http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/d...525104243.html
ATI Promotes Forthcoming DirectX 10 Graphics Chip.
ATI's R600 to Be the Fastest DirectX 9 Chip in History - ATI
by Anton Shilov
[ 05/25/2006 | 10:43 AM ]
ATI Technologies Thursday disclosed some of the details concerning the
code-named R600 graphics processing unit (GPU) and said the part will
not only support the new features and unified shader architecture, but
will also become the company's highest performing graphics chip when
it comes to wide-spread DirectX 9 applications.
R600 - DirectX 9 Champ
"The R600 will be [absolutely] the fastest DirectX 9 chip that we had
ever built," said Richard Huddy, the head of ATI Technologies'
software developers relations department, at a press conference in
London, UK.
Mr. Huddy was asked whether the R600's already well-known unified
shader architecture will suit well for the wide-spread DirectX 9 games,
which were developed with dedicated pixel and vertex processors in
mind. The answer implies that users, who will buy the R600-based
graphics cards early, will get top-class performance even in existing
applications.
Unified Shader Architecture May Boost Performance
Mr. Huddy said that Xbox 360 game console, which sports developed by
ATI Xenos graphics core with unified shader architecture and 48 shader
processors, loses 20% to 25% performance in pixel-shader limited games,
when its graphics chip is configured as non-unified, e.g.,16 processors
work strictly on vertex shaders, whereas 32 are assigned for pixel
shaders.
Microsoft Corp. pushes unified shader language for pixel, vertex and
geometry shaders in its Windows Vista graphics application programming
interface (API) - DirectX 10. As a result of that, graphics hardware
designers should deliver their chips with unified shader engines at
some point in future in order to more efficiently support the new API.
Unified shader processors allow graphics chip to configure itself
flexibly for every frame, which provides additional horsepower to the
most demanding part of the workload.
Traditional GPUs have dedicated pixel shader and vertex shader
processors. In cases, where a frame being rendered contains a lot of
geometry and just a few pixel shaders to determine colour, the
performance is limited by vertex shaders, while pixel processors are
standing idle. GPUs with unified shader processors will have special
scheduler inside them, which will determine the load from pixel, vertex
and geometry shaders and then assign appropriate number of processors
for every kind of work. This will allow to utilize all the computing
power of the GPU, believes ATI. Nevertheless, rival Nvidia Corp.
believes that implementation of a unified shader architecture should be
gradual and cautious.
R600 to Bring More Horsepower
Back in 2002 ATI also unveiled the world's first DirectX 9-supporting
GPU, which offered breakthrough performance in DirectX 8-based games,
mainly because it sported 8 pixel processors - two times more
compared to rival GeForce 4 Titanium - and 256-bit memory bus -
also about two times faster than that of the GeForce4 Ti.
The code-named R600 visual processing unit may repeat the success of
its grand-grand predecessor, as, according to sources familiar with the
plans of ATI Technologies as well as some media reports, ATI R600 will
have 64 unified shader processors - an unprecedented number so far,
16 texture units - inline with today's GPUs, clock-speed beyond
650MHz and support for high-speed GDDR4 memory controller. Rival Nvidia
G80 will have lower amount of shader processors and will also have
"hybrid", not unified, micro-architecture. Neither ATI, nor Nvidia
commented on specs of future products.
However, there may be a slight problem for ATI: Microsoft is not going
to release DirectX 10 API for Windows XP, but only for Windows Vista,
which may mean that ATI's R600 hardware will be able to show itself
in all its glory only when used in conjunction with Microsoft's new
operating system.
Similar Threads
