Nvidia reveals Specifications of GT300

[MarcVenice]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: Keysplayr
No matter what ATI tells you, they wan't to be competitive in the top spot with a single GPU. When they can't, they say they never intended to and that was their plan all along. Don't fall for it man.

I too laughed out loud when I read this as the "excuse" for why ATI was under-performing in the single-GPU segment at the time the GT200 came out. You are spot-on, of course.

I laughed because I thought to myself "It's obvious why AMD has to say this, it is their job to do all they can to keep shareholder equity from eroding, but who is actually going to fall for such an obvious transparent marketing excuse?". Then I started reading threads...ah, now I see who the who was.

When I read this oft-quoted marketing "strategy" I can't help but to conjure up the visual of when Peewee falls of his bike in Pee-wee's Big Adventure (yes I admit to having watched it once) and then jumps up to claim "I meant to do that!".

Originally posted by: ATI
[falls off bike after attempting tricks] I meant to do that.

So you're saying ATI COULDN'T make a bigger chip, with more shaders on it? Because they easily could have. But they chose not to. They made a 'small', cheap gpu, that still performed very well.

No, I think it really is AMD's strategy to make small chips, and take the performance crown (or compete in the highest-end segment) with a X2-card.

You seem to dispute this. But once again, neither of us can tell for sure (unless you are privy to information most of us are not). So unless you can back up that it's NOT AMD's strategy to go for smaller chips and then double the performance with a X2-part, your sarcasm is misplaced.

As for Keys:

Originally posted by: Keysplayr
No matter what ATI tells you, they wan't to be competitive in the top spot with a single GPU. When they can't, they say they never intended to and that was their plan all along. Don't fall for it man.

Pretty much the same applies to you as to idc. What makes you think this? If ATI had produced a chip equal in size as the gt200b (487mm2) where as ATI's chip is only 256mm2, do you not think it could have bested it in terms of raw fps?

And thus, what makes you think AMD could not have produced a 487mm2 chip to begin with? Meaning, if they wanted to compete/beat Nvidia with a single gpu, they could have increased the shaders/die size, and voila. But you seem to think this is not true/possible, and thus ATI put a spindoctor on it.

 

[Tempered81]

There are two big design changes about the 40nm DX11 GPUs. Along with increasing clockspeeds, shader count etc, ATi is DOUBLING the number of Raster backends from 16 to 32. This is going to make a substantial impact on performance. Nvidia will no doubt increase clockspeeds, increase shader count by 2.5x, etc... but most impressive of all is changing from SIMD -> MIMD modes on their shaders. This is going to give Nv the edge with shader performance that Ati has with the small die approach. I expect this to create an impressive boost in performance as well for Nvidia. To me, these Ati's ROP count, and Nv's new MIMD shaders are the moust outstanding improvements alongside DX11 and 40nm.

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: Blazer7

nV may still lead in performance but for how long? What are they gonna do when the 5870 comes out?.

Judging by the rumors at least for the next several years as the GT300 is rumored to be significantly faster than the 5870.

Originally posted by: MarcVenice


And thus, what makes you think AMD could not have produced a 487mm2 chip to begin with? Meaning, if they wanted to compete/beat Nvidia with a single gpu, they could have increased the shaders/die size, and voila. But you seem to think this is not true/possible, and thus ATI put a spindoctor on it.

If they could have, they would have. No one wants to be in second place, especially in a 2 horse race.

They had trouble making a large chip, if you recall the epic failure that was the R600.

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: Blazer7

Originally posted by: Wreckage

Originally posted by: Creig

Originally posted by: Wreckage
They don't have the <snip>

Whatever.

I know it sucks that I'm right all the time.

nV may still lead in performance but for how long? What are they gonna do when the 5870 comes out?

As a consumer, and one considering a new graphics card, I'm a bit worried. For a consumer competition is always a good thing. Right now I don't see how on earth nV can compete with AMD.

Have you not seen the rumor threads? Although any information should be taken with a grain of salt, even if they are way off, I dont think nV has anything to worry about other than margin.

 

[Blazer7]

Originally posted by: Wreckage

Originally posted by: Blazer7

nV may still lead in performance but for how long? What are they gonna do when the 5870 comes out?.

Judging by the rumors at least for the next several years as the GT300 is rumored to be significantly faster than the 5870.

