Nvidia troede vist også selv, at de havde "slagtet" ATi med NV40 og virker måske en anelse frustrerede over den nuværende situation - her er uddrag fra en underholdende artikel på The Inquirer:

"IN A DRAMATIC CONFERENCE CALL that Nvidia held last week, Nvidia's chieftain became incandescent with rage after a market researcher quizzed Jen Hsun Huang about Shader 2 and Shader 3. The researcher asked Jen Hsun about the differences crucial to the Unreal 3 engine that will be finished late next year if we are lucky. The researcher described PS 3 as a gimmick but Jen Hsun lit up at this suggestion. He told the researcher: "It's not a gimmick and it cost us 60 millions of transistors". He was quite upset and doesn't like the fact that people compare ATI cards that he called "3 years old architecture" with its PS3 part.".

Kilde: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15984

Holder den aktuelle afstemning nuværende tendenser, så tyder meget på, at vore læsere også opfatter PS 3 som mindre vigtig - selv om det dog er vanskeligt at spå om fremtiden...

Det ser dog desværre ikke ud til, at "GeForce 6800 Ultra Extreme" nogensinde vil udkomme:

"NVIDIA SAID THAT all Geforce 6800 Ultra will remain clocked at 400MHz, the same speed that they where introduced at in San Francisno and Geneva last month."

Læs mere her:

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15864

Så derfor blev afstemningen fokuseret på 6800 Ultra og X800XT.

Det ser ud til, at Nvidia blot overvejede forskellige muligheder tidligere, så 6800UE var nok mere en hypotetisk konstruktion end et direkte planlagt grafikkort - dog ser det ud til, at enkelte grafikkortproducenter (Gainward) vil tilbyde hurtigere version af 6800U, men noget officielt 6800UE ser det dog ikke ud til at være...

Der er dog desværre en uhyre dårlig sammenligning, fordi der ikke sammenlignes med Shader Model 2.0; endvidere understøtter R420 meget mere end blot Shader Model 2.0 (som selv Radeon 9500-9700 understøttede fuldt ud - Shader Model 1.1 er DirectX8, mens 2.0 og højere er DirectX9), hvorfor ATi netop skriver, at R420 understøtter Shader Model 2.0b:

"TR: Tell us about Shader Model 2.0b. This spec was created to expose the new abilities of the Radeon X800 series, right?

Nalasco: Yeah. As you probably know, in DirectX 9 there's different shader models. There's a Shader Model 2 and a Shader Model 3 that are part of DirectX 9. There's also a 2.x kind of generic shader model which allows you to specify through caps bits, one by one, you can support a set of instructions that your particular hardware supports that are in between the 2.0 and 3.0 feature sets. Now the issue is that when you do this, you're going to have a different feature set, potentially, for every piece of hardware. So the 2.a and 2.b are basically shader profiles that you can use when you're compiling HLSL shader code, and those profiles will ensure that you're able to take full advantage of the hardware base that you're compiling for. So 2.b was designed to reflect the hardware capabilities, specifically, of the X800 series.

TR: What are the highlights of 2.b?

Nalasco: The main improvements in 2.b versus 2.0 are increased instruction counts. As I said, we increased it from 160 instructions in the 9800 which supports 2.0 to 1,536 instructions in 2.b. The limits were increased for all different types of instructions. You can have up to 512 arithmetic instructions, 512 texture instructions, and also those 512 arithmetic instructions can be divided up into both scalar and vector instructions, so you can have 512 scalar and 512 vector instructions, whereas in 2.0 it was limited to a total of 96 instructions for the vector and scalar and 32 for the texture instructions.

Another thing that was added was a facing register that allows you to determine which direction a given polygon that you're rendering is facing. And this is useful for things where you want to run a different algorithm on each side of the polygon. Two-sided lighting algorithms are one example of that.

I guess those are the main improvements in 2.b versus 2.0. Oh, sorry, the other was increasing the temp registers. We increased the number of temporary registers we support from 12 to 32—12 in 2.0 and 32 in 2.0b.

Those three things are all centered around increasing the number of resources that are available to a shader when you're doing your compilation. So when you write your HLSL shader, the likelihood that it will compile successfully is going to be much higher on an X800-class product because you now have more resources that you can use in your shader, and you're less likely to have to break it up into multiple passes. And again, that allows you to simplify your programming."

