Graphics im a ati fanboy... but pixel shader 3.. is it the future ??

i feel like wasting some money, i have toyed with a 6600gt but i always came back to using my 9800pro @ xt..

but now im looking at the x800 xl's i see they are not great overclockers but ive never been one to OC my gfx cards a lot, if i know a bios flash will work i will do it other than that i leave them alone...

but i truly want to know if pixel shader 3 is just crap that was released so nvidia cards wud work better on doom3 or will it actually become the standard to use, as i have seen SC:CT use ps3 now aswell.

i didnt like doom3, dont think i will ever play it again, and i dont really see huge mods or games coming based on the doom3 engine...

but hl2 on the other hand is the game i can play over and over, and also cs:source, and the great hl2 dm...

and as far as i can see from the benchmarks and reviews, the x800 xl sorta beats the 6800GT.

the x800xl agp is h00ge !!

so ppl, tell me.. sm3 worth the change to nvidia? <-- cus thats really the only advantage i see.. i wud say hdr in far cry.. but its a single player game, after u play it once u never go back so it dont bother me.. so long as HDR will work on hl2 when they release the update i be a happy man

i am also forever hearing "gf 6 series has gr8 potential with driver updates" are these driver updates a realistic thing?

thnx let me know ure thoughts.

 

Shader Model 3.0 will be a feature of the next generation ATI products.

 

I think that pretty well explains the SM3 future. Pretty far from dead. Easier to code, so developers like it, and (as bigz has said in a couple other places) a few are even skipping over SM2 entirely, much less SM2b (ATi's offering).

A question to bigz, do you have any clue why ATi released their x series with SM2b instead of 3? Seems like they shot themselves in the foot for an entire generation of cards.

 

It was mainly down to transistor counts, and the fact that they didn't see it as being a viable thing. I think they were concerned with performance implications when Shader Model 3.0 features were turned on.

ATI made it fairly clear early on they didn't want to spend the transistors on SM3.0 for R420, because there was a limited return on IQ/performance involved along with a decline in yields and clockspeeds. Instead they went for extensions to SM2.0 while maintaining their clocks and yields (such as those yields have been *cough*, but clocks are excellent...)

AFAIK SM3.0 cost NVIDIA somewhere in the region of 50m transistors to give you an idea of how many it required - that'd increase the size of the R420/R480 die by around 1/5th, and probably also reduce the yield by that same amount, if not more.

Basically, they didn't think there was enough die space & performance for SM3.0 until they'd moved to 90nm - 90nm will reduce the die size by half, which will mean that there's plenty more room to include these additional features, along with additional pipelines and vertex shaders, coupled with an increase in clock speed.

Whether they were right or wrong on this will be determined over the next couple of months.

 

Thanks, biggles!

I suppose there's still a couple more months to wait it out, but it just seems to me like ATi is selling a below-top card for top prices, and letting their name carry them til they can get some technology for the top of the pile again.

Hmm, not like anyone else has done that before... *cough* fx *cough* 5xxx *cough*...

 

but from that news post i saw today of the ati slide, it seems the performance wont be hugely increased in next gen...

whts nvidia's next gen offering ?? any clues ?