The GT300/Fermi Thread - Part 2!

[saaya]

A great deal of graphics effects can be implemented as massive parallel computing tasks, getting around the limitations of the traditional shader pipeline and repetitive texture fetching, like the various ambient occlusion methods, full-res lens effects, order-independent transparency (a bliss for all the deferred engines out there) and many more.

thx, i didnt know that!

Compute shaders are already used for:
Battleforge: SSAO
Stalker-CoP: SSAO, Contact Hardening shadows
Metro2033: DoF
Dirt2: SSAO

wow i didnt know... so whats ssao?

Nvidia’s chief executive officer did not provide any concrete timeframes for the transition of the whole lineup to the new Fermi architecture, but said that since the owners of mainstream and entry-level graphics cards hardly demand new functionality, it is not crucial for Nvidia to update currently available “fabulous” graphics chips. In addition, the speed of the transition depends on the supply of 40nm chips by TSMC.

in theory thats true, but nobody will buy a 10.1 card over a 11 card if they perform about the same and cost about the same... if there wouldnt be 11 entry level cards this would be correct, but there are...

oh man... so fermi slipped into Q2... i thought charlie was exaggerating when he predicted that most likely fermi will actually come out in Q2... everybody laughed at him and others back in Q4 2009 when they said fermi wont be out until mid 2010...

nvidia is getting really close to their tesla deadline... they promised tesla cards in early Q2... if they cant get that done, thatll hurt their business big time...

is it just me or did jensen navigate around the question if GF104 had taped out already?
he said they will have a couple of cards, he didnt say chips... a couple of cards is 2 or more, and considering that there will be 480 and 470 plus quadro and tesla, GF100 is enough to fulfill his claim of having a couple of cards and several price points... if he didnt say anything about GF104 taping out, then its pretty safe to say it didnt happen... thats nothing you hide in front of analysts, thats something you boast about... no GF104, meh :/