Upcoming 6850 and 6870: Oct. 18th

[PP Mguire]

I didn't see you say that before. I was just correcting some inaccuracies. I agree that GPGPU is secondary. They make video cards first. And honestly I think it's a fad. GPU's are are really really good at certain things. But the problem has to be one that you can apply extreme reductionism (read: paralellize) to. Some things you can only run in a procedural manner, some things can be broken into a few threads. And some problems can be broken into thousands of tiny bits. A lot of people have jumped on the bandwagon knowing little about GPU architecture and assuming everything is faster on a GPU. That simply isn't true. I'll also say again, single and double precision don't mean much as words on their own. Double precision of what? Double precision means you have twice as many places in a value it's the difference between calling Pi 3.1 and 3.14. This depends a lot on how you are doing it and what you are looking for. Double precision just implies you want a more precise answer. it says nothing of how you get there. When people say single and double precision in terms of performance they most often mean in relation to running benchmark software such as Linpack, drystone, wetstone, Sandra, or 3dmark etc.

By double and single im talking Double and Single precision Floating Point performance. I figured you of all people would know what im talking about

Fermis Double Floating Precision performance was decreased compared to what GTX2** and Radeon 5*** can do. In short and sweet Nvidias Double Precision performance has been cut 1/8th of single, and ATI is 1/5th single to minimize cost of consumer cards and make those HPC cards look so much better. This is what i was talking about compared to your explanation of the coding involved. This is why my folding program Milkyway@home doesnt even have an API designed to use Fermi chips because they rely on double precision performance. ATI is king in that aspect of what im folding in. I apologize if i dont make much sense, 3 hours of sleep with no food does that to you. If this sounds retarded in the morning ill come back and re-write it.