When CeBIT rolls around on 18-24th March it will be carrying a long awaited graphics chip. After R&D cuts forced ATI to dump the radical R400 (now an R500 project) ATI will launch the new R420 graphics chip in a variety of flavours. It is a nextgen evolution of the current design and should knock spots off anything either ATI or nVidia have to offer currently.
Codenamed Loki, the new R420 will be the 0.13 micron and low-k process that 9800 users have been waiting for since the launch of the 9600XT (RV360). Highlights include:
- 150 million transistors.
- DDR II (not GDDR3 - just look at what happened to earlier nVidia DDRII cards to see why - the technology is still too young)
- Clock frequencies expected at 500 GPU/1000 Memory
256 bit memory controller (the R400 was planned to include a 512 bit controller but it proved too costly)
- 8x AGP
- An R423 version due Q3 2004 targetted at 64-bit systems and will support PCI Express
- Volume production by the end of Q1
nVidia are planning to launch their NV40 gpu at the same time, so it will be *real* interesting to see who comes out on top :D I think the consumer will be the eventual winner though, so look out for reducing prices on 9800 stock and top end nVidia cards as we creep towards April. We should expect to start seeing engineering sample reviews of the R420 in late February if all goes to plan. Full market volume should be with us by Q3.
A side note: The R400 GPU was planned to be an entirely new core and was expected to totally dominate the entire market, unfortunately we're now going to have to wait for the R500 to get this design now due to the R&D cutbacks :(
TL.
It sounds really good! But I think I stick to my non-64-bit-system with radeon 9800 xt. I think I have invested enough money in this stupid thing :P!
Update
ATI's entire roadmap revolves around the transition to PCI Express, in order to accomplish a bridge-free roadmap, ATI has to have two versions of every GPU: a PCIe and an AGP version (or an AGP substitute). Keep this in mind as we look at the GPUs due out in '04 since you'll be seeing two per market segment, one AGP and one PCIe.
R420 and R423 at the High End
We have been hearing about R420 for quite some time now and recently the name R423 has been in the headlines. As you can guess, R420 is the AGP successor to the R350 (Radeon 9800) while R423 is a PCIe version of the R420. The specs on the two GPUs are as follows:
0.13-micron low-k manufacturing process
160M transistors
~500MHz core clock
8 pipe design
6 vertex engines
Improvements to all of the basic architectural features (shader engines, AA, etc...)
256MB 256-bit GDDR3 (~1GHz data rate)
Single slot design
The R420/423 chips will offer twice the pixel fill rate and vertex throughput of the R350 core, as well as increases in memory bandwidth. Initial indications show that there may be two versions of the R420/423 with different memory clocks; one design calls for ~1GHz GDDR3 memory while the other calls for slower DDR1 memory. It isn't clear whether R423 (PCIe) based designs will eventually carry higher clock speeds than their AGP counterparts, but there is a definite possibility.
2004 ATI Enthusiast GPU Roadmap
Name Radeon 9800 XT N/A N/A N/A
Chipset R360 R420 R423 R480
GPU Clock 412MHz ~500MHz ~500MHz ???
Memory Clock 730MHz 1.0GHz 1.0GHz ???
Memory Width 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit ???
Process 0.15-micron 0.13-micron 0.13-micron ???
Memory Type GDDR2 GDDR3 GDDR3 ???
Pipeline 8 8 8 ???
Vertex Shaders 4 6 6 ???
Transistor Count 110Mil 160Mil 160Mil ???
Interface AGP AGP PCI-Express ???
Availability Now Q2'04 Q2'04 H2'04
Slightly less high-end: RV380
ATI's roadmaps call the RV380 the "world first PCI Express graphics controller," which says to us that we'll see RV380 before we'll see R423 (but not necessarily before R420). The RV380 will not have an AGP version, instead if you want AGP support ATI suggests you look at the Radeon 9800 (non-Pro) or the Radeon 9600XT, which give you an idea of the RV380's pricepoint. The RV380 specs are as follows:
0.13-micron low-k manufacturing process
~500MHz core clock
4 pipe design
2 vertex engines
Improvements to all of the basic architectural features (shader engines, AA, etc...)
