bad.

 

[Trimlock]

I never buy cards on release, for one its almost always a waste as they totally annihilate the previous gens, they are riddled with driver bugs and poor support, and you get price gouged almost always.

How I make my buying decision is if a game comes out and my I'm not happy with my performance or how the game looks, then I go out and look at whats available, or what is going to be available, who ever is out first or looks the best and I'm happy with their product I'll usually buy

For me I'm waiting for SupremeCommander, which has a shit load of options I know for a fact I'll need to upgrade for (SPLIT SCREEN ), also the fact it is being patched for DX10 once vista and support for DX10 is released.

 

[Unoid]

No use getting a g80 becuase vista won't be out until x-mas-jan when the r600 is anyways.

Might as well wait until both are out and so is vista.

Your cards are more than sufficient for gaming until then.

 

[Soymilk]

to the OP:

wtf? you already have sli 7900gtx, you don't need to upgrade for a while. and you won't see anyone running anything with dx10 until vista is out; xp doesn't support dx10. and vista's not coming out until what, march? i'd say just wait it out.

 

[Silus]

No use getting a g80 becuase vista won't be out until x-mas-jan when the r600 is anyways.

Might as well wait until both are out and so is vista.

Your cards are more than sufficient for gaming until then.

G80 will be a monster card for DX9, so for anyone upgrading when it comes out, it will be a great improvement over current gen cards. Until Vista and DX10 are out, G80 will provide the best DX9 performance.

 

[trxjw]

Man I am chomping at the bit for a new machine that is DX10 compatable. I've been on my current one for the better part of 4 years so I'm way over due for an upgrade. Unfortunately I cant afford to build a temporary solution right now and then upgrade to DX10 in 2-3 months when the refresh cards come out. Oh well.. back to waiting.

 

[MrGuvernment]

2 7900GTX

and WHY do you need to upgrade?

Spend your money on something more useful.

G80 will be a monster card for DX9, so for anyone upgrading when it comes out, it will be a great improvement over current gen cards. Until Vista and DX10 are out, G80 will provide the best DX9 performance.

I would hope so.... but who is to say ATI wont when they come out?

 

[Mysterae]

Whenever I get a bout of Upgraditis, I usually consult a doctor*.

*Replace doctor with significant other / bank account / common sense as required.

 

[Lord_Exodia]

I think you guys fail to realize the personality of Lord_Exodia. Sadly I'm a person that will upgrade not because I need to but just because I have to have the fastest. I might be able to wait for R600 but for somebody like me it's going to be painful. Especially when I see G80 kicking @ss and people maxing out oblivion and crysis, in G80 SLi configs and achieving Godlike FPS. I will try and wait but don't be surprised if this hardcore (obsessive) enthusiast caves in. It just sucks for me as if R600 is much better I'll be screwed later.

Man I wish ATi would have R600 ready sooner.

 

[boomheadshot45]

I think you guys fail to realize the personality of Lord_Exodia. Sadly I'm a person that will upgrade not because I need to but just because I have to have the fastest. I might be able to wait for R600 but for somebody like me it's going to be painful. Especially when I see G80 kicking @ss and people maxing out oblivion and crysis, in G80 SLi configs and achieving Godlike FPS. I will try and wait but don't be surprised if this hardcore (obsessive) enthusiast caves in. It just sucks for me as if R600 is much better I'll be screwed later.

Man I wish ATi would have R600 ready sooner.

If i were you because you said you like the fastest, I would sell one 7900 GTX and upgrade to like an E6300/E6400, then in a couple months sell your other 7900 GTX and get like the 8800 GT for 400 $. So the 8800 GT would only really cost you like 200 $.

 

[sluzbenik]

You guys also realize you will all need new power supplies too...

The Inquirer said RD600 will need 250 watts just for the power supply. How on earth are the PSU manufacturers going to cope? They are already running up against EU safety requirements with the number of amps on the 12v rails.

I bet they will be plenty of versions shipping with external PSUs just for the video card. Your wife/gfriend/live-in will love that - another huge brick with a fan sitting around! And they will be big - 250 watts is what computers used to run on.

 

[arthur_tuxedo]

Maybe it's true and it really will be that power hungry, but people were saying that about G80 until a few days ago, and now that it's been proven to have been complete bullshit, they start saying it about R600 instead. People always talk up the requirements of new stuff for some reason I can't fathom. New game comes out and people with hardcore systems come out of the woodwork saying "I'll need to upgrade just to play that at 800 x 600!" New GPU comes out and people say "It's gonna need its own dedicated nuclear reactor to power it and water cooling will have to be standard and you'll need a new case or it won't fit!" I don't know why people do that, but the trend becomes pretty obvious after you've seen it happen enough times.

 

[MrWizard6600]

@sluzbenik

they said both required extrordinary ammounts of power. both threw power consumption out the window for benchies, now they're just trying to figure out how to dial down the power consumption. you gotta remember, ATI has had some problems with their true unified shader architecture, it could just be they needed to pump some power into it to make it stable. i betcha you wont need some insane ammount of power to get one.

look at the origonal estimates for the G80, 700mil transisotors? you gotta remember each one takes a little chunk of amperage outta it, so.. from 200mil to 700mil. theoretically that could take 3x the amperage from your 12v rails. if they dont get some sorta uber low resistance transistor, NVs G80 would mean not only would i have to replace my graphics card, but my psu also.

what i really wanna see is ATI put that Rendering GPU to use. thats the differance between SLI and Crossfire right, its not the dongle, its the rendering GPU, thats why you need a crossfire master. so if they could make the rendering gpu do some real load balancing, and they maintain more er less the same architecture, you might be able to crossfire an R600 and an R620.
but anywho thats rambleing. it should be done for the X1600 and X1900.

