New GFX company enters the fight.

[skunksmash]

It's been a while since a PC graphics company has made a big challenge to the big Three (Intel, Nvidia, ATI) in terms of supporting games. The last such company was 3dfx who championed the 3 acceleration movement in the late 1990s but couldn't keep up the pace and was sold to Nvidia.

Today a new company called Caustic Graphics has officially announced its presence with claims that their PC graphics product will be able to out perform current solutions by up to 20 times. It also claims that their second-generation product, due out in early 2010, will have 200 times (and that's not a typo) the performance of current solutions. Caustic Graphics will base their graphics product on raytracing, a graphics technique that allows for highly realistic looking 3D graphics. Raytracing has also proven to have issues with performance in the past but Caustic claims their technology "enables highly parallel CPUs and GPUs to massively-accelerate raytracing, putting it on par with rasterization and resulting in cinema-quality 3D delivered interactively on low-cost PCs."

The San Fransisco-based Caustic plans to reveal more info about their first product in April 2009. At the moment they are targeting high end computing needs but we suspect that PC gaming is also in their plans.

source



well.....:eek:, this could be quite exciting, if what they say actually holds any water..??




SK

 

[thepizzaman]

running on a pci 1x slot? hm..... i highly doubt it

 

[skunksmash]

apparently they all run on a x4 PCIE, & work in tandem with a ''co processor'', so the bandwidth is less important......

SK

 

[thepizzaman]

hm......... yea idt it will out do anything.......... other than maybe a few low end cards but i might be wrong

 

[skunksmash]

it is hard to comprehend how the above will deliver 100x more graphical throughput than this....

not to mention the fact that its ''passive'', it will be a feat of sheer genius to produce the same or more power than the 295, while keeping cool as a cucumber...??


it will be interesting.





SK

 

[AstaLaVista]

The picture of that video card looks cheesy to say the least but, if they can make it happen cheaper and much better than ATI or Nvidia... I am all for it!!!

This means cheaper prices for us as well, unless of course, that card will sell for a Gazillion dollars :D

 

[Gnys]

Well, technology has advanced immensely throughout these years since the collapse of 3dfx. It's about time someone progressed with the engineering in the gpu sector and shown the world the evolution. Haha, yeah right, I'm going way over my head but seriously neither the current technology is revolutionary whether it's SLI, Tri-SLI or CrossfireX. These cards are fantastic but they need to figure out a way to keep them cool on full load and require less voltage, seriously. I don't see an obstacle in the engineering department but for obvious reason's all these issues reach further deep in the organization. I bet this is a marketing strategy of somewhat. Hot cards > solution > liquid cooling. That part of the market needs money as well and from I know everything is based on a contract.
I doubt that this company will be revolutionary but you never know?

 

[thepizzaman]

well we will find out soon i hope

 

[mpcrsc562]

Caustic Graphics :: Realtime Raytracing :: CausticRT :: CausticOne

the card works in conjunction with the existing user gpu/cpu setup already in the computer. so, in effect, it "helps your gpu/cpu do more than what they can already do on their own."

o.k.

 

[MadDog56]

Wow another GPGPU concept, how exactly are cuda and larrabee doing these days? That's right, they are vaporware as far as the end user is concerned.

Intel is only relevant because they throw the absolute worst graphics in the business on so many of their own chipsets. Other than that no one is buying an intel card. ATI struggled and was bought out by AMD, Nvidia is fighting frantically to keep physx alive. I agree that slapping two sets of hardware on the same pcb or just stuffing as many cards as you can fit into a case is not progress, but I expect nothing less than an industry wide belly flop by Caustic Graphics.

 

[xguntherc]

Ray tracing is actually very realistic.. and Nvidia knows it. They are very scared that it will take them over. they have been spending tons and tons of money on R&D for Raytracing.

It's a great technology and Nvidia cards can do it on a very small scale, but if a company like Caustic Graphics can accelerate it just like they claim, and make it run efficient, they don't need to worry about powerful cards with Big Core Clocks and loud fans.. as it works in a entirely different way.. It's letting the computer be a computer.

I can't wait for that technology to develop more. if they can get something out by January 2010.. Nvidia and ATI are screwed!

