GeForce 4 - new road map / specs - you seen these?

[Raider]

This went up a couple of days back, not sure if they're real or not, but the specs look about right:
GF4 Roadmap

I dubious myself, but if this stuff is true, then it looks like nvidia is rushing out a GeForce 3 Ultra Ultra just to retake the 3dmark 2001 crown from ATI.
Looks like another 6months before the GF4

Rundown

NV25:
128mb or 64mb memory
Core Clock : 300MHz
600MHz Memory Clock : 10.5GB/sec Bandwith
TwinView
Full Hardware MPEG2 Decoder

Nv17 (two models)
64mb Memory for both
Core Clock : 300/250Mhz
500/400Mhz Memory Clock

 

[Daemon_UK]

Umm, saw this on another forum....

Being honest, The NV30 (or whatever uses 3DFX tech) is the one that interests me the most.

Until then, Im happy with my current card!

 

[BFG10K]

I dubious myself, but if this stuff is true, then it looks like nvidia is rushing out a GeForce 3 Ultra Ultra just to retake the 3dmark 2001 crown from ATI

The 3DMark results from ATi are very suspect. Regardless, 3DMark doesn't mean anything in the real world anyway.

 

[Soccerman]

why do you say that?

though I agree, they're pointless for the most part (cause 3DMark is one of the only reasons to get a DX8 card), they still signify real gaming situations. ATi's 8500 cards top nVidia GF3 cards with higher quality and higher performance (with the 7191 drivers). I hear the latest unified ones also improve performance/quality in DX, but I don't feel like risking my card ATM..

 

[MetroRider]

or, check out what was posted on VR-Zone over here...

Geforce4 Info

GeForce4 Ti1000 (High-End) - 128bit memory interface, 128 MB DDR SDRAM, Core frequency of 350Mhz, Clock frequency of 350Mhz DDR(700Mhz), AGP 8x
GeForce4 Ti500 (Mainstream) - 128bit memory interface, 128 MB DDR SDRAM, Core frequency of 300Mhz, Memory frequency of 300Mhz DDR(600Mhz), AGP 8x
GeForce4 MX Pro (Mass Market) - 128bit memory interface, 64 MB DDR SDRAM, Core frequency of 250Mhz, Memory frequency of 300Mhz DDR(600Mhz), AGP 8x
GeForce4 MX (Low-End) - 128bit memory interface, 64 MB DDR SDRAM, Core frequency of 250Mhz, Memory frequency of 275Mhz DDR(550Mhz), AGP 8x

 

[Killrose]

Do we really need 128mb of DDR ram? Why don't they just give us Ram slots? And howabout a Socket so we can just buy a GPU and slap it in there every 6 months?

You mean we have to replace our vid cards again? I was just starting to get comfy.

 

[Eagle17]

I think this is a smart move by nvdia. They have a good reputation and they will sell a lot of these cards. I just think they should wait untill there is a reason to have a new card (dx9, etc.) the only thing that the GF 3 doesn't do in hardware that is coming up in new games is pixel shaders 1.3 and 1.4 and they will do those in software just fine. (unless running a p3-600 or less) As far as the 8500 being suspect in any test it is known that nvidea, 3dfx, matrox and others have all optimized thier drivers for benchmarks, I remember when we yelled at nvidia for this same thing with 3dbench. That was the reason most sites went to bencharking games. so if you say one company is suspect you need to look at all of them because I garauntee they are all trying to get the best scores.

 

[AA0]

Its a disgrace, lets boycott all cards that optimize their drivers, that'd work great.

3D Mark doesn't mean much, unfortunately, a lot of people think they do. Of course its much easier for a company to make their drivers work well for something like 3dmk, rather than hundreds of games. I'm sure ATI has focused optimations on 3dmk, and games that are heavily benchmarked the most. Nvidia does it too, they just have a jumpstart.

 

[Pabster]

3DMark2K1 is often called a "synthetic test", and for good reason. Most of today's titles are only DX7, not DX8 (let alone 8.1 w/ Pixel Shaders). That's why the 8500 excels in 3DMark2K1, but falls behind in most of today's titles to the GF3.

 

[Sleater]

I think benchmarks in general are highly over-rated whether they're synthetic or real. You see people talking about how ATI stomps nVidia (or vice-versa) when one card is doing 168fps in Quake3 and the other is doing 159fps -- as if the card doing 159fps is a piece of crap or something. Benchmarks are useful to get a general sense of a card's performance when looking to buy a new card. But making them the be-all-and-end-all of the cards rating is just stupid.

Does the card look good?
Do you get playable framerates?
Does it have cool features that are actually used by developers?
is the 2d good?

Those are the questions people should ask themselves about their videocard. Not crying the blues because someone elses card gets 150 3dmarks more than theirs.