 

[baronzemo78]

Having the G80 out first just makes me want the R600 out faster so I can see the benchmark comparisons. The architecture of the cards are so different it's hard to have any idea of how they will perform in both DX9 and DX10. I will wait for both cards to be released and see the power consumption and game performance before deciding.

 

[razor1]

@sluzbenik

they said both required extrordinary ammounts of power. both threw power consumption out the window for benchies, now they're just trying to figure out how to dial down the power consumption. you gotta remember, ATI has had some problems with their true unified shader architecture, it could just be they needed to pump some power into it to make it stable. i betcha you wont need some insane ammount of power to get one.

look at the origonal estimates for the G80, 700mil transisotors? you gotta remember each one takes a little chunk of amperage outta it, so.. from 200mil to 700mil. theoretically that could take 3x the amperage from your 12v rails. if they dont get some sorta uber low resistance transistor, NVs G80 would mean not only would i have to replace my graphics card, but my psu also.

what i really wanna see is ATI put that Rendering GPU to use. thats the differance between SLI and Crossfire right, its not the dongle, its the rendering GPU, thats why you need a crossfire master. so if they could make the rendering gpu do some real load balancing, and they maintain more er less the same architecture, you might be able to crossfire an R600 and an R620.
but anywho thats rambleing. it should be done for the X1600 and X1900.

ATi doesn't have any real issues with their unified architecture, at least none that were disclosed as of yet to the public.

Amperage has nothing to do with the transistors themselves, the amount of amps needed is more to propogate the neccessary energy for the entire chip to function properly and this propagation is also effected by the amount of volts needed (amps are kinda like how fast the power supply can send out power to the object, the amount of volts is how much energy is needed to sustain functionality). 3 times the transistors doesnt' always equate to 3 times the necessary amps or even power usage. There are many factors to the total amount of power needed like; types of insolation used, types of silicon manufacturing metods used, die size, total transistor count, process size involved, etc.

 

[PRIME1]

If the R600 is delayed too long it will have to go up against a G80 refresh with mature drivers.

To be honest I prefer a price battle over a feature battle. The game developers are not keeping up with the cards.

 

[As I Lay Dying]

sorry to say, as a casual gamer, and some one who spends 98% of their time in linux, I'd prolly would fork the cash over for a G80, over R600. G80s probably going to have better drive support for me. I doubt G80, wont be an fx fiasco, hopefully, but if it is I guess I will wait for the G80 refresh.

 

[Vapor03]

I just want to see what both cards are going to do.. DX10 Is going to be so bad ass..

 

[Techo-Nubian]

The wait is a killer, but 2007 for ATI 2H next gen R600 will be all that. I hope motherboard RD790 has enough PCI slots.

 

[Sharky974]

xxx

512bit reveals saves the position width new flagship R600 band width astonishing

Before this already some news confirmed NVIDIA G80 will use 384bit to reveal saves the position funds, but at present goes against the level to reveal the card all to use the 256bit position width. Although ATi the R520/R580 interior ring-like uses 512bit to reveal saves the main line but it only to have 4 to reveal saves the channel, outside revealed saves the position width still was 256bit. R600 will bring unprecedented true 512bit to reveal saves the position width, if will provide 2500MHz GDDR4 to reveal saves, then the band width achieved astonishing 160G/s, we knew even if will be the eDRAM band width which X-box in 360 will inlay also only has 256GB/s, although in the speed eDRAM will be quick many, but X-box 360 eDRAM will only have 10MB, but R600 will provide actually is 1024MB. The R600 research and development code number is Pele, will use TSMC 80 nanometer crafts manufacture, completely will support DirectX 10, will estimate in the next year first quarter issue.

 

[Trimlock]

Wow, where did you pull that information from!? and jeesus 160gb/s to the memory?! JAW DROPPING

lets hope it has insane throughput to match that crazy bandwidth

 

[MrGuvernment]

i always thought ATI's new memory architecture would really come in to play later on...

 

[tornadotsunamilife]

Doesn't the G80 have a new MC similarly seen with the R5x0 series?

 

[Silus]

and WHY do you need to upgrade?

Spend your money on something more useful.



I would hope so.... but who is to say ATI wont when they come out?

No one. But when R600 is out, what will matter the most, is performance in DX10, not DX9. G80 will be launched when the only thing that matters is DX9.

 

[Silus]

Wow, where did you pull that information from!? and jeesus 160gb/s to the memory?! JAW DROPPING

lets hope it has insane throughput to match that crazy bandwidth

That text seems to be translated from a chinese site, in babelfish

If that's true, I really want to see the transistor count in R600. If G80 with half a billion and "only" the rumored 384 bit memory interface, is already a huge chip, we can only imagine how big R600 will be. As far as rumors go, R600 by its own, should consume 250W. I'm also curious to see what will cool that thing. I guess cards that consume less power and less heat, are still not important for the red team.