What they've said is that it doesn't make sense to have a /separate/ PPU card, because you still have to re-fetch all that data to the CPU in order to push it to the GPU.
However, if you combine the PPU with the GPU, suddenly you can render what the PPU just calculated *immediately* with no interaction from the CPU. Moving that data to the CPU more than intermittently (for game logic, etc) suddenly became pointless, and we can see all that absolutely crazy performance boosts we've all been dreaming about.
This is the day game developers and gamers have been dreaming about. I hope. Unless they totally botch it.
It's nVidia and Ageia...they aren't going to botch it. I think it would be really cool to see the cards integrated like the GeForce 9800 series (9800 series, right?). Two cards, one PCI-E x16 slot and the same size as one of their air-cooled GeForce 8-series cards. Can you imagine a card like this, alongside two more 8800 Ultras on the 780i board? Absolutely incredible.
While I've never used ATI and I've always used Nvidia's cards, I must say at times nVidia's drivers are botched. So lets just hope nVidia's driver team doesn't lead this PPU+GPU section.
i agree. too bad it wasn't ati/amd who made the deal though...it truly would bring something special to integrated graphics adding a ppu core to the fusion processor!
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What they've said is that it doesn't make sense to have a /separate/ PPU card, because you still have to re-fetch all that data to the CPU in order to push it to the GPU.
However, if you combine the PPU with the GPU, suddenly you can render what the PPU just calculated *immediately* with no interaction from the CPU. Moving that data to the CPU more than intermittently (for game logic, etc) suddenly became pointless, and we can see all that absolutely crazy performance boosts we've all been dreaming about.
This is the day game developers and gamers have been dreaming about. I hope. Unless they totally botch it.
It's nVidia and Ageia...they aren't going to botch it. I think it would be really cool to see the cards integrated like the GeForce 9800 series (9800 series, right?). Two cards, one PCI-E x16 slot and the same size as one of their air-cooled GeForce 8-series cards. Can you imagine a card like this, alongside two more 8800 Ultras on the 780i board? Absolutely incredible.
While I've never used ATI and I've always used Nvidia's cards, I must say at times nVidia's drivers are botched. So lets just hope nVidia's driver team doesn't lead this PPU+GPU section.
i agree. too bad it wasn't ati/amd who made the deal though...it truly would bring something special to integrated graphics adding a ppu core to the fusion processor!
"I've never used ATI and I've always used Nvidia's cards, I must say at times nVidia's drivers are botched. "
I've used both, and I'll never buy an ATI card again.