ATI to launch DirectX 11 GPUs in seven weeks (Sept 1x)

Nvidia stated that they were skipping DX10.1 a long time ago as it only makes certain things mandatory from the 10.0 spec.

DX10's failure was all Vista's bad rap due to the press chewing it up. Regardless there were a couple of good games that looked and played better in DX10. DirectX 11 is largely backwards compatible to DX10 hardware so there is no need to shell out for a new graphics card if its not that old unless you just got to have Shader Model 5.0 and Hardware Tessellation that badly. A lot of DX10 ATI cards already have a tessellation capability anyway.

Hopefully with Windows 7's success, people can finally see game makers take full advantage of the API instead of just God Rays, higher textures and volumetric smoke.

There is a lot more to the story when it comes to us not adopting DX10.1

It wasn't so much an issue of us being lazy or stiffing the customer. It was purely for the reasons that DX10 was seen as roadblock to R&D, and the feature sets and runtime code were presented too late (if at all) to our development teams. By the time Microsoft actually allowed a full code release of Vista and DX10, it was too late. Blame Microsoft for that one.

They have taken a different approach with Windows7, and it will show in card release timing, driver stability, and support by game developers this time around.

Thankfully, Microsoft got a clue about how to present code and deal with Ring0 implementation. You can't just drop your baggage at the developers doorstep and say "pick that up would you?" They learned their lesson, and are taking steps to fixing it.


As for driver issues...

Let me break some shocking news on that front. We and ATi are fed up with game companies expecting us to add in driver fixes for their shady game engine code. A few companies that come to mind are Activision, Blizzard (by far the worst...), EA Europe, Capcom, LucasArts, Rockstar, and Bethesda. All of these companies are notorious for having significant amounts of holes in their code that they expect us to fill, because they can get away with it.

There is an unbelievable amount of driver fixes for WoW, Oblivion, and GTA4 to name a few (we are talking millions of lines of code per game) This isn't just us, but ATi as well (though I don't know ATi's specific numbers). Game developers need to take more responsibility for their shady coding techniques and the shortcuts they take that our driver teams have to attempt to clean up. If you play WoW, for example, you would know how terrible Dalaran is coded... and the vast majority of Northrend for that matter.

But, not all developers are known as bad eggs when it comes to code. Want to know one of the best companies in the world for engine design? iD Software! They make impeccable engines that require little driver optimization. More developers should take some lessons from companies like iD and Epic Games (developers of the Unreal engine).


As for nVidia in this whole launch issue:

We are having some issues with our chip design and TSMC's 40nm process; it's true. Yields are low (I cannot discuss details on numbers at this time), and there isn't much we can do about it but do an A2 spin. This issue will be corrected, and we think that GT300 will prove to be an excellent purchase option for Windows7 users who want to get the most out of their OS and gaming experience.

Suffice to say, ATi is experiencing similar yield issues, but I cannot and will not speak for their release time frames. They have a radically different chip design, with more PCB focus; whereas GT300 is more chip centric. It is our belief that GT300 will prove to be the best card you can buy, and will provide more than enough performance for even the most demanding enthusiast.

In a nutshell... we are confident that GT300 will prove to be an excellent solution and will take better advantage of the Windows7 environment while taking next generation gaming to the next level. Because, we have a chip that can do more than just graphics.

i have to agree about bethesda. fallout 3 and oblivion are possibly the buggiest games i've ever played (even though they are also the two of the greatest games ever created. go figure).

Fallout 3 was awesome, easily my favorite game in a long time! I just bought it yesterday and am going to play through it again (try-before-you-buy ill downloaded it for my first playthrough!).

And the driver support issue will never go away, because designers create horrible engines, then it leaves room for one driver company to create a special mod, just for that game, that raises frame rates, then that company gets to raise their arms in the air and scream "our GPU is faster....see here's proof!" and then the other company needs to do the same in order to not look like they have a poor performing GPU. And in some cases, these optimizations decrease image-quality, which is "cheating" frame rates. And both companies were caught cheating/lowering image quality in 3D benchmarks like 3dmark06. =\

Ha, yea. The poor coding was pretty obvious in dalaran. That area, and several other areas in northrend, run amazingly bad. I also agree that dev's need to be less lazy.

aw well, i got an second had HD4870*2 for 150 euro so i will wait until i can get an HD5870 or something for 150 euro.
but my HD4870*2 plays everything very good atm.
and for drivers, ati control center sucks, nvidia control center sucks, but for ati you can download drivers only (20MB)

nvidia's control panel is better, purely because you can have profiles binded to individual applications. CCC does not have this ability. i could go and get antitraytools, but i would really appreciate it if the official software can give me that ability.