128/256MB 128-bit (600 - 800MHz data rate)
Single slot design
RV380 seems to keep the same core clock as the Radeon 9600XT but potentially improves on memory performance thanks to a higher maximum memory clock. It looks like RV380 is just a PCIe derivative of the RV360.
RV370 - 0.11-micron
ATI's roadmap for the first half of 2004 closes with the low-end RV370 built on a 0.11-micron process. The RV370 will feature 4 rendering pipelines and 2 vertex engines but its 0.11-micron feature size should make the chip very affordable. We unfortunately don't have much more information at RV370 at this time.
Here's what to expect in the Fall from ATI:
The R420/423 will receive a speed-bump refresh called the R480.
The RV380 will get a similar bump with the RV410.
The RV410 will also be offered in an AGP solution, unlike the RV380.
The low end remains virtually unchanged, with the RV380 and RV370 trickling down to lower price points but there won't be any new cores below the RV410 in 2H '04.
Source: anandtech
Nice spot Dingo, cheers for the update! :thumbsup: Interesting to see roll out brought forward a quarter - was that launch or volume to market though? The originally mentioned Q3 was the volume to maket date.
TL.
Believe they were talking about launch dates TL with volume to market still in Q3 ;)
Hmm NV40 or R420/423 ? That is the question :)
QuoteOriginally posted by Maddy@Feb 16 2004, 01:46 PM
Hmm NV40 or R420/423 ? That is the question :)
I believe the answer you are looking for begins with R......
If nVidia struggle to beat ATI when they are already on a 0.13 process, then when ATI move to it they will blow nVidia away. The NV40 would have to be something truly spectacular to both close the gap to ATI and move ahead of them imo.
TL.
Just spotted on beyond3D that ATI’s future high end part R420 made a small appearance. According to the Dutch Tweakers.net, in a short part discussing the GDDR-3 graphics memory, which currently seems to have speeds @ 500 - 700MHz (thus that is 1 - 1.4GHz effective as it's Double Data Rate).
The more intersting part was that ATI demonstrated a demo of the upcoming, DirectX9 title, Colin McRae Rally 4 on R420, which was quoted as running at 2 - 3 time faster than present DirectX9 capable hardware. Beyond3D contacted ATI to verify if this was R420 and they stated that they had demonstrated the title running on their future "Next Generation Hardware" which is as good an confirmation of this being R420 as you can get.
Darnit .. anyone wann a to buy a Radeon 9800 Pro ? ;)
Ooohhh, excitement knows no bounds!! :D :D
Looks like the race is hotting up??
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14373 (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14373)
Can't wait for Ford to release the next spec for my Anglia!! ;) :D :D
Well, at the end of the day it doesn't matter which is faster. What is important from our perspective is that both nVidia and ATi continue to flourish so that their competitiveness keeps new, faster hardware coming to market and prices dropping.
Long live them both I say :)
ATI R420 "skateboard" spotted
DDR 1 thing
THERE WILL be two versions of ATI's forthcoming R420 â€" one one based on high end memory DDR2. Or let's say GDDR 3 as Nvidia and ATI call it lately.
GDDR 3 is higher clock DDR 2 memory that uses similar DDR 2 commands. Hopefully it runs cooler then DDR 2, but bear in mind that the current Nvidia 5950 Ultra has its memory passively cooled at 950MHz.
ATI is not ready to talk about clock speeds but we guess that it will be close to 1000MHz, or that's what the firm hopes. ATI is famous for faster clocked memory able to match the performance of higher clocked memory cards.
Cards will be equipped with 256MB or DDR 1 memory 8x32 chips. The memory bus is going to be 256 bits wide, as with the R300, R350, 360 marchitecture. I expect that cards will outperform Radeon 9800XT if the chips are clocked properly. We still don’t know whether the slower memory version of R420 will have a chip that runs at the same speed.
The cards will be AGP 8X and VGA, DVI and VIVO ready, as well as supporting DirectX 9.0c ready and I guess that pixel shader 3.0 is under that spec as well.
