Radeon 128mb fact or fiction?!?!?!

S

Sc0rp][an

New member
I think ati should load the standerd rad2 w/ 128 MIN > :)....I had to start a thread :) any ideas or speculation on radeon 2 :)?????
 
128Meg? I don't know about that... first of all, price, I personally don't know anyone that would pay whatever a 128 MB video card would cost. This alone would probably prevent ATI from making a Radeon 2 with 128 MB of ram, let alone making it the minimum configuration. Especially in conjunction with the fact that the radeon 2 will probably have 4ns DDR, can you imagine how much 128 MB of 4ns DDR must cost? Also, how much of a performance difference would there be? There is already very little difference between a Radeon with 32 MB and one with 64 MB, how much better can 128 MB be? We are talking MAJOR diminishing returns here. My best guess is that the Radeon 2 will be released at 32 MB and 64 MB, just like the Radeon, although hopefully with all the cards clocked the same, at least all the retail ones. The only argument FOR 128 MB of RAM is that the Voodoo 5 6000 will have that much, not that it will do it much good, as it will contain severely outdated chips.

Well now, I think this will give people enuf to argue about for a while. :)
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Arial, Verdana">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Sc0rp][an:
I think ati should load the standerd rad2 w/ 128 MIN > :)....I had to start a thread :) any ideas or speculation on radeon 2 :)?????<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yeah it was going to be the RadeonMAXX..but ATi officaily canceled it.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\ATI Technologies\Driver\0002\atidxhal]

"DisableHierarchicalZ"="0"
"EnableWaitUntilIdxTriList2"="1"
"Vsync"="0"
"AntiAlias"="0"
"ZFormats"="15"
"ExportCompressedTex"="1"
"DisableHyperZ"="0"
"FastZClearEnabled"="1"
"ZFogEnable"="1"
"WFogEnable"="1"
"TableFogEnable"="1"
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Arial, Verdana">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by RadeonMAXX:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\ATI Technologies\Driver\0002\atidxhal]

"DisableHierarchicalZ"="0"
"EnableWaitUntilIdxTriList2"="1"
"Vsync"="0"
"AntiAlias"="0"
"ZFormats"="15"
"ExportCompressedTex"="1"
"DisableHyperZ"="0"
"FastZClearEnabled"="1"
"ZFogEnable"="1"
"WFogEnable"="1"
"TableFogEnable"="1"

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
did you find all those reg strings? or did you put them in yourself (do they work?) or did u just make them up? If they worked, tell some people. crappy or not, they would be happy to know that you can enable it.

And if you had 128megs, with a MAXX solution, that would be 256 megs onboard (128 per chip) holy crap would that smoke the competition. And holy crap would that cost more than a decent used car. especially if it were 4ns DDR ram.

------------------
Never fear, The Sasquach is here!
 
Yeah the strings work. The only strings that are added is the TableFog, ZFog & WFog I got from Homer Simpsons Radeon Tweaker(A user from here)his tweaker puts it in for you. You can also manually put the TableFog string, ZFog, & WFog. Finally I can play Rouge Spear & Counter Strike with some fog! I have been telling people in other boards. Here's the link. http://www.strategic-plus.co.uk/store/RadTweak.zip His overclocking utiltiy doesn't work yet :( OH well...soon :D On the DisableHierarchicalZ (Thrid Part of Hyper Z)string, you want to change that to a 0 to enable it(disabled by default)nice performance boost :D

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\ATI Technologies\Driver\0002\atidxhal]

"DisableHierarchicalZ"="0"
"EnableWaitUntilIdxTriList2"="1"
"Vsync"="0"
"AntiAlias"="0"
"ZFormats"="15"
"ExportCompressedTex"="1"
"DisableHyperZ"="0"
"FastZClearEnabled"="1"
"ZFogEnable"="1"
"WFogEnable"="1"
"TableFogEnable"="1"
 
Solerno is right. Although you may not be aware that the Voodoo 5 6000 has 128mb of memory because it has 4 GPUs and costs $800.

The Radeon II MAXX will probably have 128mb of RAM.

ATI will probably be using Samsung 250MHz DDR-SDRAM.
 
