Question:
DX10 Graphics cards...
Tom's just posted their overview of the new graphics cards, and while all the new stuff I'm going to be able to do/see in games sounds cool, part of it really freaked me out. On page two of the article they mention that there is the possibility of foot long cards that require whole new cases, and that many of the DX10 cards might suck down 200-250 watts on their own...
Am I the only one who thinks this is clearly insane? Enthusiast market or not, I don't see many people paying $600 or so (for a top end card at launch), for the privilege of being able to drop another $200 on a power supply and another $150 on a case. Particularly when you consider that power requirements have been rapidly increasing, and there is a good chance you'll get to do the same thing all over again in 6 months to a year...
Maybe this belongs more in the news section, but its a desktop article mainly (although the thought of getting a foot long card that requires 250 watts of power even in a DTR notebook worries me...). Anyway, here's the link to the article:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/10/..._new_graphics/
Answer:
Re: DX10 Graphics cards...
This is getting pretty out of hand. Thank goodness at least the power suckage on processors has gotten under control. You'd think with the way cores having been shrinking and getting more efficient on the CPU side of the house that GPUs would be able to follow suit.
Answer:
Re: DX10 Graphics cards...
This is getting pretty out of hand. Thank goodness at least the power suckage on processors has gotten under control. You'd think with the way cores having been shrinking and getting more efficient on the CPU side of the house that GPUs would be able to follow suit.
The processes used on GPU cores have been shrinking. The problem is that with the extra space, they add more pipelines, bigger memory bus, etc. I'm still not 100% sure why unified shaders result in such a massive increase in size and power consumption.
But keep in mind that while the next generation of GPU cores is stupid huge, this generation - at least as far as nVidia is concerned (ignoring the 7950GX2) - has gotten MORE efficient, drawing the same or less current as their predecessors, occupying the same or less space, but offering substantially improved performance.
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Re: DX10 Graphics cards...
Pulp, you know WAY too much about GPU architecture, lol. I'm looking forward to you updating your GPU guide when DX10 parts start to filter down to notebooks.
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Re: DX10 Graphics cards...
I wonder how they could possibly put those kind of cards in a notebook...
Answer:
Re: DX10 Graphics cards...
They could go retro (which is the hip thing with all the kids nowadays...) and rework the old CRT "laptop" chassis with a giant fan out the side to duct the air off. Look on the bright side, you could probably use it to boil tea and dry your clothes as well as do spreadsheets...
Okay, sarcastic bit over, I have no clue, they have no clue, but if the high end DX10 chips end up that big and take that much juice then it is going to be quite some time before any of them show up in laptops. I don't think even AW or the other boutique folks that are willing to make some major trade-offs to get the best gaming power are going to be able to make that happen.
My point originally was that they need to get a handle on this thing, 350-400 watts was plenty for a PSU for the longest time, and we've gone from needing 500, to 600, and on up. 550w or so is the smallest I'd put in a machine, and there are KILOWATT supplies on the market. If you had told anyone a year or so ago that you were going to need a kilowatt supply to run the latest and greatest graphics card/processor/ram solution they'd probably have called you bad names to your face.
Answer:
Re: DX10 Graphics cards...
The processes used on GPU cores have been shrinking. The problem is that with the extra space, they add more pipelines, bigger memory bus, etc. I'm still not 100% sure why unified shaders result in such a massive increase in size and power consumption.
But keep in mind that while the next generation of GPU cores is stupid huge, this generation - at least as far as nVidia is concerned (ignoring the 7950GX2) - has gotten MORE efficient, drawing the same or less current as their predecessors, occupying the same or less space, but offering substantially improved performance.
The 7950GX2 is pretty efficient too, considering it's two GPU's.
Anyway, the main reason for the increase in size and power for unified shaders is probably (Just guessing with all the followin) the extra complexity. Suddenly every shader unit has to be a lot more complex (because it has to be able to handle vertex, pixel and geometry shaders, where previous architectures could specialize each shader unit for one task, making them a lot smaller and simpler)
And then there's all the logic needed to coordinate all these shaders.
(On CPU's, one of the big offenders in size/complexity/power consumption is the out-of-order logic, the units that handle distributing instructions to all the different execution units. With unified shaders, the same becomes a problem on GPU's. Suddenly you need to figure out what each shader unit is doing, when it's done, and where you can most efficiently send the next pixel/vertex/geometry shader to be executed.
Answer:
Re: DX10 Graphics cards...
It's worth pointing out that ATI and nVidia have gone on record as saying this is about the biggest, most power-hungry they're going to let their cards get.
This is really first-generation architecture, anyhow. While I think it's going to wind up taking a LOT longer for it to make it into notebooks than current architecture does, it's certainly not at all unheard of that we'll have DX10 parts in notebooks by this time next year.