GT300 is expected months after the 5870. By then it may have to compete with an x2 part. Do you think that a GT300 will outperform a 5870x2 card?

 

[MarcVenice]

Originally posted by: OCguy

Originally posted by: Blazer7

Originally posted by: Wreckage

Originally posted by: Creig

Originally posted by: Wreckage
They don't have the <snip>

Whatever.

I know it sucks that I'm right all the time.

nV may still lead in performance but for how long? What are they gonna do when the 5870 comes out?

As a consumer, and one considering a new graphics card, I'm a bit worried. For a consumer competition is always a good thing. Right now I don't see how on earth nV can compete with AMD.

Have you not seen the rumor threads? Although any information should be taken with a grain of salt, even if they are way off, I dont think nV has anything to worry about other than margin.

Funny how you disregard the rumours that circulated at the time of RV780, which in the end were way of. Also funny how most of you seem to think ATI is only going to increase their shader count, and yet do nothing about the shaders themselfs. Funny how you think RV870 is just a 'bigger' RV780, instead of something ATI has been working on for some years now.

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: Blazer7

Originally posted by: Wreckage

Originally posted by: Blazer7

nV may still lead in performance but for how long? What are they gonna do when the 5870 comes out?.

Judging by the rumors at least for the next several years as the GT300 is rumored to be significantly faster than the 5870.

GT300 is expected months after the 5870. By then it may have to compete with an x2 part. Do you think that a GT300 will outperform a 5870x2 card?

What is your guess on the % of people that buy x2 cards?


Dont you think they will have their own at some point as well?

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: Blazer7


GT300 is expected months after the 5870. By then it may have to compete with an x2 part. Do you think that a GT300 will outperform a 5870x2 card?

Only the Inq expects the GT300 to be late. Well that's what they hope as they are the worst rumor site on the planet.

I bet it still comes out in October like other sites have suggested.

However if the 5870 does come out first and it costs more than $299 will the ATI fans revolt at ATI "gouging" them or will they look the other way?

 

[Blazer7]

Originally posted by: OCguy

Originally posted by: Blazer7

Originally posted by: Wreckage

Originally posted by: Blazer7

nV may still lead in performance but for how long? What are they gonna do when the 5870 comes out?.

Judging by the rumors at least for the next several years as the GT300 is rumored to be significantly faster than the 5870.

GT300 is expected months after the 5870. By then it may have to compete with an x2 part. Do you think that a GT300 will outperform a 5870x2 card?

What is your guess on the % of people that buy x2 cards?


Dont you think they will have their own at some point as well?

Would you buy a GT300 over an x2 card if the price/performance ratio favours the later?

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: Blazer7
Would you buy a GT300 over an x2 card if the price/performance ratio favours the later?

You really think the GT300 cards would have a worse price/performance than a flagship X2 card?

With nV next gen coming out 2nd this time, they will have time to see how the 5XXX performs, and price them according to the market place, instead of pricing and reacting like they had to with GT200.

 

[Blazer7]

Originally posted by: OCguy

Originally posted by: Blazer7
Would you buy a GT300 over an x2 card if the price/performance ratio favours the later?

You really think the GT300 cards would have a worse price/performance than a flagship X2 card?

With nV next gen coming out 2nd this time, they will have time to see how the 5XXX performs, and price them according to the market place, instead of pricing and reacting like they had to with GT200.

I won't be surprised. The 5870 will be much cheaper to manufacture and by the time the GT300 is out the yields would have improved even more. AMD may cut down on the price just to hurt nV. It won't be the first time right?

 

[Blazer7]

Originally posted by: Wreckage

However if the 5870 does come out first and it costs more than $299 will the ATI fans revolt at ATI "gouging" them or will they look the other way?

Originally posted by: Blazer7
.....A single card will most likely be more than enough for most people out there and both nV and ATI know this. Given that less people will resort to CF/SLI setups I wouldn?t be surprised if these cards remain (artificially) expensive for a long time as both companies may see this as lost sales. The only thing I can think of that can ?save? the CF/SLI market is new and more demanding games and I don?t believe that we are gonna see many of those in the near future.

I bet it still comes out in October like other sites have suggested.

I hope so. As I mentioned before competition is a good thing for us consumers.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Creig
And yields are an issue they really struggled with on the GT200. Initial reports put the GT200 yield at around 40% while the 4800 was said to be around 70%. If these numbers are accurate, the GT200 was even more expensive to produce than its size alone would imply. Now we have the GT300 rumored to have 400 million more transistors than the GT200, and on a much smaller process to boot.

