nVidia NV20 info...my gawd!! ;)

[NFS4]

<< I was browsing the Dutch Tweakers site and stumbled into information they obtained about the NV20 in a Chaintech Beach party where they spoke with Roy Taylor from NVIDIA. The site is written in Dutch, I shall translate the most important aspects a bit coz this is GOOD info:

NV20 At this time NVIDIA is busy shipping the NV20, they call it 'Toy Story on a chip' with 6 to 8 weeks the 1st videocards will be released and by X-mas it should be in the shops. The selling price is up-to now unknown, but expect something in the range of $500.

Now the interesting part, NV20's fillrate will be 4800 MegaPixels and can handle 150Million polygons per second ! That's 6 to 3 times as much as the current GeForce2 GTS. Quake III would be able to do 100fps in 1600x1200x32bit !!

NVIDIA is planning to release a new chip every six months, after every 3 months of this release some sort of revision will be planned/released. Just like the GeForce2 GTS Ultra. >>


NV20 info!

 

[Shazam]

Lay the smack, Nvidia.

 

[Jonny]

That sounds really really sweet, but $750 can$ for a video card is nuts!

 

[hungrypete]

<sound of a dumb guy drooling>
those are impressive specs. Saw some picks for UT2 or something Unreal and Epic, and it looks like all that horsepower will be needed for next years games.... can't find the link with the pics now! Someone has it tho! Looks VERY cool.

 

[Pocatello]

Interesting, so who the hell in their right mind would buy the GTS Ultra?

 

[Shudder]

I can't wait till that comes out. It'll just make everything else more affordable.

Are any of the hardware distributors or wholesale places getting a little pissed that card prices are dropping faster than CPU parts ever have?

 

[Fozzie]

I suspect that 4800 is assuming an overdraw of 2-4 depending on the pixel pipelines and a effecient HSR removal method.

Otherwise even if it had 8 Pixelpipes it would have to clock at 600MHz!! :Q

XBox info on the NV25 is that it'll have 4 texture units, most likely on 4 pipelines but thats not confirmed, 100 Million polys sustained shaded, lit and textured. We can assume the NV20 will be a NV25 without a northbridge and maybe at a lower clock rate(250 vs 300?). Its also VERY VERY possible the NV20 was held back so it can be fab'd at .13 micron. TSMC is taping out at .13 right now, with shipping silicon at the end of the year. nVidia is one of TSMC's biggest customers and its likely they would be using their latest technology. If this is true then it may intro at a higher clock rate then thought at .15.

BTW, the pre-rendered &quot;Raven&quot; demo was using 550K polygons, that would need a sustained rate of 33 million to push at 60FPS. They have also shown a striped down version of the demo running on a NV15 that was remarkably close to the original. Recent statements from MS is that they undershot the actual performance of the chip originally and it was actually more powerful then they expected. Who knows how true this is.

*edit* what the.. : - o is a embarassed face?

 

[dl]

yum, more expensive vid cards to consider....

I'm going to put that boycott line back into my sig...

 

[snow patrol]

TOO BLOODY EXPENSIVE!!!!!!!

Seriously though, surely this will lead to the GTS Ultra being less (say $399 / $350 online / $300 in a few months)...If the NV-20 does come out in December, and the price is $500, Nvidia would be crazy to sell the Ultra for the same price. Let's just hope the NV20 isn't even more expensive!

 

[Spook]

Everything about this screams... 'No Way in hell'.... 3-6x faster than current boards, by christmas, and this is the first we've heard of it.... I guess we'll just wait and see... It would be nice...

 

[NFS4]

If this thing uses some sort of tile-rendering, those numbers seem plausible. Makes sense as to why they delayed it. If they had released it when they were supposed to, it would have crushed everything on the market so bad that there would be no point.

 

[AL77]

These specs are truly impressive. It seems more like NV25 specs than NV20 though...I was expecting less than half the fill rate and polygon counts for the NV20 (I assume raw numbers, i.e. no effects/texturing, etc). Does it seem odd to anyone that nVidia would just let key info of their next product slip so casually (beach party?) and unofficially; or did they do this for the GeForce cards too?

I guess we'll have to wait and see. I'd still be quite happy with half those numbers, assuming the ubiquitous memory bandwith issue has been somewhat remedied.

