......................................................................................................................................
ATI Confirms Next Generation "Leverages XBOX 360 Design"
22-Feb-2006, 21:54.59 Reporter : Dave Baumann

At a recent analyst session ATI's Senior VP of PC Business, Rick
Bergman, has confirmed that their next generation of PC graphics
products will feature much of the technology developed for "Xenos",
ATI's XBOX 360 graphics chip. We've surmised that this is likely be
the case previously, given that Xenos utilises a unified shader
architecture at the hardware level, with both Pixel Shaders and Vertex
shaders utilising the same ALU resources it becomes a ripe time to
implement it with DirectX10 unifying the vertex and pixel shader
programming capabilities in the API.

Vertex and pixel processing have previously always been separate
hardware functions, though vertex processing moved from a software
based solution to hardware with the introduction of NVIDIA's GeForce
256 and has subsequently got closer to the pixel processing capability
with each revision of DirectX Shader Model, to the point where
DirextX10 will should dictate the same programming capabilities across
both. Even with this being the case there is nothing to suggest that
the hardware has to be unified for processing as pixel operations
generally have to hide greater latencies than vertex operations thanks
to the greater use of texturing in the pipeline. However, Xenos's
design has attempted to remove the texture latency issues from shader
programmes by creating a highly threaded design that separates texture
instructions from ALU instructions, allowing multiple shader batches to
run concurrently, and so it comes as no surprise that ATI should adopt
this architecture for the PC, seeing as the investment has already been
made.
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http://beyond3d.com/#news28611

On 22 Feb 2006 14:19:38 -0800, "Air Raid" <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>
>
>.....................................................................................................................................
>ATI Confirms Next Generation "Leverages XBOX 360 Design"
>22-Feb-2006, 21:54.59 Reporter : Dave Baumann
>

.... blah. blah, blah... (rest deleted)....

.....as reporter obviously regurgitates meaningless ATi marketing
blurb.

John Lewis

>ATI Confirms Next Generation "Leverages XBOX 360 Design"
>22-Feb-2006, 21:54.59 Reporter : Dave Baumann

Translation (as I predicted when the ATI/MS deal was first announced):

ATI is gonna be devoting all their resources to the XBOX, so PC hardware and
drivers will only get whatever improvements trickle down from XBOX work :-).
--
>>==>> The *Best* political site <URL:http://www.vote-smart.org/> >>==+
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Considering the tens of millions of Xbox 360s that are likely to sell
(eventually), can you blame ATI for being Xbox-centric? I doubt they
sell tens of millions of their $500 graphic cards for PCs.

On 22 Feb 2006 19:50:55 -0800, (E-Mail Removed) wrote:

>Considering the tens of millions of Xbox 360s that are likely to sell
>(eventually), can you blame ATI for being Xbox-centric? I doubt they
>sell tens of millions of their $500 graphic cards for PCs.

You say that like they're making $500/unit from the XBox 360. Its
probably a lot closer to $100-$150 per XBox. They probably make more
profit on a $500 video card than they do on 50 XBox 360s. At the same
time, though, they'll probably sell 1000 XBox 360's for every $500
video card (since only a few overly-wealthy geeks will blow that much
cash just to get 4% more FPS in Doom 3...)

Anyway, this announcement isn't anything particularly special:
they've developed a marginally faster product and are trying to hype
it (in this case, by tying it into the hype generated by the XBox 360
launch.) In other news, the sun rose today, and north is still in the
opposite direction of south.

On Thu, 23 Feb 2006 06:30:28 GMT, drocket <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>On 22 Feb 2006 19:50:55 -0800, (E-Mail Removed) wrote:
>
>>Considering the tens of millions of Xbox 360s that are likely to sell
>>(eventually), can you blame ATI for being Xbox-centric? I doubt they
>>sell tens of millions of their $500 graphic cards for PCs.
>
>You say that like they're making $500/unit from the XBox 360. Its
>probably a lot closer to $100-$150 per XBox.

More like $20-$30 max. per Xbox360. They have only licensed the
right to replicate the design, are not responsible for silicon
production at all. and no doubt have negotiated a per-unit license
fee with M$$.

M$$ finances, schedules and is entirely responsible for the
manufacturing builds of the GPU thru TSMC. ATi may be hauled in to
tweak the design if design-related yield problems appear, and they and
IBM probably have an upfront multimillion$$ monetary incentive to
re-cast the Xbox360 GPU and CPU designs in 65nm ASAP to reduce
the power-consumption.

The current version of the Xbox360 runs too hot internally for its
package size, with most of the heat being generated by the CPU
and GPU. Once the internal heat-sinks clog with household junk
(courtesy of the 2 internal fans) , the box will overheat - there is
no way of accessing these heat-sinks for cleaning without special
tools and voiding the M$$ warranty. The DVD-drive already runs too hot
and temporarily discolors discs after several hours of continuous
3D-gaming use of the Xbox360, since the stupid Xbox360 hardware
designers jammed the GPU and CPU heatsinks right up against the
DVD-drive.

John Lewis

>and
> probably make more
>profit on a $500 video card than they do on 50 XBox 360s. At the same
>time, though, they'll probably sell 1000 XBox 360's for every $500
>video card (since only a few overly-wealthy geeks will blow that much
>cash just to get 4% more FPS in Doom 3...)
>
>Anyway, this announcement isn't anything particularly special:
>they've developed a marginally faster product and are trying to hype
>it (in this case, by tying it into the hype generated by the XBox 360
>launch.) In other news, the sun rose today, and north is still in the
>opposite direction of south.

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> Considering the tens of millions of Xbox 360s that are likely to sell
> (eventually), can you blame ATI for being Xbox-centric? I doubt they

XFLop only sold a little over 20 million over 5 years and the xflop
three-shitty is off to a slower start with no flag-rallying trademark
game so far and nothing on the horizon. The xflop three-shitty is
basically turning into a PC-alternative PC port-box which might not be
a good place to be in by next year.

> sell tens of millions of their $500 graphic cards for PCs.

http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/01/18/nvidia_sli_sales/
Nvidia sells 9 million SLI graphics processors
18 Jan 2006

Leverages to nothing. The X1900XL has the 48 shader processors and it
is just barely faster in a few benchmarks than the 7800GTX which has
been out since fall last year. The only game that is significantly
faster with the X1900XL is FEAR and there is a lot of speculation that
is just due to the shader coding used in FEAR. The 7900GTX with unified
pixel vertex pipes comes out in a few weeks and it will shove X1900XL
back to being just a contender again. The shader processor path
apporach is not proving to be any big advantage and looks like it might
be weaker in the months ahead.

Correct. But at least its a fairly major change unlike the short hops
ATI and NVIDIA seem to be making with PC GPU's at the moment. XBOX is
going to be a good thing for PC gaming.

AT LEAST ATI ARE TRYING NEW THINGS UNLIKE NVIDIA WHICH JUST INCREASES
CLOCK SPEED OR ADDS ANOTHER SHADER. EVENTUALLY NVIDIA WILL LAG FAR
BEHIND LIKE IT DID A FEW YEARS AGO. YOUR JUST A NVIDIA FAN BOY WITH NO
REAL FACTS ONLY HYPE.