Why does nvidia cheat so much?

[KCfromNC]

You did speak vocally and loudly, there is no innovation and deserves no credit.

Yay, let's all post vague meaningless but damning sounding platitudes to distract that you can't discuss the facts in a rational way! That will make for a productive discussion. It's almost like what you'd expect from someone working in marketing - ignore the facts and try to "focus" the "group" on emotion, if you know what I mean

Meanwhile, back in reality you can find that somehow researchers stole nVidia's wonderful unique innovative never-thought-of-before idea, traveled back in time a decade and wrote about it - http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar...le-ISA+Heterogeneous+Multi-Core+Architectures (notice the 2002 and 2003 dates). Either that or maybe nVidia's idea isn't as innovative as their marketing department would have you believe. It's a reasonably cool idea, assuming they can get past all of the scheduling difficulties inherent in such a plan - and they're pretty significant.

 

[formulav8]

And if you think about it, who would want a mod that would stand idly by while such was occurring under his watch? I wouldn't want to be a member of that community, the mob mentality is just not my thing.

:thumbsup: I still can't get over your name though

 

[darkswordsman17]

The part in bold, I'm not aware of this being the purpose of the Nvidia Focus Group. To me, this part of your post reads as being an assumption on your part in regards to the purpose/intent of the focus group.

Be that as it may, what purpose/intent do you suppose exists as the motivation for seeding reviewers with free samples of hardware? And how does that purpose differ from that which you assume to be the purpose of the NV focus group?



Correct on the latter, have no idea why you would go to the extra effort involved to state the former.

I'm not aware of my having defended Keysplayr anymore so than I have endeavored to defend multitudes of other forum members who were being harassed in a disrespectful manner that reflected poorly on the stature of our community as a whole.

Nice non answer. I'd say that speaks plenty but I don't want you to think I'm making assumptions. I guess, stupid me for thinking that since you know, that's exactly what happened here. But okay, so Nvidia did some soul searching and decided to be a better....hmmm oh right they're a business [as so many Nvidia defenders are so apt to point out] so yeah that didn't happen.

Yes I do think there is pretty substantial difference. You're right, free stuff even if it is review samples and ad space will bias, but it does not to the level of being tied directly to one single company where you were cherry picked to represent them for specific reasons. I guess I need to ask if you're actually trying to claim that they're equal, don't want to assume anything after all.

Like I said, defend him if you want. To be honest, I wasn't even talking specifically about him but rather the focus group in general. No, I'm not saying he's pulling anything like Rollo and the others did, but it very clearly clouds his posting in this subforum.

That's fine, see it your way, I get you were just trying to defend keys from what you consider unfair treatment (although I'm not sure how stating the fact the he's given stuff by Nvidia needs defended...but whatever). The difference is, I don't recall you responding by basically leveling insinuations at another company at the same time.

Since there seems to be some confusion, my issue was with what you posted, not you "defending" keys. Apparently you think I'm wrong to infer anything from you posting:

How many members do you suppose we have here posting in these forums that receive free AMD kit? I know a few without even putting much effort into tabulating it.

Hmm, then there's this:

My post wasn't meant to be a tease, if I was "free" to name them then I would have done so at the outset. I am not free to name them, even if they gave me their approval of me releasing confidential info I would not do it because I no more want to see them publicly crucified and vilified than I wish to see Keysplayr vilified.

(its the same with employees of companies that intentionally seek to remain unaffiliated, I know some of them privately and I would not "out" them even if they gave me their OK to do so...but yes there are AMD employees in our midst here, and they hide for good reason because there are some truly ugly hateful members in our community, on both sides of the fence)

If you are unwilling to simply take my word on it then you are basically saying I am untrustworthy and a liar, in which case if you really feel that way about me then you should probably be ignoring my posts anyways as there is little to be gained by interacting with me in that case.

If you truly believe that AMD does not give anyone free gear then I don't know what to tell you.

Consider for the moment the fact that the ONLY reason you are aware of Keysplayr being a member of the NV Focus Group is because it is a requirement of the NV Focus Group that he "out" himself. It is not a requirement of the AnandTech Forums (ATF).

