ATI News Thread

[perkam]

It's called a memory shortage. Same thing that held back the NV40/R420 high end parts upon release, and the same thing that's caused so many other videocards to take forever to show up in number. Samsung can only produce so much ram you know, and with no one else being big in the GDDR memory game it's samsung or nobody. They have the cores, it's the ram that's holding them back. Besides, they don't need that many of them as next quarter is another videocard refresh! Much like how ATi's last orders for the X1800XT are for *THIS MONTH*.

Memoy shortage is also the reason for the price of the 512MB GTX. 512MB of 1.1ns ram is the reason the GTX is so much more expensive than the X1800XT.

Its surprisingly also the reason ATI's X1600 is priced so high. THe X1600 core (its the same for either XT or PRO) is very cheap to make for ATI. There are X1600PROs with DDR1 for ~$130 whereas a card w/ the same core and 256MB of 1.4ns GDDR3 is priced at ~$180 to $210.

Perkam

[perkam]

2 posts were deleted. One by Pinnacle and one by Think. Comments like "You got owned" and others that do not contribute to the thread are going to meet that fate. At the very least, Diltech and Taurus are having a constructive discussion over the role memory plays in availability/pricing issues. Though I'd like less finger pointing and smart comments, as long as its on topic and helps the thread, pls do continue.

Perkam

[softpain]

NVidia supplies 100% of Epic Megagames hardware. They do this in exchange for epic to optimize their games for NVidia cards. A rather fair deal if you ask me, "we supply you with the resources, you put our cards strengths to good use".

In all the cards evaluation for speed and quality since the first Unreal and I saw most, I never saw the ATI cards behind in quality or speed;did you?

My point is:it's ALL about MARKETING!

ATI sell as many discrete video cards as nvidia more or less each quarter and you know that;so EPIC has no interest to not optimize their cards as much for both,and Epic always take their time to polish and optimize everything!!

Epic is a very small player even if they are getting a lot bigger since a few years and they cannot afford to alinenate 50% of their customers ( You know all of that of course cause you have been around since a long time).

About the GTX 512....Nvidia must have know about the shortage of RAM before they launch it?

They launch it for MARKETING reasons ONLY don't you see that?

BTW there is nothing wrong about marketing of course if you realize it's just that...a corporate image created primarily by marketing experts who use public relations and other forms of promotion to suggest a mental picture and thus facilitate product sales.

A corporation's image is not solely created by the company.......

[Pinnacle]

2 posts were deleted. One by Pinnacle and one by Think. Comments like "You got owned" and others that do not contribute to the thread are going to meet that fate. At the very least, Diltech and Taurus are having a constructive discussion over the role memory plays in availability/pricing issues. Though I'd like less finger pointing and smart comments, as long as its on topic and helps the thread, pls do continue.

Perkam

Thats RIDICULOUS! I was just trying to lighten the mood between Dil and taurus. You take things so seriously, christ.

<------- Im a joker

[Tim]

Thats RIDICULOUS! I was just trying to lighten the mood between Dil and taurus. You take things so seriously, christ.

<------- Im a joker

That's still no reason to crap a thread

[Pinnacle]

That's still no reason to crap a thread

Do you even know what I said?

Anyways, just drop it.

[softpain]

ATI's R580 chips in production

We know that ATI is in volume production of the R580 and it's getting ready for a late January, early February launch.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=28228

From what we know the card won't have more than sixteen pipelines but will be able to process much more than thirty two pixels per clock.

[perkam]

Do you even know what I said?

Anyways, just drop it.

Your post has been resurrected. You are free to bask in its glory It wasnt too bad so its back. No offense intended.

As for the R580 link:

From what we know the card won't have more than sixteen pipelines but will be able to process much more than thirty two pixels per clock.

Just 32 ??? I think that means 16-1-2-1 configuration...trying to go against 32 of Nvidia's pipelines. Thats very dissappointing...I was really hoping to see 16-1-3-1 But perhaps that would've been too many transies.

Perkam

[Ubermann]

I dont think 16-1-3-1 will help against 32 pipe 700mhz G71, maybe in some games but i guess it will loose in many others.
Lets just see what whats true and whats not..
700 sounds to high if its a 32pipe..

[softpain]

much more than 32 it say.....maybe 48..let's day dream...