The yield discrepancy is likely a simple matter of the multiplicative effect of parametric yield and functional yield.

There will be an intrinsic functional yield delta based simply on the (presumably same) D0 for the fab in question and the difference in die sizes, subsequently compounded at the end of the line by the binning for parametric yields.

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: Blazer7

Originally posted by: OCguy

Originally posted by: Blazer7
Would you buy a GT300 over an x2 card if the price/performance ratio favours the later?

You really think the GT300 cards would have a worse price/performance than a flagship X2 card?

With nV next gen coming out 2nd this time, they will have time to see how the 5XXX performs, and price them according to the market place, instead of pricing and reacting like they had to with GT200.

I won't be surprised. The 5870 will be much cheaper to manufacture and by the time the GT300 is out the yields would have improved even more. AMD may cut down on the price just to hurt nV. It won't be the first time right?

I dont think ATi undercut GT200 "just to hurt nV". I think they did it as a bid to gain a large % of marketshare by having an alternative that may perform lower, but costs less. It was a wise move in an economy where luxury item spending is taking a back seat. However, because nV then reacted with drastic price-cuts, they were not able to gain the marketshare, and are still in a terrible place financially.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: MarcVenice

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: Keysplayr
No matter what ATI tells you, they wan't to be competitive in the top spot with a single GPU. When they can't, they say they never intended to and that was their plan all along. Don't fall for it man.

I too laughed out loud when I read this as the "excuse" for why ATI was under-performing in the single-GPU segment at the time the GT200 came out. You are spot-on, of course.

I laughed because I thought to myself "It's obvious why AMD has to say this, it is their job to do all they can to keep shareholder equity from eroding, but who is actually going to fall for such an obvious transparent marketing excuse?". Then I started reading threads...ah, now I see who the who was.

When I read this oft-quoted marketing "strategy" I can't help but to conjure up the visual of when Peewee falls of his bike in Pee-wee's Big Adventure (yes I admit to having watched it once) and then jumps up to claim "I meant to do that!".

Originally posted by: ATI
[falls off bike after attempting tricks] I meant to do that.

So you're saying ATI COULDN'T make a bigger chip, with more shaders on it? Because they easily could have. But they chose not to. They made a 'small', cheap gpu, that still performed very well.

No, I think it really is AMD's strategy to make small chips, and take the performance crown (or compete in the highest-end segment) with a X2-card.

You seem to dispute this. But once again, neither of us can tell for sure (unless you are privy to information most of us are not). So unless you can back up that it's NOT AMD's strategy to go for smaller chips and then double the performance with a X2-part, your sarcasm is misplaced.

What's with the strawman argument?

I don't know if you intended to generate this perception but you come across as being a tad irritated and hot around the collar in your post.

At any rate no I am not saying they couldn't...I am saying they didn't, and then after the fact they publicized the strategy as being "we meant to do that". Gee, what a coincidence.

It struck me as a tad humorous and predictable (my take on it, the concept of rolling one's eyes can't be new to you, AMD's marketing here induces my eyes to roll), and you too are equally free to have whatever opinion you wish to have, and if it happens to be exactly as AMD's marketing team wanted it to be then I guess you and them get to be perfectly happy with yourselves, yes? :thumbsup: Democracy wins.

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
So unless you can back up that it's NOT AMD's strategy to go for smaller chips and then double the performance with a X2-part, your sarcasm is misplaced.

What's with the chest-pounding? Of course it was AMD's strategy to make the chip exactly the size it turned out to be, and to put two of them on a PCB...but I doubt very much it was their internally stated strategy prior to launch to have to do that in order to be competitive with NV's single GPU product at the time.

 

[Blazer7]

Originally posted by: OCguy

Originally posted by: Blazer7

Originally posted by: OCguy

Originally posted by: Blazer7
Would you buy a GT300 over an x2 card if the price/performance ratio favours the later?

You really think the GT300 cards would have a worse price/performance than a flagship X2 card?

With nV next gen coming out 2nd this time, they will have time to see how the 5XXX performs, and price them according to the market place, instead of pricing and reacting like they had to with GT200.

I won't be surprised. The 5870 will be much cheaper to manufacture and by the time the GT300 is out the yields would have improved even more. AMD may cut down on the price just to hurt nV. It won't be the first time right?