"Skateboard" is the code name that these Canadian fellows have for this card, just wait and see what name it uses for R423 GDDR3. It will be related to snow as well, unless ATI has one of its famous meetings and decides to change the code name at the last minute!!
QuoteOriginally posted by Dingo@Feb 29 2004, 10:33 AM
The cards will be AGP 8X and VGA, DVI and VIVO ready, as well as supporting DirectX 9.0c ready and I guess that pixel shader 3.0 is under that spec as well.
Hmmm, no PCI-X? :unsure:
TL.
When exactly is PCI Express due to start appearing on motherboards?
I dont want to upgrade until it appears, since it seems to be such a major change in architechture...
QuoteOriginally posted by TuToNiC@Mar 4 2004, 02:32 AM
When exactly is PCI Express due to start appearing on motherboards?
I dont want to upgrade until it appears, since it seems to be such a major change in architechture...
AFAIAA we should start seeing volume production in Q2, so it's kind of imminent. But remember that several CPU sockets are also due to change in Q2/3 so any major upgrade might be best deferred until Q4. My next system upgrade will not be until Q4 at the earliest for these reasons and I suspect may slip back into 2005.
TL.
Hercules 3D Prophet 9800XT Classic 256MB at overclockers.
Unless i am mistaken has dropped a whole £10 .....Come on there boys keep it coming down. :D
:lol: I almost posted that this morning - it dropped overnight! But I but a £10 saving was below my minimum posting threshold :P
Let's hope the prices start toppling down in the immediate future.......
TL.
QuoteOriginally posted by TeaLeaf@Mar 5 2004, 08:33 PM
:lol: I almost posted that this morning - it dropped overnight! But I but a £10 saving was below my minimum posting threshold :P
Let's hope the prices start toppling down in the immediate future.......
TL.
I will have it before the LAN i just want it cheaper :D
Our intrepid reporters have been awake for the last 72 hours trying to break into both nVidia and AMD offices to bring you, the interested reader, the latest breaking news on the battle of the Titans...................and this just in!!
WE CAN NOW confirm that Nvidia will have two versions of the NV40 chip once it is ready to show it to the world.
As is now traditional, Nvidia will have one extremely expensive card that will cost about â,¬/$499. This card is expected to be faster clocked and it will have faster memory as well.
The memory target sits close to the 600MHz range but it's still being tested for the right speed. As previously suggested, the card will use GDDR 3 memory which consumes less power and runs cooler then DDR 2.
The NV40 non ultra, amateur version is going to be clocked lower but we don’t have any details how slower yet. The price will be around â,¬/$299.
Both boards will use similar memory configurations but we suspect that Nvidia might offer a 128 bit version of the card.
whilst across the city our erstwhile colleauges bring us this
The DDR 1 version of ATI cards with R420 chip is codenamed Skateboard here, and now it's the right time to reveal what the Olympic Snowboard codename means.
This is the most detailed batch of information that we've manage to get since this card is getting close to its announcement, but as we said it most likely won't be announced at SnowBIT as previously planned.
R420XT is the high end card â€" the fastest one in the class - where XT stands for extreme performance and it will rock at around 500MHz for the GPU and around 1000MHz for the memory. Bear in mind that those are preliminary results that might vary. This means that ATI plans to get the cards on these speeds.
The printed circuit board (PCB) will be a 10 layer design and the memory on this high end card will be GDDR 3 8Mx32 8 pieces of memory. The card is AGP 4X/ 8X.
............that's it, er yes, that is it................okay, back to bed, come on, all of you!!......big day tomorrow!! :wacko:
NO, WAIT, DON'T GO YET!!
..........and this just in on the telex........
NVIDIA'S NV40 is not going to be just fast in shaders and pixels, it will have some additional features that will be interesting to anybody that messes with Video.
The video capabilities of NV40 are quite something.
It seems that all NV4X generation of cards will feature very attractive video options.
Nvidia wants to promote NV4X generation of chips as the ones with high quality video, complete and ready for HDTV and PVR.
