Forums | MacLife

I think this needs to go up in In Tech News. There's a lot more than gaming significance to this.

GT300 delayed till 2010
GT215/216/218 MIA as well
By Charlie Demerjian    Tuesday, 5 May 2009, 16:25

IT LOOKS LIKE Nvidia engineering is getting right back into its old fighting form once again. The GT300 chip is delayed until 2010, and the GT21x parts seem to be MIA.

The big news is of course the GT300 delay. A few weeks ago it was promising insiders parts in October, a goal that was laughably unrealistic given that the tapeout was set for June. It seems that realism might be poking it's head through the Santa Clara FUD, er... fog, and NV has told those who need to know that it will be Q1 2010 now. Given its timeliness of late, we think it should append a bold "Maybe...." to that though.

We are not sure if it is a delay to the tapeout, or a delay for said fog lifting, but I would bet on tapeout delay. In fact, if I were to shake the magic 8-ball of GPU futures very hard, I would bet that tapeout was delayed, and it is still not being realistic on time to market. That said, as of last week, sources deep inside big green had not gotten their GT300 themed tapeout party hats and related bonus materials (and one of these too).

That brings us to the GT215/216/218. They were set for about now earlier this year, then nothing. The silence is deafening. In fact, the silence is so deafening that Nvidia is jumping up and down talking about mobile 40nm parts now instead. We hear it is having massive 40nm yield problems, something you simply can't have for your intended high volume parts.

So, to change the subject, 40nm is all about mobile now! Ignore the fact that ATI has a very successful 40nm part out in the 4770 - Nvidia is telling OEMs to not position 9800 products against that because it can't match the price. The 40nm products that should compete with it are.... Mobile, did we mention Mobile?

We are hearing rumors of an editors day in mid-May, so the usual 2-week time line to introduction puts the 40nm launches at Computex. That means Nvidia won't have a competitive part in the meat of the market for almost all of Q2.

But all is not lost, we also hear Jen-Hsun is being tapped for a Hot Chips 21 keynote. That should be a morale booster for the green team, and if minor miracles happen, he might even have early silicon to show off. Given the rest of Nvidia's competitive situation, that will be the (singular) bright spot for Nvidia in the near future. µ

Charlie's take on the GT300 and the upcoming ATi/NV DX11 warz. Looks like another rough year for the green team.

THERE'S A LOT of fake news going around about the upcoming GPUish chip called the GT300. Let's clear some air on this Larrabee-lite architecture.

First of all, almost everything you have heard about the two upcoming DX11 architectures is wrong. There is a single source making up news, and second rate sites are parroting it left and right. The R870 news is laughably inaccurate, and the GT300 info is quite curious too. Either ATI figured out a way to break the laws of physics with memory speed and Nvidia managed to almost double its transistor density - do the math on purported numbers, they aren't even in the ballpark - or someone is blatantly making up numbers.

That said, lets get on with what we know, and delve into the architectures a bit. The GT300 is going to lose, badly, in the GPU game, and we will go over why and how.

First a little background science and math. There are three fabrication processes out there that ATI and Nvidia use, all from TSMC, 65nm, 55nm and 40nm. They are each a 'half step' from the next, and 65nm to 40nm is a full step. If you do the math, the shrink from 65nm to 55nm ((55 * 55) / (65 *65) ~= 0.72) saves you about 1/4 the area, that is, 55nm is 0.72 of the area of 65nm for the same transistor count. 55nm shrunk to 40nm gives you 0.53 of the area, and 65nm shrunk to 40nm gives you 0.38 of the area. We will be using these later.

Second is the time it takes to do things. We will use the best case scenarios, with a hot lot from TSMC taking a mere six weeks, and the time from wafers in to boards out of an AIB being 12 weeks. Top it off with test and debug times of two weeks for first silicon and one week for each subsequent spin. To simplify rough calculations, all months will be assumed to have 4 weeks.

Okay, ATI stated that it will have DX11 GPUs on sale when Windows 7 launches, purportedly October 23, 2009. Since this was done in a financial conference call, SEC rules applying, you can be pretty sure ATI is serious about this. Nvidia on the other hand basically dodged the question, hard, in its conference call the other day.

At least you should know why Nvidia picked the farcical date of October 15 for its partners. Why farcical? Lets go over the numbers once again.

much, much moar

There've been several good stories I've had to pass on lately, but with summer '09 arriving on 6/21, this may be the last post in this epic thread. *sniff* It's been good. Well, onwards...

June GPU Market Update: Price Compression Benefits
It's a great time to buy a GPU, especially if you're in the market for an AMD part. Prices are low and...

Things have been quiet on the GPU front for a while now, but there has definitely been activity on the pricing front. With the economy in the toilet, spending on hardware and games has declined; AMD and NVIDIA are fighting for your purchase. Prices are fairly compressed between $100 and $200, and spending just a little more can get you a whole lot of bang. We'll start on the low end and move up as we go. 

We use price and availability at newegg.com as an indicator of the broader market in order to simplify our data and give more clear recommendations.

Sub $100 Cards

At the lower end of the spectrum, the Radeon HD 4670 can be had for less than $70 USD (down to $50 if you don't mind the rebate hassle). This is a solid card and a good way to go for people who want a well rounded card. It's not the best performer out there, but it offers a good performance boost over built in graphics hardware and leads cheaper add-in cards as well.
..

June GPU Market Update: Price Compression Benefits  Books might ph34r.

Related story:

Desperately Seeking Quality LCDs
A while back, BenQ sent us their FP241VW LCD, an expensive high-end offering with some interesting features. Can this A-MVA panel best the competition, and does it even matter?...

http://www.anandtech.com/displays/showdoc.aspx?i=3584

There are more, like one on new NV mobile GPUs, Samsung(?) OLED displays and more, but time does not offer. Soon. See you in summer, at least.