 

[Davegod75]

sweeeeeeeet

 

[NFS4]

iXBT-Labs released the final specs for the GeForce 2 long before it was ever released. The specs were about 95% accurate

 

[BD2003]

and exactly how much alcohol consumption was going on at this &quot;beach party&quot;?

 

[Blackhawk2]

<< I was browsing the Dutch Tweakers site and stumbled into information they obtained about the NV20 in a Chaintech Beach party where they spoke with Roy Taylor from NVIDIA. The site is written in Dutch, I shall translate the most important aspects a bit coz this is GOOD info:

NV20 At this time NVIDIA is busy shipping the NV20, they call it 'Toy Story on a chip' with 6 to 8 weeks the 1st videocards will be released and by X-mas it should be in the shops. The selling price is up-to now unknown, but expect something in the range of $500. >>

Toy Story on a chip? Umm ya right, sorry but the real specs don't even come close. $500? Uhm ya right again, like Joe Average consumer is gonna pay that price for a video card...most likely CAD designers will be the only ones using this chip at that price...Btw how does Xbox get away with the whole system cost being $200 US when we must end up paying $500 for this? Can we say Nvidia is gouging the PC market to pay for Xbox?

<<Now the interesting part, NV20's fillrate will be 4800 MegaPixels and can handle 150Million polygons per second ! That's 6 to 3 times as much as the current GeForce2 GTS. Quake III would be able to do 100fps in 1600x1200x32bit !!>>

Sure it can handle 150 million polygons per second but at most you'll get closer to 20 million do to vertex saturation of the AGP bus, remember the cpu is the system controller so it still must send vertices to the graphics card thereby limiting your output to what the AGP bus can handle.

<<NVIDIA is planning to release a new chip every six months, after every 3 months of this release some sort of revision will be planned/released. Just like the GeForce2 GTS Ultra. >>

They plan to milk the market for all its worth? Yup I guess so, business as usual

 

[Czar]

That price will kill it

 

[ElFenix]

and what exactly would be the point of releasing something with these specs in december? it would still blow everything out of the water. absolutely everything. nvidia should restrain itself... having a good competitor is a really easy way of keeping the feds off your back. actually, a board like that would be priced so high that no one could afford it anyway, more like one of intel's paper launches. (p2 300, p3 1ghz, 1.13ghz). of course this info doesn't jive at all with the theory that they are really waiting for dx8 to be finalized before the hardware is finalized.

 

[NFS4]

<< $500? Uhm ya right again, like Joe Average consumer is gonna pay that price for a video card...most likely CAD designers will be the only ones using this chip at that price...Btw how does Xbox get away with the whole system cost being $200 US when we must end up paying $500 for this? Can we say Nvidia is gouging the PC market to pay for Xbox?
>>


You underestimate the buying public. How many people plunked down $600 for SLI?? Flocks of 'em. How many here sware by the Voodoo 5 6000. Quite a few. It doesn't matter how much it will cost, people will still buy it.

 

[ElFenix]

blackhawk2- microsoft is the one losing money on the xbox, not nvidia. they're not gouging the pc market to pay for xbox. since the current gf2u offers half the performance claimed and is at the pricepoint claimed, those specs almost look like a bargain.

 

[NFS4]

<< and what exactly would be the point of releasing something with these specs in december? it would still blow everything out of the water. absolutely everything. >>


You underestimate the other graphics card makers out there

 

[ElFenix]

toy story took a whole room full of sgi's hours to render one second. these specs aren't that fast, though they are fast. remember pixar's comeback, calling the nv chips toys.

 

[ElFenix]

i'd love to see tdfx and matrox bring some stuff to the table, will drive down the price. remember v3s and tnt2s were under $200... those were the days.

 

[Blackhawk2]

<<I do remember those being nVidia's words when they described what to expect from the NV20. I think that they know more about the card than you and what it is and is not capable of >>

Judging my integrity? I get my information from my brother who is an ASIC engineer, so right back at you NFS4, and who did you talk to at Nvidia? The marketing department LOL

 

[zippy]

Yay! Lets all love nVidia...lmao. If you pay $500 for a video card you belong in a mental institution. Also, are we going to believe a Dutch Tweakers site that reeled off a bunch of disgustlingly fast numbers and an Xmas release, or anand who said spring but mentioned no #'s? I'll stick with anand thank you very much...