As such we (ATF) also do not have a policy regarding members of parallel organizations on the AMD side of the fence to "out" themselves, that is between them and the policies of their organization just as is the case with the NV focus group.



^ thanks for the background. That does speak to the credibility of the members of the focus group who were engaging in those practices at the time when those practices were policy. But Keysplayr was not a member then, and that is no longer the purpose of the focus group.

At some point the community needs to recognize that organizations change, people change. The US military of the 1940's detained US citizens of Japanese descent during WWII, a heinous act committed against the very citizenry for which the military had sworn to protect.

Today's US military has the same name as the one that existed in WWII, but it is composed of entirely different people and has policies that have changed (don't ask/don't tell, etc) since the era of WWII...it would be wrong of me (or anyone else) to hold it against a member of the military today the actions of the military from years ago when that military member did not even belong to the military then.

I view the situation with the NV Focus Group no differently, at a symbolic level, the organization has the same name but to my understanding that is about all that it has in common with the organization that existed with the same name years ago. And again, the deplorable actions committed by members of that group at the time certainly have proven their integrity to be lacking, no question about that, but members who have joined since that time have not done anything to deserve the treatment they receive at the hands of some posts IMO.

So, I was wrong to infer, but I was right? I just was stupid to even ask in the first place I guess.

I thought they rewrote the forum guidelines/rules specifically because of the focus group stuff?

I was pi**ed when I found out about the focus group. I was also pi**ed about how this site handled it, and this makes me fully realize things really have not changed that much. The only reason things aren't as bad as before is that Nvidia was smart enough to tell their little minions not to be outright a**holes like they were before. So the focus group is less malicious. So what? it ruined this forum and so I absolutely think people should still take issue with them being here.

I would be equally pissed if I knew there were AMD shills that operated similarly to the nvidia's focus group on here, guess I should be pissed then (and probably further pissed at Nvidia since if they're not required to "out" themselves I clearly should not think keys is the only one).

Wow, really? Trying to make comparisons between the Nvidia focus group and the US military detaining Japanese citizens during WWII? WTF? Please actually think before making analogies.

 

[Lonbjerg]

Nvidia has created ridiculous brand fanaticism among users through their online word of mouth campaign, its pretty amazing. Is nvidia a religion these days?

Pot, marry kettle...:whiste:

 

[SirPauly]

Edited to add - that's for everyone who magically started using the phrase "conspiracy theory" all at the same time.

There you go, the mind is churning -- another conspiracy why some are using conspiracy. Connect the dots!

 

[darkswordsman17]

"The Court finds that the CQ-56 replacement computer is a reasonable replacement for the original computers at issue in this case. Although there are differences between the CQ-56 and various computers for which it is offered as a replacement, the CQ-56 meets or exceeds nearly all of the specifications of the original computers. In addition, it comes with an advanced operating system, new warranty and other programs," US District Chief Judge James Ware said."

Meets or exceeds nearly all of the specifications of the original computers.
When you RMA a 3 year old GPU that you originally paid 250 dollars for, do you expect to get what 250 dollars buys you today? Or do you have the realistic expectation of a like kind and quality card which would probably be worth 1/4 of what you originally paid, but offers similar performance or even a little better.

The world is watching.

The reason it was "3 year old" is because Nvidia first outright refused to even acknowledge it, and then OEMs had to actually make a fuss. Then Nvidia tried to fix it by slapping an infected bandage on it that further delayed it actually getting resolved. People were screwed out of hundreds if not thousands of dollars solely because of Nvidia's screw up, and Nvidia got away with spending relatively chump change to resolve the issue.

 

[SirPauly]

Yay, let's all post vague meaningless but damning sounding platitudes to distract that you can't discuss the facts in a rational way! That will make for a productive discussion. It's almost like what you'd expect from someone working in marketing - ignore the facts and try to "focus" the "group" on emotion, if you know what I mean

Meanwhile, back in reality you can find that somehow researchers stole nVidia's wonderful unique innovative never-thought-of-before idea, traveled back in time a decade and wrote about it - http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar...le-ISA+Heterogeneous+Multi-Core+Architectures (notice the 2002 and 2003 dates). Either that or maybe nVidia's idea isn't as innovative as their marketing department would have you believe. It's a reasonably cool idea, assuming they can get past all of the scheduling difficulties inherent in such a plan - and they're pretty significant.

