The Fermi!

[gbeauche]

Then you could also buy a new monitor/tv to watch bluray in 3d. At least vp4 should support h264 mvc which all cheap g210/gt220/gt240 have got. Has ati announced something for their chips yet? I doubt so as "UVD2" is not even fast enough for more than h264 l4.1...

1) H.264 MVC support is in GT215 chips only, i.e. G240 with VP5, not in G210 for example.

2) There is no HW decoder generally "fast enough" for more than L4.1. All current HW decoders (including NVIDIA) are designed for H.264 High-profile @ L4.1. Higher levels may be supported, but with compromises in terms of speed or features. NVIDIA won't advertise L5.1 because real-time constraints can't be fully guaranteed.

[BlackStar]

Even though DX11 isn't widely used yet (how could it be, when DX11-capable cards only became widely available this month? (Widely referring to plentiful and cheap mid-range parts)

On the other hand, even without DX11 the 5xx0-series pretty much own everything else on the market right now. Previous gen cards are already a hard sell and getting worse as 5xx0 prices are starting to go down.

Fermi right now is set for a spectular FX 5800 Ultra-level failure: late, expensive, power-hungry and potentially underperforming in actual games. Nvidia's slides say that Fermi wins 5870 by 60% in Unigine/tesselation, which is impressive - until you realize that they are comparing a potential $600 card (Fermi) to a $350 card. In other words (speculation):

(a) there's a good chance that Ati's 5970 is very close or faster than Fermi.
(b) the difference is likely to be lower than 60% in actual games (this is a tech demo showcasing a very specific part of the pipeline - actual games tend to be more balanced in performance)
(c) Fermi may be launched at a lower price than previous Nvidia high-end parts (typically $600-$700). With a little luck, it Fermi might go down to ~$500 - still pricey, but a much better value proposition given the 60% (max) performance delta.

One of the links posted here mentions a late March launch date. Come on Nvidia, we need some competition here!

[Kano]

@gbeauche

If there are VP5 cards then this should be marked here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDPAU

or

ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Li...DME/README.txt

VP2 = VDPAU FEATURE SET A
VP3 = VDPAU FEATURE SET B
VP4 = VDPAU FEATURE SET C

So VP5 would be a still unknown VDPAU FEATURE SET D in theory. I do not believe in marketing speach of nvidia, all those mentioned cards usually have got the same engine.

[deanjo]

1) H.264 MVC support is in GT215 chips only, i.e. G240 with VP5, not in G210 for example.

2) There is no HW decoder generally "fast enough" for more than L4.1. All current HW decoders (including NVIDIA) are designed for H.264 High-profile @ L4.1. Higher levels may be supported, but with compromises in terms of speed or features. NVIDIA won't advertise L5.1 because real-time constraints can't be fully guaranteed.

Just for your reference:

    NVIDIA GPU product                    Device PCI ID      VDPAU features
    ----------------------------------    ---------------    ---------------[FONT=arial]
[/FONT]    GeForce GT 220                        0x0A20             C
    GeForce 210                           0x0A23             C
    GeForce GT 230M                       0x0A2A             C
    GeForce GT 240M                       0x0A34             C
    GeForce G210                          0x0A60             C
    GeForce 205                           0x0A62             C
    GeForce 310                           0x0A63             C
    GeForce 210                           0x0A65             C
    GeForce 310                           0x0A66             C
    GeForce G210M                         0x0A74             C
    GeForce GT 240                        0x0CA3             C
    GeForce GTS 260M                      0x0CA8             C
    GeForce GTS 250M                      0x0CA9             C
    Quadro FX 380 LP                      0x0A78             C

As mentioned above all these cards carry the same PureVideo engine.

[gbeauche]

As mentioned above all these cards carry the same PureVideo engine.

Or the required VDPAU features implementing H.264 MVC are not available yet, so be the best matching feature set is still marked as "C" and the rest is not advertised... NVIDIA doesn't do paper launch so they will report things when proper drivers are available.

[deanjo]

Or the required VDPAU features implementing H.264 MVC are not available yet, so be the best matching feature set is still marked as "C" and the rest is not advertised... NVIDIA doesn't do paper launch so they will report things when proper drivers are available.

Well when feature set c cards debuted Nvidia announced it's capabilities before vdpau even had support for those extra capabilities.

[deanjo]

All and all I don't think we would see MVC support in vdpau anyways as there still isn't a "legal" way of playing back bluray in linux.

[Kano]

Well i have got an old asus v7700 deluxe with shutter glasses, but no connector to use with new vga cards. So the stereo glasses have been introduced very long ago with crt monitors. Currently the 120 hz tft full hd monitors are only "new" thing. The alternative way reduces the effective resolution by 50% and is cheaper however as only pol filter glasses are needed. I see no reason why h264 mvc would not be possible to decode correctly on linux as m2ts. The same way you can use to watch youtube videos too...

[deanjo]

Well i have got an old asus v7700 deluxe with shutter glasses, but no connector to use with new vga cards. So the stereo glasses have been introduced very long ago with crt monitors. Currently the 120 hz tft full hd monitors are only "new" thing. The alternative way reduces the effective resolution by 50% and is cheaper however as only pol filter glasses are needed. I see no reason why h264 mvc would not be possible to decode correctly on linux as m2ts. The same way you can use to watch youtube videos too...

BTW as a side note, a 120Hz monitor or LCD TV really isn't required. Many plasma TV's are capable of doing 3D. The new Nvidia glasses work fine on my Samsung plasma.

[movieman]

I have one issue with the enormous amount of power this chip uses, if the unofficial benchmarks are even remotely accurate that I have seen, all I can say is I expected more out of a card using 280ish watts.

Sadly, I wasn't: from the benchmarks I've seen, ATI's shaders have been substantially more efficient than Nvidia's for some time, presumably because ATI are still making graphics chips whereas Nvidia have been trying to produce vector processing chips and hope they could still do graphics. I can understand Nvidia wanting to find new markets for their hardware, but they seem to have put those new markets above their traditional market where they make most of their money.

To me this does really look like another 'Geforce FX' if the articles I've seen are correct; which is unfortunate because I was planning to build another gaming/video editing Windows PC later this year and Avid don't like ATI cards.