I see no reason why people won't go for 128MB. When the GeForce came out, people and companies doubted that anyone will buy 64MB versions, yet enough people did to make this a standard. As solerno said, there's not that much difference between 32MB and 64MB. There's also not that much difference between a GeForce2 GTS and an Ultra, and yet some people will pay an extra $200 for a little extra speed.

As long as people are willing to pay, even if they are a minority, companies will make these boards, since the have the largest profit on them.
 
If ATI did decide to up the competition by making 128mb boards, they should only make them for people who want them (special order). Im sure very few will want them for pricing reasons. That way they wont have to estimate on how many people would want them, cuz the estimate would most likely be too much, or too little. This way they wont waste any resources.

------------------
Never fear, The Sasquach is here!
 
128MB of onboard RAM would mean that they is more RAM on the video card than on the majority of computers. Right now most computers are still Pentiums with 32 MB of RAM.

I believe that the Radeon II MAXX will have 128MB of RAM. However, the cost may already be too much for the general market.

The people who want the best boards already buy the professional boards.
 
Ok 128mb or DDR ram along with the Radeon feature I bet your looking at a near 1000 dollar card witch is to say the least fuc|<ing insane
 
the 128mb of ram on a v5 6000 like stated above is used for four gpu's, in this case it is divided up equally between the four chips, meaning you only got 32mb of actuall texture space, because each chip requires it's own texture ram. A radeon 2 maxx or whatever would probably come in a 128mb variation sooner or later because it gives 64mb of ram per chip, on par with current high end video cards.

My question is, why not build in an external ram controller, and include two pc-133 dim slots on the video card to allow for ram expansion. Most people woulds say just add it to the system and use agp, but agp severely limits the bandwidth compared to the rams throughput. Imagine if you could buy a 32meg radeon 2, and upgrade it to provide better performance for the price of some cheap pc-133. It wouldn't be as fast as a card with the same amount of ram because were looking at ddr 183 mhz ram, compared to 133mhz sdr, but hell it would bring agp usage down in games and progs with large/many textures, and would definitely provide a speed improvement.

A 64 meg radeon 2 maxx, (32 megs per gpu) with 128mb of pc-133 tagged on would provide some severe a$$ kicking performance, with not much extra cost overhead.
 
The only problem with my proposed dimm add ons, is, well some really really tricky texture management. Deciding where to put this texture, on the fast ram or on the slow ram??? If they could work that out though, maybe even include extensions for native support in opengl and d3d, it would kick ass. If new games could handle it internally and use some intelligence, it would be incredible.
 
But, (sorry about the ongoing replies, think of things after the fact) if you consider the bandwidth, if you have your texture buffers on the ddr 183 ram, take that bandwidth out, and the pc-133 ram isn't horribly slower now.

Taking this ever further, for a budget card, they could offer a card with 16megs of 183sdr ram that's only used for frame buffers, and 32mb of 133mhz sdram that's only used for texturing, it would probably perform very well and it would be cheap as hell. Include one open dimm slot on it, and it's upgradeable, allow for up to 64mb dimm to be stuck into it, and it is usefull for even some high performance gaming, for easily less than the total cost of a 32 meg card, even though this would almost battle it for bandwidth, and would have more ram.
 
"Right now most computers are still Pentiums with 32 MB of RAM."

Maybe in your basement, but not in the real world. I can't even recall the last time I saw a game released that would run on 32MB of RAM. I don't even think Windows can run on that anymore (or if it can, it's not a very good idea).

128 MB will actually become standard pretty soon, now that large, 32-bit textures have caught on. S3TC and FXT1 are decent ways to help older cards keep up, but they're still no match for having the real thing. And believe me, if you build it, they will come (they = games with 100 MB of textures in each scene).

Also, don't forget that FSAA takes up quite a bit of RAM. Now that it's becoming a standard feature as well, you can bet your ass 128 MB will be a welcome addition. 4x FSAA at 1024x768x32 takes up 12 MB of RAM. 3dfx claims that 16 samples is necessary for high quality FSAA. At 1024x768x32 again, that means you require 48 MB of RAM just to store the supersampled image. Add another 3MB for the framebuffer, and you're left with only 13 MB for texture storage on a 64MB card. That's not enough, even with texture compression.

