June 16, 2008
Vision different from reality in new graphics cards
AMD and Nvidia unveiled next-generation graphics chips today, with both claiming their uses would reach well beyond the traditional gaming audience.
AMD aimed high and fell short with its Cinema 2.0 event. It claimed its technology was responsible for a defining moment in graphics when films would extend seamlessly into interactive gaming experiences and games and their characters would achieve true photo-realism.
Video of movie industry figures including Robert Rodriguez, director of Sin City, talking about Cinema 2.0 was shown, along with the filmed opinions of gamers and top developers about when photorealism would make characters in games lose their “uncanny valley” appearance.
The estimates ranged from three to 10 years, but presenters at the Cinema 2.0 event said it was only months away with the new technology. However, a demo supposedly updating the AMD demonstration model Ruby to photorealism fell flat when she appeared in an earlier unlifelike incarnation superimposed on a photorealistic street scene.
“We’re still in the process of updating her,” was the rather lame explanation.
I was more impressed when a presenter delivered “a teraflop for 200 bucks” line - the price the basic ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics card will go on sale for in about a week’s time.
This is more likely to appeal to the mass-market consumer – a trillion floating operations per second made possible by a chip around a centimeter square. Twelve years ago, a whole roomful of computers fitted with 10,000 Intel Pentium Pro processors were needed to create the world’s first teraflop supercomputer.
Nvidia announced its graphics had evolved “beyond gaming” but more sensibly talked about how this level of computing power would simplify day-to-day tasks, like running Windows Vista or converting movies to show on an iPod. Instead of taking five hours, movies could be transcoded in 35 minutes, it said.
Its new GeForce GTX 260 and 280 cards are priced at $399 and $649.
Both companies also see scientific and industrial applications for the increased parallel processing powers of their graphics processing units (GPUs).
In games, it seems certain that these newer chips will allow PCs to regain a graphics edge over the fixed-specification next-generation consoles, but proclaiming them as an advance equivalent to the introduction of sound in movies is a little far-fetched.
Thanks so much for pointing out the ridiculous nature of the ongoing marketing campaign from graphics card makers. I work in the film industry and we have frames that take 50 hours to render using technology that is not available on graphics cards. They are continually playing catch up and we keep moving ahead, and we have a long way to go. That they can put so much computing power on a single chip is significant and worthy of pointing out, but this continual claim that they can do 30 fps of cinematic quality makes me laugh.
Posted by: joe | June 17th, 2008 at 6:56 am | Report this commentRegain the graphics edge over consoles? I am offended. My system out preforms the Xbox 360 and PS3 with 2 year old parts that were already obsolete when I bought them.
Posted by: Dan | June 17th, 2008 at 7:39 am | Report this commentare you an NVIDIA hack?
Posted by: Simon | June 17th, 2008 at 7:49 am | Report this commentLet’s hope this great computing power let us find
new deep energy sites faster
new synthetic fuels formulas faster
new cancer killer gene-guns faster
ultra-smart thin-film and silicon solar solutions faster
water desalination methods faster
hydrogen/metahnol fuel-cells smaller and cheaper
better and cheaper organic food crops faster
sometimes faster is better
Posted by: blogger | June 17th, 2008 at 11:05 pm | Report this commentI hear this every time a new product is release, but honestly, what they say, and what I see in video games - do not line up. What they promised years ago I still don’t see in games today, like wrinkling faces and hi-detail expressions. Replacing old 256 colour textures with photo-realistic textures is one thing, increasing polygon count is another, adding some bump-mapping effects etc… but 3D games today still look like Im looking into a miniaturized world inside a bubble. They lack depth and realistic perception.
In my opinion a graphics card today should have 4GB ram on board, for much, MUCH higher resolution textures (thus requiring larger scaled polygons) allowing system ram to act as a “scratch” disc.
Fact is, all this new line up will achieve is slightly higher detail at a premium for suckers who will part with money for just a touch more realism.
Posted by: iii | June 18th, 2008 at 12:20 am | Report this comment