Any thoughts on the "next Gen" of NVIDIA?

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shathal
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Any thoughts on the "next Gen" of NVIDIA?

Post by shathal » Fri Feb 01, 2008 3:27 am

I'm kinda curious if anyone's had any particular insights on the new generation of NVIDIA's coming out (slated/delayed for Feb/March now it seems).

I'm less bothered about the "top end" slugging match for pure performance, but don't mind getting the new DirectX and shader support - as long as the cards can be quieted down.

Die-shrink to 65 nm should - hopefully - help with reduction of power (thus heat) requirements - thus silence the critters down somewhat ...

Or is it too early yet for anyone to have heard anything else (I've not really been able to find much except some rumourmongering and the die-shrink stuff myself, as well as 10.1 DirectX and the new Shader support) :(.

thejamppa
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Post by thejamppa » Fri Feb 01, 2008 3:37 am

nVidia is slightly disadvantage since Ati is already in 55 nm technology. This means Ati cards are generally cheaper to make and since ati uses aggressive pricing that is not good combo, when you look how much nVidia has laid back since introduction of HD 2900 XT. The HD 38x0 series was pretty much over looked by nVidia and 8800 GT was precautionary release.

I think nVidia has taken its top position bit too obious now. Ati HD 38x0 cards had much better perfromance than peoples thought and were really good value. Depending place HD 3870 and 8800GT price difference can be very substansial.

Most likely nVidia postponed its products just to overclock them bit more before releasing good press samples and hoaning its chips. nVidia has realized that it has been slacking off and Ati can come behind and surpass it once again. They really do not have such luxury as last year just lay quiet with G-80 chipset and gain very good profit for there was little price competition.

HD 38x0 series has changed this again. nVidia has to re-think their marketing as they cannot anymore rely on one superior chipset as Ati could manage make its flop a very good, low power contender that doesn't lack far behind G92-chipsets at the best and has much better multimedia qualities.

Without 8800GT and g92-8800GTS nVidia would have been in serious problems

The new 9xxx-series is really must work for nVidia. Peoples expect so much from nVidia with its new 9xxx-series based on 8800-series. I think nVidia will finally use SM 4.1 and DX 10.1 standards in 9xxx-series and will make its own version of Ati PowerPlay. I've also heard nVidia is hoaning and re-thinking its cards multimedia properties as they are not enough good as they are.

shathal
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Post by shathal » Fri Feb 01, 2008 3:52 am

Oh? What isn't "good enough" about the multimedia properties?

I'm genuinely curious, as most of my "multimedia" usage involves playback of either DIVX or DVD's so I'm not exactly a "heavy user" :).

thejamppa
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Post by thejamppa » Fri Feb 01, 2008 5:22 am

When compearing iron level HD-material decoding, Ati and nVidia are rpetty close together. Ati gains few 2% marginal victory but its not much. However, nVidia's problem is that image quality is not what it should be. Driver and software issues with nVidia multimedia has forced most users use 3rd party solutions when they want to use all multimedia properties and hardware decoding fully.

However Ati HD 38x0-series had some problems in Iron leevel HD material decoding in Muropaketti tests. HD 2600XT was marginally better than 8800GT when it came CPU usage in Iron level decoding: 8800GT had about 15% CPU usage while HD 2600XT had 13% CPu usage when using Iron level decoding while watching BluRay and HD-DVD materials.

Generally image quality in Ati UVD has been better quality than in nVidia pure video. Also Ati vga-cards have 5.1 integrated sound system which you can use with HDMI-adapter. Excellent for some HTPC builders.
Last edited by thejamppa on Fri Feb 01, 2008 5:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

thejamppa
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Post by thejamppa » Fri Feb 01, 2008 5:23 am

** Mods please remove this and post below this**
Last edited by thejamppa on Fri Feb 01, 2008 5:26 am, edited 1 time in total.

thejamppa
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Post by thejamppa » Fri Feb 01, 2008 5:24 am

Sorry about brain fart. I was sure I hit edit button and not quote... I still don't know what happened. I hope Mods can remove this and post above this. I am sorry for the inconvinience.

Tzupy
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Post by Tzupy » Fri Feb 01, 2008 8:43 am

If you are interested in the GeForce 9600GT, I read that it comes with 64 shader units and 650 MHz core clock (shaders 1625).
Here is a link: http://www.vr-zone.com/articles/GeForce ... /5529.html
My guess is the performance should be like the G80 based 8800 GTS, and max power consumption 65-70W.

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Post by thejamppa » Fri Feb 01, 2008 9:34 am

Tzupy wrote:If you are interested in the GeForce 9600GT, I read that it comes with 64 shader units and 650 MHz core clock (shaders 1625).
Here is a link: http://www.vr-zone.com/articles/GeForce ... /5529.html
My guess is the performance should be like the G80 based 8800 GTS, and max power consumption 65-70W.
That makes sense, since 9600GT should be rival against HD 3850-series.

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Post by JazzJackRabbit » Fri Feb 01, 2008 9:46 am

In short no one knows. I think thejamppa overestimates ATI position. True, nvidia cannot slack anymore as ATI rules low and mid end segments with 3450/3650/3850 with nVidia not being able to put out a single model that can compete with these and ATI also temporarily took performance crown with 3870x2. However, nvidia positions are much stronger than it appears to be. nVidia still rides on the success of 8800 with latest G92 remake. 9600GT should be coming soon and taking away 3850 success and 9800x2 should be out next month as well to compete with 3870x2.

