Nvidia Graphics Chip Market Share Nosedives

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[citation][nom]NuclearShadow[/nom]Which they no doubt left for a reason and must be a good one at that.Go ahead and sell as I buy.[/citation]
[citation][nom]JohnnyLucky[/nom]I didn't know Intel had 50% of the global market.[/citation]

you both forget one thigng that is hurting nvidia alot in teh intergrated chip segment , is teh simple fact that as of todate , intel stil refused to allow nivida to make chipsets for the i7 processor line. Normally nivida woulkd fill this gap with amd chipsets , but most folks buying amd main baords tend to go with amd made chip sets for stability reasons , also most peopel going amd also tend to favor cross fire over sli , so nvidia is feeligna double opinch , the the intel thing is definitely the harsher problem of the two. hoenstly i wish intel woudl pull their head out of thier a--es and realise they are only helping AMD buy blocking nivida from making i7 chipsets. if nivida had an i7 chip set the main boards would cost a lot less and i might actually consider intel for my next build, as things stand i'm gonna hunt up an nvida 970A chipset for amd mainboard and go that route
 
Yeah NVIDIAs drivers weren't so great when vista was released and they contantly crashed the thing, also what about the laptop gpus they were cooking by running the fans too slow. Both companys have had driver issues but my ATI cards seem to live longer...
 
Funny I have "tried" to switch back and forth between NVidia and ATI over the years. From past experience I can honestly say that ATI's hardware seemed to be better at first but their drivers had serious issues. NVidia’s Drivers seemed rock solid right from the beginning. I can offer a glaring example for the ATI negative remark on their drivers; especially their latest. When upgrading Catalyst drivers it doesn’t work. Flat out does not work. Then I have to do some research online. After some pretty extensive searching, I see that the drivers will not upgrade correctly without some pretty extensive cleanup of the previous drivers. When I say extensive; let me explain. Not only do you have to uninstall the driver you must remove the software that was downloaded. But wait, not you have to download a third party software tool called regcleaner because, apparently, when upgrading if those registry entries are not cleaned up the new drivers won’t install correctly. Then the absolute most hilarious part of this whole situation is that there are actually people out there condoning this type of bad software development. They say things like, "If you aren’t savvy enough to own this really great graphics card don’t even bother"; and, "noobs need not apply". Really??? Then after all this trouble the drivers are flaky. Now my water flickers in Crysis. Now the sky flashes in COD; problems that weren’t there before. I am sorry to inform those people that the end user experience should not be awful like that. You should not have to reboot three times and delete old registry entries, and pray to god you aren’t messing too much with registry entries. As anyone who "really isn’t a noob" knows that you screw too much with the registry you are apt to brick your install. There are painful ways to get it back. But why? What’s the point? The hardware isn’t any better than NVidias anymore. In fact I would say NVidia is superior now. Case in point; why does so many of NVidia third party sellers offer a limited lifetime warranty and AMD not? Pretty telling there. So now back to the whole driver fiasco. So a new driver comes out for my NVidia card. I download it. I hit the install button. It goes. I reboot. I am done.... D-U-N dun.. lol No registry crap, no recovery. No searching for folders that are elusive in hidden directories because they won’t allow the update process to proceed correctly. Dun... I hope this was descriptive enough about the issues I have had with the several ATI and now AMD cards. I think you all need to truthful about your experience and be reasonable as well. No other reputable hardware company asks you to literally jump through hoops to install updated drivers. Oh and be careful you might brick your OS install. It just isn’t practical or necessary.
 
@gtatar

I have never had any of the problems with AMD/ATI drivers that you are describing. As for arguing which company's cards are superior, that is a discussion that could go on forever cause their hardware is often on par with each other and you would have a lot of trouble proving that AMD is better than Nvidia or vice versa.
 
The Radeons left this huge black border around my screen, and I couldn't get it to go away.
Click to expand...

This is an overscan issue. If I understand this correctly, ATi defaults to some normalized value where nVidia defaults to full overscan. It could be ATi has a reason not to default to full overscan, but every HDTV I've hooked a computer up to needs the full overscan to fill the screen. You can adjust this in the scaling tab under display configuration in Catalyst. Under the desktop and displays category, click the little triangle on the display of interest and go to configure. A search on ATI overscan should resolve any ambiguities.

