The Fermi!

[Kano]

Only ati fanboys buy those cards for Linux usage.

[L33F3R]

Twice the size, and more than twice the cost for not twice the performance of a 5870. Nvidia screwed up and only fanboys refuse to see it.

well how many fps do you get in doom 3? Chances are my crusty old 6200 can whip your 5870's ass due to the current state of the free drivers; and the binary are not even worth talking about. Thank you but im not spending $300 too see quake 3 almost work right.

[BlackStar]

well how many fps do you get in doom 3? Chances are my crusty old 6200 can whip your 5870's ass due to the current state of the free drivers; and the binary are not even worth talking about. Thank you but im not spending $300 too see quake 3 almost work right.

If there's one thing that works well with fglrx, that is 3d. The other is power management.

Sorry, but your trolling attempt is laughable.

[Ex-Cyber]

Not sure if it's still done, but they used to have large FPGA (or similar) devices to simulate video cards. Abysmal performance, but you could run and test the design logic from them. This was when chips were a good deal less complicated though, so maybe their design methods have changed since then.

-- Additional: when I say "they", I mean companies in general, not specifically nvidia.

That could be, though I'm almost laughing trying to picture what it would look like. If my math is right, one of Fermi's 512 shader cores might fit in a high-end FPGA. I'm thinking that a full prototype would have to be a rack full of custom backplanes, with each card hosting one or two shader cores. It might even make sense to do it, given the cost of producing an actual chip.

[bridgman]

The hardware emulator systems used to have boxes with hundreds of large FPGAs per box, with multiple boxes connected over a thick mat of ribbon cables. Imagine the innards of a Cray 1. These days I believe the FPGAs have been replaced with hundreds of custom RISC processors per box, but you still have to keep buying boxes until you have enough capacity to fit the GPU (or at least enough blocks to handle the specific testing you want to do at the moment).

There are two big benefits to these boxes - the first and most obvious is that you get to run "full chip" testing before taping out, and the second is that you have access to all of the internal logic nodes so when the chip isn't doing what you expect you have a much better chance of figuring out why.

Hardware emulation systems are godawful expensive so they tend to run 24/7 with engineers booking on the systems at all hours of the day. On HD4xxx I think our video BIOS team had the slot from 2AM to 5AM ;(

[deanjo]

the fermi's the press will get for testing, will be selected cards. Don#t expect the same performance with the cards you will be able to buy.

Twice the size, and more than twice the cost for not twice the performance of a 5870. Nvidia screwed up and only fanboys refuse to see it.

Pot... kettle.....black

[rbmorse]

It's a dirty job, but it has to be done.

[energyman]

too bad Nvidia has not one single card to compete with ATI at the moment. Not one.

5670 is out and destroyed the last place for them to hide.

And video acceleration? All I hear Nvidia is not so great either (in windows). And I don't like drivers constantly removing features.

So Nvidia has no hardware now. They don't have any OSS drivers to speak off. And all their hope rests on a card too big, too hot and too expensive. A card designed in a way that makes downscaling it almost impossible.

Whoever buys Nvidia hardware must have their heads examined.

[energyman]

well how many fps do you get in doom 3? Chances are my crusty old 6200 can whip your 5870's ass due to the current state of the free drivers; and the binary are not even worth talking about. Thank you but im not spending $300 too see quake 3 almost work right.

well, since there are no open source drivers for the 6200 ... you just lost the argument from the start.

I just lean back and rest comfortable on the fact that AMD already started to release information about the 5XXX series. While Nvidia can't even be assed to help with documentation for Geforce 4, FX or 6.

[tball]

well, since there are no open source drivers for the 6200 ... you just lost the argument from the start.

I just lean back and rest comfortable on the fact that AMD already started to release information about the 5XXX series. While Nvidia can't even be assed to help with documentation for Geforce 4, FX or 6.

Well spoken..

But either way he is trolling. Fglrx is running just fine today for most of us. Seriously the only left to be done for fglrx is stabilizing of xvba and fixing the annoying maximizing bug (which can be fixed by a patched xorg-server).

I don't think he knows what he is talking about.