** The Official Nvidia GeForce 'Pascal' Thread - for general gossip and discussions **

[Perfect_Chaos]

PowerVR must be decent, SEGA used it with the Dreamcast and it did pretty well considering it came a fair bit earlier than the PS2 did, and it stood up against it very well for the most part in graphics terms.

 

[drunkenmaster]

It's completely off topic but I'll stay there, Pottsey, the reason Wii U is deemed a failure is the (earlier on complete) lack of third party support. Having a gpu which doesn't exist with no where near enough power for normal features and a ray tracing block that NO GAMES use anywhere will win them precisely zero third party games.

The reason they are making a new console is to try and get multiplatform games back, on par with what the other platforms provide. Their entire point of switching from Wii U is to gain parity with the other consoles, they can't do this by diverging hardware completely.

The ray tracing demos Imagination have shown are poor, they are limited, no depth, no other game stuff going on. Since the dawn of time you can make a tech demo that looks 1000 times better than what you can produce in game with the cpu actually having to run a game on it and the gpu having to make more than a few objects work. There is absolutely no demo anywhere of a lets say COD Whatever the Heck Version Next demo with ray tracing, PowerVR/Imagination don't have hardware on the level of 100-200W, they don't have discrete GPU level power, they haven't taped out a large design nor have a history of delivering such a platform over and over again.

There is far more to sorting out a high end console than a simple tech demo on a mobile level device that isn't remotely suitable for a higher end console.

Nintendo are going AMD precisely because AMD have made these devices over and over again, they are capable of producing a semi custom device to the exact specs Nintendo want but most importantly they can offer software and hardware compatibility with the other top consoles which will get them third party support back with easy ports.

Where they'll probably screw up is believing they need some stupid gimmick and give us a crap controller or something equally bad in an attempt to stand out.

 

[meldarthx]

It's completely off topic but I'll stay there, Pottsey, the reason Wii U is deemed a failure is the (earlier on complete) lack of third party support. Having a gpu which doesn't exist with no where near enough power for normal features and a ray tracing block that NO GAMES use anywhere will win them precisely zero third party games.

The reason they are making a new console is to try and get multiplatform games back, on par with what the other platforms provide. Their entire point of switching from Wii U is to gain parity with the other consoles, they can't do this by diverging hardware completely.

The ray tracing demos Imagination have shown are poor, they are limited, no depth, no other game stuff going on. Since the dawn of time you can make a tech demo that looks 1000 times better than what you can produce in game with the cpu actually having to run a game on it and the gpu having to make more than a few objects work. There is absolutely no demo anywhere of a lets say COD Whatever the Heck Version Next demo with ray tracing, PowerVR/Imagination don't have hardware on the level of 100-200W, they don't have discrete GPU level power, they haven't taped out a large design nor have a history of delivering such a platform over and over again.

There is far more to sorting out a high end console than a simple tech demo on a mobile level device that isn't remotely suitable for a higher end console.

Nintendo are going AMD precisely because AMD have made these devices over and over again, they are capable of producing a semi custom device to the exact specs Nintendo want but most importantly they can offer software and hardware compatibility with the other top consoles which will get them third party support back with easy ports.

Where they'll probably screw up is believing they need some stupid gimmick and give us a crap controller or something equally bad in an attempt to stand out.

This

 

[Mauller]

What is lacking? They support all the same features and beyond what AMD and NV, they have a long history working on consoles, some of the scenes are not simple. The ones that are simple are to focues on and demo a single feature. When compareing a high end powervr spec against AMD then powervr can do everything amd can but amd cannot do all the high end features powervr can. Both have worked with Nin on conoles so I don't see why they have to go with amd. Powervr is the better spec hardware with better graphics and standout features when it comes to consoils. Sorry I hate typeing on phones will edit my post when I get home to make it more readable..

The rest of the hardware is lacking. They might have a dedicated Raytracing engine that gives them realtime ray tracing performance that is better than a top end AMD or Nvidia card. but the rest of the GPU hardware is worse than an intel GPU.

And watch the scenes again where they demonstrate raytracing. the Models are very low poly. the entire scene is low poly. the textures look like they came from a Ps2 and the scenes themselves are very sparsly populated.

The scenes are also limited to showing only a very few foreground objects.

It is good for a Mobile GPU but no where near what a Discrete GPU is capable.

And as Drunken mentioned, PowerVR have been out of the Big GPU game for a long while now, it would take them time to get back into it again and to get to where AMD and Nvidia are. Look at all of the money intel has and they failed miserably at making a Discrete GPU.

 

[Ayahuasca]

DM is spot on there.

Pottsey I know you like PowerVR and everything but your bias is very apparent.

If PowerVR were capable of delivering what AMD and NV do and also capable of going beyond that as you say then why are we seeing nothing of it apart from some demos that don't show much at all. Creating those demos for very specific conditions is rather pointless in my opinion, nVidia have shown quite complex PhysX demos that are far better than what we've seen in any games, the reason being is because the performance would be shocking or the power required would be astronomical.

