dragonsqrrl :
Maxx_Power :
Any word on power ? That's a BIG Nvidia issue, since nearly forever.
I don't think that's the case, unless you have an extremely selective memory.
Okay, I'll be more specific. Except for the recent Kepler generation, and then ONLY for the top models, the Nvidia GPUs have been more power hungry per whatever metric (usually performance) you want to measure them with against, say AMD. For the lower power, lower budget arena, this was true for: the GTX 200 series vs. the HD 4000 series, the GTX 400 series were that way vs, the HD 5000/6000 series, the GTX 500 series were that way and finally, the GTX 600 series from 650 Boost and below seems that way. That's when they are directly competing with AMD. Compared with PowerVR's awesome deferred rendering stuff that's built from the ground up to be power efficient, I don't know how much of a chance NV stands, all else being equal.
On the Tegra-only side of things, Tegra 4 didn't win as many design wins primarily because of power consumption. And on the topic of Tegra 3, to quote from Anandtech and its forum:
From Anandtech:
"NVIDIA's GPU power consumption is more than double the PowerVR SGX 545's here, while its performance advantage isn't anywhere near double. I have heard that Imagination has been building the most power efficient GPUs on the market for quite a while now, this might be the first argument in favor of that heresay."
From the forums:
"It seems like NV might be struggling with power consumption on their GPUs in comparison to Imagination Tech (PowerVR).
Certainly from a platform power standpoint, it does indicate some difficulties in competing with ARM SoCs if it's true, although it doesn't seem to result in significant penalties in Android ARM tablets. "
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2291670
That's exactly what I was getting at, that the philosophy of NV is to be faster at nearly all costs, to the point of obvious diminishing returns. Based on the history of NV and their tendency to optimize everything for extra power for the last bit of performance (whether to beat AMD for bragging rights or whatever), I would venture to think that a lot of people are concerned with how their future products are on a power constraint.