Nvidia's in trouble

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jerseygamer

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Excuse me sir but what planet do you live on? What ever planet that is I would love to buy property there. The early 7 series drivers and the current 8 series drivers are the best example of how bad a driver can get. I cant with good intent install an Nvidia card in any of my builds. I refuse to deal with the reports. I can however install a 3800 ATI in any build as I know its supported well now and is in the most future proof family of graphics cards out there.
 

jerseygamer

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Look you can not claim good dx10 performance because it simply does not exist atm no matter what graphics platform you use. However.... dx10.1 is the save all for dx10 gaming. Nvidia fans seam to ignore dx10.1 and so does the company. None of the current Nvidia products are compatable with dx10.1 and I have news for Nvidia buyers:

=None of the current Nvidia products on the shelf or coming from the 9 series will be compatable with DX10.1 or ANY future updates to DX!

What does this mean? Its simple. The tweaked rebrand of the 8 series that is the 9 series all though it was done rather well will never have good or improved dx10 performance. It is IMPOSSIBLE to update this hardware(even the 9 series) to dx10.1 and above because they lack the hardware for compatability. So basicly the **** performance you get now is only going to get worse next year as almost every title will be DX10.

DX10.1 is super important. Nvidia dropped the ball here. I fear not because they have enough cash on hand to plow into there next series in no time flat and catch up. Untill then lets just hope for some super big price drops making Nvidia a vialbe purchase for this years releases.
 

homerdog

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I do like some of the improvements that DX10.1 brings, especially for AA. However, I fear that Nvidia's lack of support for the updated API will severely limit its adoption. On the one hand we have Nvidia cards that flat out can't do DX10.1, and on the other hand we have the HD3000 series that's too slow for it to matter. I've said it before and I'll say it again, we need new (or at least updated) architectures.

Die shrinks are good, and I'm all for a nice bump in clocks and reduction in power consumption. I don't think a die shrink warrants a +1000 on though, it should be +100 just as it has always been e.g. 7800 to 7900.

*Edited for typos and grammar*
 

jerseygamer

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We do need new architectures for sure. What alot of people missed about AMD is they banked on the improved performance of dx10.1. I think the DX improvement alone is going to put the 3800s over the 8 series on its own. "If" things go half as well as projected for dx10.1 it "should" put the 3800s above the 8800s in performance as long as they can improve on the high end x2 and keep it a viable option. We had a nice even field for a while. If these companies keep fighting it out we stand to see much better prices. If Nvidia does not jump on the dx10.1 fight yesterday nobody makes out.
 

z_dori

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so what to buy for now?
780i with GTX & SLI it later or rampage with 3870x2? (pref is more important than money for now)
or wait till the end of April to see 9800 vs ATI what ever it will bring...?
 

Amxd

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i just have 1 thing to say to mister game_boy.
u seem to know crap about anything ur saying.

Nvidia's g80 chipset as u see in almost every 8000 series from nvidia (except 8800 gt and 8800 gts 512 since both are g92) is at LEAST 9 months old.

u r freeking comparing a brand new card been placed on market from ati less than 1 month ago to gtx? gtx has been placed on market 8 months ago man.

and still gtx is almost as fast as the new ati card lolol. do u really think ati will be there to compete in performance against nvidia when 9800gx2 and 9800 gtx will come out? and no, if ur expecting 9800 gtx version to be ONLY 15% faster than the GTS version ur COMPLETLY wrong... and proves once more that u dont know what ur freeking talking about

and 1 more thing. HD3870X2 has 2 chipsets in 1 pcb and that makes it pci express 1 compilant. 1 more puch in the stomach of ati....

thats bullshit man
do ur homework before saying anything at all
 

tamalero

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you're comparing wrongly the G92 vs the G80
R600 had 2 variants.. the R670 is similar.. 2 variants... only varies the frecuency.
 

jerseygamer

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Wait and see. Nvidia could pull a 9 series dx10.1 card out of there behinds who knows. The new ATI line is very promising as well. We are faced with 2 lines of cards. One is has slightly better performance all around but DX10.1 compatability reduced future proofing a great deal because of current dx10 performance. The other option from ATI is slightly slower and thus cheaper aside from the X2 who currently holds the high end benchmarks but all the 3800s are future proofed in comparison to the Nvidia line. Its realy apples and oranges here. Neither camp is offering us anything realy special atm causing me to look to the future aside from the X2. Now when the X2 is revamped I will give it another look untill Nvidia releases a dx10.1 card.
 

