Final Words
So, what's the verdict? An on-package bridge will help NVIDIA to alleviate OEMs of any fears that they may have had about working with a non-native solution, and we aren't seeing any real performance drop due to the existence of a bridge. There is the bandwidth issue, which is very application-specific and doesn't affect anything that we normally test in our graphics suite (though we are looking for ways to incorporate a test).On the other hand, NV45 in its current incarnation is only a 35MHz overclock beyond the 6800Ultra. This does help close the already small gap between the occasional PCIe benchmark that lags AGP. In a case or two, we see performance gains approaching that of the percent difference in clock speed (at 1600x1200 with 4xAA/8xAF anyway).
If NV45 doesn't make its way out until later, it's possible that we will be seeing this at a slightly different clock speed (the sample that we saw at Computex was clocked much lower than the sample we have in our labs). And in the end, it's not just a performance question, but a value question. Will NVIDIA charge more money for this part than for the discrete HSI solution paired with a GPU? Will OEMs save significant amounts of money on board costs? We will really have to wait and see what happens in the retail market over time to understand the answers to these questions.
There are still those PCIe adoption issues to worry about on both sides. How many on package chips to produce versus how many discrete HSI components to build is a tough decision. Having options is what NVIDIA is all about this time around. Last year, they were painted into a bit of a corner with NV3x and a 130nm fab process that wasn't quite what they wanted (or so the rumors go). This year, NVIDIA wants to be ready for anything. Hopefully, both ATI and NVIDIA will get what they deserve for building quality parts this time around.
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kherman - Monday, June 28, 2004 - link
How did this get eh NV45 label? Shouldn't this be the NV40p or sum'n?Minotaar - Monday, June 28, 2004 - link
Pentium Pro did NOT have on-package cache. Pentium Pro had On-DIE cache. Pentium 2 took a step backwards and had on-package cache (that huge ugly slot garbage, with the triple fans from OC co's like Glacier? The side two fans cooled cache chips on the side). It wasnt until Socket P3 that on-die cache came back.Thats why celeron happened the way it did. it started off as a p2 with none of the on-package cache. Remember the ol' celly 266 that OC'd to 450, and for some lucky ones 504? Well That was just the P2 card without the cache on the sides - the sides were empty.
Pentium Pro also had the advantage of clock speed cache, whereas P2's cache was bus speed. But I digress. The article has an inconsistancy.
Brucmack - Monday, June 28, 2004 - link
Well, you're not going to gain anything in the near future with PCIe, so if you already have an AGP card, don't bother.It would probably be a good idea to get a PCIe card if you're upgrading to the new Intel chipset though. The boards that have both PCIe and AGP slots are running the AGP slot off of the PCI bus, so there will be a slight performance penalty associated with that.
GhandiInstinct - Monday, June 28, 2004 - link
So is AGP8x faster or better than PCIe, because that's what I got from those earlier benchmarks. Or will drivers and optimizations change that in the future?Basically, is it worth while(money) to purchase PCIe now?