G
Guest
quotes from Inquirer:
http://theinquirer.net/?article=24306
G70 was no new chip designed from scratch
Naming games nobbled us all
By Fuad Abazovic in Wien: Friday 01 July 2005, 00:23
IN CONVERSATION with some knowledgable Nvidians, we learned that the G70
chip was no brand new design.
In fact, they claim its architecture was a very well kept secret and Nvidia
managed to confuse the whole world by simply renaming one chip and changing
a thing or two.
Few non-NDA people and partners believed the new core, manufactured "from
scratch" would actually be delivered on time. But that story turned out to
be all bluff and bluster. The chip isn't designed from scratch at all -
Our knowledgeable friend told us that we should not be too hung up on the
nomenclature, as this is Nvidia internal thing and can change anytime.
Nvidia stole a march on rival ATI by bringing the G70 to market quickly and
even shipping it the same day. ATI is yet to bring out its response, the 520
wonder chip.
Nvidia had been prepared for a paper launch a while back and would have gone
for it if ATI had managed to launch its R520 earlier.
The G70 is really a tweaked NV40 core with more pipelines and some new
features and that's it. This is the common opinion shared by many editors
who have been at Nvidia's 'editors' days'.
Still, we share the same opinion and we all agree that Nvidia is capable of
making a fuzz about anything.
G70 could stand for Geforce - Graphic series seven - but no one wants to
confirm or deny this.
A great step forward for Nvidia, perhaps, but not as revolutionary as the
chip designer wants you to believe. Nvidia loves G70 as it helped it capture
the performance flag once more and brought it much positive press.
Most important of all, it's shipping. And there is no competition yet from
ATI. That will come in the next few weeks, though we still believe the R520
could end up faster - but we don't yet know when it will come out and what
will be the yields.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
okay Inquirer is saying what some, including myself, have believed for a
long time now.
*the GeForce 7800 GTX is really no more than an upgraded, beefed-up GeForce
6800
*because the G70 GPU is no more than an upgraded NV40 GPU.
*therefore, the G70 is really just a refresh of NV40 -- much like the NV15
~ GeForce2 GTS was a refresh of NV10 ~ GeForce. or like the NV25 ~ GeForce
4 TI was a refresh of NV20 ~ GeForce 3
*the G70 ~ GeForce GTX is NOT a completely new, built-from scratch
architecture like the NV40 was compared to NV30 and NV35.
*the G70 ~ GeForce 7800 therefore, is just another 'NV4X series' GPU.
*I don't think we will see a completely new architecture from Nvidia until
near the release of Windows Longhorn and Windows Graphics Foundation 2.0
(aka DirectX 10 aka DirectX Next, with Vertex & Pixel Shader 4.0)
*we might in fact see one more major refresh of the current NV4X
architecture, the G80, next winter or spring, before we really move on to
an all-new architecture, which I will refer to as NV5X, for Longhorn /
WGF2.0 / DirectX10 / Shader Model 4
http://theinquirer.net/?article=24306
G70 was no new chip designed from scratch
Naming games nobbled us all
By Fuad Abazovic in Wien: Friday 01 July 2005, 00:23
IN CONVERSATION with some knowledgable Nvidians, we learned that the G70
chip was no brand new design.
In fact, they claim its architecture was a very well kept secret and Nvidia
managed to confuse the whole world by simply renaming one chip and changing
a thing or two.
Few non-NDA people and partners believed the new core, manufactured "from
scratch" would actually be delivered on time. But that story turned out to
be all bluff and bluster. The chip isn't designed from scratch at all -
Our knowledgeable friend told us that we should not be too hung up on the
nomenclature, as this is Nvidia internal thing and can change anytime.
Nvidia stole a march on rival ATI by bringing the G70 to market quickly and
even shipping it the same day. ATI is yet to bring out its response, the 520
wonder chip.
Nvidia had been prepared for a paper launch a while back and would have gone
for it if ATI had managed to launch its R520 earlier.
The G70 is really a tweaked NV40 core with more pipelines and some new
features and that's it. This is the common opinion shared by many editors
who have been at Nvidia's 'editors' days'.
Still, we share the same opinion and we all agree that Nvidia is capable of
making a fuzz about anything.
G70 could stand for Geforce - Graphic series seven - but no one wants to
confirm or deny this.
A great step forward for Nvidia, perhaps, but not as revolutionary as the
chip designer wants you to believe. Nvidia loves G70 as it helped it capture
the performance flag once more and brought it much positive press.
Most important of all, it's shipping. And there is no competition yet from
ATI. That will come in the next few weeks, though we still believe the R520
could end up faster - but we don't yet know when it will come out and what
will be the yields.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
okay Inquirer is saying what some, including myself, have believed for a
long time now.
*the GeForce 7800 GTX is really no more than an upgraded, beefed-up GeForce
6800
*because the G70 GPU is no more than an upgraded NV40 GPU.
*therefore, the G70 is really just a refresh of NV40 -- much like the NV15
~ GeForce2 GTS was a refresh of NV10 ~ GeForce. or like the NV25 ~ GeForce
4 TI was a refresh of NV20 ~ GeForce 3
*the G70 ~ GeForce GTX is NOT a completely new, built-from scratch
architecture like the NV40 was compared to NV30 and NV35.
*the G70 ~ GeForce 7800 therefore, is just another 'NV4X series' GPU.
*I don't think we will see a completely new architecture from Nvidia until
near the release of Windows Longhorn and Windows Graphics Foundation 2.0
(aka DirectX 10 aka DirectX Next, with Vertex & Pixel Shader 4.0)
*we might in fact see one more major refresh of the current NV4X
architecture, the G80, next winter or spring, before we really move on to
an all-new architecture, which I will refer to as NV5X, for Longhorn /
WGF2.0 / DirectX10 / Shader Model 4