Summer will bring a GPU war

[AirRaid Mach 2.5]

Analysis PR teams gear up for carnage

By Charlie Demerjian: Friday, 02 May 2008, 5:05 PM

THIS SUMMER WE are going to see an large scale GPU war, something we
haven't really seen for a few years now. Nvidia may have all the
headlines today , but ATI has been plotting and rebuilding for the 7xx
series launch.

Last year, the mere suggestion of ATI doing well was laughed at, but
the firm took the outright lead with the X2 cards and forced NV into
the reactionary GX2. ATI can do three and four-way adequately, albeit
with the the Broken OS, while NV can only do it in name. Same with the
bucket called 'hybrid' for both power and frame rate.

ATI has been plotting a comeback, and the R770/R700 parts should take
the outright lead once again. The trick to the cards is what we told
you almost two years ago, no more big GPUs.

You saw a little of that with the 3870X2, but the bridge was a simple
PCIe switch. The real magic this time is a bridge that shares memory,
GDDR5 in this case. Yup, you will have 2 GPUs with one set of memory.

This simplifies designs, lowers chip cost, and speeds time to market.
You get two full variants for the design cost of 1.25, and you are on
the happy end of the cost/area curve for fabbing silicon. While the
early word on GT200 is that it is again 500mm^2+, ATI will have 2x
chips that are much smaller, which translates into a huge cost
advantage.

The other nice thing is that the bridge should keep the GPUs hidden
from the system. This has a disadvantage of hard-wiring in the
Crossfire modes leaving a little performance on the table, but when
you have two of them in the system, it looks like two GPUs, not four.
One look at the 1 -> 2 -> 4 scaling rates will show what a win that
is.

What it comes down to in the end is that ATI looks to have built up a
technological lead that NV is reacting to. It is the same thing that
happened about the time when NV first released SLI, it had all the
answers and ATI had to catch up. Now the tables are turned.

Another interesting change is on the PR side. NV has been mouthing off
to anyone who won't run away fast enough while ATI has been silent.
Some minor reshuffling at the ATI PR camp says that they are prepping
for an outright hot war. As you know, it is always the silent ones
that are the most trouble.

This summer we will see both trends come to a head, a new resurgent
ATI technological lineup with a PR team willing to beat heads to get
the job done. NV will be playing catchup with a long list of paper
technologies and a few real ones.

The shouting should be pretty intense, and with Intel flipping sides,
things will be all the more interesting. µ

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/05/02/summer-bring-gpu-war

 

[Augustus]

More than likely summer will bring another round of incrementally better
GPU's at prices that inspire no-one to rush out and upgrade. I doubt the
flagship G100 512bit Shader 5.0 card will be out in Q3. And when it does, I
expect it'll cost more than the 8800 Ultra when introduced.

 

[AirRaid Mach 2.5]

More than likely summer will bring another round of incrementally better
GPU's at prices that inspire no-one to rush out and upgrade. I doubt the
flagship G100 512bit Shader 5.0 card will be out in Q3. And when it does, I
expect it'll cost more than the 8800 Ultra when introduced.

GT200 won't be a Shader 5.0 card, it's still DX10.1 Shader 4.0 (or
4.1, i forget)

It'll be the first significant upgrade of the G80 / GF 8800 since fall
2006. Every card Nvidia has released since has been a minor tweak.

GT200 should be to G80 / GF8800 what G70/GF 7800 was to NV40/GF 6800.

 

[Augustus]

GT200 should be to G80 / GF8800 what G70/GF 7800 was to NV40/GF 6800.

I'll believe that when I see some actual reiews. The card I owned previously
was an 7800GTX OC unit. It was replaced with an 8800GT OC unit. The
difference was in performance vast. I really doubt the GT200 unit, or
whatever moniker it's called, will be anything like that performance jump.

 

[Augustus]

It was replaced with an 8800GT OC unit. The difference was in performance

vast.