I dont think ATi undercut GT200 "just to hurt nV". I think they did it as a bid to gain a large % of marketshare by having an alternative that may perform lower, but costs less. It was a wise move in an economy where luxury item spending is taking a back seat. However, because nV then reacted with drastic price-cuts, they were not able to gain the marketshare, and are still in a terrible place financially.

I expect that this time they will have a better chance as they're gonna release their product first for a change. It will be very interesting to see what happens. Besides I don't think that nV can afford to do the same thing again. We all know what happened last time. In order to stop ATI they cut their prices way too much and by doing so they hurt their partners badly. Shortly after many nV only partners started moving towards the red camp.

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: Blazer7

I expect that this time they will have a better chance as they're gonna release their product first for a change. It will be very interesting to see what happens. Besides I don't think that nV can afford to do the same thing again. We all know what happened last time. In order to stop ATI they cut their prices way too much and by doing so they hurt their partners badly. Shortly after many nV only partners started moving towards the red camp.

That is because they sold GTX280 to the board partners expecting a MSRP of $649. They then had to immediatly drop the prices over $200, so it was a debacle for the partners.

With nV getting to see the reception and market for 5XXX first before setting the launch MSRP, they would have to be absolutely retarded to overprice them by too much, and I will be the first to say so.

Im more of an EVGA fan than a nV fan, so if they screwed up that bad again, I think they would lose some more top-tier, and I would go with them.

I dont really expect that though.

 

[Blazer7]

Originally posted by: OCguy

Originally posted by: Blazer7

I expect that this time they will have a better chance as they're gonna release their product first for a change. It will be very interesting to see what happens. Besides I don't think that nV can afford to do the same thing again. We all know what happened last time. In order to stop ATI they cut their prices way too much and by doing so they hurt their partners badly. Shortly after many nV only partners started moving towards the red camp.

That is because they sold GTX280 to the board partners expecting a MSRP of $649. They then had to immediatly drop the prices over $200, so it was a debacle for the partners.

With nV getting to see the reception and market for 5XXX first before setting the launch MSRP, they would have to be absolutely retarded to overprice them by too much, and I will be the first to say so.

Im more of an EVGA fan than a nV fan, so if they screwed up that bad again, I think they would lose some more top-tier, and I would go with them.

I dont really expect that though.

The thing is that the GT300 will cost way more to manufacture than the 5870. If yields aren't good enough from the start nV won't have the luxury for drastic price-cuts if needed. But you are right on one thing, this time nV will have the opportunity to ?aim? before they shoot.

I'm very curious as to how this will be played out. The last ATI card I had was a rage Magnum (Rage 128 Pro GL). Hell I can't even remember what year it was! Since then I've been using only nV based cards and this is the first time I'm seriously considering an ATI again.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Originally posted by: Wreckage
I bet it still comes out in October like other sites have suggested.

Not quite. If this chip hasn't had its first tape out yet, a more realistic launch timeframe would be next year Q1.

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: Cookie Monster

Originally posted by: Wreckage
I bet it still comes out in October like other sites have suggested.

Not quite. If this chip hasn't had its first tape out yet, a more realistic launch timeframe would be next year Q1.

The rumor sites are now predicting Q4 launches for both companies.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Originally posted by: OCguy

Originally posted by: Cookie Monster

Originally posted by: Wreckage
I bet it still comes out in October like other sites have suggested.

Not quite. If this chip hasn't had its first tape out yet, a more realistic launch timeframe would be next year Q1.

The rumor sites are now predicting Q4 launches for both companies.

Releasing this product before christmas season is what they are hoping for as do every other company, but I doubt nVIDIA will try to speed up their GT300 release since this chip is really important to them in several ways (such as facing off against Larrabee) and will hurt them if this chip fumbles so Im assuming that they want to be very cautious about this chip.

It takes not days, but months to debug your first silicon after the first tape out have been received. You also have revisions which are there to fix all the high priority erratas so this consumes several months. Once the chips meet the desired performance results and what not, they are then entered into volume production stage where this also takes several months. Im not going into exact details here, but when one does a rough approximation based on the assumption that GT300 has not taped out as of now, a Q4 launch is being highly optimistic, where as a Q109 launch seems much more reasonable.

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: Cookie Monster

Originally posted by: Wreckage
I bet it still comes out in October like other sites have suggested.

