ATI's next graphics card possible specs.

Azza

Let you in on a little rumor going round the net. It its anyway near true those who splashed out on SLI may cringe!

24 "Pipelines"
32 Texture Units
96 Arithmetic Logic Units (ALU)
192 Shader Operations per Cycle
700MHz Core
134.4 Billion Shader Operations per Second (at 700MHz)
256-bit 512MB 1.8GHz GDDR3 Memory
57.6 GB/sec Bandwidth (at 1.8GHz)
300-350 Million Transistors
90nm Manufacturing
Shader Model 3.0
ATI HyperMemory
ATI Multi Rendering Technology (AMR)
Launch: Q2 2005
Performance: Over 3x Radeon X800 XT !!! (for single R520)
16x stochastic FSAA
FP32 blending, texturing
Programmable Primitive Processor/Tesselator

OfflerCrocGod

Cost €1000.

KTRIC

I'm tellin ya, If I knew what that ment I'd be impressed !!

Azza

It means if those specs are true it would be twice as fast as an nvidia SLI rig with 2 6800 Ultra's which is very fast as it is.

DirtyHarry

it wont be anywhere near that, ATI would be shoting themselves in the foot.....geez like there still selling 9800 Pro's!

neokenzo

Thats the R520 aint it? Cant wait for it to be release. I almost went with SLI but at the last minute decided to wait what ATI's responce is towards nVidia SLI. I'm hoping that they will release AMR real soon

astrofool

those specs are just about physically impossible. i.e. to fit that much functionality into the chip, it would need alot more than 350million transistors, and also therefore have 0 chance of reaching that clock speed.

No one actually knows what the source is, and it looks like a fanboy's ideal of a next card.

po0k

Depending on the process, it's possible.
700Mhz will be the launch flagship card, with the usual mid-range and budget derivatives 3 months later and the "Ultra" revamp 6 months after launch.

astrofool

no it would not be possible to do those specs with that amount of transistors unless they were able to cut the amount of transistors used in the alu's and texturing units to a third or less, regardless of process.

You're normally fairly clued up syxpak, but to imply that reducing to a 90nm process means that a chip needs less transistors is stupid. If they could do more with less transistors, than die shrinks would not be needed.

airetam_storm

For that its worth hoping

But realistically ATI are gonna need a beast card to compete with the 2x 6800U setup and a vgood next card is a must for them

dixsey

I reckon you could be right about those specs, ati need something big to answer nvidia,s sli technology

TacT

dixsey wrote:

I reckon you could be right about those specs, ati need something big to answer nvidia,s sli technology

I'm with astro on this one, no way, no chance, not a hope in hell it's that good!

airetam_storm

TacT wrote:

I'm with astro on this one, no way, no chance, not a hope in hell it's that good!

Prob not but theres a good chance that itll be amazing

Attol

I'd like to see when they actually end up in the shops! ATI just pulled their X850XT cards. Seems like they just cant make cards anymore. This is after the X850XT being the card that would "end availability problems". Don't think I could get my hopes up for an ATI card again, all of their recent cards have been paper launches just to get some good reviews on the net.

Azza

Actually I have found the X800XT's and X850XT's in stock easy enough. If anything I found the nvidia 6800ultra's but harder to get and more expensive and there slower.

jessy

ya there fairly hard to find alright, but not to much more than other top end hardware. Got my X850XT from Overclockers.co.uk.

Gilgamesh

how the hell are you going to power that thing????

if it should have those specs, you woul dbe looking at a PC.
Plus 1.8GHz Memory??? my Ar$e!!!
your would probably be looking a 120+ Watts just for the graphicscard.
but you would totally create a bottleneck, as the mainboard/northbridge, woudl be able to supply that tranferrate, even in PCI-E
I know that the new chip is going to rock bigtime, plus who really needs SLI sofar.
Nvidia are just using a technology they spent a fortune on in the past when they bought 3DFX and expect that everybody spends 1000 Euros just for games.

BloodBath

I'm with astro on this one, no way, no chance, not a hope in hell it's that good!

Why not? That's not even doubling performance on an x800xt. The x800xt almost doubled performance over the 9800xt. It's not that hard to beleive.

Don't think I could get my hopes up for an ATI card again, all of their recent cards have been paper launches just to get some good reviews on the net.

At least the cards are still good. Nvidia are lucky to still be in the market after the dire fx range.

how the hell are you going to power that thing????

if it should have those specs, you woul dbe looking at a PC.
Plus 1.8GHz Memory??? my Ar$e!!!
your would probably be looking a 120+ Watts just for the graphicscard.
but you would totally create a bottleneck, as the mainboard/northbridge, woudl be able to supply that tranferrate, even in PCI-E

Your already looking at 120+w for a graphics card, this might push 150w but so what. It's not like you can't get a 480w psu.