Should read: "The difference in performance was vast" ........original
sounds like I'm channeling Yoda

 

[Rick Savoie]

You can never have enough... even my 8800GTS SLI is not good enough for me


If only I'd wasted the money on Ultras

On Fri, 2 May 2008 21:20:46 -0700 (PDT), "AirRaid Mach 2.5"

[snip]

This summer we will see both trends come to a head, a new resurgent
ATI technological lineup with a PR team willing to beat heads to get
the job done. NV will be playing catchup with a long list of paper
technologies and a few real ones.

The shouting should be pretty intense, and with Intel flipping sides,
things will be all the more interesting. µ

ATI is like that Japanese soldier stuck on an island that didn't hear
WWII was over.

I'm sure there are a few stragglers, but all my gaming friends and I
have recently upgraded to NVidia cards, mostly 8800GT's. ATI's problem
is that there is still nothing out other than Crysis that challenges
this card. Think any of us are going to be looking to upgrade in the
Summer to something faster, when what we've already had for 7 months
is powerful enough for everything on the market and now available and
bargain priced?

Hell no.

Don't call me an NVidia fanboy either, its the first non-ATI card I've
had since the GeForce 2ti.

Tim

 

[Beladi Nasrallah]

You can never have enough... even my 8800GTS SLI is not good enough for me

Was that 512 or 640 MB version ?

If only I'd wasted the money on Ultras

On Fri, 2 May 2008 21:20:46 -0700 (PDT), "AirRaid Mach 2.5"

[snip]

This summer we will see both trends come to a head, a new resurgent
ATI technological lineup with a PR team willing to beat heads to get
the job done. NV will be playing catchup with a long list of paper
technologies and a few real ones.
The shouting should be pretty intense, and with Intel flipping sides,
things will be all the more interesting. µ

ATI is like that Japanese soldier stuck on an island that didn't hear
WWII was over.

I'm sure there are a few stragglers, but all my gaming friends and I
have recently upgraded to NVidia cards, mostly 8800GT's. ATI's problem
is that there is still nothing out other than Crysis that challenges
this card. Think any of us are going to be looking to upgrade in the
Summer to something faster, when what we've already had for 7 months
is powerful enough for everything on the market and now available and
bargain priced?

Hell no.

Don't call me an NVidia fanboy either, its the first non-ATI card I've
had since the GeForce 2ti.

Tim- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

 

[John Lewis]

Analysis PR teams gear up for carnage

By Charlie Demerjian: Friday, 02 May 2008, 5:05 PM

Er, why do you keep regurgitating "theInquirer" rubbish -- verbatim?

Just post the URL and then shut up. Most o us on these newsgroups can
read quite well, and most of us have brains that probably function a
lot better than yours in terms of deductive reasoning and sorting out
real-facts from "trash-facts".

John Lewis

 

[Legion]

Analysis PR teams gear up for carnage

By Charlie Demerjian: Friday, 02 May 2008, 5:05 PM

THIS SUMMER WE are going to see an large scale GPU war, something we
haven't really seen for a few years now. Nvidia may have all the
headlines today , but ATI has been plotting and rebuilding for the 7xx
series launch.

Last year, the mere suggestion of ATI doing well was laughed at, but
the firm took the outright lead with the X2 cards and forced NV into
the reactionary GX2. ATI can do three and four-way adequately, albeit
with the the Broken OS, while NV can only do it in name. Same with the
bucket called 'hybrid' for both power and frame rate.

ATI has been plotting a comeback, and the R770/R700 parts should take
the outright lead once again. The trick to the cards is what we told
you almost two years ago, no more big GPUs.

You saw a little of that with the 3870X2, but the bridge was a simple
PCIe switch. The real magic this time is a bridge that shares memory,
GDDR5 in this case. Yup, you will have 2 GPUs with one set of memory.

