We'll see how that works out. This kind of "flexible" or "unified"
architecture was attempted with the FX5xxx series. The end result is that
games required a lot more tweaking/shader-replacement to take advantage of
this kind of flexibility. And remember, "unified" shaders are more
complicated than dedicated vertex- or pixel-shaders, so die size grows
again, and we pay for it in the form of lower clock speeds and dustbuster
cooling solutions.

Also, recall the 7800GTX isn't that much faster than the 6800Ultra in
applications requiring lots of memory bandwidth (e.g. Doom3), for the
obvious reason that memory technology hasn't advanced much between the two
cards: same 256-bit interface, similar clock speed.

--
"War is the continuation of politics by other means.
It can therefore be said that politics is war without
bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed."


<Highlander> wrote