I've also gone through many cards, both ATi and nVidia. I've found my share of issues with both companies and find both companies products to be workable when you understand the issue to avoid. Ever since ATi started using the dotnet framework to write their driver UI, I've felt their drivers where bloated. That said, I felt nVidia's were bloated before that and they seem less bloated now by comparison. The biggest issue I've had with ATi's drivers is the UI layout. By comparison, nVidia's are easier to navigate, and adjust. Another short coming of ATi's drivers has been multiGPU setups. Recently, this shortcoming has been largely rectified. The final shortcoming of ATi drivers has to do with new game releases. Because of nVidia's developer relations, ATi is often forced to wait until after game release to resolve issues. Given that nVidia has access to developers to resolve issues well before the release of the game, the one to two months I've had to wait for ATi to catch up after game release doesn't seem all that unreasonable. However, I'm the kind of person who likes to wait and see how well a game reviews before I purchase it, so I usually don't even feel the wait.

The largest issues I've had with nVidia's drivers had to do with occasional stability issues, optimization tricks with noticeable quality degradation, and inferior filtering techniques. Stability issues are normally a single release issue, so I just revert to the previous driver until the next update. ATi is guilty of over optimizing as well, but to their credit, theirs has largely been less noticeable and more often than not a response to nVidia. To be specific, nVidia's filtering isn't bad, but rather, ATi seems to keep a step ahead of them.

I've preferred ATi for my HTPC cards since the Rage Pro days (think All-In-Wonder). I prefer nVidia for compute applications like Folding@home and some of the new Photoshop filters. My gaming PC goes back and forth depending on what makes the most sense. Notebooks are a mixed bag. nVidia had all those unreliable chips in their 8000 series and derivatives, but that is an issue largely past. ATi chips are more power efficient, but nVidia had the only graphics switching technology until very recently. I still don't have a feel for how well ATi's works. In any case, until ATi can at least match nVidia's optimus technology, I prefer nVidia for mainstream and lower chips. ATi chips make more sense at the high end owing in part to a lack of designs using optimus. The fact that the ATi chips are less power hungry and consequently cooler makes me a little more comfortable with their reliability (assuming the manufacturer doesn't cut corners on cooling).

Both companies have had their foul ups, some larger than others (FX series, HD2000 series). It's not something I hold against them. Their business practices and handling of major problems has longer lasting effects. Because of this, when I am presented with an overall equal product from both ATi and nVidia, I will go ATi. However, given that I consider price, performance, customer support, heat, noise, power consumption, ect., their is rarely a product I consider equal. As such I currently have two ATi cards, two nVidia cards, and one nVidia mobile solution. That said, it just so happens that I've put more ATi cards into systems I've built for others recently due to price/performance.
 
Just to add to your comment:

AMD has recently been updating their files weekly in order to catch up to game developers. The only recent game that I can recall as having issues with being supported was DOA2 and that was apparently nvidia's slip-up.

ATi/AMD gets a bad rep because for a long while people were using unofficial drivers (omega) rather than the official drivers. Of course, neither were as good as the nvidia drivers at the time. That simply doesn't exist anymore, and those claiming that they prefer one class of drivers over another should really download and install the new ones, as theirs are most likely outdated by a period of 2-3 years.
 
I see almost no mention in these posts about the series of extended warranty offers and product recalls that OEMs (HP, IBM, ASUS, Sony, etc.) had to issue as a result of the faulty NV IGPs and GPUs around the 2007 timeframe. Each of those OEMs got stung pretty badly because of NV's goofup. Nevermind that NV paid their costs, the impact on percieved brand quality, and the resulting drop in brand loyalty alone would be enough to drive most of those companies away from using NV product again.

Add to that the prohibition for NV to make a chipset with IGP for SB or even Core i7, and it becomes very clear that NV has reaped what it has sown on one hand, and has been crushed by anti-competitive Intel behavior on another. If you are a GPU maker and aren't making IGPs or APUs, then from a volume standpoint you are no more than a niche player. NV is competitive in the portable device space and that appears to be their future. In spite of what gamers want to believe (myself included), discrete GPUs face a dwindling marketshare as the capabilities of APUs and IGPs improve over time. I suppose it's analogous to the mainframe and minicomputer markets from the 70s. As PCs and workstations got more powerful, the need for massive, monolithic computers dwindled to the point of near-extinction. As APUs and IGPs get more powerful, so too will the need for massive, power-hungry discrete GPUs dwindle.

I applaud NV for seeing the writing on the wall and trying to do something about it, rather than becoming the last, best buggy-whip maker in an era of automobiles.
 