Uhh ATI has supported application detection as far back as I can remember. I've never personally used it, but it's always been there, even when CCC didn't exist and all your options were still in your Display Properties.

that's not actually what it looks like. it does basically the backward version of what i want: it loads an application IF i load a profile. i want it to load a profile when i load an application.

You can either Hotkey a profile, create a desktop icon (which in turn executes an application/game), or use the little right-click menu. I am not sure why they do not include Application Detection out-right though, but I am pretty sure they did at one point in time. I've always just used defaults for the most part, and in-game options.

i basically want the card to underclock itself whenever i open GW. let's face it, i don't need my 4890 running 900/1000 to maintain 60 fps in GW. heck, my old 4850, with its original buggy vbios, was running GW flawlessly with it stuck in "low power 3D" for a month before i noticed.

I agree quite a bit with that, as that's one thing i missed when i got this 4850. The simple to use per application profiles. I don't see why ati can't make that.

I've found nvidia's "control panel" to be a a piece of junk. Every system I've seen it on causes the system to lag when opening. Have yet to see that issue when opening ATI's Control Panel, and CCC works quite well, even on old systems.

With ATI, you can just install the display drivers too. So if you don't really use the CCC for anything, there is no point installing it.

It pools system information before it opens. That causes that delay. Unfortunately, no way around that.

There is, it's called async threading and better programming; something nvidia is lacking ,just look at those horrid drivers.

Our drivers are very well programmed. There are so many factors involved with modern driver releases, and laziness on the game developer and OS developer side didn't help drivers in the last few years. Suffice to say, Windows7 may change that a bit (but that is totally up to MSFT not being complete morons this time around)

ATI has already released 2 generations of 40nm chips, the 4770, and is currently farming their 3rd generation which will be the 58xx series in September. They did have issue with 40nm in the first generation, which lead to yield/stock issues for the 4770. But the 2nd generation proved successful and the 4770 is well stocked across all stores now. It appears their 3rd generation 58xx's are going as planned and their Sept launch will be fine.

nVidia has still yet to complete 1 generation of 40nm, so they are a little behind in that aspect, which is why they are having the 6 month delay in release.

http://service.futuremark.com/hardware

Due to nVidia's huge die size, I think once again they will lose this generation. In fact there was a great article written by an nVidia engineer on how they learned from the GT200 series and that having a huge die size is actually a bad thing, but he also said GPU's are engineered in 3-term sets, so the GT300 was actually being engineered before the GT200 was ever really released. So they found out too late that large die sizes are detrimental to the performance & success of your chip.

4890 price: $195
GTX 280 price: $345

Both cards are pretty similar in performance. The GTX 280 die size and large memory bus-width is what drives the cost up. Large die sizes have poor yields, and cost more to manufacture, so you lose money exponentially.

There are 2 ways to increase memory bandwidth; Place more physical memory chips on your PCB so you can access more of them at once; Increase the speed in which the memory runs at.

nVidia decided to use a 512-bit bus width to access 16 64mb GDDR3 chips. Each chip has 32 pins on it, so the GPU itself needs 512 pins to hook up to all 16 chips. This increases the size and complexity of the GPU. This gave it a total of 1024mb of memory at 140gb/s bandwidth.

ATI decided to build a smaller, cheaper, simpler, easier to engineer chip with a 256-bit bus-width. This means it's die size was less than half that of the nVidia, but also meant it could only get half the memory bandwith. This is why ATI used GDDR5. GDDR5 gets twice the bandwidth as GDDR3 and 4. So in the end, both cards get roughly the same memory bandwidth, except the ATI GPU costs far less to manufacture, it's smaller, and ATI can put 2 and even 3 GPU's on a single PCB to increase performance for enthusiasts.

Stop lying, nvidia's drivers are horrid.

A bit old, but still very true:

Ahah that's gotta be all those laptops with nVidia solder joint problems they kept lying about, and INQ busted them using an electron microscope or something. Apple also canceled their contract and is trying to sue for their money back, since nVidia basically bricked an entire generation of Apple laptops.