Back to the original question, nobody knows. 9800x2 is just two G92's slapped together. 9600GT is once again, duh, cut down G92. There are rumors that 9800GT/GTX will sport directx 10.1 support which would indicate a slightly different chip from G92, but 9600GT was rumored to have 10.1 support as well, and that turned out to be misinformation. Based on the fact that 9800 GX2 and 9600GT are both G92 chips it is a strong indication that 9800xx will be G92 variants as well, however in that case what advantage are they going to have over existing 8800GT/GTS? Unless it's of course clocked like crazy (800MHz or so). So until someone leaks reliable information on the web no one knows for sure. I also don't think 9800GT/GTX will launch in Feb/March. 9800GX2 still isn't out yet, and it's February already. If the new generation aka 9800 is to come out, it's gotta be at least several months after 9800GX2 launch.

shathal
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Post by shathal » Fri Feb 01, 2008 10:25 am

Thanks for the responses so far - hadn't spotted the vr-zone article, cheers for that :).

Here's "my sources" that I found last night:
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.h ... VzaWFzdA==

and (new features / stuff):
http://www.dailytech.com/NVIDIA+Details ... e10218.htm

To be treated with care - a not small amount of cros-site scripts on those sites (gotta love Firefox ++ NoScript) :).

thejamppa
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Post by thejamppa » Sat Feb 02, 2008 4:19 am

Its intresting to see that nVidia seems to hold back the newer DX 10.1 and SM4.1 support. I guess nVidia now wants to cash their users as much as they can. When 9XXX series with such supports eventually come, I am sure nVidia marketing will start huge campaign to advertise SM 4.1. and DX 10.1 support which they so far have flamed Ati for doing that in their HD 38x0 series.

9xxx series will be intresting. I am waiting how the 9800 GT and maybe sometimes comming 9800 GS will perform.

So far there basicly no guesses of Ati's 48xx-series.

TooNice
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Post by TooNice » Sat Feb 02, 2008 5:40 am

thejamppa wrote:Ati HD 38x0 cards had much better perfromance than peoples thought and were really good value. Depending place HD 3870 and 8800GT price difference can be very substansial.
If you take the most expensive GT against the cheapest 3870, you'd be very right. In fact, you'd also be right to say that on average, there is a noticeable price gap between the 8800GT and the 3870. However, from a performance perspective, the 3870 does not provide more performance for the buck even with the average price differential (I know you did not claim otherwise - but I think it is relevant to note). Incidentally, the price gap between the cheapest 8800GT and the cheapest 3870 (I've seen here in the UK - YCMV) is actually pretty narrow. The problem is that the 8800GT originally intended to be amazing value, but the imbalanced supply vs demand resulted in retailers marking up those chip.

In my opinion, the 3850 is more special than the 3870 in the sense that there is really very little in nVidia's line up at that price range. The 8800GS kind of sits between the 3850 and the 3870: this mean that from a performance card perspective (yes, HDMI on the 38-series is nice on an multimedia PC), the 3870 has to deal with two close competitors (512MB GT and the 384MB GS), whereas the 3850 can undercut the GS and not have to worry behind it (the 8600 series are a bit too far back).

And 'flamed' ATI? I've not really seen nVidia flaming ATI for having DX10.1 support anymore than I have seen ATI flame nVidia for being the first to support DX10. That's to say that they both sides are pretty civil AFAIK - not one big happy family, but I've not really seen either side depart from your usual PR talks (which are quite far from 'flaming').

thejamppa
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Post by thejamppa » Sat Feb 02, 2008 6:07 am

I'll dig up somewhere where nVidia reprisantives listed how useless SM 4.1 and DX 10.1 are and why they basicly didn't integrated those features with new 8800-series.

I think they called "useless tiny features" and "used by someone else to sell their cards"

I remember because I found that very funny since nVidia did exact same with their 8600-series when they marketed them as first DX 10 game cards for budget.

shathal
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Post by shathal » Wed Feb 06, 2008 2:38 pm

thejamppa wrote:I'll dig up somewhere where nVidia reprisantives listed how useless SM 4.1 and DX 10.1 are and why they basicly didn't integrated those features with new 8800-series.

I think they called "useless tiny features" and "used by someone else to sell their cards"

I remember because I found that very funny since nVidia did exact same with their 8600-series when they marketed them as first DX 10 game cards for budget.
*chuckles* - yeah, I'm pretty sure that Marketing "birds" of both major vendors sing that tune (or a variant thereof) depending on the season of the year.

Any luck in finding this? :)

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Post by HueyCobra » Wed Feb 06, 2008 3:51 pm

thejamppa wrote:I'll dig up somewhere where nVidia reprisantives listed how useless SM 4.1 and DX 10.1 are and why they basicly didn't integrated those features with new 8800-series.
DailyTech - Crytek, Microsoft, NVIDIA Downplay DirectX 10.1
Microsoft wrote:"DX10.1 is an incremental update that won’t affect any games or gamers in the near future."
NVIDIA wrote:"a minor extension of DirectX 10 that makes a few optional features in DirectX 10 mandatory."
Crytek wrote:"We pride ourselves on being the first to adopt any important newtechnology that can improve our games so you would expect us to getwith DX10.1 right away but we've looked at it and there's just nothingin it important enough to make it needed. So we have no plans to useit at all, not even in the future."
Also of interest, GeForce 8800 GT, Radeon HD 3870 hit near-price-parity and GeForce 9600 GT to be pricier than its predecessor.

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