PC General Discussion Thread

[:D:]

Marketing.

[Power666]

There are a few minor differences between the Geforce 8 series and the Geforce 9 series (which includes the Geforce 8800GT and 8800GTS 512 MB). One is support for 64 bit floating point precisions but that doesn't affect gaming. There is a new compression technique employed to better utilize available hardware bandwidth. The last minor change is support for DisplayPort and its associated DRM.

The Geforce 8800GTX and 8800GTS 320 MB and 640 MB models could have been adapted to support DisplayPort as the actual display logic is outside of the GPU in another chip.

As I said, nVidia did develop something far more faster but it'd cost them more to manufacture. Right now nVidia controls the high end and there is no immediate need to release it. Having said that, it'll be a few months before AMD releases the R700 (aka Radeon x4000 series). nVidia has left the Geforce 9900 number open so it may eventually see the light of day.

For the moment, both AMD and nVidia are focusing on improving their multi-GPU technologies instead releasing large expensive chips. I eventually do see both companies drop the act of requiring specific chipsets for their multi-GPU technology. For the most part, AMD has already done this.

[E6600]

The last minor change is support for DisplayPort and its associated DRM.

What use does DRM serve, what will they be using it for? Controlling the quality of displayed content?

[Power666]

The DRM in DisplayPort serves the same purpose as the DRM in HDMI.

[E6600]

Originally Posted by Power666

The DRM in DisplayPort serves the same purpose as the DRM in HDMI.

So it'll downgrade the quality of any 'suspected' content, I hate DRM

[Power666]

For the truly mad, a triple CrossFire card has has made an appearance. The really, really wicked part is that each of the three GPU's are upgradable since they're laptop MXM cards connected to a PCI-E switch.

Speaking of more madness in pictures, high resolution photos of Intel's new motherboards have appeared for the Nehalem family processors. The Nehalem based chips are likely going to be called "Core 3" and sport things like triple channel DDR3 memory controllers, symmetric multithreading, and a massive L3 cache. This gets rid of many of the flaws in Intel's aging design by getting rid of the front side bus like AMD did with the Athlon 64. The thing to note from the photos is that Intel has soldered some memory directly on to the motherboard. This isn't required for DDR3 but I suspect more and more boards will do it. DDR3 has a very slim allowance for multiple slots. In fact, the original DDR3 spec called for just one slot per channel! The current specification supports two slots at 800 Mhz and 1066 Mhz speeds. At 1333 Mhz speeds, things get fuzzy as some boards will only work with one slot per channel. 1600 Mhz and faster speeds can only work with one slot. A way around this limitation is to solder some memory on to the motherboard while still having a single slot on the channel. I suspect that some motherboards will forego memory slots all together and soldier everything down while providing some very aggressive cooling to the DDR3 memory chips.

[chedabob]

That Asus card is a fucking monster. How good is the r670 GPU though?

[Power666]

Well the first review of the Geforce 9800GTX went live and was pulled yesterday. It is indeed a higher clocked Geforce 8800GTS 512 MB with support for triple SLI. That is literally it. Of related interest, there is Geforce 800GTS [b]1 GB[b] with clock speeds higher than that of the stock Geforce 9800GTX. For your money, that Geforce 8800GTS 1 GB is the best single card on the market.

This past week AMD launched the Phenom 9850 processor, which is the CPU that they should have shipped six months ago. This version is the 'B3' stepping which fixes hardware bug in the CPU. There was a software patch for the 'B2' Phenoms that shipped months ago but it had a rather drastic effect on performance. The B3 and the B2 revision perform the same without the patch but the B3 versions don't have that hardware bug. AMD has also cut the price of the quad core Phenoms and seems to be releasing them now with unlocked mulitpliers standard. That means very easy overclocking. Ultimately though, Intel's quad core chips ship at higher frequencies and edge out the Phenoms clock per clock. Then again Intel's top of the line chips can cost five times as much.

[chedabob]

Are Nvidia actually going to release a new GPU this quarter or are they going to keep rehashing the older ones?

[Power666]

The Geforce 9600GT was a new chip but its performance is less than a Geforce 8800GT. In fact, the only thing seperating the Geforce 8800GT and the Geforce 9600GT are the number of shaders built into the chip design. The Geforce 9600GT is manufactured with 64 shaders and all of them enabled while the Geforce 8800GT is manufactured with 128 shaders but only 112 of them enabled.

The Geforce 9300 or 9400 is supposed to be a new chip design too wtih a 128 bit wide memory bus and a different number of shaders.

The old rumors of a massive chip with a 512 bit wide memory interface and 256 shaders didn't pan out I guess. I highly suppect that nVidia did design such a chip (and could launch it on a whim) but as a company they don't feel the need to launch such a high end chip at the moment due to lack of competition from AMD. On that note, AMD is said to be preparing a new high end chip for a late May/June launch so if nVidia wants to respond with a Geforce 9900GTX, they'll be able to.