I'm all for facts, but is the accusation of me being part of marketing another conspiracy?

 

[bryanW1995]

Shocking revelations. The same company that brought your Rollo is willing to go out of its way to make the competition look bad.

 

[Idontcare]

Nice non answer. I'd say that speaks plenty but I don't want you to think I'm making assumptions. I guess, stupid me for thinking that since you know, that's exactly what happened here. But okay, so Nvidia did some soul searching and decided to be a better....hmmm oh right they're a business [as so many Nvidia defenders are so apt to point out] so yeah that didn't happen.

Yes I do think there is pretty substantial difference. You're right, free stuff even if it is review samples and ad space will bias, but it does not to the level of being tied directly to one single company where you were cherry picked to represent them for specific reasons. I guess I need to ask if you're actually trying to claim that they're equal, don't want to assume anything after all.

Like I said, defend him if you want. To be honest, I wasn't even talking specifically about him but rather the focus group in general. No, I'm not saying he's pulling anything like Rollo and the others did, but it very clearly clouds his posting in this subforum.

That's fine, see it your way, I get you were just trying to defend keys from what you consider unfair treatment (although I'm not sure how stating the fact the he's given stuff by Nvidia needs defended...but whatever). The difference is, I don't recall you responding by basically leveling insinuations at another company at the same time.

Since there seems to be some confusion, my issue was with what you posted, not you "defending" keys. Apparently you think I'm wrong to infer anything from you posting:



Hmm, then there's this:



So, I was wrong to infer, but I was right? I just was stupid to even ask in the first place I guess.

I thought they rewrote the forum guidelines/rules specifically because of the focus group stuff?

I was pi**ed when I found out about the focus group. I was also pi**ed about how this site handled it, and this makes me fully realize things really have not changed that much. The only reason things aren't as bad as before is that Nvidia was smart enough to tell their little minions not to be outright a**holes like they were before. So the focus group is less malicious. So what? it ruined this forum and so I absolutely think people should still take issue with them being here.

I would be equally pissed if I knew there were AMD shills that operated similarly to the nvidia's focus group on here, guess I should be pissed then (and probably further pissed at Nvidia since if they're not required to "out" themselves I clearly should not think keys is the only one).

Wow, really? Trying to make comparisons between the Nvidia focus group and the US military detaining Japanese citizens during WWII? WTF? Please actually think before making analogies.

As you have gone to great efforts to communicate above, the topic itself is one for which you are emotionally invested to the point of eliciting emotions of anger on your behalf.

An emotional state which is known to cloud one's ability to think clearly and rationally about the topic itself.

Furthermore, you have endeavored to create something entirely artificial in your post such that you could then vilify "it" as if "it" had anything to do with me, my posts, or the spirit of the message I have communicated in this thread.

The straw man fallacy occurs in the following pattern of argument:

1. Person A has position X.
2. Person B disregards certain key points of X and instead presents the superficially similar position Y. Thus, Y is a resulting distorted version of X and can be set up in several ways, including:
   1. Presenting a misrepresentation of the opponent's position.
   2. Quoting an opponent's words out of context — i.e. choosing quotations that misrepresent the opponent's actual intentions (see fallacy of quoting out of context).[2]
   3. Presenting someone who defends a position poorly as the defender, then refuting that person's arguments — thus giving the appearance that every upholder of that position (and thus the position itself) has been defeated.[1]
   4. Inventing a fictitious persona with actions or beliefs which are then criticized, implying that the person represents a group of whom the speaker is critical.
   5. Oversimplifying an opponent's argument, then attacking this oversimplified version.
3. Person B attacks position Y, concluding that X is false/incorrect/flawed.

