More G80 Details at DailyTech

No 80nm? No GDDR4??
Looks like ATI will win again.

The GeForce FX 5800Ultra was 130nm with DDR2, and it got stomped into the ground by the 150nm DDR1 9700Pro.

80nm isn't that big of a deal...and with a 384bit memory bus, they don't need GDDR4. I bet this card gives R600 a run for its money.

You cant compare cards at that time, they had 8 texture units and 4 fragment pipelines at best, meaning that an overclock wouldnt have done as much as it would today when ATI will beat their 48 fragment pipeline record, in wich every Mhz is important, and if ATI uses 80nm they could have every card 100Mhz higher then nVidia, wich coupled with that ammount of pipelines would be some serious advantage in FPS. Hopefully nVidia has learned their lesson on HDR AA and image quality will finaly be the same.
Do u mean that they dont need GDDR4 because they have 384bit, because then the memory bandwidth will be enough and if they did have GDDR4 and 384bit then the core would bottleneck the memory? If not, then ATI will win if they have 384bit.

That entire comment is just completely absurd. You have no idea what the clock speeds will be. You have no idea what the performance will be. It's anyone's game right now. 80nm doesn't guarantee ATi faster clock speeds or more performance. They went with 90nm for the x1800xt and that cost them 6 months of delays and it was still slower than the 110nm 7800gtx when it launched. Things are not so simple as you make them out to be.

The X1800XT failed because it had only 16 fragment pipelines and 16 texture units when the 7800 GTX had 24 in both. The X1800XT was like a 6800 GT. If the X1800XT was built on the 110nm process then it would have completely been a failure because it would be just like the 6800. I dont know what u mean 80nm doesn't guarantee higher clock speeds, but ur right abt the performance, it mostly depends on the pipelines. I dont know how ur going to be able to calculate these card's performance if they have unified shaders, and so i dont how we will be able to compare them purely based on their specs. And u didnt answer my question abt the memory, do u mean that if u have GDDR4 384-bit then the bandwidth will be so large that it will actually bottleneck the core?

watching the rumors, Nvidia will have 32 unified pipelines and 128 shader pipelines and ATi will have 64 unified pipes. btw, a 384 bit bus GDDR3 memory from nVidia will let a maximum of 84GB/s of memory bandwith but this will be a bottleneck (because of the enourmous amout of shaders), and you can see that by this card: X1950pro ! !

offtopic: why the X1950XTX only have 1 photo and 7950GTX2, 7900GTX have 3, 4 or more photos? Is the X1950XTX ugly?
omg the cooler is fantastic and they have only one photo! why?

Oh, i forgot. fanboys!

absurd? and removing posts isnt that absurd or you are afreid of something?

ATi only posts 1 or 2 pictures of each card, nVidia posts 4 or 5, I post whatever is available. I also have direct access to nVidia's ftp server which makes it a lot easier to get all the images...for ATi I have to go to their site and dig through webpages to find them. Since I stick to the professionally done images, I have more nVidia images than ATi.

I remove posts that have no redeeming value like the 'omg this card r0x0rs' type comments, other than that I don't intentionally censure any particular perspective, I just try to keep the comments free of nonsense. Also realize that posts don't appear instantaneously, I have to approve them first.

@Track, the entire point here is that, without having definite knowledge of the pipeline configurations for next-gen cards, there is absolutely no way to make even a good guess as to which will be faster based on manufacturing process and memory type alone. It seems like the more advanced process and more advanced memory would be an advantage, but several times in the past other architectural issues have completely cancelled out such advantages and in some cases they've even been a burden. If you look at current cards, it's apparent that memory bandwidth isn't the biggest bottleneck, and with a 384bit memory bus G80 will definitely not be hurting for memory bandwidth, even using only GDDR3 (which is a rumor, it could very well use GDDR4). And 80nm is not a huge advantage either, current 80nm chips are getting only moderate clock speed boosts vs their 90nm counterparts. Such performance benefits as you get from faster memory or slightly faster core clocks is completely insignificant when you compare that to the possible ramifications of the number and layout of the pixel/vertex pipelines.

Oh and to answer your question, 256bit GDDR4 on the X1950XTX has proven that memory bandwidth is not a bottle-neck for that card. Whether or not 384-bit GDDR4 will max out R600 is anyones guess. But overall, just remember that nVidia and ATi are very very smart companies...there are a lot of things to consider when designing a new card: memory type, manufacturing process, transistor count, pipeline count, etc...both companies are in the game to win...so don't think nVidia is going to lose just because they opted for GDDR3 and 90nm vs GDDR4 and 80nm, whatever they're doing, rest assured that they thought about it first and they think they made the right choices.

Im not saying that its not possible for a company to "win" with outdated hardware features, but that if these companies are equally smart, then the one with the best features such as GDDR4 and 80nm will win. If u say that nVidia will "win" DESPITE the fact that they are using GDDR3 and 90nm then ur saying that they are better then ATI, whom are using GDDR4 and 80nm. But no company has ever "won", possibly because of the law that forbids companies to make products that would put their competitors out of work. Thats why we always see similar cards that perform similarly. Can u say that for the same ammount of money u can get better performance in ATI or nVidia? Maybe, but it evens itself out. nVidia wins for 300, ATI for 400. All in all, i dont think that any company is going to "win" but its interesting to talk abt it as if it was possible.
And i dont know what "more advanced" process or memory means. I look at whats on paper versus what i see in benchmarks.
Also, my question was - would GDDR4 AND 384bit memory mean that the core could bottleneck the memory bandwidth?

