ATI strikes back YET AGAIN! : RV410

[TrinireturnofGamez]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/18/ati_rv410/

sporting the same  128 bit bus 500mhz core clock , the same 1ghz ram clock and the same TSMC .11 process, the new ATI budget card promises  the same price range and the same speeds .    

the new process will make it effecient enough not to need an extra power connector , and with the already overclocked X-800s able to reach an extra 40-50mhz.... we might see much greater o/cing yields from this new product .

The 6600 and 6600 GT are due to be out next month , we will probably see the new 'X' series product out at the same time...  


 X-700 anyone?

the chip is PCI-X native, and with ATI promising to BACKWARDS BRIDGE their PCI-x cards for awhile to come , AGP should be there for us too.

EDIT : this babys is supposed to break 7000 3dmarks, that OWNZ a 9800XT! can you say wow?
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=17152                    

[coldstorm]

with so many product out there will ati be able to handle the R&D cost of all of them and not sink in to a big hole                    

[TrinireturnofGamez]

aah yes but its NOT so many products , the X-800 core was desgined to be able to add and remove pipelines and still work, like the 9800 core , and even if it wasn't , the Mobility 9800 is  the same thing but on a larger process [X-800 core, 8 pipes] .
  And up to now most of the R&D has been kept down, by transplanting  whole sections of one core to the next , the truform section of the core is the same in the 9700 as it is in the X-800, the  vertex pipes in the 9000  are  the same as in the 9800 [ but only 1 vetrex unit in 9000 ]  .                    

[coldstorm]

if i understanding what u saying them they basically using the best chipset and burning out part for lower gpu that mean expense on ati behalf for making most expensive chip and just burning off part for it be for the specification                    

[TrinireturnofGamez]

no ... the parts NEVER EXISTED on the lower cores  and they are therefore cheaper to make .

ATI  may resort to 3DFX tactix and but multiple cores together to trump SLI  , they have done it for the military before . :  http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=17889

Our friends at techbit.ca told us that ATI confirmed to them our news about multi chip cards and Patricia Mikula, ATI's PR manager said in a recent meeting that the X800 line of cards could support up to 256 cores operating together with each card capable of addressing 1GB of memory.

this may imply that  ATI is ready and waiting to put massive amounts of memory on their cards..... possibly waiting for a drop in DRAM prices  or  for nvidia to show off their product .                    

[coldstorm]

well to equal up two 6800 in sli they got to put 512 of gddr on a board for two gpu to share ati will look at that cost and stay away only the the quarto 4400 has that amount of ram and it is very expensive . aslo with more ram and gpus heat issues come into play also issues of adding extra power to support the gpu ati will look at these and forget the idea                    

[TrinireturnofGamez]

RV410 to be released in October of this year., 6600 in  late september .  We should see benchmarks of both sometime in the coming weeks . The 6600 GT makes over 8000 3dmark 2003, the  X-700 over 7000 , a 9800xt can barely reach 6500 ..this gives you some idea of how fast these cards are . Nvidias leaked scores are higher.. but lets not ignore the fact that  nvidia uses optimizations to the most extreme extent .. if you disable those optimizations , a 5950 looses 2000 3dmarks from their original score of 7800.                    

[Rampage]

well to equal up two 6800 in sli they got to put 512 of gddr on a board for two gpu to share ati will look at that cost and stay away only the the quarto 4400 has that amount of ram and it is very expensive . aslo with more ram and gpus heat issues come into play also issues of adding extra power to support the gpu ati will look at these and forget the idea

ent SLI IDMC!!!
conduction of two 6800 and is smooth sailing iwmc                    

[TrinireturnofGamez]

SLI 6600s will 0wn seriously, and 2 6600s are less than a 6800 ultra or GT ...
  but dual pci-x motherboards are rare and expensive . SLI will probably be limited to a handful of people who can manage to get their hands on dual PCI-x boards and big OEMs like Alienware and Falcon .  
    I don't think anyone should jump on  PCI-X till late 2005/2006 ..... the currant mobos will not have support for future 64 bit  processors [800mhz fsb] and AMD has PCI-x support and dual cores right around the corner . Samsung is upgrading their DDRII manufacturing process to make it cheaper.. and we will see a coresponding drop in DDII prices soon.  
    And don't forget that in 2006 512mb cards will be the standard : The first Unreal }I{ engine games will be out  then ..  they have a minimum requirement of a card supporting DX9 shaders  and having 256mb of RAM .                    