[metro.cl]

R580 ps is 4core x 3quad x 4ps x [ 12 ] = 576flops.


regards

[perkam]

R580 ps is 4core x 3quad x 4ps x [ 12 ] = 576flops.


regards

Whoa ?? didn't quite get that ???

Perkam

[metro.cl]

its goin to equivalent to 48pipes if that formaula is true, this is what i understood

it will have 3 quads each quad with 4 cores that can proces 4ps each clock then you get the "power" of 48 pipes.

that is consistent with what we got from the x1800 press release when we asked about r580

[perkam]

its goin to equivalent to 48pipes if that formaula is true, this is what i understood

it will have 3 quads each quad with 4 cores that can proces 4ps each clock then you get the "power" of 48 pipes.

The Inq says 16 pipes with 32 cycles per clock...what you're saying is 4x4x3...which is what i Thought it would be...16x3 ... but it isn't afaik. I think its only 2 quads.

Perkam

[metro.cl]

The Inq says 16 pipes with 32 cycles per clock...what you're saying is 4x4x3...which is what i Thought it would be...16x3 ... but it isn't afaik. I think its only 2 quads.

Perkam

could be but if you read the part of it would equal to more than 32pipes the formula might make sense.

[Ubermann]

Some farcry betapatch 1800XT crossfire bench:
http://translate.google.com/translat...language_tools



Also look at HDR+AA screensshots (very nice!) :

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=988870

[onewingedangel]

if they use the same pipeline structure for the r580 as the x1600xt which has a 4 x 1-1-3 configuration, but have four units of this, it would be 16 x 1-1-3, or 4x4x1-1-3 which would mean 48 pixel shaders. However all the other units would only match the x1800 - so the x1850 or whatever it may be called, would only perform better in situations that are pixel shader limited, but should see a good boost in these situations (moving from 16 to 48 pixel shaders). Just look at the relatively small difference between the x1300 and x1600 to see how this will affect the r520's performance. Also higher speed memory and/or core clocks may provide a nice boost for the applications not limited by the number of pixel shaders. But please correct me if im wrong, but isn't the main advantage of more pixel shaders less of a performance hit for aa and/or hdr?

[perkam]

Nice

Perkam

[onewingedangel]

I don't know why ATi isn't pushing the image quality advantage more, for once they can do something that Nvidia cannot in HDR+AA, and they haven't really taken advantage, and soon enough Nvidia will have a product that can perfom this too, be it the g71, or the g80.

[perkam]

It looks like the R580 might be using the same PCB as the X1800XT, hence the reason for the ability to put them into production the same time as the R520.

I'm hearing a lot of talk that it'll be x1900...but seeing as ATI is using the higher clocked XT name as X1800XT OC...this may well be the X1800XTPE.

No speculation on clocks or features, just some possibilities on how they might be able to offer these in January alongside the current X1800 product line.

Perkam

[DilTech]

I don't know why ATi isn't pushing the image quality advantage more, for once they can do something that Nvidia cannot in HDR+AA, and they haven't really taken advantage, and soon enough Nvidia will have a product that can perfom this too, be it the g71, or the g80.

There's nothing for them to push...

Currently, the only game it can do it playably in is Far Cry. Even then it's in the low 30's/high 20's. Do you honestly expect to see it manage HDR + AA at a decent rez in newer games? Most games aren't running so great now with just HDR alone(serious sam 2 isn't even playable with HDR on the x1800xt).

It's a great idea, nice to see it was possible to do, but NVidia was honestly right. Current hardware is just to slow to handle this right now. Maybe with the R600 and it's 10mb EDram cache, it might just happen, but for now the horsepower just isn't there, FROM EITHER COMPANY!

[wfarid]

well they did get crossfire out before christmas, i just saw it on sale... We all know that a 7800 512 sli setup will beat it, but i want to see if anyone can break the WR with a crossfire setp(cough, sampsa).

here's the thread http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...ad.php?t=82779 and for those of you that are too lazy to click twice, here's the vendor http://www.priceguidenetwork.com/ind...roducts_id=682

i don't know how reliable they are or anything. But they claim to have it in stock and it's pretty cheap $540 (i can't believe i'm saying 540 is cheap...)

[perkam]

How in the world is priceguidenetwork offering a crossfire edition card for $540 ???!!! Everywhere else they're $600+ ??

Perkam

[Rovtar]

they are cheap

[Ubermann]

X1900 to launch January 24th at $599-649

http://translate.google.com/translat...language_tools