GPU Cheatsheet - A History of Modern Consumer Graphics Processors
by Jarred Walton on September 6, 2004 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Wrapping it All Up
So, that's an overview of the recent history of graphics processors. For those that are impressed by the rate of progress in the CPU world, it pales in comparison to recent trends in 3D graphics. Just looking at raw theoretical performance, since the introduction of the "World's First Graphics Processing Unit GPU", the GeForce 256, 3D chips have become about 20 times as fast. That doesn't even take into account architectural optimizations that actually allow chips to come closer to their theoretical performance, or the addition of programmability in DX8 and later chips. Taken together with the raw performance increases, it is probably safe to say that GPUs have become roughly 30 times faster since their introduction. We often hear of "Moore's Law" in regards to CPUs, which is usually paraphrased as being a doubling of performance every 18 to 24 months. (The actual paper from Moore has more to do with optimal transistor counts for maximizing profits than performance.) In comparison, "Moore's Law" for 3D graphics has been double the performance every 12 months.
The amazing thing is that we are still pushing the limits of the current technology. Sure, the 6800 Ultra and X800 XT are fast enough to run all current games with 4xAA and 8xAF turned on, but some programmer out there is just waiting for more power. The Unreal Engine 3 images that have been shown are truly impressive, and even the best cards of today struggle to meet the demands. The goal of real-time Hollywood quality rendering is still a ways off, but only a few years ago Pixar scoffed when NVIDIA claimed they were approaching the ability to do Toy Story 2 visuals in real time. Part of their rebuttal was that Toy Story 2 was using something like 96 GB/s of bandwidth for their textures. We're one third of the way there now!
What does the future hold? With the large sizes of the top GPUs, it is probably safe to bet that newer features (i.e. DirectX 10) are going to be at least a year or more in the future. This is probably a good thing, as it will give ATI and NVIDIA (and their fabrication partners) time to shrink the die process and hopefully start making more cards available. We may not even see DirectX 10 hardware for 18 months, as it is planned as part of the next version of Windows, codenamed Longhorn. Longhorn is currently slated for a 2006 release, so there isn't much point in selling hardware that is completely lacking in software support at the OS and library level.
Those looking for lower prices may be in for something of a disappointment. Lower prices would always be nice, but the trend with the bleeding edge hardware is that it is only getting more expensive with each successive generation. Look at the NVIDIA top-end cards: GeForce 256 DDR launched at about $300, GeForce 2 Ultra and GeForce 3 launched at around $350, GeForce 4 Ti4600 was close to $400, GeForce FX 5800 Ultra and 5950 Ultra were close to $500 at launch, and recently the 6800 Ultra has launched at over $500. More power is good, but not everyone has the funds to buy FX-53 or P4EE processors and matching system components. However, today's bleeding edge hardware is tomorrow's mainstream hardware, so while not everyone can afford a 6800 or X800 card right now, the last generation of high-end hardware is now selling for under $200, and even the $100 parts are better than the GeForce 3 era.
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JarredWalton - Thursday, October 28, 2004 - link
43 - It should be an option somewhere in the ATI Catalyst Control Center. I don't have an X800 of my own to verify this on, not to mention a lack of applications which use this feature. My comment was more tailored towards people that don't read hardware sites. Typical users really don't know much about their hardware or how to adjust advanced settings, so the default options are what they use.Thera - Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - link
You say SM2.0b is disabled and consumers don't know how to turn it on. Can you tell us how to enable SM2.0b?Thank you.
(cross posted from video forum)
endrebjorsvik - Wednesday, September 15, 2004 - link
WOW!! Very nice article!!does anyone have all these datas collected into an exel-file or something??
JarredWalton - Sunday, September 12, 2004 - link
Correction to my last post. KiB and MiB and such are meant to be used for size calculations, and then KB and MB can be used for bandwidth calculations. Now the first paragraph (and my gripe) should be a little more clear if you didn't understand it already. Basically, the *bandwidth* companies (hard drives, and to a lesser extent RAM companies advertising bandwidth) proposed that their incorrect calculations stand and that those who wanted to use the old computer calculations should change.There are problems, however. HDD and RAM both continue to use both calculations. RAM uses the simplified KB and MB for bandwidth, but the accepted KB and MB (KiB and MiB now) for size. HDD uses the simplified KB and MB for size, but then they use the other KB and MB for sustained transfer rates. So, the proposed change not only failed to address the problem, but the proposers basically continue in the same way as before.