[coldstorm]

the only 6600 that can do sli is 6600 gt these use th gddr ram for the cost a 6800 ultra u can get two 6600gt it has yet to be scene if they will match up in perfromance but having the ability to upgrade is an incredible feature in which u don't really have to worry about selling the other car but use it in a dual configuration when u need more power after selling out $200 us a on card it good to know u can upgrade it by adding the sli interface and another card . as far as pixel shadding operation go two 6600 gt should outperform a lone 6800 ultra by specs                    

[TrinireturnofGamez]

SLI offers you some flexability.... get one PCI-X  video card that will last into the future..... like a 256mb 6600 GT
 [ if 256mb makes a diff to performance ]  then  when your rig starts to lag .. instead of buying another 300 USD card... get a 100USD twin to yours and double your performance .                    

[coldstorm]

i think the 256 mb verison if there is one would run u into about $250 range since the 6800 gt is about $300 us and the 256 mb one is usefully when when u crank up detail setting in doom 3 while it is first game there will be more                    

[cdx2k1]

In my opinion SLI is a waste of time unless u using the best of the best (Eg)>Current generation extreme user card>>GeForce 6800 Ultra or equivalent), got cash to burn and is an insaneeeee junky.                    

[!Synth]

In my opinion SLI is a waste of time unless u using the best of the best (Eg)>Current generation extreme user card>>GeForce 6800 Ultra or equivalent), got cash to burn and is an insaneeeee junky.

Indeed. The rest of the system would bottleneck it to hell, short of the very best...                    

[coldstorm]

humm the system will not bottle nech since with pci-x u get almost 4 times the bandiwdth of agp 8x. all the card doing sli use pci-x                    

[!Synth]

humm the system will not bottle nech since with pci-x u get almost 4 times the bandiwdth of agp 8x. all the card doing sli use pci-x

So processor speed don't count? So memory and disk subsytem dont count? All of these contribute...

Remember we are talking with respect to a SLI config...at that level all the rest of components had better be able to handle all that bandwidth!

With any system the key is to matching components. I mean its not logical to pair an X800 with a p3 500 is it? With SLI it will become alot harder to "match"...but then again no one saying you HAVE too, just it would make more SENSE too.                    

[TrinireturnofGamez]

In my opinion SLI is a waste of time unless u using the best of the best (Eg)>Current generation extreme user card>>GeForce 6800 Ultra or equivalent), got cash to burn and is an insaneeeee junky.

Indeed. The rest of the system would bottleneck it to hell, short of the very best...

i feel like defending SLI :
the SLI algorithm works by adjusting the usage of the second card eg.
if u getting 60+ fps in a game , SLI drops the usage of the second card to like  10%  , saving CPU power . If the game is EXTREMELY demanding and u would  get -30 fps with one card, SLI kicks in with the second one, and instead of card no. rendering 10% of the screen, it renders half of it .  
 SLI will only eat CPU power and bottleneck a bit when you need ALOT of GPU power  .  
   Bottleneck isn't as bad as u think, i live with constant bottleneck [850mhz PIII, Radeon 8500 128mb o/c] when i play FarCry my frame rate is stuck between 20-25 outdoors at highish settings .... the frame rate does not increase much belong High texture quality , medium water quality etc.  i find its better than playing with a machine that jumps from 40 to 10 outdoors .

SLI  has a few major problems to overcome 1.
Nvidia has not distributed test systems to 3rd party review sites who we trust more than them.... to give us the whole story and what to expect
 2. lack of available PCI-X boards  with 2 X16 slots  
3. lack of cheap SLI capable cards [6600 GT is supposed to solve that ]
 
and we STILL don't know if we can stick any 2 cards of the same type , eg. MSI 6800 and Albatron 6800 would conflict etc.  It may be fixable by flashing the BIOS in both to the same version... but one might use faster RAM or something that might still cause errors.                    

[coldstorm]

to use pcix board almost all use socket 758 (can't remember exact number) the only processor than can fit it start at alowest 2.4 ghz with 800 fsb u are not going to get much of a system bottlenech with that. given that a faster hb and faster ram will increase frame rate a bit the best way to increase frame rates is with a better gpu. if i had a nvidia geforce 2 and a nvidia geforce 4 trying to run the same game with the same specs for eaching system the geforce 4 will way outperform the geforce 2 if u running a system of geforce 4 time while if i were to run it with the geforce 2 time pc the  geforce 4 will indeed have a bottle nech .as for the 2 x16 slot issue that should be dealt with in at least amd department by the new nforce 4 board coming out