I hope ray tracing does arrive soon for desktop gaming but we need to see it as part of a complete game environment.

 

[Mauller]

DM is spot on there.

Pottsey I know you like PowerVR and everything but your bias is very apparent.

If PowerVR were capable of delivering what AMD and NV do and also capable of going beyond that as you say then why are we seeing nothing of it apart from some demos that don't show much at all. Creating those demos for very specific conditions is rather pointless in my opinion, nVidia have shown quite complex PhysX demos that are far better than what we've seen in any games, the reason being is because the performance would be shocking or the power required would be astronomical.

I hope ray tracing does arrive soon for desktop gaming but we need to see it as part of a complete game environment.

Sparse Voxel Octree Global Illumination is a form of ray tracing. Although it requires less computation. The quality is not as good as many bounce RT but it is still superior to raster based lighting.

And Cryengine has it enabled in thier latest engine. the performance hit is tiny compared to having HBAO+ and all lighting effects on max. Yet looks superior.

 

[Pottsey]

“If PowerVR were capable of delivering what AMD and NV do and also capable of going beyond that as you say then why are we seeing nothing of it apart from some demos that don't show much at all. Creating those demos for very specific conditions is rather pointless in my opinion”

It’s not pointless and its new technology that’s no one has every managed to do until now. A lot of big names like Nintendo said they are interested in the technology but will not licence it without proof of concept as it’s never been done before. So IMG built some basic 10watt chips and ran some tech demos to prove it works. All you have seen is some demos as the technology has only just this month been publicly shown and is being evaluated by Nintendo and others. The dev boards have only recently gone out and they need time to create content.

“Having a gpu which doesn't exist with no where near enough power for normal features and a ray tracing block that NO GAMES use anywhere will win them precisely zero third party games.

The reason they are making a new console is to try and get multiplatform games back, on par with what the other platforms provide. Their entire point of switching from Wii U is to gain parity with the other consoles, they can't do this by diverging hardware completely.”

No one is talking about a GPU with nowhere near enough power for normal features. The high end PowerVR designs are more than powerful enough to run all normal features fast. The main 3rd party game development platforms like Unity support the Ray Tracing block and the Ray Tracing block makes it easier and cheaper for 3rd party game teams to develop games. It’s a win, win as the PowerVR GPU can run the other platform games and it can make game development cheaper and easier all attractive to third party developers. The hardware doesn’t diverge completely it’s a hybrid chip that can do everything AMD chip can and more. It can run all the stuff AMD can and stuff AMD cannot run.

“There is far more to sorting out a high end console than a simple tech demo on a mobile level device that isn't remotely suitable for a higher end console.”

Of course there is and IMG know that as they have already done 3 consoles and I lost count of how many handholds like the Playstation Vita. Anyway you seemed to have missed the reason they made the “simple” tech demos. The company’s looking at the technology wanted to see the hardware in action as proof it works. All main console companies are very interested.

“The ray tracing demos Imagination have shown are poor, they are limited, no depth, no other game stuff going on.”

What about the demo which was a city map where you could drive around the roads, go into buildings, had cars driving around, day and night cycles. Its wasn’t a full game but it was hardly that limited with no depth and no game stuff.

“There is absolutely no demo anywhere of a lets say COD Whatever the Heck Version Next demo with ray tracing, PowerVR/Imagination don't have hardware on the level of 100-200W, they don't have discrete GPU level power, they haven't taped out a large design nor have a history of delivering such a platform over and over again.”

Well they do have a history with 3 consoles and arcades and it looks like we will be seeing full games around 2017 when the hardware is meant to be volume shipping. IMG do have high level GPU designs and as for high watt PowerVR have always been an order of magnitude more efficient. Even the old discrete GPUs ran at what was it something like half the watt of the equivalent NV or ATI card.

Sorry for derailing the thread although it’s not all me. I was just trying to point out AMD haven’t got a clean run at the next gen consoles. At the moment it could go either way. PowerVR have the more advanced graphic feature support, better graphics from ray tracing, better bandwidth and better energy consumption. It looks like a race between AMD and PowerVR. NVidia seem to have been ruled out.

“they are capable of producing a semi custom device to the exact specs Nintendo want but most importantly they can offer software and hardware compatibility with the other top consoles which will get them third party support back with easy ports.”

A few points IMG have a far bigger and better history of making custom devices to exact specs. PowerVR have full software and hardware compatibility with the top consoles and big mobile platforms like Apple and popular game dev engines like Unity and Unreal. PowerVR support all the popular API’s that AMD run but also run the popular API’s AMD cannot run like Metal. There are a lot of 3rd party devs who use Metal which AMD cannot run.