High quality video will brought motion adaptive de-interlacing, high quality scaling and filtering, good old video de-blocking and integrated TV encoder.
As for HDTV, Nvidia claims Transport stream handling, HDTV output (720p, 1080p, 480p CGMS) and HDCP - High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection as well as HDMI High-Definition Multimedia Interface support.
The PVR part is the most interesting as Nvidia claims that the NV4X generation will have support for no more and no less then MPEG 1/2/4 encode and decode as well as WMV9 decode acceleration.
This means that all decoding and encoding operation previously done by software and very CPU dependant will be able to be processed on NV4X chips. We are not aware specifically how Nvidia plans to do that but it sounds promising.
NV40's introduction is just weeks away.
..........there, you will all sleep soundly in your beds now that you know!! :whistle: :D
Here we go again ;) :D ...............
THE BIGGEST and most closely-guarded secret about ATI's upcoming R420 chip, in either R420XT or R420PRO guise, is the number of pipelines the chip will use.
But now we can reveal that the R420 design features 12 working piplines from a possible maximum of 16.
The ATI R420 chip seems to be a heavily-tweaked R360 core, with added pipelines, built on a .13 marchitecture that allows the chips to run faster than ATI's current high-end chip milestone, a 412MHz R360.
As we previously said, the relative frequency numbers for this chip will be close to 500/1000MHz in its XT version; it will use GDDR 3 memory that consumes less power, and yet gives out less heat, than DDR 2.
Its all about the brawn this time, ATI says. And, with six vertex shader units, this chip ought to be very fast.
Despite protests, the outlook remains very cloudy for the upcoming performance crown battle between the R420 and Nvidia's NV40.
While on the other side of town...........
AFTER DAYS, nay weeks of inquiring we can now confirm that NV40 is not 8x2 marchitecture part as we previously suggested. Nvidia is behaving as if the NV40 was the Crown Jewels of Her Brittanic Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Fish can fly, but it's been spreading flying red herrings.
Nvidia is telling "selected people" that NV40 is indeed 210 millions of transistor chip with 16 pipelines as we reported a few weeks ago.
The other side of this NV40 coin is that the real Mc Coy the real NV40 card that was taped out quite some time ago is actually going to be KIA [Killed in action]. Very knowledgeable friends told us recently in the Vienna Opera house that NV40 with 16 pipes and 210 millions of transistor is completely other chip then original NV40.
What actually happened is that Nvidia recently learned about R420 marchitecture and this entire 12x1 story and, that they will eventually end up in second place and decided to can NV40 project and to go immediately with NV45.
NV45 is the name for PCI Express NV40 but apparently this new chip is a rushed new project that Nvidia wanted to save for later.
Still as a consequence our Opera loving friend suggested that there is no possible way that Nvidia might have a working version of the chip at Cebit or if they have it its early silicon for showing off. You can forget about launch party at CeBIT or anytime soon, we are given to understand. Even if the company launches it in April it will be a pure paper launch as NVDA cannot deliver it so soon.
As the case is altered, Nvidia might win performance crown again but it's absolutely certain that ATI R420XT will be the first next generation card in shops.
So which one do I buy?
refer to the manual Ron.........look on page 66, cross reference with page 48, multiply the outcome by page 71 and divide by the appendix ;) :whistle:
I dont have an appendix - it was removed when I was 6. If I divide by it I get infinity. Is there an Infinity graphics card?
QuoteOriginally posted by BlueBall@Mar 17 2004, 09:26 AM
I dont have an appendix - it was removed when I was 6. If I divide by it I get infinity. Is there an Infinity graphics card?
Good question, I've got the same, also no appendix anymore, some surgeon took it out. The b*st***, gave me alot of pain.
Ah, that'll be human case mods then....have you tried a cold cathode for that or better yet get virus protection from Norton or the like!! <_< :D
QuoteIs there an Infinity graphics card?
Ive got an infinity sub does that count? ;)
Nope fraid not DA.
Nice try though.
Just in time for the LAN?!!