You just don't get it. Do you really think nVidia couldn't put GDDR4 on the board if they wanted to? Do you really think they couldn't have done 80nm? They chose what they chose because they thought it was the best way to go, and ATi did the same. Time will tell who's right. Maybe nVidia didn't need GDDR4 to hit their target memory bandwidth with a 384bit bus? Maybe they thought a chip as complex as G80 on 80nm was too risky right now. The point is you don't know, and jumping to any conclusions right now is premature. And companies win all the time...ATi won with the 9700s and 9800s and nVidia has been winning ever since...just look at their stock values.

Are u seriously saying that they CHOSE to incorporate old hardware into their new cards? Well i cant see a reason for them to use GDDR3 instead of GDDR4 unless GDDR3 was a lot cheaper and they didnt need GDDR4 to reach their "target" bandwidth. But then, what is "target" bandwidth? I mean isnt more better?
I dont know what u mean "too risky", but i think that they just started building the card a long time ago and didnt think abt 80nm or GDDR4. Just like with the 7900 series - they took the G70 cores and tweaked them to incorporate a 90nm process, but that was ALL that they could do because the design of the G70 wasnt as flexible as the the design of the R580 wich let ATI inhance the X1900 in may ways that nVidia just couldnt, its not that they didnt want to. These companies use a great deal of effort to try and read the future and their competitor's offerings in thus time in order to counter it well enough to be in the running but not a far lead that would bankrupt their competitor, as that would be against the law.
So, if u say that they didnt "need" GDDR4 or 80nm, that would make sence IF - the card is already powerfull enough without them and putting them in would be too costy, OR if putting them into the the design would create such a powerfull card that ATI would not be able to keep in the running and would go out of bussiness.

It's not against the law to stomp your opponent into the ground, I don't know where you got that. Sometimes going with the latest and greatest isn't the right answer. Maybe there are technical limitations that made doing a 384 bit memory bus with GDDR4 too complex? Maybe they can get better memory bandwidth with GDDR3 and a 384bit bus than GDDR4 and a 256bit bus, YOU DON'T KNOW. Maybe 80nm is not mature enough to support a chip as complex as G80 right now. Maybe they didn't want to wait till next year to launch the chip so they decided to stay with 90nm. Bottom line, just trust the fact that the engineers at nVidia know precisely what they're doing. And you don't.

The R600 is rumoured to have an 800MHz clock core and 64 Fragment Pipelines

http://news.softpedia.com/news/ATI-R600-Delayed-35587.shtml

Oh...and did I mention 65nm technology?

65nm is highly doubtful, unless R600 is coming out next fall.

We both dont know why, not just me. It has to be against the law to completely take the market, otherwise why hasnt anyone done that by now? ATI and nVidia seem to make very similar cards all the time, niether company seems to "win". Microsoft gets sued all the time for doing the same to smaller companies who have no chance of getting into their market.
65nm is more then highly doubtful, its immpossible. nVidia is still doing 90nm, and ATI has JUST began to use 80nm.

It definitely is NOT against the law to take the market, the reason it hasn't been done is because it's almost completely impossible. One company would have to make some major breakthrough in technology, or make some egregious mistake...and even then that doesn't put them completely out of the running. ATi and nVidia make very similar cards because they have essentially the same goals and are using the exact same technologies, so they are bound to come up with very similar designs. Microsoft gets sued because they leverage their OS monopoly in other markets (like web browsers), that's unfair and illegal. But it doesn't stop them from trying their best. No company out there tries to make an inferior product to avoid being too much better than their competition. And for the record, the first 80nm chip ever made (G73-B) was made by nVidia.

IDK, dosent make sence why these companies wouldnt just make a much better product, price or what? The 7800 GTX, and then 7800 GTX 512 was a good start, but i hoped that nVidia would finish them off. I still see nVidia as the "good" guys and ATI as the "bad" guys, just like my friend who "cant" buy Intel, they should have a law against likeing the things u got!

Track why do you always argue with mike over such little things?

They're making the best products they can! They both make huge jumps in performance every single generation and prices continue to get better and better. In 2003 a 9800 XT cost $500, you can get better performance now for about $80. That's progress! And competition is the best thing that can happen. ATi and nVidia are constantly pushing each other to do better, that's why we've seen such rapid progress as we have.

Yeh I agree with you there Mike. Like when ATi launched the X1900 series making the X1800 series drop massively in price. I've seen on the overclockers website that the cheapest X1800 is only �135 where as the X1900 is almost double. So now not only are us AGP users going extinct, but were also having to pay for more expensive graphics cards when you could have one with the same performance but much cheaper on the pci-e bus. niiiiiiice :(

True i remember when i first bought my 6800agp for 275$ Now it costs 95 for a 7600gs.

This is a debate - no one is arguing. Ha ha, maybe Mike gets angry when i express thoughts he believes are wrong but it dosent bother me, i always learn a lot by talking to Mike.
I agree with the progress, but if u say that the prices are lower because of competition, then ur saying that if nVidia/ATI exsisted alone they would charge whatever they want and be mean to everyone. But u may be right. You have to look at these company's motives. They are only doing it for the money.

Now thats something i can agree with you on Track.