**Next Gen Rumors Thread**

[Like a Fox Yet Again]

:beer:

 

[OS]

anyone want to take a guess when we will start seeing next gen products?

 

[Gamingphreek]

Recent article thinks that Nvidia is working on the 90 series. I have it linked at the top and right Here

Seems to me that it is just pure speculation nothing more, i mean what are they skipping the 80series.

-Kevin

 

[R3MF]

i want hardware with unified shaders, i.e. DX10/WGF2 compliant. when can i have them?

 

[Fenuxx]

Originally posted by: R3MF
i want hardware with unified shaders, i.e. DX10/WGF2 compliant. when can i have them

Not now, thats for sure. WGF2.0 compliant cards will not be out for a while at least (likely 2006), so thats not gonna happen with G70\R5x0. As far as hardware with "Unified Shaders", what do you mean by that? Pixel Shaders and Vertex Shaders are 2 different things, so they aren't going to "combine" any time soon, if thats what you mean.

 

[microAmp]

Thanks Gamingphreek!

Is there any information out there on the ETA on the cards from both companies?

 

[blurredvision]

Originally posted by: hans030390
for example...Gran Turismo 4 for ps2...look at that! it looks amazing on its own...but what else, it runs at 60fps!!! wow! what else? it supports 1080i!!!! you know what else? it runs 1080i at 60fps!!!! WHAT??? ON A PS2???? (and yes it does run it that well, it is in every review)

I'm sorry, but I don't understand why everyone thinks 1080i in GT4 is true 1080i. Have you seen it first-hand? It merely sharpens the jaggies and bad textures that are present. Now don't get me wrong, GT4 is an incredible piece of code for the machine it was designed to run on, and looks absolutely fantastic on a non-HDTV screen. But 1080i is a much higher resolution than the typical 480i. And GT4 at 1080i is hardly a higher resolution. Infact, I'm not quite sure what they've even done thinking they are running at 1080i, it's clearly not 1920xwhatever res it is.

I was first excited to hear GT4 supported 1080i, but once I turned it on, you couldn't see anything ahead of you because of the muddled mess. I promptly gave it the 480p treatment, and it looked as good as I could expect on a 52" HDTV.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

Originally posted by: blurredvision

Originally posted by: hans030390
for example...Gran Turismo 4 for ps2...look at that! it looks amazing on its own...but what else, it runs at 60fps!!! wow! what else? it supports 1080i!!!! you know what else? it runs 1080i at 60fps!!!! WHAT??? ON A PS2???? (and yes it does run it that well, it is in every review)

I'm sorry, but I don't understand why everyone thinks 1080i in GT4 is true 1080i. Have you seen it first-hand? It merely sharpens the jaggies and bad textures that are present. Now don't get me wrong, GT4 is an incredible piece of code for the machine it was designed to run on, and looks absolutely fantastic on a non-HDTV screen. But 1080i is a much higher resolution than the typical 480i. And GT4 at 1080i is hardly a higher resolution. Infact, I'm not quite sure what they've even done thinking they are running at 1080i, it's clearly not 1920xwhatever res it is.

I was first excited to hear GT4 supported 1080i, but once I turned it on, you couldn't see anything ahead of you because of the muddled mess. I promptly gave it the 480p treatment, and it looked as good as I could expect on a 52" HDTV.

yeah i suspected its not true 1080i, the PS2 is a powerful machine when you know how to get the best from it, but i dont think its that powerful, or does it even have the memory space/buffer to hold a true 1080i frame? id imagine they done some trickery to kinda upmix 480 into 1080 and tbh that just wont do, leave it in 480 mode

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: R3MF
i want hardware with unified shaders, i.e. DX10/WGF2 compliant. when can i have them?

If we knew that this wouldn't be a rumors thread

As for the ETA's im doing a lot of google searching and the best i can get is early summer, and AFAIK that isn't confirmed. Ill keep searching though.

-Kevin

 

[Gamingphreek]

Ya know those Inquirer articles are starting to piss me off. THey are completely misleading and wrong. "double the pipes means double the performance" :roll: yeah ok. I really wish they would get someone over there who knows about computers and doesn't just find the rumors.

Edit: Although this is a video card thread i thought this might be of some interest: MSI P4N (Yeah N(vidia) on Intel)

-Kevin

 

[Fenuxx]

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
Although this is a video card thread i thought this might be of some interest: MSI P4N (Yeah N(vidia) on Intel)

Heh, almost would make me consider going back to Intel. That, and if Intel could ever get the thermal management of its desktop CPU's under control. Yeah, I know, there are Dothan (Pentium-M) converters for S478, but thats just too much work to go through for something that, well, yeah...

 

[Gamingphreek]

Updated with some new info and an AMD category has been added. Yes, an AMD category. THis better not be some April fools joke.

Make sure to read the comments that i put next to the recently linked article as there is some false rumors.

