I know this might be redundant and obvious, but the genesis of this thread is a clear example why I rarely post, and tend to spend less and less of my substantial lurking time in VC&G all the time.
The constant flag waving, personal attacks, and anger directed at members because of tenuous brand associations is pretty off putting. While the thread title did smack a bit of being potentially baiting, I was (foolishly) hoping that there might be a discussion about the unfolding shape of PC graphics on the software and OS end.
I would love to have seen a conversation about what impact a mantle/non-mantle bifurcated future might look like, how it would be good or bad, and weather anything would then prevent NVIDIA from similarly releasing a competing, metal level instruction set....Stratus.
Personally, I would like to participate in a conversation about that future. Because I don't relish the thought of having a return to the days when you had to configure software installs based on which model of sound card, video card, and OS patch you had, and then try and troubleshoot all of the attendant conflicts and problems therein.
But that's not what we have. I think that's too bad.
Back to the regularly scheduled demolition derby.
How is a post like this allowed to stand? It's one thing to debate and disagree, but this....yeaNIGEL! Back the F off.
I buy more Nvidia cards than I'll ever get in 100 years. It's high time you closed that abusive abrasive crass mouth of yours and come back when you have the slightest INKLING of what you're talking about.
ONCE AGAIN!
BACK OFF!!
I think you forgot to present your case first Keys.
The entirety of all your posts are FUD. Nothing to present a case against, really. And thanks for saying Nvidia invented the GPU. Kind of negates everything you've said.
So, are AMD fans saying that all future game developers are only going to code for the Mantle API instead of DX?....Wouldn't that negate at least half the gaming populous?
I was being sarcastic. Nvidia claims to have invented the GPU in 1999 even though there were GPU's 20 years earlier. But seeing as I'm always willing to learn something new, why don't you tell me who invented the GPU?
The problem I have with this is that Nvidia aquired it's way to many of it's innovations after buying out 3dfx. Also the crap about them "inventing the GPU" is utter nonsense.
Before they "invented the GPU", ATI had done the following -
http://www.amd.com/us/aboutamd/corporate-information/Pages/timeline.aspx
1989 - ATI assists in establishment of VESA standard for graphics industry.
1995 - ATI is first graphics company to ship Mac-compatible graphics boards.
1996 - ATI enters the notebook market with the industry's first notebook 3D graphics accelerator.
1997 - ATI is first graphics company to provide hardware support for DVD acceleration and display.
1997 - ATI is first graphics company to release products supporting Accelerated Graphics Port, the new industry standard.
1998 - ATI is first company to introduce a complete set-top box design.
After 1999 the firsts were even more technological, especially on the hardware side.
2002 - ATI launches ATI Radeon 9700 Pro: world's first DirectX 9 graphics processor.
2003 - ATI introduces ATI Radeon 9600 XT: world's first high volume 0.13um low-k chips.
2004 - ATI introduces first 110nm GPUs (ATI Radeon X800 XL).
2005 - ATI GPU is featured in Microsoft Xbox 360, revolutionizing high-definition gaming.
All that before AMD even aquired them, at which point AMD has helped them to even more firsts. Nvidia simply has nothing like the history ATI has. They sure talk a big game about "inventing the GPU" but it's pretty clear to me who is moving the industry forward a lot more. This is why AMD was first to Mantle and why Nvidia will follow months later. If you know your computer history this would not be a surprise.
Because they really need.... something. They need to stick around and provide ample competition so we as the consumers have some leverage with our buying dollars.
Pass that along to Nigel.
Nvidia. As you stated.
NIGEL! Back the F off.
I buy more Nvidia cards than I'll ever get in 100 years. It's high time you closed that abusive abrasive crass mouth of yours and come back when you have the slightest INKLING of what you're talking about.
ONCE AGAIN!
BACK OFF!!
My money is still on this simply being a way for DICE to port frostbite around between PC and consoles freely and AMD thinking they can sell it to everyone else.
It would have more relevance in my mind if there was any game engines using it besides Frostbite. So far there isn't. So I do believe that Nvidia is thinking like I do currently, it's irrelevant to PC gaming at large at this point in time.
Well you can be pretty sure they dont think like you. Quite the opposite. And thats what keeps them a profitable company. The downplaying of Mantle is not happening inside nv. Its a higly professional company we talk about and, no pun intended, not a fanclub. They take everything serious and huge matters as Mantle is top management issue from day one.
Besides the usual damage control they are preparing different scenarioes, depending of how things evolve during the next 3 monts. And there is damn hard work we cant see right now. And the battle for the developers will be extreme. There will be a lot of money in the air because there is a lot at stake for future profit.
You act like you are CEO of nvidia. You know exactly nothing about them internally just as nobody else here does. It is pretty obvious to me and others have said too, that the reason they did not say a word is because it means nothing when someone makes a presentation and has no proof of anything and only one engine using it.
When there is actual working product then they can start talking about it. It is like Intel watching AMD hype their CPU and then what? It isn't special. You can't go into panic mode every time a competitor decided to make a presentation with slides.
http://www.pcpowerplay.com.au/2013/09/nvidia-interview-the-sky-isnt-falling/
This was posted in the console subforum before anyone had heard about Mantle. I can't see the link while at work, but some of the quoted parts seem to be downplaying the 'to the metal' advantages over DX. Now, this is telling now, because before it was like NV were sort of saying they don't care about console performance; but, this happened just before the Mantle marketing slides that seem to have a bunch of non developers all hot in their pants of some imagined 50% performance increase.
Nvidia already responded to Mantle, you guys just missed it. They were subtle enough it didn't even register for most people.
I can agree than no company should claim to have "invented the gpu". Nvidia were the first to bring t&l to hardware as a standard, they solved the memory bottleneck problem with their crossbar controller, they made the first step towards programmable shaders which later led to arguably every gpu micro architecture from every vendor. And you'll see the same story about S3; mock their slow chip performance, but they were the ones who came up with hardware texture compression. Or matrox who had multi screen support with mutiple ramdac cards. Or 3dfx who were the first to let people run mutliple cards in SLI. Or ST who refined hardware culling into the pipeline. And of course, Ati who had a lot of good things going for them with their hardware mpeg decoding and early attempt at hardware tessellation...
Arguably none of the things you listed in your before 1999 list come even close in terms of scope or relevance to gaming gpus as any of the later innovations especially considering that the design were in the pursuit of the gaming load profiles of their time and what was in 3-4 generations of nvidia's in-house tech became the basis for every GPU architecture today across every vendor.