AMD & Nvidia New Graphics Cards Line-Up For Q2
Here's how the products stack up for Q2 between AMD and Nvidia. In April, we will see the introduction of HD 3850 X2, HD 3830, HD 3650 OC from AMD as well as GeForce 9800 GTX. HD 3830 is actually HD 3690 but the latter is meant for China market only while HD 3830 will be available worldwide. As for the rest of the GeForce 9800, 9600, 9500 and 9300 series, they are slated for June introduction. We have not include the RV770 series yet as we are in the midst of collecting more information on this new architecture but they are on target to appear in late May.
Comments (17)
I cannot see any real advantage over GDDR4, I do not think that memory bandwidth of GDDR4 could limit the performance of RV770. Think of some nvidia chips with smaller bandwidth that can beat ati chips.
Anyway, I am DAAMIT fan.
--
Smaller memory bandwith is actually bottlenecking Nvidia G92- cards already. Of course RV670 has bigger bottlenecks (Like having only 16 TMUs). Now that AMD is gonna double the TMU number + increasing clock frequency. This means that this card will have a lot better AA performance and you'll need much more memory bandwith when using AA.
Think about 9600 GT and 8800 GT.. they have 15% difference in DX9 and 5% difference in DX10 even when 8800 GT has 75% more SP and TM units. Memory channel holds 8800 GT back badly.
Now HD3870 has 25% bigger memorybandwith and HD4870 would have 170% larger TM-performance and 105% larger ALU-performance. So yes they have to either increase widht of the memory channel or use faster memory in order to not have serious bottleneck with memory bandwidht.
I cannot see any real advantage over GDDR4, I do not think that memory bandwidth of GDDR4 could limit the performance of RV770. Think of some nvidia chips with smaller bandwidth that can beat ati chips.
I really think that the main factor affecting the performance of graphics cards are drivers. They should completely rewrite drivers for new core. They're just modyfing and improving old drivers.
This is why i think Larrabee would be big success, because this is brand new architecture with brand new drivers.. yes, a lot of issues, but it is not problem to fix something for intel. I am sure if Intel had TLB bug, it would be fixed in half time it took for amd. (just means intel have a lot more of $$ than amd)
Anyway, I am DAAMIT fan.
This means that 256-bit memory interface would be more than enough for next gen high end cards despite that it's bottle necking today's high end cards
Power consumption should be around same level as GDDR4 (GDDR4's main advantage over GDDR3 was that it has smaller power consumption)
-------
Why do you think Nvidia won't use GDDR5 with new generation when they have been said to be skipping GDDR4?