-Kevin

 

[Creig]

So there you have it, the Apollo Fir looks to be the board of choice with no-one else even being able to get close until ATI can stop blowing electricity substations and NVIDIA can get Taiwan back within the same space/time envelope as us. Set for an April release you?d have to be a fool to miss out on this one!

Rearrange the letters "Apollo Fir" and you get "April Fool".

 

[otispunkmeyer]

Originally posted by: Creig

So there you have it, the Apollo Fir looks to be the board of choice with no-one else even being able to get close until ATI can stop blowing electricity substations and NVIDIA can get Taiwan back within the same space/time envelope as us. Set for an April release you?d have to be a fool to miss out on this one!

Rearrange the letters "Apollo Fir" and you get "April Fool".

yeah that was posted here this morning....very funny, easy to spot since the article was full of high comedic value lines

how did u let a line such as "And 2GB of framebuffer will definitely come in handy for the upcoming version of Playboy: The Mansion that uses masses of uncompressed normal maps for even better breasticle fidelity."
escape you?

and this

"When asked to comment, ATI?s spokesperson, Louis Frappe-Mocha, had this to say;
?We?ve long known about the Apollo Fir as one of the AMD engineers is notoriously gobby after two pints and a curry, so we?ve been working on a similar system based on 8 R480 chips. To save space we?re stacking them two high in four piles on each board? we think that we?ll be able to push at least 24 pipelines as soon as the damn thing stops blowing all the fuses in the building when we plug it in??

 

[stimpy1]

Originally posted by: AlexR
Also I dont really think such cards are needed. What games would need them?

Planned obsolescence.

 

[PrayForDeath]

Rumor

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
ATI
Rumor... if you can read German *Note some of these rumors are already confirmed completely false. Nvidia has already confirmed that they will be releasing NV50 and it will be a completely new architecture and not just a refresh.

where does it talk about the NV50 in this article? do you mean the NV48?

Also, an excerpt from the "State of 3D" article:

The G70 is the first indication of change, and I believe that we may very well have already seen the first G7x part slipped under our noses. Last month NVIDIA released the GeForce Go 6800 Ultra to the market, and it is a native 12 pipeline/5 vertex shader product that is created for the desktop replacement market. This chip is clocked at a very surprising 450 MHz, and does not require extreme cooling to do so. For reference, the NV40 based GeForce 6800 Ultra is clocked at 400 MHz and requires a hefty cooler. In the reviews that were released, nothing was said about what process it was manufactured on, what chip it was based on, or any other truly relevant feature that could have pointed to the parentage of this product. The fact that it runs at 450 MHz should be a very good indicator that it is not from the NV40, NV41, or NV42 family of products.

I can confirm this as wrong...the GeForce 6800 Go Ultra is based off the NV41M (NV42) chip, as shown here in Anand's review. The GeForce 6800 Go Ultra is no G-series product. :roll: Anand says in his next article that the GeForce 6800 Go Ultra is the exact same thing as the GeForce 6800 Go, with a higher clock speed. The GeForce 6800 Go is pictured here.

http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/video/NVIDIA/GeForce6800Go/NV41M.jpg

Him (penstarsys) saying that 450 MHz "should be a very good indicator that it is not from the NV40, NV41, or NV42 family of products" is also wrong. My 6800NU (NV41) is clocked at a core speed of 450 MHz and a memory speed of 425 MHz (not effective). In addition to that, the BFG 6800U OC makes it to 425 MHz core. I'm sure it could go further. It makes me doubt the validity of the rest of the stuff in that article.

In the reviews that were released, nothing was said about what process it was manufactured on, what chip it was based on, or any other truly relevant feature that could have pointed to the parentage of this product.

Later he found out, posted on the article's forum, and stlil hasn't corrected it. :roll:

 

[R3MF]

unified shader model is the plan.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

what is this thread doing on the second page? i thought it wer stickied?

 

[Fenuxx]

Originally posted by: R3MF
unified shader model is the plan.

As I said, at least with the upcoming gen of cards, a unified shader is HIGHLY unlikely. I'm not saying that it won't come to that at some point, but at least not the G70\R520's, and maybe not even after that (G80\R620?). It is just not, unfortunately, gonna happen, yet.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: otispunkmeyer
what is this thread doing on the second page? i thought it wer stickied?

Im not sure but im updating links right now

-Kevin

 

[Fenuxx]

Originally posted by: otispunkmeyer
what is this thread doing on the second page? i thought it wer stickied?

This thread was given 2 weeks stickied (for now, at least). Here's a copy of the PM the mod sent me:

Originally posted by: Anandtech Moderator
I am not sure it is worth a sticky, but I gave it two weeks. Get back to us after that if it works

So, if we all want it to stay stickied, we should PM the mod again, and ask for an extension. I will in a bit.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Cool stickied again. I think it should stay stickied until we see a next gen card. After that it isn't worth it

-Kevin

 

[Fenuxx]

Tada

Originally posted by: AnandTech Moderator
I gave it another two weeks. Same general instructions - Let us know if/when it should be extended.

Mod

 

[Ackmed]

How embarassing. You didnt know the AMD joke, was a joke.