History of Nvidia and DX9 -Article

[spam]

Read the following article on the development of DX9 The Shocking State of 3D Affairs

Whats your opinion?

 

[Rogodin2]

IT's technically wrong is some parts and rather unprofessional in others-the author is taking some heavy flack and retracting some of the propositions over at beyond3d.com

rogo

 

[Pete]

IMO, Josh seems to be defending nV a tad in his recent articles. As he acknowledges in the addendum, this article isn't exactly accurate. I found it to apologetic for my tastes. Sure, he labels it explanatory rather than apologetic, but I don't agree--all the context in the world doesn't excuse lying to your customers. Perhaps this is me more disagreeing with the explanations/context he puts out than with his personal opinion on the situation. Josh has proven to be a reasonable and intelligent guy, so I'm sure his update will be worth reading. I was always enthused about his State of 3D articles, but this one is mostly old and too-often inaccurate news to me, so I'm nonplussed.

I'm off to read B3D's take on this.

 

[Genx87]

Nice try but it really doesnt hold much water. Even for someone who likes Nvidia.

I do agree with him that Nvidia "may" be building a base for future generations. Or maybe they just got caught with thier genitals in thier hands.

I guess only time will tell us how it all pans out.

 

[spam]

I found it interesting that Nvidia did not involve itself in the early devlopment meetings of DX9! That to me is just an amazing statement of who Nvidia's foolishness. It has been asserted, even by some AT posters that there was a conspiracy to hurt Nvidia. Seems Nvidia's wounds are self inflcted. That to me has been the missing piece in this puzzle of why Nv did not optimize for DX9. Nvidia had just finished it's development of Xbox and hoped to sway its business partner M$ to conform the DX9 standard to be more NV friendly. That is unbelievbly stupid!!!

 

[Genx87]

That is provided his information is correct of course. Something he really lacks to back up.

My guess is the fanATIcs will run with that but throw out the rest of his information.

 

[spam]

I think there's been a lot of revisionist history on these matters but it seems likely to me if it were not true, it would be challenged by Nvidia or it's defenders. It would be a matter of public record somewhere. What I did like about the review was that it had an update on it at the end. I would really like to see that more often. Reviews are only accurate at a given point in time. They are out of date and have a very short shelf life. It would help if the reviewer would update as more tests and events unfold.

 

[spam]

Here's a quote from the Inquirer that corroborates the NV 35's limitations cited in the above article.

Well, we tested ATI Radeon yesterday and it shows very dramatic Max Payne 2 difference between Nvidia and ATI. It's not an egg-to-egg comparison but in certain cases on Sapphire 9800XT Max Payne 2 ends up almost two and a half times faster then on a FX 5900 non Ultra card. Two and a half times is sure not difference that one could expect and 25 percent would sound rational to us. But when it comes to Nvidia high end cards and DirectX 9 games like Tomb Raider 2, Halo and Max Payne 2, Nvidia's performance just vanished.

 

[Czar]

Originally posted by: spam
I found it interesting that Nvidia did not involve itself in the early devlopment meetings of DX9! That to me is just an amazing statement of who Nvidia's foolishness. It has been asserted, even by some AT posters that there was a conspiracy to hurt Nvidia. Seems Nvidia's wounds are self inflcted. That to me has been the missing piece in this puzzle of why Nv did not optimize for DX9. Nvidia had just finished it's development of Xbox and hoped to sway its business partner M$ to conform the DX9 standard to be more NV friendly. That is unbelievbly stupid!!!

thats the nail in the coffin

 

[BenSkywalker]

But when it comes to Nvidia high end cards and DirectX 9 games like Tomb Raider 2, Halo and Max Payne 2, Nvidia's performance just vanished.

MaxPayne2 is DX8.1 based, and Halo has every boards performance 'vanishing'(actually, so does TRAoD when you enable all the DX9 features, it's just a lot worse on nV's hardware).

 

[jiffylube1024]

I thought it was a well written article, with good intentions. The author seemed to be somewhat "rooting" for Nvidia getting back on top again (and indeed even his whole thesis and arguments supported this fact) however there were some good points about Nvidia's experience with .13, complex GPU design, etc. Some of the facts were off (I don't think NV3x ever runs in 8X1 for example) however his message seemed clear - Nvidia went for a very complex GPU design (and proprietary Cg compilers) and it was a huge decision that seems to have caused them nothing but problems so far. However, they're still in the race and hopefully they can get right back into the hunt in the next generation. Let's just hope that they don't try to stick us with proprietary compilers again and actually follow the spec.

This new set of GPU's this spring/summer will really be huge for both companies. For our sake (the consumers) let's hope that one company doesn't totally dominate the other, so that there can be ongoing competition in the market. The last thing we want to see is ATI or Nvidia as the sole major player in the video market.