It won't even come close to maxing out the bandwidth of pci-e. Even the top end cards at the moment don't max out agp 8x.


I'm not saying it's true but by all means it is possible.


BloodBath

gline

i dont think they will jump that far with the next cards, as x800's are still selling at high price. Are they bringing out dual core gpus??? like the new dual core cpus coming out?? do they have a plan to do that?? now that would be cool

jessy

Dual cores would be nice, would probably kill/nearly kill Sli as well. Though they would run way to hot, they will need to drop the micron to maybe 0.065, Prescott's run very hot at 0.09 and the x850xt run even hotter, so Gpu dual cores will probably be a while yet.

gline

I suppose heat is a major problem, x800s run really hot . Why dont they bring out motherbaords with gpu sockets on it, like a cpu socket, so you could upgrade your gpu manually and have a proper hsf on it . Also wouldnt it be quicker as it wouldnt be limited to agp or pciE speeds, you could also have ddr slots for the ram, so you can upgrade that to what ever you want, hehehe, i will keep dreaming , lol

astrofool

well seeing as the specs say "3x performance of X800XT" !, your point is kinda moot DubDVD. Also, the x800xt isn't twice as fast as a 9800XT performance wise anyway......

BabyEater

the x800xt isn't twice as fast as a 9800XT performance wise anyway

I would say it is twice as fast as the 9800XT, look at Doom3, Half-Life 2 and Farcry etc at 1600*1200 and it is at least twice as fast.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/2004-27gpu2_3.html

BadCharlie

BabyEater wrote:

I would say it is twice as fast as the 9800XT, look at Doom3, Half-Life 2 and Farcry etc at 1600*1200 and it is at least twice as fast.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/2004-27gpu2_3.html

But its only 2twice as fast when you play them games at 1600*1200 Res. But most people are prob playing at 1024*768 Res.

BabyEater

Thats beacause they are CPU limited at lower resolutions the higher the resolution the more the graphics card has to work so the more we se the difference in performance

BloodBath

well seeing as the specs say "3x performance of X800XT" !, your point is kinda moot DubDVD. Also, the x800xt isn't twice as fast as a 9800XT performance wise anyway......

It was my point. Like the benchmarks show it is pretty much twice as fast with AA and AF on or at higher resolutions.

But its only 2twice as fast when you play them games at 1600*1200 Res. But most people are prob playing at 1024*768 Res.

If your willing to spend 500-600e on a graphics card most people will be playing at at least 1280x1024 with max aa and af. Decent monitors aren't expensive these days.


BloodBath

gline

BloodBath wrote:

If your willing to spend 500-600e on a graphics card most people will be playing at at least 1280x1024 with max aa and af. Decent monitors aren't expensive these days.


BloodBath

That is so true, most people these days are playing @ 1280x1024, as you wouldnt be spending that kind of cash on a graphics card to play at lower res

Attol

Yeah, it's just plain stupid to high end card's performance at 1024 and lower. My 6800gt is incredibly CPU limited even at 1280x1024 4xAA 8xAF.

neokenzo

Looks like Zardon from Driverheaven testing a new card. Its likely to be from ATI. It does 3DMark02 40k on stock speed

http://www.driverheaven.net/showthread.php?t=68684

ViperVenoM

well i just hope it is that

because it will be what im buying

im holding off going to s939...till dual core cpus are out..then ill just get a nice dual core cpu and that baby....

im on strike ..im not going SLi...god dammit im not!

neokenzo

Check this out too, 512MB on ATI's next card?

http://www.theinq.com/?article=21382

4Xcut

ViperVenoM i agree completely with you on the sli thing.I may be wrong on this but did i not hear correct that sli is supported in as few as 3 games. if this is true then it doesn't seem to make sense to spend that much money on an sli setup when there is so little usefor it. would it not be better to wait and see what ati's response is and spend money on that as it is more than likely that it will have support in more than 3 games.

gline

4Xcut wrote:

ViperVenoM i agree completely with you on the sli thing.I may be wrong on this but did i not hear correct that sli is supported in as few as 3 games. if this is true then it doesn't seem to make sense to spend that much money on an sli setup when there is so little usefor it. would it not be better to wait and see what ati's response is and spend money on that as it is more than likely that it will have support in more than 3 games.

