Nvidia for Better Or Worse

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: Schmide

Those were your standards, put forth by you. I simply used your own words to prove my point. If you have to come down off your high irrational horse to reach my rational ground level, so be it.

You set the standard of DirectX is an open standard and PhysX is not. I simply proved you wrong is all.

I'm not trumpeting PhysX as an open standard, I'm just saying that it is as or even more open than DirectX. However both are owned and controlled by one company. You just don't like how that fact makes you wrong.

 

[dunno99]

Originally posted by: Swampthing
So lemme get this straight. Your comparing an API that comes standard on the only operating system that's even remotely mainstream, something that you pretty much HAVE to own to even use a computer.

To a video card that not even 30% of the computer using world even has?

Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why directx won out over opengl.

You really think that's a fair comparison of open and closed standards?

Proprietary standards that only work one on manufacturers chip who doesn't even have 30% of the total graphics card market share is a whole other thing. That stifles development big time.

Wow. I think I'm speechless. What does 30% market share of nVidia cards have to do with OpenGL and DirectX? This was a comparison between an "open" standard OGL vs. a "closed" standard DX, not between DX and nVidia (what? that doesn't even make sense). So, when did intel not have an OGL and DX implementation? nVidia? AMD? Via/S3? And how does the proprietary DX have any single bit more market share than OGL? If anything, OGL has the bigger market share, since on Windows, both OGL and DX are supported by all graphics card manufacturers. On Linux and Apple, however, only OGL is supported (discounting WINE). In the end, OGL didn't lose out because of the irrelevant "30%" figure, it lost out because it was slow in pushing innovation. So yeah, I think you're confusing OGL with nVidia or something.

Now, your last sentence may make sense. But to be honest, there's always the CPU fallback for PhysX (correct me if I'm wrong), so technically speaking, PhysX itself isn't exactly GPU-only or 30%-only. So on the software front, I'm not sure how it exactly implies stifling innovation. If a game company can reduce the number of people allocated to physics, that means a company has that many more people to work on something else, bringing, that's right: innovation (or at least better frame rates if they don't manage to feature creep). On the other hand, arguing about "standards" (open or closed) being on one hardware and not another is like arguing about the Cell not being on the X360 -- exactly, "huh?!"

However, I don't necessarily condone nVidia's behavior about disabling PhysX on ATi graphics processors. However, if they're using some sort of low level signaling to move vertex data directly from the coprocessor to the graphics card, then there may be reason why they would need to lock the software to the hardware (they may not do so now). But obviously, this is a contended point, and we won't find out the reasons/consequences until later in time.

I've been in the industry for a while now (not that this gives me any credence...I'm just stating my observations over this period of time), and all this talk about standards is somewhat bullsh*t. The only thing that matters to developers is setting a spec and sticking to it (e.g. support and conforming to the spec). Anything else is rubbish. I mean, after all, you're playing the games we make, not the hardware itself, right?

(BTW, I don't speak for my company in any of my posts. I am just speaking about my own experiences.)

 

[Schmide]

Originally posted by: Wreckage

Originally posted by: Schmide

Those were your standards, put forth by you. I simply used your own words to prove my point. If you have to come down off your high irrational horse to reach my rational ground level, so be it.

You set the standard of DirectX is an open standard and PhysX is not. I simply proved you wrong is all.

I'm not trumpeting PhysX as an open standard, I'm just saying that it is as or even more open than DirectX. However both are owned and controlled by one company. You just don't like how that fact makes you wrong.

WTH kind of argument is that. Because you make it bold makes it true?

Apparently you put an undue burden on the term "open standard" such that it has absolutely no variance in level of openness? I guess if your only perspective is that of the open source community, for which I enjoy participation in, you could be factually right. Reality is there exists a wide range of openness, the very least of which encompasses a review by which involved parties help define the direction of the standard. The very most would be full transparency where all aspects of the process must be open to the public. When you talk in your absolute facts without respect to various perspectives, you set yourself up for failure.

