Nividia's GT300 Architecture

[nub]

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/new ... chitecture

A VERY interesting read regarding Nvidia's "upcoming" GT300 architecture. I can't say for sure whether everything is 100% true and accurate, however it does seem like Nvidia is digging a deeper and deeper hole and ATI seems like its really on the ball, especially with the upcoming DX11 and Windows 7.

I always preferred Nvidia, mostly because I've had bad experiences with ATI's drivers (however ATI users have told me the drivers have been fine for a while now), but I've also had a mindset about Nvidia always being on top of things in the GPU market. I realize I've not read up enough regarding this.


There's TONS of hotlinks to other articles from the same site, all regarding Nvidia's follies. The author of the articles seems a bit too condescending for my tastes, but assuming all the information is accurate, I think Nvidia might be deserving of it.

[zombie@computer]

its always been like this. Nvidia and ATI are real competitors. One day ati is miles ahead, the next nvidia is. I wouldnt want to have it any other way...

Still, it seems likely GPU's will go the way of the soundcard within 5 years, changing my perspective completely. The DX11 generation may be (one of) the last GPU's around. The last step in the sand before making the big jump into the inevitable ravine...

[ghost12332]

I to had horrendous ATI driver issues a year back, but I don't think I'll be buying anymore Nvidia cards...

[stoopdapoop]

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3469&p=1

hehe.

Ah, videocards.

[vcool]

ATi had horrible drivers two-three years ago. I always had problems with them. After I got a 8800 GTS I never had a problem with nV drivers. Seems to be the opposite for me now.

[nub]

I had some issues with a couple of DLL files for my GTS 250 when I downloaded the most recent drivers. Every time I started up windows I'd get some error that they failed to launch. I had to uninstall the drivers and use the drivers from the disk that came with the card. No issues since...

I guess it's just what Z@C said, the tides are turning.

And yeah, GPUs are going to be obsolete soon due to limitations of the human eye. I wonder what will happen...will games simply hit the ceiling of high-end graphics and become more sophisticated with physics and the like using advanced processing technology? That's my guess at least.

[PaulH]

I just got a GT295 after my 8800 Ultra failed, had a nightmare with the new card where it just wouldn't work once i installed the drivers, so i ended up getting a new power supply, some new RAM and eventually a new motherboard too, and now it works fine. Expensive graphics card!

I am wondering though whether i should have waited for a DX11 compatible card like the GT300 series, but i guess they'll be pretty expensive when they come out...

[stoopdapoop]

heh, when I ran my little benchmark thingie a while ago, I had trouble finding people who didn't have a 4870 or a 4850

But We've got some time before we reach the limits of the eye/brain. That's for Damn sure.

But (of course) Z@C is right, there have been many shifts in power. And you have to keep in mind the Best performing chip isn't always the most practical due to price. There have been many times where ATI's price to performance ratio was alot better than that of Nvidia. And people would more expensive midrange chips from Nvidia because their high end product was faster, which doesn't really make any sense.

[nub]

I am wondering though whether i should have waited for a DX11 compatible card like the GT300 series, but i guess they'll be pretty expensive when they come out...

I don't know if DX11 is going to be instantly used in every game, but M$ said that there won't be a DX11 requirement for Windows 7 or anything. To be perfectly honest you should probably switch over to ATI when the time comes for a DX11 compatible GPU. They're already way ahead in the game because when they started implementing DX10 into their boards, they also added most of the features that M$ removed from the final release of DX10 (because Nvidia whined at them about the features). DX11 basically brings all those missing features back plus a few new ones, so ATI already has most of DX11 done in their upcoming models, thus a substantial lead. GT300 will more than likely fail, if this article is accurate. The author says that the GT300 will probably launch 4 quarters late, and even then ATI's cards will perform better. There's more to it than just that though; like chip shrinking and such. There's blue hotlinks within that article that take you to other related articles on the same site.

[MrTwoVideoCards]

Anyone notice that the article is from May. Of this year? It might of changed a bit for Nvidia since then.

[xoqolatl]

Charlie Demerijan is well known for hating Nvidia. Of course he makes some valid points - if Nvidia's failure in next generation is even half as big as he predicts, they are in deep sh!t.
Notice how Nvidia is trying to gain new markets other than GPUs? They already lost their chipset business, GPGPU and PhysX are going to be obsolete soon due to Larrabee and DX11/OpenCL. Nvidia is trying to get into MIDs and SFF with ION and Tegra - they are desperately trying to survive. AMD has a great advantage of small dies and Global Foundry, while Nvidia is trying to make money with G92 variants and make hype with overpriced GT200. I don't like what they did to GPUs in last 2 years, but I really wish GT300 performs and is not a mammoth chip like GT200 was.