This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious, because attacking a distorted version of a position fails to constitute an attack on the actual position.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

There is nothing I can do to dispel the multiple straw men you have concocted in your post. They are of your doing, not mine, and were crafted by you to serve your own misguided purpose, one born from a state of emotional investment in the topic itself, as you amply demonstrated.

Nothing productive will come from my attempting to engage you in rational discourse with the objective of dispelling your keen desire to see shadows of strawman where none exist. Make the devil of me if you find therapeutic benefit in the exercise, release that anger so the healing can start.

Its simply not healthy, not mentally healthy, for you to be so emotionally invested in something as inane as an online forum to the extent that it elicits emotions of anger from you when you are/were faced with the prospect that there are/were marketeers in the audience. Such a co-dependence with the makeup of a forum community is not healthy.

 

[tviceman]

Shocking revelations. The same company that brought your Rollo is willing to go out of its way to make the competition look bad.

Even more shocking: a company would want to create a marketing and developer relations program to leverage their products. That is the basic summation of why this thread exists.

 

[SirPauly]

Shocking revelations. The same company that brought your Rollo is willing to go out of its way to make the competition look bad.

I think this is where it gets semantic. If nVidia spends more resources and tries to do more for their customers doesn't this translate into the competition not looking as good if they don't offer similar abilities or spend similar resources? And if a company tried to do more maybe they will get rewarded with sales and slight premiums.

Or is blanketing a company based on how some perceived Rollo -- sound reasoning?

 

[railven]

I think this is where it gets semantic. If nVidia spends more resources and tries to do more for their customers doesn't this translate into the competition not looking as good if they don't offer similar abilities or spend similar resources? And if a company tried to do more maybe they will get rewarded with sales and slight premiums.

Or is blanketing a company based on how some perceived Rollo -- sound reasoning?

Hmmm....

I'm torn about this. I'm an ATI user, and my GF is an nVidia user. Before the HD generation, because we are basically married (joint account) our budgets would usually be in the same realm for our parts.

ATI offered me as a user a better product (performance wise) for the same buck. The same isn't as true now, but in some situations it is.
For her, at the same price point the added perks (such as PhysX) hit her with a performance deficiet that she'd either turn it off or run it at low, and at low she'd comment "why even bother, you can barely see it." Sure, she had the option, but without willing to invest more money she didn't really have a choice whether to use it.

I realize we all measure "premiums and perks" separately. Well when she upgraded I took her old GTX and used it as my PhysX card in Windows 7. So now I was enjoying the perks offered to Nvidia users (some, not all) without issue until they decided to lock me out for no reason. So this made me look at them poorly. Fine, whatever. Then I had Batman AA issue. My Radeon performed worse than my girlfriend's GeForce with AA OFF. She turned on AA and we had similar performance.

I tried the ID hack and magically I got AA on my Radeon without a performance hit (from my research, and evidence posted by some here) it seems my Radeon was performing the AA code path, just not displaying it. That gave me more displeasure with nVidia.

I'm not saying ATI is a marvel or the second coming of Jebus. But, that's two strikes against me and I don't openly hate nVidia. The Focus Group fiasco hurt their overall image in my mind more than these last two events.

I own nVidia and ATI. But, I'll be honest - nVidia doesn't do anything that makes me feel they are worth buying over ATI.

 

[Keysplayr]

I'm curious what alleged conspiracy you're talking about here. Please be specific.

Edited to add - that's for everyone who magically started using the phrase "conspiracy theory" all at the same time.

I'd say you've got a fair bit of reading to do. And if your comeback is to say you've read it all, then I can't help you at all.'

 

[KCfromNC]

I'm all for facts, but is the accusation of me being part of marketing another conspiracy?

I'm all for facts, but let's discuss <random distraction from the facts> first. Pretty transparent attempt at a dodge.

 

[blackened23]

Heh good thing for you the tin foil hat worked lol

What you call brand fanaticism, I call critical thinking. Looking at a situation and arriving at a conclusion that doesnt require a conspiracy theory.

I once witnessed a drunken brawl over a friendly argument turned bad over the "best" sports car. I guess its true, people get mad when you put their questionable practices of "their" company to light.