 

[xguntherc]

check this out. using 4 9800GX2's for this. (So it's not that far away, but it's far)

NVISION08: Interactive Ray Tracing

Nvidia demos real-time GPU ray tracing at 1,920 x 1,080 | News | Custom PC

look at that car, and that's just the beginning.
Custom PC: Master Index

CUDA is a great step forward in Raytracing. it's rasterization, and raytracing combined for an overall better graphic, with less power than pure raytracing.. it's still a while away, but I'm very interested to see what this comany "claims" they have!

 

[Everlong]

Wow another GPGPU concept, how exactly are cuda and larrabee doing these days? That's right, they are vaporware as far as the end user is concerned.

Intel is only relevant because they throw the absolute worst graphics in the business on so many of their own chipsets. Other than that no one is buying an intel card. ATI struggled and was bought out by AMD, Nvidia is fighting frantically to keep physx alive. I agree that slapping two sets of hardware on the same pcb or just stuffing as many cards as you can fit into a case is not progress, but I expect nothing less than an industry wide belly flop by Caustic Graphics.

How is CUDA vapourware? It's been out for quite some time. And how are Nvidia frantically trying to keep Physx alive?

CUDA is capable of ray tracing NVISION08: Interactive Ray Tracing like what Gunther's already said.

It doesn't really mean much this though. It's just like saying "I can offer you a cable connection 10x faster than your current DSL connection". It just seems Caustic think Ray Tracing is the sum of photo realistic rendering. It's all well and good saying, "In 2010, it will be 200x faster than what we have now", but Nvidia and ATI still have to release their DX11 cards, even thought MS aren't supporting Ray Tracing for a while yet.

I'll be impressed with it doing photon mapping of a 20million polygon scene at 4k resolution at 60fps.

 

[thepizzaman]

hm......... i can't wait to see how thins turns out...
o anyone know anything about ATI and NVidia's dx11 cards?

 

[AstaLaVista]

This sounds like the modem wars when they all claimed their modem could hit 56K speeds but the isp were only able to provide 2400 baud rates :D

All in all, as long as it doesn't cost me a mortgage payment for one of this new cards, I am all for it, in the end though... it is pretty much Greek to me

 

[thepizzaman]

This sounds like the modem wars when they all claimed their modem could hit 56K speeds but the isp were only able to provide 2400 baud rates :D

All in all, as long as it doesn't cost me a mortgage payment for one of this new cards, I am all for it, in the end though... it is pretty much Greek to me

agreed :D

 

[MadDog56]

Wow another GPGPU concept, how exactly are cuda and larrabee doing these days? That's right, they are vaporware as far as the end user is concerned.

Intel is only relevant because they throw the absolute worst graphics in the business on so many of their own chipsets. Other than that no one is buying an intel card. ATI struggled and was bought out by AMD, Nvidia is fighting frantically to keep physx alive. I agree that slapping two sets of hardware on the same pcb or just stuffing as many cards as you can fit into a case is not progress, but I expect nothing less than an industry wide belly flop by Caustic Graphics.

How is CUDA vapourware? It's been out for quite some time. And how are Nvidia frantically trying to keep Physx alive?

CUDA is capable of ray tracing NVISION08: Interactive Ray Tracing like what Gunther's already said.

It doesn't really mean much this though. It's just like saying "I can offer you a cable connection 10x faster than your current DSL connection". It just seems Caustic think Ray Tracing is the sum of photo realistic rendering. It's all well and good saying, "In 2010, it will be 200x faster than what we have now", but Nvidia and ATI still have to release their DX11 cards, even thought MS aren't supporting Ray Tracing for a while yet.

I'll be impressed with it doing photon mapping of a 20million polygon scene at 4k resolution at 60fps.

I'm not going to go round for round with a fanboy, I'm sure you're busy salivating at the prospect of an nvidia cpu and wouldn't want to take your time. In short Cuda is missing any real presense in consumer applications (thus useless to the average end user) and physx is in need of a much better sales pitch than "it adds a little eye candy" to get a respectable number of game developers to implement it. A handful of titles, big or not, hasn't proven physx is here to stay.

 

[Everlong]

CUDA was never meant to be used by the average PC user, though, although in areas where it is i.e. Geforce Physx it does help.

And you could have argued the same when Ageia came in to the scene, there was no real use for Physx 2/3 years ago.