[This message has been edited by Crusher (edited 11-16-2000).]
 
with the coming of ddr sdram in motherboards it is conceivable that u could have a dimm slot on the board that supports the pc266 (pc2100 if u like bandwith numbers) dimms and that definately would not be much slower than onboard ram. it also wouldn't be much more expensive than the pc133.

------------------
 
This Add-on Ram idea has already been used.
Remember the Rage pro era of graphics cards? They had that SODIMM ram socket to upgrade the Ram if it allowed for any extra other than whatever was stock on the plain PCB. Performance wasnt slower tho i dont think. My Xpert98 has a SODIMM socket with a 4mb SGRAM upgrade module on it.
Im sure they just recycled this from a Xpert@Work when i bought it because it didnt have SDRAM (it had SGRAM), and i dont think it was supposed to have that SODIMM socket either. Ooh well.

Of course, they ditched that afterwards and went straight for On board nonupgradable ram.

Ram upgrades would be nice. thinka bout it, buy a 32MB video card now, and when games get insane textures, just purchase an extra 32mb and turn it into 64mb. TADA, (somewhat) brand new 64mb video card.



------------------
Never fear, The Sasquach is here!
 
MEAT--> A discrete memory solution is too bulky and slow. Integrated memory is the best solution. Notice that graphics RAM comes in ships, not DIMMs.

CRUSHER-->Most people don't upgrade their computers at all. Considering that The Pentium 200 was mainstream only 3 years ago and that most chipsets at the time only supported 64 MBs of EDO RAM, it is extremely logical that most computers are that speed.

Many people still use 386s and 486s.

Windows 95 is still used on a lot of computers, and it can run on 16MBs of RAM. If you look carefully at the game boxes, you'll still see the minimum configuration of Pentium 133 with 32MB of RAM.

It'll run, just not well.

128MB is the standard for computers sold now, but it will not be the standard amount of RAM in computers for another 2 or 3 years.

My computer has 256MB of PC-133. What are you running?
 
argh! I only have 128mb of pc100.... I'm two steps behind the curve! Add on a lowly 500mhz processor, another step or two, and of course, a rage pro... ok everyone, get up and take a one mile jog backwards!

Win98se will run on 32megs, but it's not recommended, and believe me, it's unstable and slow. I had this for over a year on a k5-100 system with a whopping 32megs of 60ns edo ram! Programs inside windows work okay like this, but the windows interface, and start up is slow as hell.
A freind had a cheap budget system having 98se 32mbpc100 and a k62 450. It sucked, tucked an extra 64mb under the hood, and it was a decent system. Other than the crappy sis 6320 video, (6320? I think), it was a decent system. The video was sooo bad I was proud to own a rage pro. My rpro on a k5-100 with 64megs under win2k out did his k6-2 450 with 32megs under 98se with unreal tournament! Anybody see why ati kicks ass? the sis 6320 card is a current model!

From playing with win me on my system, I don't think I'd like to try the burn with under 64mb

BTW: By expanding the memory with on-board add ons, they could add it like a second level cache. Think, the main video ram is like a l1 cache, and agp is like l2. If you add a second onboard memory, work it like l2, and the agp as l3.
Also, data interleaving is a possibility. Using two dimms, the data can be distributed between the two evenly, giving twice the bandwidth. Using two pc2133 dimms now gives you 533mhz of 64bit bandwidth, comparable to vram in use on many midline to top line cards today. You could also look at it as 266mhz 128bit bandwidth, very very wide. And the interleaving doesn't have to add any latency, so the ram would have a 2 or 2.5 clock latency.

[This message has been edited by Meat_PoPsicle (edited 11-21-2000).]
 
Meat_PoPsicle said:
argh! I only have 128mb of pc100.... I'm two steps behind the curve! Add on a lowly 500mhz processor, another step or two, and of course, a rage pro... ok everyone, get up and take a one mile jog backwards!

Win98se will run on 32megs, but it's not recommended, and believe me, it's unstable and slow. I had this for over a
Click to expand...

I just upgraded my system to 512MBs of Crucial PC-133 Cas2.

Yeah, I've run Windows with 16 megs bofore, it is just bad.

Discrete graphics memory would cost more than the card itself.
 
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