Flat-Panel Interfaces Included
Both the Radeon processor and the GeForce2 GTS also include a digital-flat-panel interface to drive high-resolution color flat panels. NVIDIA designers integrated a TMDS transmitter on the chip, eliminating costly off-chip drivers.
To achieve the high bandwidth needed for the memory subsystem, ATI designers opted for the interface to use 200-MHz double-data-rate (DDR) synchronous DRAMs. Initially, though, the chip can use existing slower DDR SDRAMs. Up to 128 Mbytes of off-chip memory can be addressed by the graphics processor. With a 128-bit-wide interface, the processor has a memory bandwidth of 4.6 Gbytes/s. Additionally, the company developed a novel acceleration technology called HyperZ. This accelerates memory data transfers through the use of lossless compression and on-chip caching. Overall, the HyperZ technology boosts the effective memory bandwidth more than 20% faster than the basic DDR SDRAM data rate.
The NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS architecture also supports up to 128 Mbytes of DDR SDRAM for use as the frame-buffer memory. Memory bandwidths of over 5 Gbytes/s are made possible with the DDR 128-bit-wide interface.
Initially, the company expects to see three board-level memory configurations. These are a 32- and a 64-Mbyte AGP implementation, and a 32-Mbyte PCI version. Although the board-level manufacturers will set the price of boards based on the NVIDIA chip, the company estimates that a 32-Mbyte board might cost about $299. The chip consumes about 10 W. AGP cards built with the chips will fall well within the AGP power guidelines for graphics cards.
ATI claims that power consumption for its Radeon processor will be between 5 and 7 W. Boards based on its chip should fall well within PCI and AGP guidelines too. Prices at the board level should be comparable to those based on the NVIDIA chip.
Price & Availability
Both ATI and NVIDIA estimate that the base-level graphics cards, which are implemented around their respective controller chips and have 32 Mbytes of DDR SDRAM, will list for between $250 and $300 each. Samples of the ATI Radeon processor will be available this summer, while samples of the GeForce2 GTS are available right now.
ATI Technologies Inc., 33 Commerce Valley Dr. East, Thornhill, Ontario, Canada L3T 7N6; (905) 882-2600; www.ati.com.
NVIDIA Corp., 3535 Monroe St., Santa Clara, CA 95051; (408) 615-2500; www.nvidia.com.