JarredWalton - Saturday, September 11, 2004 - link
#38 - there are quite a few cards/chips that were only available in very limited quantities.39 - Actually, that is only partially true. KibiBytes and MibiBytes are a *proposed* change as far as I am aware, and they basically allow the HDD and RAM people to continue with their simplified calculations. I believe that KiB and MiB are meant for bandwidths, however, and not memory sizes. The problem is that MB and KB were in existence long before KiB and MiB were proposed. Early computers with 8 KB of RAM (over 40 years ago) had 8192 bytes of RAM, not 8000 bytes. When you buy a 512 MB DIMM, it is 512 * 1048576 bytes, not 512 * 1000000 bytes.
If a new standard is to be adopted for abbreviations, it is my personal opinion that the parties who did not conform to the old standard are the ones that should change. Since I often look at the low level details of processors and GPUs and such, I do not want to have two different meanings of the same thing, which is what we currently have. Heck, there was even a class action lawsuit against hard drive manufacturers a while back about this "lie". That was the solution: the HDD people basically said, "We're right and in the future 2^10 = KiB, 2^20 = MiB, 2^30 = GiB, etc." Talk about not taking responsibility for your acttions....
It *IS* a minor point for most people, and relative performance is still the same. Basically, this is one of my pet peeves. It would be like saying, "You know what, 5280 feet per mile is inconvenient Even though it has been this way for ages, let's just call it 5000 feet per mile." I have yet to see any hardware manufacturers actually use KiB or MiB as an abbreviation, and software that has been around for decades still thinks that a KB is 1024 bytes and a MB is 1048576.
Bonta - Saturday, September 11, 2004 - link
Jarred, you were wrong about the abbreviation MB.1 MB is 1 mega Byte is (1000*1000) Bytes is 1000000 Bytes is 1 million Bytes.
1 MiB is (1024*1024) Bytes is 1048576 Bytes.
So the vid card makers (and the hard drive makers) actually have it right, and can keep smiling. It is the people that think 1MB is 1048576 Bytes that have it wrong. I can't pronounce or spell 1 MiB correctly, but it is something like 1 mibiBytes.
viggen - Friday, September 10, 2004 - link
Nice article but what's up with the 9200 Pro running at 300mhz for core & memory? I dun remember ATI having such a card.JarredWalton - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
Oops... I forgot the link from Quon. Here it is:http://www.appliedmaterials.com/HTMAC/index.html
It's somewhat basic, but at the same time, it covers several things my article left out.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
I received a link from Matthew Quon containing a recent presentation on the whole chip fabrication process. It includes details that I omitted, but in general it supports my abbreviated description of the process.#34: Yes, there are errors that are bound to slip through. This is especially true on older parts. However, as you point out, several of the older chips were offered in various speed grades, which only makes it more difficult. Several of the as-yet unreleased parts may vary, but on the X700 and 6800LE, that's the best info we have right now. The vertex pipelines are *not* tied directly to the pixel quads, so disabling 1/4 or 1/2 of the pixel pipelines does not mean they *have* to disable 1/4 or 1/2 of the vertex pipelines. According to T8000, though, the 6800LE is a 4 vertex pipeline card.
Last, you might want to take note of the fact that I have written precisely 3 articles for Anandtech. I live in Washington, while many of the other AT people are back east. So, don't count on everything being reviewed by every single AT editor - we're only human. :)
(I'm working on some updates and corrections, which will hopefully be posted in the next 24 hours.)
T8000 - Wednesday, September 8, 2004 - link
I think it is very good to put the facts together in such a review.I did notice three things, however:
1: I have a GF6800LE and it has 4 enabled vertex pipes instead of 5 and comes with a 300/700 gpu/mem clock.
2: Since gpu clock speeds did not increase much, they had to add more features (like pipelines) to increase performance.
3: Gpu defects are less of an issue then cpu defects, since a lot of large gpu's offered the luxory of disabling parts, so that most defective gpu's can still be sold. As far as I know, this feature has never made it into the cpu market.