If even you (above many times) can relate the levels of openness of physX respective to that of directX, the facts would fall on my side. If you deny that, I consider you unworthy to argue with.

 

[evolucion8]

Now nVidia will clasify EOL the GTX 285, GTX 275 and GTX 260 and will leave only the GTX 295, will this mean that a new GPU is coming?

http://www.semiaccurate.com/20...d-and-high-end-market/

Also this http://www.semiaccurate.com/20...nd-gtx275-prices-soon/

nVidia is in a critical position now.

 

[akugami]

Originally posted by: Mr Fox
nV is fading..... Enough said...

They have been run out of the Core Logic Chipset business..(Thank God !)

I wouldn't say that nVidia is fading. One can certainly make the argument that ATI is poised to ascend but I don't think we can really say nVidia is fading.

As for the core logic and chipset business...I'm one who is not happy nVidia is out of that business. My last two Intel motherboards used nVidia chipsets. Competition breeds innovation and also lowers prices. One of the reasons I'm against the closed nature of PhysX and CUDA. It'd give control of key technologies in the hand of a company with a checkered past. Not that ATI is any better and I'd oppose any proprietary tech on their part as well.

 

[BFG10K]

Originally posted by: T2k

Interestingly enough it was the NV Focus Group Member Mod that triggered your notice.

That looks like a mod call-out, so I?d be careful as you?re skating on thin ice.

I?ve had repeated complaints about you, and you?ve already been warned by a senior moderator for other infractions in another thread. This would make it warning three, and your last.

Video Mod BFG10K.

 

[JSt0rm]

Originally posted by: evolucion8
Now nVidia will clasify EOL the GTX 285, GTX 275 and GTX 260 and will leave only the GTX 295, will this mean that a new GPU is coming?

http://www.semiaccurate.com/20...d-and-high-end-market/

Also this http://www.semiaccurate.com/20...nd-gtx275-prices-soon/

nVidia is in a critical position now.

:shocked: I actually feel bad for the people who work there. I also hope they don't die as we do need competition.

 

[Keysplayr]

I wouldn't worry too much about Nvidia dying Jstorm. You need to star worrying about AMD's staying power at this point though. Remember, they did make the top 20 list of companies in danger of bankruptcy not very long ago. Many have speculated that Nvidia might buy AMD, but I wouldn't even know if that would be allowed assuming NV "was" interested. NV is going to be around a lot longer than AMD.

 

[Red Irish]

Originally posted by: Keysplayr
I wouldn't worry too much about Nvidia dying Jstorm. You need to star worrying about AMD's staying power at this point though. Remember, they did make the top 20 list of companies in danger of bankruptcy not very long ago. Many have speculated that Nvidia might buy AMD, but I wouldn't even know if that would be allowed assuming NV "was" interested. NV is going to be around a lot longer than AMD.

Surely you are not arguing that Nvidia is currently in a better market position than AMD/ATI? I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that ATI had successfully undercut their competition due to the pricing of the 4800 series and I assume we will see a similar pattern with the 5800 series, given that Nvidia has no viable alternative to offer at the present time (their cards are outpriced and outperformed by ATI's alternatives).

 

[Blazer7]

The 4xxx series did put AMD back in the game but still they were not anywhere close to threaten nV's dominance. No doubt that now with the 5xxx series AMD is in a much better position but much depends on nV's answer. How fast they will reply, how good Firmy and its derivatives are gonna end up and at what cost. If Firmy enters the graphics arena in Q4 and prices are not sky high nV may still have a chance to hold AMD at bay. Not without a loss but they may still be able to avoid the worst. Who knows. Only time will tell.

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: Red Irish
Surely you are not arguing that Nvidia is currently in a better market position than AMD/ATI? I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that ATI had successfully undercut their competition due to the pricing of the 4800 series and I assume we will see a similar pattern with the 5800 series, given that Nvidia has no viable alternative to offer at the present time (their cards are outpriced and outperformed by ATI's alternatives).

