nVidia DX10.1 cards specs and pictures

[Shintai]

here's an interesting question:

if you have a corei7 with qpi and triple channel ddr3, wouldnt it be better for a graphics card to use system mem than use gddr2 with a 64bit bus?

Yes. You can actually run some "CPU+GPU" at about HD4650 to HD4670 speeds with DDR3-1066 up to 2000.

DDR3-2000 on i7 is about 50GB/sec or so. Add some quadchannel memory or simply just 128 or 256bit DIMMs and discrete graphics cards are in heavy danger of extinction.

[570091D]

Yes. You can actually run some "CPU+GPU" at about HD4650 to HD4670 speeds with DDR3-1066 up to 2000.

DDR3-2000 on i7 is about 50GB/sec or so. Add some quadchannel memory or simply just 128 or 256bit DIMMs and discrete graphics cards are in heavy danger of extinction.

so... the core i7 now has a graphics core? i blieve the problem with running gpu memory through the system bus would be the latency incured travelling over the pci-e lanes. but these cards are not meant for high end systems, i'm amazed that some feel bitter when a new card is released and it doesn't run crysis () on very high or cure cancer. these are entry level cards, the vast majority of what nvidia will sell. they added dx10.1 support to increase longevity of the product and it's overall competativness. these cards will be bundled with celeron powered systems or htpc. when customers buy systems with these cards, they will not be comparing shader cores or wondering why nvidia decided on 1gb of vram. they just want the sims to run and the ability to play blu-ray movies. given that purpose for existance, this will probably be a sucessful product.

[Talonman]

DDR3-2000 on i7 is about 50GB/sec or so. Add some quadchannel memory or simply just 128 or 256bit DIMMs and discrete graphics cards are in heavy danger of extinction.

Yawn...

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/12391/...285/index.html

"Of course it is way too late for Larabee to take on the GTX 285 and considering that both NVIDIA and ATI are hard at work on the next generation of cards, Larabee won't have a chance at competing in the high end GPU markey when it comes later this year or early next year. Instead it will have a great shot at competing in the mid-range market."

larabee might give 285 a run for it's money...

But to put discrete graphics cards in heavy danger of extinction, it will take more than that.

The other question is how many people will sell their rig that only needs a new GPU, so they could get a Larabee system?

My money says discrete graphics cards will be around for years...

[ToTTenTranz]

here's an interesting question:

if you have a corei7 with qpi and triple channel ddr3, wouldnt it be better for a graphics card to use system mem than use gddr2 with a 64bit bus?

Low-end graphics cards use both (integrated 64bit + system memory). It's called TurboCache by nVidia and HyperMemory by ATI.

However, this only makes sense in low-end graphics cards.
A discrete graphics card still has to use the PCI-Express bus, which means there's a limit of 8GB/s (PCI-E 2.0 16x). Not to mention the system's memory is also alocated by the CPU which causes a lot of latency.

So a discrete graphics card with 8GB/s of internal bandwidth won't have its bandwidth doubled if it's using the system's memory through a PCI-E 2.0 16x bus (another 8GB/s), because of latency issues.

[ToTTenTranz]

Yawn...

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/12391/...285/index.html

"Of course it is way too late for Larabee to take on the GTX 285 and considering that both NVIDIA and ATI are hard at work on the next generation of cards, Larabee won't have a chance at competing in the high end GPU markey when it comes later this year or early next year. Instead it will have a great shot at competing in the mid-range market."

larabee might give 285 a run for it's money...

But to put discrete graphics cards in heavy danger of extinction, it will take more than that.

The other question is how many people will sell their rig that only needs a new GPU, so they could get a Larabee system?

My money says discrete graphics cards will be around for years...

Dude.. no one mentioned Larrabee.. Are you sure this was the right thread to post that?




And of course discrete graphics cards will disappear. Not in one year, not in two and most probably not in 4 or 5..
But everyone knows that CPU and GPU architectures are merging into something along the lines of Cell, Larrabee and Creative's Zii - eventually.



For some reason, nVidia is now pushing harder into the mobile market. They know their chances of a long-term success aren't the best in the x86 market.

[Talonman]

Dude.. no one mentioned Larrabee.. Are you sure this was the right thread to post that?

DDR3-2000 on i7 is about 50GB/sec or so. Add some quadchannel memory or simply just 128 or 256bit DIMMs and discrete graphics cards are in heavy danger of extinction.

Shintai is talking Larrabee...