This simplifies designs, lowers chip cost, and speeds time to market.
You get two full variants for the design cost of 1.25, and you are on
the happy end of the cost/area curve for fabbing silicon. While the
early word on GT200 is that it is again 500mm^2+, ATI will have 2x
chips that are much smaller, which translates into a huge cost
advantage.

The other nice thing is that the bridge should keep the GPUs hidden
from the system. This has a disadvantage of hard-wiring in the
Crossfire modes leaving a little performance on the table, but when
you have two of them in the system, it looks like two GPUs, not four.
One look at the 1 -> 2 -> 4 scaling rates will show what a win that
is.

What it comes down to in the end is that ATI looks to have built up a
technological lead that NV is reacting to. It is the same thing that
happened about the time when NV first released SLI, it had all the
answers and ATI had to catch up. Now the tables are turned.

Another interesting change is on the PR side. NV has been mouthing off
to anyone who won't run away fast enough while ATI has been silent.
Some minor reshuffling at the ATI PR camp says that they are prepping
for an outright hot war. As you know, it is always the silent ones
that are the most trouble.

This summer we will see both trends come to a head, a new resurgent
ATI technological lineup with a PR team willing to beat heads to get
the job done. NV will be playing catchup with a long list of paper
technologies and a few real ones.

The shouting should be pretty intense, and with Intel flipping sides,
things will be all the more interesting. µ

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/05/02/summer-bring-gpu-war

Yah,yah,yah...I'll believe it when I see it.

 

[pg]

Yah,yah,yah...I'll believe it when I see it.

See wat? All hype !

ATI and Nvidia have turned into just like Intel or Microsoft.

Before they release anything, way, way before they're ready, they
hyped up the market to the point of no return. When everyone and their
grandmother start to believe in the hype, they release yet-another
junk.

What ATI and Nvidia ought to do is to release the full specs so that
people can start coding in it, using whatever language people are
familiar with.

With all those power in the GPU and no one except for the game /
simulation people can tap into, what's the damn use?

 

[penang]

The gpu is a highly specialized processor with a high level of paralellism,
and because of that it's best at certain types of processing, not general
purpose processing like you use your general purpose cpu such as phenom,
core, pentium, etc. For those that know how the gpu works and understand how
to harness that power, it's fantastic.

If you had access to that "power", what would you use it for?

I'm not your garden-style programmer, I program DSP, embedded system,
microcode and such. I know what I am talking about.

The Stream processors are just that, processors. They may have special-
built features, but they are processors nevertheless.

The problem today is neither Nvidia nor ATI would release the specs to
their processors, like Intel and AMD releasing their processor specs
to the programming communities.

If they release the specs, then the programming communities would know
HOW TO TAP INTO the raw power of those processors.

Parallel processing isn't a new thing btw. We have had these for over
20 years.

The unfortunate thing is too many people such as you have been
brainwashed by the hype and lies of Nvidia / ATI to believe that "Oh,
it's parallel processing, that means it must be EXTRA-ORDINARILY
SPECIAL, that the thing must only be used for special purpose, that
this .... that that ... whatever ... and in the meantime, ATI and
Nvidia are laughing their ass off, because there are people OUT THERE
actually telling others that NOT RELEASING THE SPECS of the GPU is
the RIGHT THING TO DO !!!

People must realize that we are paying our hard earned money on the
GPU, and we need to be able to have the ability to program it.

Just like owning a car. We ought to have the ability to tune it, if we
want to.

Right now, if we take GPU as cars ... it's like we buy a car with the
hood glued shut, that we, the driver/owner of the vehicle, are NOT
ALLOWED to open the hood to check what's inside.

Don't you think it's kinda ridiculous, my friend ??

 

[mr deo]

Er, why do you keep regurgitating "theInquirer" rubbish -- verbatim?

John Lewis

Heh...
With a name like that ;P ...
The implications it brings..
Can you say such a statement and get away with it!!!!

 

[mr deo]

People must realize that we are paying our hard earned money on the
GPU, and we need to be able to have the ability to program it.

