Trident XP4 - DX9 card for 99 dollars??

Hi!

I just found an interesting interview about the new Trident XP4 card. If it will really have full DX9 hardware support it is definately worth a closer look since it will only cost 99 dollars. They say that it will have 70% of the R300 performance but for that price that’s still a really great deal.
http://www.gamersdepot.com/interviews/trident/xp4/001.htm

What do you think of this?

Thanks
LaBasX2

Originally posted by LaBasX2:
[b]Hi!

I just found an interesting interview about the new Trident XP4 card. If it will really have full DX9 hardware support it is definately worth a closer look since it will only cost 99 dollars. They say that it will have 70% of the R300 performance but for that price that’s still a really great deal.
http://www.gamersdepot.com/interviews/trident/xp4/001.htm

What do you think of this?

Thanks
LaBasX2[/b]
I think you’re mistaken when you think it’ll come with ‘full DX9 hardware support’ - whatever that means. All they’re saying is that it’ll be “DX9 compatible” which is a hugely different thing.

When they say full DX9 hardware support, I believe that is literally what they mean, floating point buffers, pixel shaders and all the other stuff. At no point did they say it was merely compatible with DX9. Though I did fail to see any mention of Trident supporting OpenGL on this “DX9 GPU”.

as long as they don’t mention anything about ogl2.0 i am not interested.

A closer examination of the Trident webpage reveals little information on the XP4. Though a look through a FAQ they have reveals they do support OpenGL on several of their more recent graphics chips, and it says they will support OpenGL on all future hardware, which I assume includes the XP4. Hey, they even have Linux drivers available, so they can’t be all bad eh?

[This message has been edited by DFrey (edited 08-12-2002).]

Less than 100$ with 128MB DDR memory? Common now.

I didn’t even know trident was in business and they seem to have a whole bunch of GPUs. That’s the first time I saw their web page actually.

V-man

Consumer pricing for a 128 MB DDR266 stick is $25, so OEM chip prices are somewhere south of that. Even with $20 for the GPU and $20 for board & RAMDAC, they could be making a profit, although about as slim as on a typical TV set… and it would be a pretty crappy RAMDAC :slight_smile:

But, hey, anything to spur competition, as long as that ALSO drives consumer adoption. Right now, if you write a consumer app, it might have to run on anything from an Intel i815 to an ATI R300. Scary!

If it uses a 266MHz DDR stick, it’s certainly not going to be anywhere near a GeForce4 in performance.

word. RAM != video memory

Regardless of what Trident PR feeds you, XP4 is just a “generic” DX8 part. Drivers will support DX9, just like any other modern card. I believe VS functionality is done on cpu.

Jack

That thing uses DDR 700.

If a typical CPU costs between 200 and 400$, how can something more sophisticated costs less. GPU tend to have a lot more transistors and I think their technology is behind Intel, which costs them a lot in silicon.

It just doesn’t add up. Maybe it will sell for 700$, then in 1 year it will be 100$.

Originally posted by jwatte:
But, hey, anything to spur competition, as long as that ALSO drives consumer adoption. Right now, if you write a consumer app, it might have to run on anything from an Intel i815 to an ATI R300. Scary!

People with integrated video tend to surf the net and email. Toms hardware was talking about that. An integrated GF MX will be a waste for most people, but that’s the way the egg rolls. They put it in the machine, people buy blindly, the small percentage that is us get cheap but valuable hardware.

V-man

JackM, how do you come to your conclusion? I’m wondering because their website has no significant details on this part. All I can find is the original press release. And in it, it clearly states that the vertex and pixel shaders are in the silicon and is known as the “BrightPixel” rendering engine.

I think that Xabre chips from Sis have only
PS in hardware and VS are executed on CPU.
Dont know for Trident.
I only hope that all this new cards will have half decent OpenGL drivers.

RAM != video memory

Video memory is the memory located at/used by the graphics board.
RAM is a memory access technology that provides constant (or very near constant) lookup time for each memory location (random access).

So, if the video memory is not RAM, what kind of access technology does it uses? A sequential access memory (for example a tape recorder) maybe? Video memory is mostly implemented as a type of RAM.

The almighty press release
The only relevant snippet is this

Other key capabilities of the XP4 family include:

  • BrightPixel™ rendering engine with hardware vertex and pixel shaders
  • SmartTile™ memory architecture for optimal memory bandwidth utilization
  • CoolPower™ for low power management
  • Multiview with CRT, DVI and TVout
  • Resolution up to QXGA (2048x1536) with 420MHz RAMDAC
  • DXVA hardware support with both IDCT and Motion Compensation
  • Advanced de-interlacing for highest-quality DVD movies
  • AGP-4X bus interface

So it has HW-VS and HW-PS. Note how they don’t talk about versions. If they had support for PS 2.0 (ie DX9) you’d think they’d mention it, right? So my conclusion is it has some kind of fragment shader hardware (maybe even ‘only’ PS1.1) and vertex shader hardware (whatever version, but for sure it’s <2.0).

And for the SiS Xabre thing, it doesn’t have hardware for vertex shaders but it does have fragment shader hardware. AFAIK it’s version 1.3 in DX lingo.

If they had support for PS 2.0 (ie DX9) you’d think they’d mention it, right?

True. The marketing department should be hyping that aspect. I guess this thing could be like Matrox’s Parahelia (sp?) and be only partially DX9 compliant by not supporting PS 2.0.