 

[Epsilon-Zero]

Ah this thread brings back memories of the Geforce FX days when Nvidia knew they had a stinker and did everything they could to keep ATI from gaining markershare.

The same could be said about the Geforce 9000 series when Nvidia infamously rebranded many 8000 series cards. Now ofcourse this is standard operating procedure at both companies.

But you know what? I still use Nvidia to this day.
When I was younger Nvidia owned all the talking points, the messaging, and the NV chipsets which locked out any use of Crossfire at the time. But, all of that has become less relavant over time.

Is there an AMD/ATI gpu in my future? Maybe....

 

[KCfromNC]

I'd say you've got a fair bit of reading to do. And if your comeback is to say you've read it all, then I can't help you at all.'

OK, thanks for the pointer. I re-read the thread. Looks like you guys are confusing people seeing that a company behaved poorly in the past and wondering if they're still at it with people seeing wild conspiracies at every turn. Pretty transparent attempt at an ad hominem when you think about it. It's even easier when you throw it out there and pretend people are ignorant for not automatically agreeing with you.

 

[SirPauly]

I'm all for facts, but let's discuss <random distraction from the facts> first. Pretty transparent attempt at a dodge.

Let's discuss them:

nVidia hired AEG, ATI hired HRC PR firm. I feel going behind the gamers back is a slippery slope, especially on forums. nVidia and AEG were wrong going behind the back of gamers and feel they made a mistake.

I don't think anyone enjoys to see AA or Stereo3d be leveraged but it's the reality of things when areas are not ideal. Without the work of the IHV's, neither Batman AA or Stereo3d in Deus Ex wouldn't be there at all for anyone to enjoy; at least their customers can.

I'll discuss anything, anytime, when it comes to technology.

 

[dunno99]

So, back to the original topic.

After reading through the Tech Report's article, I have to conclude that the author is pretty ignorant about information theory and computer graphics.

First of all, the quickest way to do fixed tessellation is to use the object's bounding volume's center or projected area-to-polygon-density ratio as the determining factor for when to tessellate. Hence you see the far side of those objects as densely tessellated as the front. When you have enough power to not care, you just don't care, which is probably the case here.

Secondly, does the author know how ANNOYING it is to write code to support punching holes in a water sim? There's a huge amount of border conditions and continuity problems if one assumes holes can occur anywhere. The simplest solution is to just always apply the tessellation to the whole water plane -- which, I'm sure, originally appeared under the city anyway.

And this leads to my third point: does the author even know how difficult the hidden object removal problem is in computer graphics? The usual "if I can't see it, then don't draw it" (which is what the author's statement boils down to) is probably as informative as the statement "physics can't be that hard if I'm living in it!"

In other words, if he can come up with an algorithm that does occlusion culling in O(logN) time, please go write a paper and publish it in SIGGRAPH -- I'd be VERY interested in reading it. And for those of you who think that this is already solved via BSP, KD-tree, BVH, etc, etc.... Well, please go read the literature again. Someone already calculated that these aren't O(logN), but more like O((logN)^6) or something -- but I couldn't find that paper again.

Moral of the story is: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity [or time constraints]."

 

[Idontcare]

I realize we all measure "premiums and perks" separately. Well when she upgraded I took her old GTX and used it as my PhysX card in Windows 7. So now I was enjoying the perks offered to Nvidia users (some, not all) without issue until they decided to lock me out for no reason. So this made me look at them poorly.

That made me look poorly on Nvidia as well.

Imagine if you owned an Intel SSD and an OCZ SSD, the Intel was your c-drive and the OCZ was your d-drive. If Nvidia owned/managed OCZ, your OCZ drive would disable itself and refuse to allow windows to access it as soon as the OCZ drive detected another non-OCZ SSD in your system.

And OCZ would make excuses "well, we did buy Indilinx straight out after all, its our IP now, and we don't want to be responsible for ensuring our OCZ drives will perform under all possible compatibility situations which our competitors products might induce outside of our control".