Not quite. If this chip hasn't had its first tape out yet, a more realistic launch timeframe would be next year Q1.

I don't work at NVIDIA or ATI so I don't know if either card has taped out yet.

 

[OCGuy]

Reports from April had GT300 taping out in June. We shall see.

 

[cbn]

I wonder how these DX11 GPUs GT300 and RV870 will perform with DX9/DX10 games?

Isn't architecture geared towards DX11 different than DX9/DX10?

If so I wonder how well HD5870 and GTX 385 will "test" compared to the current offerings (since in late 2009/early 2010 there wouldn't be any DX11 games for benchamrks)?

Someone earlier in this thread was thinking GTX 385 would perform equal or slighty worse than GTX 295 but I don't see how that could be with 512 shaders vs 480 shaders and likely 2 GB of memory vs 1 GB "mirrored" memory. Or maybe this could be true if the DX11 hardware was lacking something needed by DX9/DX10 software.

 

[MarcVenice]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: MarcVenice

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: Keysplayr
No matter what ATI tells you, they wan't to be competitive in the top spot with a single GPU. When they can't, they say they never intended to and that was their plan all along. Don't fall for it man.

I too laughed out loud when I read this as the "excuse" for why ATI was under-performing in the single-GPU segment at the time the GT200 came out. You are spot-on, of course.

I laughed because I thought to myself "It's obvious why AMD has to say this, it is their job to do all they can to keep shareholder equity from eroding, but who is actually going to fall for such an obvious transparent marketing excuse?". Then I started reading threads...ah, now I see who the who was.

When I read this oft-quoted marketing "strategy" I can't help but to conjure up the visual of when Peewee falls of his bike in Pee-wee's Big Adventure (yes I admit to having watched it once) and then jumps up to claim "I meant to do that!".

Originally posted by: ATI
[falls off bike after attempting tricks] I meant to do that.

So you're saying ATI COULDN'T make a bigger chip, with more shaders on it? Because they easily could have. But they chose not to. They made a 'small', cheap gpu, that still performed very well.

No, I think it really is AMD's strategy to make small chips, and take the performance crown (or compete in the highest-end segment) with a X2-card.

You seem to dispute this. But once again, neither of us can tell for sure (unless you are privy to information most of us are not). So unless you can back up that it's NOT AMD's strategy to go for smaller chips and then double the performance with a X2-part, your sarcasm is misplaced.

What's with the strawman argument?

I don't know if you intended to generate this perception but you come across as being a tad irritated and hot around the collar in your post.

At any rate no I am not saying they couldn't...I am saying they didn't, and then after the fact they publicized the strategy as being "we meant to do that". Gee, what a coincidence.

It struck me as a tad humorous and predictable (my take on it, the concept of rolling one's eyes can't be new to you, AMD's marketing here induces my eyes to roll), and you too are equally free to have whatever opinion you wish to have, and if it happens to be exactly as AMD's marketing team wanted it to be then I guess you and them get to be perfectly happy with yourselves, yes? :thumbsup: Democracy wins.

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
So unless you can back up that it's NOT AMD's strategy to go for smaller chips and then double the performance with a X2-part, your sarcasm is misplaced.

What's with the chest-pounding? Of course it was AMD's strategy to make the chip exactly the size it turned out to be, and to put two of them on a PCB...but I doubt very much it was their internally stated strategy prior to launch to have to do that in order to be competitive with NV's single GPU product at the time.

Maybe I was irritated, because you're insinuating I'm taking AMD's PR for factual truth. But, instead I thought about, weighed a few things, read a thing or two, and came to the conclusion their strategy isn't such a weird one, and doesn't strike me as coincidental at all.

Not sure if it was in AT's article, about how the HD 4850 ended up a lot faster then AMD intended too, but I think in there it is said, and reasoned very well, about why AMD went for the smaller chip and then going for a X2-part, to compete with Nvidia in the high-end. Afaik, it's their strategy to later on have _multiple_ gpu's, not just two, on a single videocard.

And I don't see how HD 4870X2 competes with a GTX285. That's not what AMD wanted indeed. If AMD wanted RV780 to compete/win the single gpu 'battle', they probably would have increased it's die size/shader count.

But now we simply disagree. Last time you were being sarcastic though, which struck me as odd, because of your usually well thought out posts, which actually have valid arguments to back things up.