Just like owning a car. We ought to have the ability to tune it, if we
want to.

Right now, if we take GPU as cars ... it's like we buy a car with the
hood glued shut, that we, the driver/owner of the vehicle, are NOT
ALLOWED to open the hood to check what's inside.

Don't you think it's kinda ridiculous, my friend ??

ever seen a Citroen Saxo pulling a carnievan (err, Caravan) that's twice as
long as the car itself...
the GPU cant replace other types of processors without giving up a lot of
something.
If the chips were so similar that they could be easily swapped around then
we wouldnt have the need for seperate video cards...
That said, Your point is valid in that all of the command codes shoudl be
released as there may well be applications that could run well on those
cards.

 

[Jim Beard]

Right now, if we take GPU as cars ... it's like we buy a car with the
hood glued shut, that we, the driver/owner of the vehicle, are NOT
ALLOWED to open the hood to check what's inside.

IIRC, Rolls Royce has been known to do exactly that. When
last I noticed (a few decades ago) they had mechanics that
would fly from the UK to locations in Africa to provide
routine maintenance such as changing the oil and oil filter.
YPYM, YTYC.

I personally prefer open systems and public disclosure
of the specs, but the creator of a thing is entitled to
decide how he will allow others to use it. If you don't
like his decisions, go to someone else for what you want.

Cheers!

jim b.

 

[pg]

IIRC, Rolls Royce has been known to do exactly that. When
last I noticed (a few decades ago) they had mechanics that
would fly from the UK to locations in Africa to provide
routine maintenance such as changing the oil and oil filter.
YPYM, YTYC.

I personally prefer open systems and public disclosure
of the specs, but the creator of a thing is entitled to
decide how he will allow others to use it. If you don't
like his decisions, go to someone else for what you want.

Cheers!

jim b.

In term of cars, we have choices.

In term of GPU, please be real. Thank you !

 

[Jim Beard]

In term of cars, we have choices.

In term of GPU, please be real. Thank you !

Reality is, those who create things sell them on
the terms and conditions they specify.

You pays your money, you takes your choice
( or, you takes your pick, if you prefer that
wording). If you do not like the choice, create
and make your own things. You are not able?
Do without.

The world, and other people's businesses, were not
created to do just what you want. Grow up. Learn
to live with it.

Cheers!

jim b.

 

[pg]

Reality is, those who create things sell them on
the terms and conditions they specify.

You pays your money, you takes your choice
( or, you takes your pick, if you prefer that
wording). If you do not like the choice, create
and make your own things. You are not able?
Do without.

The world, and other people's businesses, were not
created to do just what you want. Grow up. Learn
to live with it.

Whoa !!! Imagine all the drivers of the whole world all "grown up",
and "learnt to live with" whatever shit you said, whoa, my man ... we
will still be driving cars with our boots glued shut.

Unfortunately for you, sir. This world is filled with people that are
far from "grown up" such as you. That is why we have cars that we can
open the boots, that we can tinker with it, that we can change the oil
ourselves, and so on.

Thanks God, for making me so "naive" !!!

 

[Bob Myers]

Whoa !!! Imagine all the drivers of the whole world all "grown up",
and "learnt to live with" whatever shit you said, whoa, my man ... we
will still be driving cars with our boots glued shut.

Unfortunately for you, sir. This world is filled with people that are
far from "grown up" such as you. That is why we have cars that we can
open the boots, that we can tinker with it, that we can change the oil
ourselves, and so on.

Thanks God, for making me so "naive" !!!

The only problem is, of course, that Jim B. was
completely correct in what he said. You have a finite
number of products to choose from in any given
market; if you don't like what's offered, your choices
come down to "make your own" or "do without"
("pay someone to create it for you" is a subset of
"make your own," for those with the means). That's
it. There are absolutely no guarantees that you will
be able to find exactly what you want, or that anyone
is required to make it available to you.

Bob M.