That would be purely BS, unacceptable. But for some reason Nvidia pulled it off. A reality distortion field the likes of which no doubt brought a tear to Steve Jobs eye.

 

[SirPauly]

As a gamer, it's tough to agree with nVidia on that decision and have been vocal about hopefully rethinking it -- here is what they offered officially and where I differ from nVidia:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=32292025&postcount=640

 

[Idontcare]

Unfortunately for Nvidia, that is exactly what you'd expect them to say even if the reality of the situation was a little more closer to that of what Larry Ellison is willing to say publicly:

"I don't care if our commodity X86 business goes to zero," Ellison said. "We don't make any money selling those things. We have no interest in selling other people's IP. x86 includes Intel IP [and] Microsoft IP. We don't make money selling that. Sun sold that stuff, and we are phasing out that business. We have no interest in it whatsoever. We have interest in selling systems that include our IP. That's how we're going to drive the profitability of our overall hardware business."

Source: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Infrast...-Stays-on-High-End-of-Server-Business-832392/

It is very easy to envision Jensen having similarly logical motives for changing the PhysX consumer model once they acquired Ageai.

Why would NV want to enable the sales of their competitor's IP anymore so than Ellison wants to?

It all makes cold logical sense at a competitive business level, you can bet OCZ would love to be able to convince its customers that they need 100&#37; OCZ SSD's and no competitor products, the ram guys are half-way there as it is.

Whether the driver argument is valid or a smokescreen to justify their business strategy is irrelevant, they are in drivers seat, but the problem for Nvidia is that saying one thing means little if you can't say it convincingly. And clearly they have failed to convincingly present their position to the enthusiast community that NV wishes would buy into Physx given the persistence of the discussions on the Physx decision itself.

Ellison isn't worried about playing games here, he just comes out and gives it to the customer base straight up. I can respect that.

 

[Seero]

That made me look poorly on Nvidia as well.

Imagine if you owned an Intel SSD and an OCZ SSD, the Intel was your c-drive and the OCZ was your d-drive. If Nvidia owned/managed OCZ, your OCZ drive would disable itself and refuse to allow windows to access it as soon as the OCZ drive detected another non-OCZ SSD in your system.

And OCZ would make excuses "well, we did buy Indilinx straight out after all, its our IP now, and we don't want to be responsible for ensuring our OCZ drives will perform under all possible compatibility situations which our competitors products might induce outside of our control".

That would be purely BS, unacceptable. But for some reason Nvidia pulled it off. A reality distortion field the likes of which no doubt brought a tear to Steve Jobs eye.

The real reason is not that difficult to understand. Nvidia does not want people to buy a low end GPU to act as a PPU for their PC, at the time when they don't have high end GPU for sale.

Ever wonder why CPU/RAM socket keeps changing so that you can't recycle your old CPU/RAM? Who doesn't have a few CPUs and RAMs laying around? Only Nvidia video cards provide some degree of use after it no longer serves as the primary display card. The decision was they cease to support configuration where the computer is not using Nvidia as a primary display card, which is different from the card cease to work. Older or custom driver can be used. The most interesting thing is Nvidia release a driver that forgets to put this check into their driver from time to time.

Those who want that configuration to work can easy do so. I believe we have a number of posters who know how, and some of these posters decided to continuously QQ out loud about it even over they get it to work.

 

[SirPauly]

For me, had trouble with it because I am a firm believer in GPU Physics and desire to see more adoption and more dynamic gaming. This is a gamer stand-point, without the behind the scenes information, because I desire not only to see PhysX available to other vendors with a discrete nVidia PhysX card, have a desire to see PhysX be ported to OpenCL as well some day. This is my idealism. May be wrong or even ignorant but that's the way I feel.

 

[tviceman]

I also agree with the general sentiment regarding Nvidia locking out people from using an AMD/Nvidia mix for physx. Don't Q&A for it, fine. Don't provide technical support for it, fine. But don't lock it out - it's a crappy business move and prevents physx from getting higher adoption rates. I do not believe the argument that it would cut into sales of higher end Nvidia cards. I think, in fact, it would INCREASE sales of all Nvidia cards.