AMD and nVidia each have just introduced their latest next generation GPUs.  The two companies are taking totally different approaches to improving graphical performance.  This comes at a crucial time when GPUs are increasingly becoming the bottleneck for latest games (see Crysis).  AMD/ATI's R700 series GPU takes a more traditional approach by improving their older design and simply making it parallel by adding duplicate cores much like a modern multi-core CPU.  On the other hand, nVidia's Geforce 200 GPU is a completely redesigned monster with 192-240 stream processors packed into a single die.

I believe ATI's approach will be more scalable due to its parallel nature.  The low end RV710 with a single chip should be fairly efficient while packing enough punch to counter the older but effective 8800/9600 series Geforce cards.  I predict the RV710 and RV730 to be popular for laptop applications.  On the high end, I believe the Geforce 200 design will prevail simply because parallel processing is still not as efficent as it could be to benefit the R700 design with multiple chips.  Furthermore, nVidia's proprietary CUDA technology along with their recent aquisition of PhysX will allow the GF200 to be extremely efficient on multiple fronts, not just graphics.  This is all speculation for now until we see some benchmarks but I'm hoping that AMD/ATI steals the show this time around as they have been on the losing side on both the CPU and GPU fronts (against Intel's Core CPUs and nVidias 8XXX series GPUs). 

Healthy competition always benefits the gamer!

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written by gameh0lic , June 20, 2008

not bad, not bad at all

http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-ati-radeon-hd-4850-review-force-3d--powercolor/1

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