IMG PR people have strongly been hinting at a console win. Including retweeting articles talking about the leaked Nintendo specs which include comments like streaming 4K/60 FPS & HDMI 2.0 which is something PowerVR GPU’s do but AMD don’t current support. If it turns out IMG are not involed with Nintendo then the PR people need sacking or a major telling off for unprofessional behavior.

Anyway that's enough off topic time to get back on topic or to move threads.

 

[Mauller]

It could always be that imagion have the contract for the portable part of the console while AMD could be making the more powerful base station.

Yes imagion have made gpus in the past for consoles but they were still inferior to AMD and nvidias discrete products at the time. The vita is also very low power with ps2 level graphics. Good for a portable at the time but nothing compared to the discrete market.

If imagion knew they could compete in the discrete GPU market then they would have reentered or stayed in the game.

Also Polaris has support for HDMI 2.

 

[Ash0787]

So graphics cards experts that have been following this closely,
how likely is it that I'll be able to get something in the next 6 monthes for under 500 that will edge a 980Ti ( 25%+ bench scores ) while using less power ( around 200w ) while having 16GB HBM2 ?

 

[Pottsey]

It could always be that imagion have the contract for the portable part of the console while AMD could be making the more powerful base station.

Yes imagion have made gpus in the past for consoles but they were still inferior to AMD and nvidias discrete products at the time. The vita is also very low power with ps2 level graphics. Good for a portable at the time but nothing compared to the discrete market.

If imagion knew they could compete in the discrete GPU market then they would have reentered or stayed in the game.

Also Polaris has support for HDMI 2.

I am not going to go into detail here as I have gone off topic to much and explaining it would take up to much space. But the short version is what you said is wrong. IMG never directly entered and so never left the discrete GPU gaming market. So you cannot use that as a reason for why they cannot make discrete GPU level power GPU’s.

IMG could compete in the discrete GPU market as they have GPU designs that scale up and already support all the features AMD and NVidia do. The reason they do not is not due to lack of hardware power. IMG GPU for consoles where not inferior to AMD and NVidias discrete products at the time. But I am not going into detail as that would be another long off topic post.

 

[D3K]

So graphics cards experts that have been following this closely,
how likely is it that I'll be able to get something in the next 6 monthes for under 500 that will edge a 980Ti ( 25%+ bench scores ) while using less power ( around 200w ) while having 16GB HBM2 ?

On a scale of 0-100, with 0 being low, and 100 being high, 0.

 

[Ash0787]

Yeah I thought as much when I heard the news that there were going to be a lot of cards using GDDRX and the new Titan will only have 16 GB not 32GB VRAM.

See I was thinking the other day before I looked at any news about it and what I described above is what I decided I was looking for out of pascal

I found this thing the other day that says game developers could make better graphics abilities if there was more memory, so I dont want 8GB I want more then that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAsg_xNzhcQ
so it seems that people that said 4GB is enough for even 4K resolution were 'wrong' because that is only if game engines dont improve

 

[Orangey]

Developers need every card at the min spec or higher to have huge amounts of VRAM to provide the sea change in graphical fidelity they promise.

 

[Mauller]

Be interesting to see if Nvidia picup 10bit content on their consumer cards.

Will be good to see some Rec.2020 Authored games.

I can see it now, WoW will be more colourful and puke inducing than before! prepare for rainbows to burst from your screens in a blaze of glory!

 

[Ash0787]

Ye thats true, and most people will probably be staying with 970 for a while which is one of the most popular selling cards, and has only 3.5 GB of video memory

I want a card that will be worthwhile to SLI though so having excessive amount of VRAM and low price would be ideal

Also another unrealistic thing I want is 4K OLED monitor, I am only aware of one product so far, not sure if more were announced since CES

 

[Mauller]

Also another unrealistic thing I want is 4K OLED monitor, I am only aware of one product so far, not sure if more were announced since CES

if you can put up the cash and deal with the size, then get an LG 55in OLED TV.

 

[FoxEye]

Yes imagion have made gpus in the past for consoles but they were still inferior to AMD and nvidias discrete products at the time.

Iirc the Kyro II when it debuted was more powerful than the competition.

 

[FoxEye]

Yeah I thought as much when I heard the news that there were going to be a lot of cards using GDDRX and the new Titan will only have 16 GB not 32GB VRAM.

See I was thinking the other day before I looked at any news about it and what I described above is what I decided I was looking for out of pascal

But if a GDDR5 Pascal card can deliver 125% 980ti performance, why the insistence on HBM2? More likely to be cheaper to produce and therefore under £500 as you wanted. And actually available to buy this year

 

[D.P.]

Iirc the Kyro II when it debuted was more powerful than the competition.

Not really
http://www.anandtech.com/show/735/10

 

[Troezar]

Iirc the Kyro II when it debuted was more powerful than the competition.

I had one. It was a good card but I don't think it was the best at the time. It was great value for money iirc.