When ati have a response to sli out then nvidia will have a response to that in the pipeline, its an endless circle, you dont get the hardware because you need it, you get it because its slightly future proof . Its also a hobby. with pc's you can never have the best as there is always something else on the way to beat it

ViperVenoM

yeh well

im not making the same mistake as before

the 9800xt came out..when ..september 03 or something? (could be a bit off there)

and they was still the top card in feb 04 which is when i got mine thinking wooo gonna be well ahead for ages..only to hear of all this pci express and sli stuff up and coming and seeing benchies of my card getting well and truely trashed! i mean the 9700pro was better than the 9600pro..the 9800pro was nice little increase over the 9700pro etc etc..then the 6800/x800's just completely CRAPPED! on the 9800xt by like 90% in cases..i just was not happy!

so in future if im gonna get the latest gen stuff..ill get it pretty much as soon as it comes out giving me longer before it gets beat again, which is what i intend to do with ATi's next card...

obviously ill read up about it and doing so is what put me off getting SLi if SLi was like supported for everything and took full advantage of the hardware then id have probably opted for it..but £100 on a motherboard and £600 on a couple of 6800GT's...waa no ta i think ill just pay the £350 for the next card or whatever and have done with it for another year! :eek:

gline

ViperVenoM wrote:

if SLi was like supported for everything and took full advantage of the hardware then id have probably opted for it..but £100 on a motherboard and £600 on a couple of 6800GT's...waa no ta i think ill just pay the £350 for the next card or whatever and have done with it for another year! :eek:

true, sli doesnt seem to justify the price

Azza

All that has been confirmed so far is thats its called an X950XT and its got 512MB of ram. It could possibly be no more than an X850XT with more ram.

There is talk now of a 6800 Ultra with 512MB ram making an apperance at some German event on the 10th of March.

jessy

I think it would be a mistake for NVIDIA to release the 6800 ultra with 512MB Mem, first cos no game needs that kind of video mem and second, anyone who can afford to buy a 6800ultra will probably know enough to know 512 video mem won’t make a difference in games over 256.

Azza

The next Unreal Engine which I think is due out next year will require 1GB ram to run at full wack according to the designers.

jessy

1Gig of video Ram :eek:

gline

Azza wrote:

The next Unreal Engine which I think is due out next year will require 1GB ram to run at full wack according to the designers.

Video ram or system ram??? probably system ram, as i dont think video cards wil have 1gb anytime soon

BloodBath

Video ram of course. 1gb of system ram is the min requirements already to run games at their full potential. Textures and 3d models are starting to get massively detailed. Doom3 requires 512mb of video ram and a lot of future titles will be the same. Games are only limited by the hardware that's available for them. Otherwise the developers could crank up the 3d and texture detail easily.

I saw some guys got one of those ati cards for testing and the only real improvents in the benchmarks were memory related so I think the first card will be an x800 core with 512mb of ram with the new cores with 512mb and 256mb flavours out in the summer.


BloodBath

padraigf

Anyone saying Doom3 requiring 500mb of video ram is just being ridiculous. I'm aware that it has 500megs of textures, but it runs in Ultra quality perfectly on a 256meg card. The cost of a gig of GDDR3 sounds incredibly prohibitive to me....

Also, anyone remember all the speculation that youd need like a 9800pro or an x800 to play D3 on low/medium ? It was all just a bloody joke! You can play the game on a GeForce 3 for crying out loud!

BloodBath

I know it runs fine on a 256mb card but it does require a 512mb card for full quality textures. GDDR3 will get cheaper like any ram once it's popular. There are no 1024mb modules of it yet but i'm sure samsung are working on it already. If you have seen the quality of the 3d models and textures of unreal3 then i'd say it will easily require at least 512mb of video memory to run properly, ie full detail.


BloodBath

padraigf

But Doom 3 doesnt require 512mb of video memory to run textures at full quality. If you select "Ultra Quality" then it's using 512mb of textures. Theres more than enough bandwidth to chuck them in and out of system/video memory. 512mb definitely isn't "required".

Look at the newest TurboCache 6200s. I think that manufacturers should be working this into all models (in some way shape or form) to keep prices down a bit. GDDR3 is obscenely expensive.

BloodBath

Sorry the textures will look fine. What I mean is if you want to run doom3 on a high resolution @ ultra quality it is recomended that you have 512mb's of video memory as by id's own calculations a typical level in doom3 can hold 500mb's of texture data. This can lead to chopiness at certain times on a 256/mb card as textures have to be constantly reloaded.


BloodBath

Azza

Good news for ATI fans. The X850XT and the X800XL will be available very shortly in AGP form.

The X800XL is considerable cheaper than the 6800GT and preforms almost on par so looks like a good card.

Also noticed overclock.co.uk are selling the Powercolor X800XT cheaper than the 6800GT.