[citation][nom]dgingeri[/nom]This is mostly because most consumers, including many IT managers who make the buying decisions, are, quite simply, idiots. They don't realize just how many problems they'll have with driver issues and program compatibility. They just think cheap="good enough". So many people just don't realize that you get what you pay for, and paying a little more to get good quality is well worth the investment.[/citation]
Although I agree with you about investing in a better product, the IT directors/top level managers must work with non-tech executives who might not understand. It comes down to the "bottom line" and meeting business requirements.
 
Nvidia will be lucky to survive as a company. The real money is in the higher end graphics chips where ATI/AMD has taken the lead. The integrated chip business is gone. Now they are betting their future on tablets/phones where the margins are razor thin and where competition is fierce. My bet is AMD wins it out across the board with integrated/fusion graphics chips.
 
nVidia will be OK.
the future brings change and newer technologies.
much ado about nothing we already know.
(except for johnny who didn't know Intel had 50%.. LOL)
just kidding, I didn't know either..
 
[citation][nom]southernshark[/nom]Nvidia will be lucky to survive as a company. The real money is in the higher end graphics chips where ATI/AMD has taken the lead. The integrated chip business is gone. Now they are betting their future on tablets/phones where the margins are razor thin and where competition is fierce. My bet is AMD wins it out across the board with integrated/fusion graphics chips.[/citation]

But it's not; the real money is in low- to mid-range offerings. I bet you that the 460 will have made NVIDIA far more money than the 480 and 580 combined. Why? Better value for the consumer.
 
Wierd how electronics go..Nvidia sales down...I just read an article on here that says Amd 6950 cards scale better than the Gtx 570 cards Especially in 3-way crossfire..just something to think about when I do my next build next month....when the Bulldozer chips come out...
 

so true about the GTX 460 and versions of it there of...
 
[citation][nom]gtatar[/nom]~~ When upgrading Catalyst drivers it doesn’t work. Flat out does not work. Then I have to do some research online. After some pretty extensive searching, I see that the drivers will not upgrade correctly without some pretty extensive cleanup of the previous drivers. When I say extensive; let me explain. Not only do you have to uninstall the driver you must remove the software that was downloaded. But wait, not you have to download a third party software tool called regcleaner because, apparently, when upgrading if those registry entries are not cleaned up the new drivers won’t install correctly.~~~[/citation]

You have issues. I and most others have not had to go through such issues. All my updates have worked fine. Perhaps you holding it wrong?

nVidia has had their share of driver issues. AMD biggest weakness is the lack of drivers for Linux - best to go with Geforce.

 
[citation][nom]dgingeri[/nom]I find this odd because I have bought more video cards this year than any year previously, and most of them have been Nvidia cards. I've purchased 2 GTX470's, a GT430, and a G210 for myself alone, and 6 more for family members. I've previously bought more ATI cards, but their recent driver quality and the problems I've had hooking them to HD TVs has discouraged me from buying more of them.[/citation]

you've gotta be f''ing kidding me right? This year I bought 2xGTX460 768MB because of their great price / performance and value, and I can't even connect my f'''ing LG Flatron M2762D TV trought HDMI with them!!!! The driver says something about the device not supporting digital video bla bla - BUT it works fine on my old 4870!!!! Stop complaining about ATi drivers when Forceware randomly disables and enables SLI and, and tons of other bugs.
 
[citation][nom]zulfadhli[/nom]Maybe Nvidia should provide 2d surround on one card...Then i would love to buy more of their top tier cards![/citation]

maybe nvidia will do that with their kepler. but as far multi monitor gaming concerned it is not much an issue since very few people use more than one monitor to play games.
 

I would love to make a multi-monitor set-up :sol: . Unfortunately, I don't have the budget or workspace to do it yet :fou: .
 
[citation][nom]Teramedia[/nom]In spite of what gamers want to believe (myself included), discrete GPUs face a dwindling marketshare as the capabilities of APUs and IGPs improve over time. I suppose it's analogous to the mainframe and minicomputer markets from the 70s. As PCs and workstations got more powerful, the need for massive, monolithic computers dwindled to the point of near-extinction.[/citation]

That concept is coming back but this time the mainframe is called "the cloud", only this time it wasn't made of necessity but rather that many of companies want to be able to "micro-charge" for everything that you do and not have anything thats truly yours anymore.
 

you sure it's not operator error.?
 
[citation][nom]milktea[/nom]Never owned any Nvidia products. Their names doesn't come up often in the mainstream consumer segments. Even with the introduction of smartphones, PowerVR is more heard of than Nvidia. It's sad.[/citation]
if you've ever owned a Motorolla Razer phone you had an nvidia chip in it, many of the smart phones have nvidia graphics in them.
 
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