 

[spam]

This new set of GPU's this spring/summer will really be huge for both companies. For our sake (the consumers) let's hope that one company doesn't totally dominate the other, so that there can be ongoing competition in the market. The last thing we want to see is ATI or Nvidia as the sole major player in the video market.

I hope that the two compainies come away having learned the right lessons. Like honesty is the best policy, however if Nvidia feels that its dissimulations were effective then it may put more emphasis on massaging the benchmarks than on speed and quality. Needless to say ATI could follow Nvidia's bad example and take the wrong lessons from the latest competition.

 

[IncredibleHutch]

alright... I know I'm running a laptop with a mobility 9000 that I purchased last November... but I'll comment on these new cards speaking in general. Who cares if the companies optimize. How often is the user going to really tell the difference in the way an explosion occurs on one card compared to another. Odds are you are avoiding that explosion and trying to focus aim on something else anyway. The frames are moving entirely too fast for your eye to be able to examine the difference between 1 individual frame on two different cards. Sure we can always make animated gifs of the difference where the pic will flash back and forth and surely you'd see a difference. But that's 1 instant in time come and gone and your ready to frag the next bad guy. Anywho that's all I have to say about that.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Originally posted by: IncredibleHutch
alright... I know I'm running a laptop with a mobility 9000 that I purchased last November... but I'll comment on these new cards speaking in general. Who cares if the companies optimize. How often is the user going to really tell the difference in the way an explosion occurs on one card compared to another. Odds are you are avoiding that explosion and trying to focus aim on something else anyway. The frames are moving entirely too fast for your eye to be able to examine the difference between 1 individual frame on two different cards. Sure we can always make animated gifs of the difference where the pic will flash back and forth and surely you'd see a difference. But that's 1 instant in time come and gone and your ready to frag the next bad guy. Anywho that's all I have to say about that.

But optimizations don't alter one frame, they alter how something is rendered or the output (in all frames). I think we should just stick to "honesty is the best policy".

 

[nRollo]

That article is weak.

I'd sure like to see some benches of the Volari cards. The 3d market has been too limited for too long.

 

[Genx87]

think there's been a lot of revisionist history on these matters but it seems likely to me if it were not true, it would be challenged by Nvidia or it's defenders. It would be a matter of public record somewhere. What I did like about the review was that it had an update on it at the end. I would really like to see that more often. Reviews are only accurate at a given point in time. They are out of date and have a very short shelf life. It would help if the reviewer would update as more tests and events unfold.


Well the problem is I have heard anything from 1.5 years before the NV30 to 6 months for when FP24 was finally decided upon. I did a little research 2 months ago into the matter and it appeared that upto at least July 12th of 2002 FP16 was going to be the standard for DX9 pixel shaders. Sometime between that and whenever they changed the spec they went to FP24. And there wont be any "public" record because it wasnt a public meeting.

I am sure MS has some meeting notes buried somewhere but good luck trying to get access to them I still remember even last winter people debating on whether FP16 or FP24 will be the standard for Pixel Shaders.

I dont think it was as cut and dry. I have my personal feelings on why they went FP24 but that is for another thread

 

[spam]

Hi I thought I would pass on an email I got from Josh Walrash writer of the article,


Hello Josh Walrath,

I am trying to get some more background on the DX 9 development history. As you may know there has been some who have thought that Nvidia's absence from the early meetings on the DX9 development was not voluntary. Rather it was shut out. Is there any corroborative evidence that supports the more common view that Nvidia chose to go it's on way? This seems to be the crux of the matter, all that follows is a result of this one critical point. Can you help with any links or information?

Thank you for a very good read I enjoyed the article very much it.

Bruce .

Hi Bruce,

These decisions not to attend were not documented by NVIDIA. I had a friend that attended many of the initial DX9 meetings that fleshed out the standard, and NVIDIA was absent. From all indications, this was a voluntary move by NVIDIA. I have just read a post from a former MS employee who worked with developers extensively, and he mentions that NVIDIA wasn't happy with many of the initial specifications of DX9, and wanted their own implemented. The person goes on to say that NVIDIA essentially tried to blackmail MS with Xbox chip allocations to try to get MS to change their minds on DX9. By the time the dust settled, DX9 was firmly entrenched, and NVIDIA already had the NV3x series of chips in advanced planning and engineering stages. In other words, NVIDIA followed their own ideal of DX9, but it turns out that much of that ideal was not implemented into DX9. So basically they had a part that did not match up well with the specification.

Microsoft legally would not be able to lock NVIDIA out of the DX9 discussions, because this could be labeled as anti-competitive behavior (and MS is very sensitive to that word now).

 

[spam]

I am also asking others who may have inside contacts in the industry about this historical development of DX 9. If you have any contacts could you try and elicit some information?

 

[jim1976]

Originally posted by: Rollo
That article is weak.

I'd sure like to see some benches of the Volari cards. The 3d market has been too limited for too long.