You are right, nVidia's current position is bad, doesn't have videocards that are competitive with the HD5x00 series at a good prices, doesn't have DX11 support, is moving most of its GTX series to EOL status, its out of chipset bussiness, renaming G92 SKU's to newer SKU's aka GTS 250, locking out PhysX which will simply slow down its adoption, the GT300 is late and will be expensive, hot and big, is slowly losing market share,but we need nVidia so innovation can keep bouncing between companies. ATi is currently putting more effort in gaming features and performance than in GPU computing, nVidia is doing the opposite, both approaches are great because the customer can choose which area fits best his/her needs and simply buy what he/she needs.

 

[BenSkywalker]

but I dare say Nvidia aren't the innovators. Open standards bring about innovation. Closed standards don't. I'd infact say Nvidia is stalling innovation to some degree. They are trying to innovate with gpgpu-apps, yet they stop said innovation dead in it's tracks, by using closed standards.

Like OpenCL, which nVidia has full consumer support for, ATi has zero consumer support for. That an example of this 'open standard innovation'?

How about Linux support? When is it that ATi is going to get close to offering the same level of support that nVidia does? This another example of the 'open standard innovation' that nVidia is stalling?

How about OpenGL support? Is ATi ever going to reach the level of nV's drivers on that front? That another stall?

Is nVidia stalling open standards from your perspective because they give them so much more support then ATi?

ATi is great at supporting the 100% proprietary DirectX.

ATi's PR department excels at supporting the 100% proprietary Havok too.

What I don't see, is where is the actual open standards support? Press releases? Is that how you define it? Because in terms of what I can do with open standards right now, my ATi box is dead last by a staggering amount. I don't use press releases to do things, but driver support does come in handy.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: Red Irish

Originally posted by: Keysplayr
I wouldn't worry too much about Nvidia dying Jstorm. You need to star worrying about AMD's staying power at this point though. Remember, they did make the top 20 list of companies in danger of bankruptcy not very long ago. Many have speculated that Nvidia might buy AMD, but I wouldn't even know if that would be allowed assuming NV "was" interested. NV is going to be around a lot longer than AMD.

Surely you are not arguing that Nvidia is currently in a better market position than AMD/ATI? I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that ATI had successfully undercut their competition due to the pricing of the 4800 series and I assume we will see a similar pattern with the 5800 series, given that Nvidia has no viable alternative to offer at the present time (their cards are outpriced and outperformed by ATI's alternatives).

No, not arguing that at all. 58xx is out, the fastest single GPU, decent price. They'll enjoy 2 to 3 months of this. Then everything changes.
The pricing of the 4xxx series was great for consumers, but even then, that "better market position" didn't gain them much in the way of market share. And they didn't report making any money either. So, you can have the greatest market position ever, but if you don't sell enough cards, what does it mean? If they had sold 4xxx by the trainload, I would think their market share would have went up considerably. But that didn't happen. Why not?

 

[Schmide]

Originally posted by: Keysplayr
Why not?

Dell

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: Keysplayr
No, not arguing that at all. 58xx is out, the fastest single GPU, decent price. They'll enjoy 2 to 3 months of this. Then everything changes.
The pricing of the 4xxx series was great for consumers, but even then, that "better market position" didn't gain them much in the way of market share. And they didn't report making any money either. So, you can have the greatest market position ever, but if you don't sell enough cards, what does it mean? If they had sold 4xxx by the trainload, I would think their market share would have went up considerably. But that didn't happen. Why not?

The HD 48x0 simply outsold the GTX 2x0 series, period. Even with the Steam hardware survey you can sum it all, and the HD 4x00 simply outsold the GTX 2x0 series. Most of the nVidia's market share comes from the 86x0, 88x0, and 98x0 series because they were priced right and offered nice performance, if ATi never got enough big chunk of the market share in the Radeon R300, R4x0 and R5x0 era, they never will at this point.