 

[MANKOU]

Sleater:

I totally agree. Someone should look first at his needs and then go for a new PC component. This is what I do. For example: I never buy everything at once when I upgrade, just because I don't need everything at that time. For my work and RPG-RTS-adventure gaming I am still OK with my old TNT card. I bought a GF3 and after a week I saw that it was a mistake, returned it and took a set of speakers and a DVD drive instead. I believe that I'll get a new video card at the same time that I'll get a new 17-19 monitor. 3D Mark scores are a good way to feel a stupid urge to throw your money

 

[BFG10K]

why do you say that?

Two reasons:

(1) The rendering accuracy article which had the XORed images.
(2) ATi's complete dominance in the 3Dmark tests despite losing across the board in real world games.

Do we really need 128mb of DDR ram?

Absolutely. In fact I think we're behind one generation behind in terms of VRAM size. We should have already had 128 MB GF3 Ti500s which would mean that 128 MB would become mainstream in the next generation of cards. As it stands now we're behind with what games need.

 

[Xtasy]

wut is the retail price of each geforce 4 card gonna be? I really can't believe that a geforce 4 mx (low end) to be lower than $300!

 

[Xtasy]

also is there any thing new besides hardware mpeg2 decoding?

 

[AGodspeed]

GeForce4 Ti1000 (High-End)
- 128bit memory interface
- 128 MB DDR SDRAM
- Core frequency: 350Mhz
- Clock frequency of 350Mhz DDR(700Mhz)
- AGP 8x
- 10.5GB/sec Bandwith
- TwinView
- Full Hardware MPEG2 Decoder

AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Xtasy]

looks more like geforce 3 ultra with hardware mpeg 2 decoding and agp 8x

 

[KouklatheCat]

Killrose,

I like your idea.

 

[Killrose]

Thanks kouklathecat, I'm serious about the ram slots. The GPU socket might be harder to impliment. But think about it, you buy a card with 32mb standard, then add what you want to it. Then when you sell the card you keep your ram for the next card, or upgrade to a lower ns rating.

 

[crash2much]

I don't know if your serious or not , Killrose, but I've always been afraid to ask the same questions.

 

[mulciber]

...

 

[MANKOU]

<< well, tons of cards used to have extra sockets for ram. my s3 virge had extra slot for ram. im sure the engineers know what they are doing though, no point in pretending we know some secret that nvidia doesnt. >>



The "secret": why upgrade when they can can buy new cards?

 

[mulciber]

...

 

[EglsFly]

Killrose, I also like your idea. Could be a whole new way to approach making video cards.
The upgradable video card!
Socketed GPU and RAM Slots would be great!
With nVidia releasing processors every 6 months, why not!?
Doubt it would ever see the light of day though.

You could buy a video card like you do a motherboard. You get the video card, purchase whatever GPU and Memory you need, just like a motherboard.

I guess we are lucky that motherboards are not built like video cards with a fixed processor and ram!:Q

 

[Mavrick007]

You want to know why they don't have upgradable video cards now?

With a mobo.. your new Athlon XP board will not take a slot A, it takes a socket A chip. The only difference is that you have many diff speed cpus, but not the same way with gpus. There's new features that with new mobos will allow you to use better chipsets and faster ram that wasn't present on the older boards cause it wasn't out yet. It would cost you much more to buy a socketed vid card cause of the extra sockets on it and the chips themselves. When you would go to upgrade your gpu, where would you put a bigger or smaller one(cause they change the process every so often to smaller dies), or where would you put diff speed ram if it didn't support the faster ram like you see now, we're getting newer XP boards with support for 333Mhz ram when older ones don't officially support more than 266Mhz ram. It's the same idea with vid cards. They would cost way too much to produce and upgrade. I remember adding an extra meg of ram to an old trident with Dram chips.. they cost like a bundle for 2 chips! What would you set the max ram at? 64? 128? 256? Why not make a card with the max ram right off and buy that flavor like they do sell? A gpu would only work for probably one generation, but why have the same high costing board work with a lower quality gpu like an mx or what not. I'm sure the hardware is not exactly the same on a GF3 TI500 as it is on a GF2Mx.

It's a cool idea though, but for the companies it must be better marketing sense to sell it all together cause they have enough compatibility problems as it is just with mobos now.

 

[vss1980]

Another reason why you will never see such types of expandable graphics card is that the technology is too sensitive.
For example, when PC133 boards started appearing, several had problems running with all the memory slots populated with PC133 memory and couldn't maintain stability. That's just 133MHz memory, so consider 350MHz memory with DDR signalling. The cost of such boards and the memory would be silly money.

Also, GPU's dont expand the same way as a CPU does. For example, the Athlon's just keep getting faster by ramping up the MHz.
When graphics card makers go faster they bring out a new chip and in most situations they are not pin compatible with what has gone before. Also, as chips get more complex, the power requirements change so the tracks going from the AGP slot to the GPU while working fine for one chip will not work as well for another (there are enough AGP problems as it is with sidebanding and fastwrites).

I'm not saying its not possible to create such a card, its just that it is unlikely to happen and would probably double the cost of the cards.