homerdog

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There are going to be a lot of sad-face smilies around here when the 9800GTX is finally released. We've known for a while that the 9800GX2 will be 2 g92s. Are you guys telling me that Nvidia is going to release a monolithic 9800GTX that beats the 9800GX2?
End of rational thought, proceed with mindless fanboy false hope :bounce:
 

z_dori

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i thing about multi GPU solution coz my 27" dell.
the 3870x2 is a good card with good specs but CF it, acording to toms preview on CFx is not worth it & the difference from 2 to 3GPUs (3870+3870x2) is not so big that will do the change to games like Crysis (not talking about Far cry 2 yet....)

i ATI won't get a good high end card with Single GPU than i will defenetly go with nVidia- 2 GTX (88 or 98) will bring pref better than 3870x2 even with the DX10.1 vs DX10
so the DX10.1 doesn't matter if i can play it at medium settings & 30FPS with no aa.. or what ever the specs of 3870x2 with crysis at 1920x1200. (they are not high for now...)

what about CF support? the games need to support CF to use the 2 GPUs of 3870x2. i saw in some benchs that the games that didn't support CF bring pref of a lot less than gtx/gts512....

(i need to find that again...)

for now i'm sticking with 780i & SLI some gtx in April/May...

 

dev1se

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It wasnt actually.... nVidia, since the 6 series has always release high end cards that have around double the performance of the mid-range card.

If this 9800GTX is only just pipping the 9600GT, then why not call it the 9600GTX??

After all, same bit-bus, same memory amount... infact why bother with a 9800GTX at all if it's only superior specs are double the stream processors and a few mhz here and there?
 

Exactly. DX10.1 wont be delayed. Do you think Intel will come out with a DX10 compliant only, disregaurding 10.1? The new arch is here, been here since the 2900s.Its time for nVidia to stop making DX9/10 cards and go entirely compliant or theyll be left behind not only ATI with a second gen DX10.1 compliant , but Intels as well. This is why I think nVidias hurting. Theyve made huge amounts of money because M$ decided to NOT go full DX10, which left ATI holding @%^ in their hands. Its too late now, as its coming. Ill say it again, if you want a more forward looking/future proof card, wait til the next gen comes out. The next gen should run current DX9 games just fine and be able to handle the newer REAL DX10/10.1 games coming
 

yipsl

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Only for those who buy into the prepaid advantage Nvidia buys in a very few games. The only game I'm playing right now that's part of Nvidia's program is LOTR online, and I'm doing quite well with my 3870x2. In The Witcher, ATI's doing quite well because both companies are on the same playing field.

Nvidia has fans who prefer a few extra fps in a FPS, but ATI has fans who prefer image quality and don't want drivers fudged for FPS demos to be the reason we buy our cards. I will freely admit, I might have gotten just a 3870 instead of a 3870x2 if I'd had known that 4870 and 4870x2 was coming out in June, but I still don't regret it because reviews of The Witcher showed that it stuttered on a 3870 and an 8800gt, so the dual GPU card makes all the differences.



I'm opposed to any game being pre released optimized for either company. It's a loss for consumers. The only game that's in Nvidia's mishegoss program that I play is LOTR online and I'm still getting decent CRPG performance at full quality except very sharp instead of 8x AF.

If I played mostly FPS like Crysis, then perhaps I'd be more of an Nvidia fan, but I saw their blurring of image with the 7xxx series, and remember the early FX series as a waste of anyone's time to set up in a PC. Nvidia takes the low road while ATI tries for genuinely new tech, which eventually works when new drivers or second generation cards are released (ie the 3870 vs. the 2900xt).
 

yipsl

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Yep, I have one running on a cheapo MSI 690V board. I spent so much getting the card that I had to go cheap on the board. If it were not for Nvidia's 405 chipset not liking AMD cards, I would not have had to move my CPU and RAM.

Crossfire performance on a single slot board, with future CrossfireX when I get a Crossfire board. My 3DMark scores are low only because of my CPU:

New3DMark.jpg


TestResults.jpg
 

yipsl

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Not that I normally go out of my way to defend Nvidia, but there are sources from game companies to news sites that they will skip DX10.1 because DX10 won't be fully utilized for quite some time. They will wait for DX11. Though DX10.1 is Microsoft's baby and not an ATI version like DX9.0b, I see it getting shafted from game companies waiting for the DX right afterwards.