What exactly do you think he was referring to then? Cell... Shintai? Naaa
He is a Larrabee fan.

And of course discrete graphics cards will disappear. Not in one year, not in two and most probably not in 4 or 5..
But everyone knows that CPU and GPU architectures are merging into something along the lines of Cell, Larrabee and Creative's Zii - eventually.

Then we agree. I too think it will be years from now.

I just didn't get that vibe from Shintai. If he would have added years from now, I would have been on board too.

[ToTTenTranz]

Shintai is talking Larrabee...

What exactly do you think he was referring to then? Cell... Shintai? Naaa
He is a Larrabee fan.

Dude.. he talked about Core i7's bandwidth and then he said discrete graphics cards will be gone -> Larrabee is a GPU for discrete graphics cards.


There was really no Larrabee mention in there.

[Talonman]

ok...

[Shintai]

Jeebus....

[blindbox]

Yes. You can actually run some "CPU+GPU" at about HD4650 to HD4670 speeds with DDR3-1066 up to 2000.

DDR3-2000 on i7 is about 50GB/sec or so. Add some quadchannel memory or simply just 128 or 256bit DIMMs and discrete graphics cards are in heavy danger of extinction.

Really? Radeon HD 4870 does 115.2 GB/s http://techreport.com/articles.x/14990/5
and that's not even 512-bit. AFAIK, GDDR5 has the potential to go >4GHz too.

[Shintai]

Really? Radeon HD 4870 does 115.2 GB/s http://techreport.com/articles.x/14990/5
and that's not even 512-bit. AFAIK, GDDR5 has the potential to go >4GHz too.

Thats also about the best there is out there HD4890 is 125GB/sec. Replace the 64bit DIMMs with 128bit DIMMs and your i7 is now 100GB/sec with trichannel. And DDR3 also still have plenty of potential

But remember this aint about tomorrow but the future. Looking on i7 alone as a base in terms of bandwidth. Only the HD4800 series cards would be left today. Everything below could easily be CPU+GPU if we look away on diesize and power consumption for abit.

HD4650 got 16GB/sec bandwidth. HD4670 got between 28 and 35GB/sec. HD4770 got 51GB/sec.

[Smartidiot89]

Really? Radeon HD 4870 does 115.2 GB/s http://techreport.com/articles.x/14990/5
and that's not even 512-bit. AFAIK, GDDR5 has the potential to go >4GHz too.

Samsung has 128Mbyte 1750mhz(7000mhz effective) GDDR5 modules

The ones used on AMDs GPUs are Qimonda and Samsung(or is it only Qimonda?) which are specified at 4GHz, but the norm for overclockers is pretty close to 5GHz.

[blindbox]

Thats also about the best there is out there HD4890 is 125GB/sec. Replace the 64bit DIMMs with 128bit DIMMs and your i7 is now 100GB/sec with trichannel. And DDR3 also still have plenty of potential

But remember this aint about tomorrow but the future. Looking on i7 alone as a base in terms of bandwidth. Only the HD4800 series cards would be left today. Everything below could easily be CPU+GPU if we look away on diesize and power consumption for abit.

HD4650 got 16GB/sec bandwidth. HD4670 got between 28 and 35GB/sec. HD4770 got 51GB/sec.

Ah okay, so the cream of the crop still wins . Power consumption(and heat) is quite the concern. I don't expect stock coolers to become TRUEs.

[Shintai]

Ah okay, so the cream of the crop still wins . Power consumption(and heat) is quite the concern. I don't expect stock coolers to become TRUEs.

I didnt say the current highend wouldnt win today. Or even most of the cards below. The point is about the future. CPU+GPU solutions is eating the discrete GPUs from below and up. And specially in 4-5 years down the road it already looks very dim for discrete cards. But we will have something like 10 years or more before the last discrete card.

IGP performance have always been bottlenecked by memory bandwidth. And thats something thats getting increased very rapidly on the CPU these years. You could essentially make an i7+RV740 today as CPU+GPU even with TDP. Its just a matter of time before you will buy a total solution by AMD or Intel with everything on a chip. The only thing to really discuss is just what comes next on the CPU. Is it the SB I/O, memory for CPU, GPU etc.

[saaya]

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/12391/...285/index.html

"Of course it is way too late for Larabee to take on the GTX 285 and considering that both NVIDIA and ATI are hard at work on the next generation of cards, Larabee won't have a chance at competing in the high end GPU markey when it comes later this year or early next year. Instead it will have a great shot at competing in the mid-range market."

noooo wayyyyy tweaktown really wrote that?
OMG hahaha! i gotta save this for later, this is hilarious!