Kilde: http://techreport.com/etc/2004q2/nalasco/index.x?pg=3

Så X800-serien er meget mere avanceret end 9800-serien. Læs også dette uddrag, som omhandler de flotte billeder i Far Cry, som du refererer til:

""It's pretty much impossible to make a sm3.0 game look noticeably different to a sm2.0 game, which is why Nvidia was comparing the 2.0/3.0 path with a 1.1 path." A CryTek representative responded on this matter with this answer: "Was Nvidia showing SM3.0 vs. SM2.0 or SM1.1?" He replied to his own question by saying that Nvidia was showing 3.0/2.0 vs. 1.1."

Kilde: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15442

X800-serien besidder endvidere komprimeringsteknik for normal maps, hvilket NV40 ikke gør, som anvendes i bla. Far Cry og Half-Life 2, som kan gå hen at blive en meget vigtig egenskab:

"3Dc is ATI's new compression technology that's been designed specifically for normal maps. Games use normal maps to provide the illusion of 3D detail on a surface. The normal map adds information about the direction each pixel is facing to aid in creating realistic lighting effects, thus enabling the game to create even better 3D illusions on a flat surface. Unfortunately, normal maps also add pressure to the already taxed graphics memory subsystem. ATI's new 3Dc technology achieves up to 4-to-1 compression ratios, allowing developers to use more high-quality normal maps for better-looking 3D details."

Kilde: http://www.gamespot.com/features/6095215/p-2.html

Og:

"3Dc is easy to implement according to ATi. Support for 3Dc in Serious Sam 2 was implemented in a matter of days and according to ATi, was a surprise showing at Technology Days. Another demonstration that was shown that used 3Dc was a scene from Half-Life 2 where they switched between the non-compressed normal maps that have to be used on older cards and 3Dc. The difference in image quality was huge as there was a marked difference between the lower detailed normal maps and the high detail ones courtesy of 3Dc."

Kilde: http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/r420preview/3.html

Bemærk at hele denne smøre ikke er for at favorisere ATi X800 eller nedgøre betydningen af Shader Model 3 (som jeg bestemt opfatter som vigtig), blot er det relevant at vide, præcis hvor diverse grafikkort reelt adskiller sig, så ens købsargumenter og overvejelser bliver de bedst mulige.

Læs evt. mere her om dette emne, teksten er dog på tysk:

http://www.hardwareluxx.de/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=000036&p=6

GEILER, ES IST MIT! (det er kommet med over i den nye arkitektur.

Tak for linket, havde sgu nok ikke fundet det selv.

Nvidia gjorde præcis det samme for kort tid siden - læs f.eks. denne artikel, hvor netop Nvidia beskyldes for svindel med brilineær filtrering:

http://www.overclockers.com/articles1039/index02.asp

Så både ATi og Nvidia kan beskyldes for at tilbyde brilineær filtrering på bekostning af ægte trilineær filtrering. Eftersom det stort set er umuligt at se, hvorvidt der anvendes brilineær eller trilineær filtrering med det blotte øje i diverse 3D-spil, så har vi ladet dette emne ligge, og koncentrerede os i stedet om forskelle på X800 og GeForce 6800, som alle umiddelbart kan se:

http://www.hardwaretidende.dk/hard/artikel/04/05/27/3352176

Men såfremt ATi ikke fjerne brilineær filtrering i den nærmeste fremtid, er det da muligt, at vi fokuserer på dette - et tysk site påstår i øvrigt at have testresultater med X800 med og uden ægte trilineær filtrering:

http://www.computerbase.de/news/hardware/grafikkarten/2004/juni/volle_filterung_ati_nvidia/

Dvs. det burde være ekstremt nemt for ATi at ændre brilineær filtrering til trilineær i deres drivere. Det nemmeste for både ATi og Nvidia ville vel være at overlade valg af filtrering til brugeren - så vi selv nemt kunne vælge, hvorvidt brilineær eller trilineær skal anvendes.

Nvidia har en driver option så brugerne selv kan enable eller disable brilinær filtering, jeg mener Toms Hardware har benchmarks af GF 6800 med både brilineær og trilinær filtrering...

Det er nu ikke en stavefejl :-) "Brilineær" filtrering er en blanding af bilineær og trilineær filtrering, læs mere her:

http://www.3dcenter.org/artikel/2003/10-26_a_english.php

Ahaaa, ja.. det forbasver mig nu hvordan jeg kunne overse det, men jeg må indrømme at jeg dog havde svært ved at tro det var en stavefejl, men kunne ikke lige få det til at hænge sammen hehe..

Eller også prøver du bare at redde den i sidste sekund;)

spøg til side, tak for svaret.

MVH AlphaMF