They did made money with the RV770, what makes you think that they didn't?. A smaller GPU, with a much simpler PCB at a very competitive price, they can afford to drop prices whenever they feel like, not like nVidia with their twice bigger GPU with its very complex PCB which from a performance/price/manufacturing costs perspective, it isn't very competitive at all. That's why partners like XFX went to ATi. AMD as a whole company is bleeding money, but ATi is the only AMD's division which is making money, they're dragging ATi's acquisition debt, CPU looses etc, using your logic is like saying that nVidia will not make new videocards because they quit chipset business. If ATi didn't had enough money, Cypress wouldn't be here, but look at nVidia now, selling expensive cards at such low prices to remain competitive has digged a hole in their pockets, that's why they will EOL those expensive GTX, they aren't profitable at all with such low prices, also not being able to refresh their SKU line with newer cards and newer feature set simply stalls the progress, not being able to master DX10.1 in time, hence the delay of DX11 adoption in their hardware, something is very wrong there.

The steam survey is quite accurate with the market share tendency, it doesn't reflect the whole market share, but gives you a hint, most market share from nVidia comes from old generation of cards, less than 1/3 comes from the GTX series, while accounting the HD 4800 series alone, simply outsold the GTX series, period.

All videocards

8800 series 9.89% and is diminishing
9800 series 5.63% and is increasing slighly
8600 series 5.68% and is decreasing slowly
GTX series 5.93% and is increasing considerably (0.86%)

ATi 4800 series 7.83% and is increasing considerably (0.43%)

DX10 GPU only stats
8800 series 14.37% and is decreasing considerably (0.91%)
9800 series 8.18% and is decreasing slighly
8600 series 8.25% and is decreasing considerably
GTX series 8.61% and is increasing slowly (0.37%)

ATi's 4800 series 11.46% and is increasing moderately (0.38%)

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: evolucion8
snip

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/h...creases-market-share/1

The 4800 series failed to gain significant marketshare, thus making it a failure.

AMD failed to profit on it, again more failure

Those are really the 2 benchmarks of success.

Actual video game benchmarks showed it behind the competition. 3 strikes and out.

 

[BenSkywalker]

It appears that the 4770 is included in the 4800 numbers, unless I'm blind I don't see it anywhere on the charts.

Problem with analyzing things the way you are, the 4770, 4830 and 4850 don't compete with anything in the GTX line atm, they go against the GTS and 9800xxx lines, which if you compare those numbers it puts nV at 12.41% to 4800s 7.83%. If the drivers broke down the 4800 series per board it would help out a lot, make it easier to point out the differing market segments. It makes no sense to seperate out the GT200 and G92 parts though, what functionality has changed on them from a gaming standpoint?

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker

Problem with analyzing things the way you are, the 4770, 4830 and 4850 don't compete with anything in the GTX line atm, they go against the GTS and 9800xxx lines, which if you compare those numbers it puts nV at 12.41% to 4800s 7.83%. If the drivers broke down the 4800 series per board it would help out a lot, make it easier to point out the differing market segments. It makes no sense to seperate out the GT200 and G92 parts though, what functionality has changed on them from a gaming standpoint?

Yeah he was trolling a bit. Look at the first page of the survey (which he ignores).

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

NVIDIA 65.38% ATI 27.26% Which mirrors my post above regarding marketshare.

 

[Keysplayr]

 

[alcoholbob]

Roughly 8% vs 6% 48xx vs GT200 according to the Steam Survey, however, 48xx includes the 4830 and possibly the 4770. But even if 4800 matched GT200 in sales its a success for ATI considering their 1:2 market share ratio vs nvidia.

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: Wreckage

Originally posted by: evolucion8
snip

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/h...creases-market-share/1

The 4800 series failed to gain significant marketshare, thus making it a failure.

AMD failed to profit on it, again more failure

Those are really the 2 benchmarks of success.

Actual video game benchmarks showed it behind the competition. 3 strikes and out.