[Smartidiot89]

noooo wayyyyy tweaktown really wrote that?
OMG hahaha! i gotta save this for later, this is hilarious!

That was actually quite funny, tweaktown seems to have forgotten what company they are talking about

Really that prototype was a joke if it was 32cores@1GHz compared to the final product, and software(drivers) will do wonder.

Also wtf one of the biggest dies in existence will be Larrabee no sane company would put that expensive piece on the mid-range market

[Talonman]

noooo wayyyyy tweaktown really wrote that?
OMG hahaha! i gotta save this for later, this is hilarious!

Yep...

That's what the experts think.

[570091D]

I didnt say the current highend wouldnt win today. Or even most of the cards below. The point is about the future. CPU+GPU solutions is eating the discrete GPUs from below and up. And specially in 4-5 years down the road it already looks very dim for discrete cards. But we will have something like 10 years or more before the last discrete card.

IGP performance have always been bottlenecked by memory bandwidth. And thats something thats getting increased very rapidly on the CPU these years. You could essentially make an i7+RV740 today as CPU+GPU even with TDP. Its just a matter of time before you will buy a total solution by AMD or Intel with everything on a chip. The only thing to really discuss is just what comes next on the CPU. Is it the SB I/O, memory for CPU, GPU etc.

i think we need to wait to see some actual gaming results for these gpu+cpu chips. if the max memory bandwidth is 100gb/sec and your on die gpu is using most of that bandwidth, wouldn't that choke the cpu and still lag the system? also, i think heat will be a primary concern and probably the biggest limiting factor (not to mention, suppling power to a 300watt chip). amd/intel will have to pack some real power into these cpu+gpu solutions if they want to bring an end to the discrete graphics card.

[ToTTenTranz]

i think we need to wait to see some actual gaming results for these gpu+cpu chips. if the max memory bandwidth is 100gb/sec and your on die gpu is using most of that bandwidth, wouldn't that choke the cpu and still lag the system? also, i think heat will be a primary concern and probably the biggest limiting factor (not to mention, suppling power to a 300watt chip). amd/intel will have to pack some real power into these cpu+gpu solutions if they want to bring an end to the discrete graphics card.

There's no way to compare the Mojo of these chips, since they're still a year away from getting into market.

About heat and power supply, what would you say about a 1.4 billion transistors chips @725Mhz/1.5Ghz, 4 years ago?

[570091D]

There's no way to compare the Mojo of these chips, since they're still a year away from getting into market.

i believe intel has said q1 '10 for their duel+gpu, but are you REALLY saying that we shouldn't compare gpu to gpu? if thier purpose is the same, and some on this board are correct in speculating that these systems will replace aib gpus, then why shouldn't we investigate which is faster?

About heat and power supply, what would you say about a 1.4 billion transistors chips @725Mhz/1.5Ghz, 4 years ago?

i would have said: "i have no idea what you're talking about"

but, in four years do you really think that a gpu packaged with a cpu will be able to compete with a complete graphics sub-system that has several thousand compute shaders and high speed memory on a dedicated bus? personally, i'm skeptical.

however, if you're saying that these "fusion" chips will replace cards like the gt210 and 220, i do believe you're right. in a few years graphics cards will probably only be used by the devoted gamers with large monitors and VERY demanding games. shintai may very well be on to something, as nintendo has proven that you can have fun with video games without a graphics card that requires more power than a refrigerator. but, then far cry 2 and crysis have proven that there is a large market for games with realistic graphics.... only time will tell.

[Talonman]

Your not alone.

[ToTTenTranz]

but, in four years do you really think that a gpu packaged with a cpu will be able to compete with a complete graphics sub-system that has several thousand compute shaders and high speed memory on a dedicated bus? personally, i'm skeptical.

however, if you're saying that these "fusion" chips will replace cards like the gt210 and 220, i do believe you're right. in a few years graphics cards will probably only be used by the devoted gamers with large monitors and VERY demanding games. shintai may very well be on to something, as nintendo has proven that you can have fun with video games without a graphics card that requires more power than a refrigerator. but, then far cry 2 and crysis have proven that there is a large market for games with realistic graphics.... only time will tell.

4 years is more or less the timeframe to completely replace low and low-mid end graphics cards with APUs (application processor units = CPU + GPU).
Just like bottom-low ends are being completely replaced by IGPs now.