ATI will ship its much-anticipated R420 chip later this month as the Radeon X800 Pro. The part's 26 April debut will be followed a month later by the Radeon X800 XT on 31 May.
So claims Anandtech, citing unnamed vendor sources and a glance at ATI's roadmap.
If the date is accurate, it puts ATI just 13 days behind Nvidia's NV40 launch on 13 April. NV40 will surface as the GeForce 6800 and is likely to form the basis for other series 6000 GeForce parts. Note the lack of the 'FX' branding - Nvidia has dropped it, Anandtech claims.
The X800 Pro will ship with 256MB of GDDR 3 graphics RAM across a 256-bit memory bus, but a revised version with 512MB of memory is expected later this year. The report also forecasts the arrival of an X800 SE, which supports 128MB of vanilla DDR SDRAM.
The R420 is an AGP 8x part - the native PCI Express version, the R423, will launch on 14 June, the report claims. It too will be offered as the Radeon X800. Both versions are expected to clock at around 500MHz with 1GHz memory clock frequencies. They feature eight-stage pipelines with six vertex shaders.
Expect to see Radeon X600 and X300 products in due course, we're told, as the RV380 and RV370 parts come on stream. These represent ATI's first 110nm parts.
Meanwhile, ATI's Radeon 9100 IGP is due for an update, apparently, in a few months' time. The revision, codenamed 'RS350', will support Intel's LGA775 CPU interface.
Further down the line, late in Q3, ATI will offer three new Pentium 4 chipsets, currently dubbed the RS400, RC400 and RU400. The first provides PCI Express graphics and non-graphics add-in card buses, along with a dual-channel memory controller. The other two will offer single-channel memory support, while the latter will not support external graphics cards.
AMD isn't being left out, courtesy of RS480 and RX480 chipsets, the first with integrated graphics the second without it.
....and on another street corner!!
Nvidia will unveil its next-generation graphics chip - almost certainly the long-awaited NV40 - on 13 April.
So claims a source close to the company cited by Extreme Tech's Mark Hachman.
Alas, the source proved unable to say much about the chip itself. Unconfirmed reports from a variety of websites suggest it will be a DirectX 9.0 part with 16 parallel pipelines running through enhanced pixel shaders.
The NV40 is not expected to support PCI Express directly but ship with an AGP-to-PCI Express bridge chip. One source Hachman spoke to said the chip's AGP bus will be boosted to an unofficial 16x spec. to match the needs of PCI Express. Certainly, Nvidia's first line of PCI Express parts - the GeForce PCX 5950, PCX 5750, PCX 5300 and PCX 4300 - are all AGP 8x chips that ship with a bridge part.
If the NV40 is launched next month, it marks the end of a long wait for the part, which was originally roadmapped for a late 2003 debut. When that was the case, Nvidia had a revised version, the NV45, on its roadmap for a Q2 2004 introduction.
The Nv45 was due to be Nvidia's first native PCI Express part, with the NV40 offered in both AGP 8x and PCI Express forms.
Recent speculation has centred on major design changes made by Nvidia to the NV40 core. Certainly, ATI is believed to have binned its next-generation R400 part in favour of a souped-up version of its R300 architecture, the R420. The R420 is believed to sport a native PCI Express interface and is expected to debut in the coming months
I've no idea what you've just said, but I know I want one :P
QuoteOriginally posted by RizZy@Apr 8 2004, 09:56 AM
I've no idea what you've just said, but I know I want one :P
That's the power of advertising!! ;) :D :D
I have the ASUS 9800XT and not impressed......
............Because??
Just can't really see any difference.....
Would it be because the 9800XT does things that are not being done in todays games yet?
It could be....
I was expecting my FPS to increase by some margin on the games i already play and it has increased by an average of 10-15 fps.
UT2004 i was hoping to get an average of 100fps and get 60-70 an increase of ^as above^ 10-15 fps from my Gainward GF4 4600.
I could also get a refreshrate upto 160 Hz on the GF4 and this XT will only go upto 100 Hz at 1152 x 864.
Im just not impressed with this for £320