Trolling?, we all know the kind of BS you are capable to spread, even Keysplyr told you once that the HD 48x0 are far from being a failure, thanks to it you were able to enjoy the low price of your obsolete DX10.0 GTX 260+. So I will not bother arguing against you, after all, your arguments are empty as you are, at least I posted meaningful information, you just posted an old link, I feel pity for you.

Originally posted by: Astrallite
Roughly 8% vs 6% 48xx vs GT200 according to the Steam Survey, however, 48xx includes the 4830 and possibly the 4770. But even if 4800 matched GT200 in sales its a success for ATI considering their 1:2 market share ratio vs nvidia.

I agree, if ATi was never able to acquite significant market share when they had the best card in the market like the 9700/9800, X800 and X1K series, they will never be, but it still a success despite of the past flops like the HD 2900XT and the uncompetitiveness of the HD 3800 series.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker

but I dare say Nvidia aren't the innovators. Open standards bring about innovation. Closed standards don't. I'd infact say Nvidia is stalling innovation to some degree. They are trying to innovate with gpgpu-apps, yet they stop said innovation dead in it's tracks, by using closed standards.

Like OpenCL, which nVidia has full consumer support for, ATi has zero consumer support for. That an example of this 'open standard innovation'?

How about Linux support? When is it that ATi is going to get close to offering the same level of support that nVidia does? This another example of the 'open standard innovation' that nVidia is stalling?

How about OpenGL support? Is ATi ever going to reach the level of nV's drivers on that front? That another stall?

Is nVidia stalling open standards from your perspective because they give them so much more support then ATi?

ATi is great at supporting the 100% proprietary DirectX.

ATi's PR department excels at supporting the 100% proprietary Havok too.

What I don't see, is where is the actual open standards support? Press releases? Is that how you define it? Because in terms of what I can do with open standards right now, my ATi box is dead last by a staggering amount. I don't use press releases to do things, but driver support does come in handy.

I refuse to believe you didn't understand he was talking about Physx. Him not outright stating that and trying to make nVidia look worse with other wording is no worse than you ignoring it.

PhysX is a tool for nVidia used to eliminate competition, not unlike Glide was for 3Dfx. We need a physics acceleration technology that anyone can benefit from, whether it be like OpenGL or DirectX, it doesn't really matter as long as isn't like Glide (and just so you can't pretend not to understand me, I am using those as analogies)

 

[Keysplayr]

"even Keysplyr told you once that the HD 48x0 are far from being a failure,"

Do you have that quote? I remember saying that, but forgot the context in which it pertained. Might help to get my exact quote for context reasons.

 

[BenSkywalker]

I refuse to believe you didn't understand he was talking about Physx.

The only potential open counterpart to PhysX is something built using OpenCL, which as of right now nVidia has full support for and ATi does not.

We need a physics acceleration technology that anyone can benefit from, whether it be like OpenGL or DirectX, it doesn't really matter as long as isn't like Glide (and just so you can't pretend not to understand me, I am using those as analogies)

As of right now, nVidia is the only company fully supporting a potential alternative to PhysX that is open. ATi has come out publicly for Havok, which is another solution just like Glide, and DXC, which is entirely proprietary.

DirectX is 100% proprietary, people need to keep that in mind.

As of right now in terms of supporting open standards there is no doubt whatsoever that nVidia is ahead of ATi. Do they also support their own standard? Yes, they do. Is there any open alternative counterpart to PhysX? No, there is not. There is the potential with OpenCL, but if it came out today it wouldn't change the fact that it would only run in hardware on nVidia's solutions.

I agree, if ATi was never able to acquite significant market share when they had the best card in the market like the 9700/9800, X800 and X1K series

ATi was ahead of nVidia for quite a while in terms of marketshare, they lost that position a while ago and have been slowly going down since(even on their strong product cycles).

 

[Schmide]

I will say all the above data is a testament to the success of the 8800 line. In fact if you add up all the 9800gt, gts 150, 9600 (gso part), etc. You're probably nearing the 20% figure maybe a bit less.