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NVIDIA's upcoming Summer 2008 lineup gets some additional details

Later this week NVIDIA will enact an embargo on its upcoming next-generation graphics core, codenamed D10U.  The launch schedule of this processor, verified by DailyTech, claims the GPU will make its debut as two separate graphics cards, currently named GeForce GTX 280 (D10U-30) and GeForce GTX 260 (D10U-20). 

The GTX 280 enables all features of the D10U processor; the GTX 260 version will consist of a significantly cut-down version of the same GPU.  The D10U-30 will enable all 240 unified stream processors designed into the processor.  NVIDIA documentation claims these second-generation unified shaders perform 50 percent better than the shaders found on the D9 cards released earlier this year.

The main difference between the two new GeForce GTX variants revolves around the number of shaders and memory bus width.  Most importantly, NVIDIA disables 48 stream processors on the GTX 260. GTX 280 ships with a 512-bit memory bus capable of supporting 1GB GDDR3 memory; the GTX 260 alternative has a 448-bit bus with support for 896MB.  

GTX 280 and 260 add virtually all of the same features as GeForce 9800GTX: PCIe 2.0, OpenGL 2.1, SLI and PureVideoHD.  The company also claims both cards will support two SLI-risers for 3-way SLI support.

Unlike the upcoming AMD Radeon 4000 series, currently scheduled to launch in early June, the D10U chipset does not support DirectX extentions above 10.0.  Next-generation Radeon will also ship with GDDR5 while the June GeForce refresh is confined to just GDDR3.

The GTX series is NVIDIA's first attempt at incorporating the PhysX stream engine into the D10U shader engine.  The press decks currently do not shed a lot of information on this support, and the company will likely not elaborate on this before the June 18 launch date.

After NVIDIA purchased PhysX developer AGEIA in February 2008, the company announced all CUDA-enabled processors would support PhysX.  NVIDIA has not delivered on this promise yet, though D10U will support CUDA, and therefore PhysX, right out of the gate.

NVIDIA's documentation does not list an estimated street price for the new cards.

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No DX10.1?
By L33tMasta on 5/20/2008 4:18:17 PM , Rating: 5
Are you kidding? Why doesn't is support DX10.1?




RE: No DX10.1?
By robert5c on 5/20/2008 4:28:20 PM , Rating: 1
what do you need 10.1 now for?


RE: No DX10.1?
By L33tMasta on 5/20/2008 4:29:38 PM , Rating: 5
What do you NOT need it for? it's the newest API thus the hardware devs need to support it.


RE: No DX10.1?
By dsx724 on 5/20/2008 4:37:34 PM , Rating: 5
DirectX 10.1 introduces a new shader model as well as more flexibility. Flexibility costs in performance which is why Nvidia is clinging to DX10. ATI has far superior hardware in terms of programability and Nvidia knows it can't match ATI's performance if it upgrades the GPU's to comply with 10.1 spec.


RE: No DX10.1?
By L33tMasta on 5/20/2008 4:39:01 PM , Rating: 2
It also introduces "free" 4xAA with no performance hit.\


RE: No DX10.1?
By dubldwn on 5/20/2008 4:56:21 PM , Rating: 4
Free or required?


RE: No DX10.1?
By leexgx on 5/20/2008 5:38:52 PM , Rating: 3
required to support 4x hardware aa
not that the game has to use it thought


RE: No DX10.1?
By thartist on 5/21/2008 2:18:19 PM , Rating: 2
Yes of course, as if AA would now be magically invisible to horsepower requirements.


RE: No DX10.1?
By MrPoletski on 5/21/2008 10:55:28 PM , Rating: 2
Tile based renderers can do MSAA for virtually no performance cost.


RE: No DX10.1?
By gochichi on 5/27/2008 4:09:23 PM , Rating: 2
It is certainly possible to design hardware that would take care of AA with no performance degradation. In fact, I am surprised an unswitchable 4XAA hasn't been released long ago.

It would just be a matter of making the hardware just do anti-aliasing without asking drivers, games, or user settings. It is similar to saying that you can have a printer connected to your computer without performance degradation (you can), but more hardware is necessary (the printer). It is also similar to 3D acceleration in general... this hardware could be called "AA-accelerator" and it could certainly create a scenario where turning AA off would offer absolutely no performance benefit.

I look forward to the day where AA is considered at the hardware level to the degree that turning it off offers no benefit, as it stands I always err towards turning it off because any degree of added smoothness is always welcome. Even if it's a change of 60fps to 90 fps I still disable AA, and this is a failure of the hardware. The more specific the hardware, the more performance you'll get from it. Currently, the GPU is handling AA though some generalized processor, and it would be best if AA was a separate process done by its specific processor (or portion thereof).


RE: No DX10.1?
By StevoLincolnite on 5/21/2008 12:46:21 AM , Rating: 5
There is also the issue of future compatibility, this is the exact problem ATI had with the Radeon x850 series, they were SM2 capable, not SM3 like nVidia cards, then games like Bioshock were released which required SM3 hardware, despite the x850 being more than enough to run the game at fairly good settings, it failed because it didn't meet all the check boxes, so can we expect the same from the Direct X 10 cards in the future?


RE: No DX10.1?
By Jedi2155 on 5/21/2008 2:52:16 AM , Rating: 4
It is also the same issue Nvidia had with their DX8 cards when Battlefield 2 came out. All of Nvidia's DX8 cards didn't support it while ATI still had support with their DX8.1 based R200 and their more advanced Pixel Shader 1.4 while Nvidia only did up to 1.1 with the Geforce 3 and Geforce 4 Ti.

So yes...there is a concern for DX10.1 if developers choose to support it. Of course we don't really know till a big game hits....


RE: No DX10.1?
By StevoLincolnite on 5/21/2008 8:41:18 AM , Rating: 3
The Geforce 4 Ti Series was Direct X 8.1 cards, however they were still limited to SM 1.3, not 1.1 as you claim and still below the level of 1.4 that was required.

The Geforce 4 MX440 was a big killer in the end, it was faster than the Geforce FX 5200, yet it could not do any form of Pixel Shader work outside of the Fixed Function arena, thus even though people got Oblivion to run on the Geforce 3 Ti200 and Geforce FX 5200 - the Gefore 4 MX440 had no hope thanks to it being a Geforce 2 on Steroids. (Direct X 7 class Requirement for Old Oblivion is Direct X 8 class).
Heck, even Id Software said that the Geforce 4 MX440 would hold back games graphics because of it's limited feature set.
Yet because of this, people with a Geforce 256 released in 1999 could play games such as Half Life 2 which came out in 2004, which is 5 years of gaming thanks to probably the Geforce 4 MX, which had a huge market share.

ATI aren't innocent either, with the Radeon 9200 series, although not on as large of a scale as the MX440 was.
Thank goodness nVidia and ATI stopped that practice a long time ago.


RE: No DX10.1?
By PhantomRogue on 5/21/08, Rating: -1
RE: No DX10.1?
By omnicronx on 5/21/08, Rating: -1
RE: No DX10.1?
By afkrotch on 5/21/08, Rating: -1
RE: No DX10.1?
By fikimiki on 5/21/08, Rating: -1
RE: No DX10.1?
By afkrotch on 5/21/08, Rating: -1
RE: No DX10.1?
By DigitalFreak on 5/21/2008 3:55:43 PM , Rating: 2
Well, this sheds more light on the removal of DX10.1 from Assassin's Creed.