Still, if any company does go DX10.1, then I'll benefit but current Nvidia cards will not. As far as it goes, if an RPG or RTS comes out with DX10.1, then it's for me. It will probably be the FPS companies that ditch DX10.1 because it's just too much work.
 

amnotanoobie

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Ok, time for my points:

@Game_boy
1. Out of the 9 posts you made, 7 (or 8, i probably missed one) of your posts are in this thread wherein you predict things based on rumors. The other post you have is on another thread wherein you recomment the 3870x2.

2. On your original post, 5 out of 7 of your points are SOLELY BASED ON RUMOURS AND HEARSAY. The other two points are the only ones that have some factual basis. On the fifth part:


And probably on the 6th part.




Let me ask you, how could you criticise ideas based upon rumours and unreleased, unannounced products? These are basically just predictions, nothing more nothing less. What you said are as factual as any $2 fortune teller off the street.




Since I'm being so generous today, I'll criticise each of your points:

On your opening line, you did say that nvidia had 3x the market cap. With a ton of money you could do a ton of things, classic example, intel's prescott processor. It was hot, it was energy inefficient, it was slow, but it did sell. With help from intel's money and marketing they were able to sell millions of those things. (Don't talk to me about the morality or correctness of intel's methods, I'm stating what intel was able to do) With all that money, they could just buy off a lot of other companies, and still pounce on AMD.

Point 1: Nvidia's 7xx chipset is not yet released. A lot of things could be changed from beta stages and the retail product.

Point 2: I love the way that you confidently used phrases such as "is rumoured" and "a high chance". Well again, you assumed based on rumours that the 9xxx series would be a rebadge. Also why would nvidia even try to release a new high end product when ATi's flagship model has trouble challenging even nvidia's mainstream.

Point 3: I love this statement, "you haven't seen AMD's real high-end yet," my question to you is that "Have you seen their real high-end?" Unless you're an industry insider, that's a different story. The scores you gave could also be the final scores, or could have only marginal difference with the final score. We could never say until AMD does release it first!

Point 4: Gotta love these predicting lines: "plenty of independent rumours", "some potential model numbers", "there have been very few rumours", "we hear that", "almost ruling out", "I think". I couldn't even begin to comprehend how you could make this a point, as there is no factual point here.

Point 5: My question, who uses DX10.1 now? Yup, nada. Ahh, you say in the future they'd use them. But wouldn't it be also coincidental that probably by the time DX10.1 is used and made a minimum requirement, a line of new and faster 10.1 cards would be out? So I guess we could praise AMD for making a mid-end (or probably low-end) DX10.1 card.

Point 6: Probably the only point that is actually based on news and fact. Though this is not an indicator of the future of nvidia, as they could only make a faster card. Also how could their market share fall? When their money comes a lot from the mainstream GeForce cards. Sure workstation cards have high profits, but sale volumes in non-workstation cards does also make a difference.

Point 7: Larabee and Fusion haven't been released, all we have is marketing and technical white paper. How sure are you that nvidia wouldn't release a unified gpu and cpu before or alongside the big two. The best case release dates of Larabee and Fusion are somewhere along the lines of 2009 all the way up to 2012, so you just shot yourself in the foot with the statement: "I can't make solid predictions beyond 2008 though." Though I favor open-source programs, the users of open-source OS' against Windows or Mac users are still outnumbered by at least 3 to 1. Also the quality of software would be different between 2 paid employees against the work of 10 self-motivated, unpaid coders.


"I think they will try and offer better price/performance as AMD did in 2007" - Uhhh, nvidia and intel did have the better price/performance ratio througout the whole of 2007. Way to shoot yourself again in the foot.


Point 6:


 

yipsl

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Regarding AMD's high end, who cares? I don't care if Nvidia has a GPU that's $600 and gets, maybe, 10 fps more than a $450 ATI part. Nvidia fudges drivers in such a way that image quality is affected (while they corrected the 7xxx blur with the 8xxx series, they fudged Crysis' water big time, just to "win" a few benchies).

The PC world does not revolve around enthusiasts who overclock on water. Nor does it revolve around enthusiasts who buy the highest end card every 6 months to one year. Even mainstream gamers prefer to get bang for their buck. Sometimes, it's Nvidia, sometimes it's ATI, but it's never the $600 part.

I'm about ready to go Intel for performance until AMD proves itself with 45nm Phenom's. If I can actually get a Crossfire board that will be ready for a 4 gigahertz native clock Nehalem, then fine. There's still no rationale for me to go with an Nvidia chipset, SLI and the outdated technology and fudged drivers we've seen with Nvidia cards this quarter.
 
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