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No-one else loves NVIDIA. Who cares?

by Tarinder Sandhu on 11 April 2008, 09:50

Tags: NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)

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Just yesterday, NVIDIA patted itself on the back for releasing the fastest GeForce platform ever platform ever.

Citing the performance dominance of the SLI-capable, twin-GPU GeForce 9800 GX2 and three-way SLI ability of the GeForce 9800 GTX, sat on top of a nForce 790i Ultra SLI chipset, NVIDIA's Ujesh Desai said: “Since the start of the year, we have been committed to introducing products that not only set the bar for performance and scalability, but also deliver the ultimate visual computing experience,” said Ujesh Desai, general manager of GeForce desktop GPU business at NVIDIA. “Consumers buying a new PC or those who want to build one from scratch know that the key to the best visual computing experience starts with the GPU. With our new products and the support of our partners worldwide, 2008 marks the beginning of the visual computing revolution and solidifies the GPU’s position as the most important processor inside the PC.”

NVIDIA may well be right in believing that its top-of-the-line products offer the best desktop gaming performance around, but the GeForce GPUs are based on 18-month-old technology, albeit with a few tweaks here and there. The underlying chipset, now supporting Intel's 45nm CPUs and PCIe 2.0 natively, isn't much of an improvement over the erstwhile champion, nForce 680i Ultra SLI, really.

Thinking about it, two GeForce 9800 GX2 cards will cost around £750, and the motherboard a further £230 or so. All told, there's scant change from £1,000, and that's without factoring in the price for the very finest CPUs...

Trouble is, NVIDIA still needs to rely on Intel to provide the cutting-edge CPUs, no matter what Mr. Desai reckons about the GPU's position inside the PC - NVIDIA has no x86 license of its own.

Further, NVIDIA and Intel's relationship isn't particularly cosy, according to reports elsewhere, so maybe the company's feeling of self-satisfaction may turn out to be rather too ephemeral, especially if Intel can get Larrabee right - drivers and all.

What about AMD and NVIDIA, then? Let's just be encouraging and state that their relationship is perfunctory, but that would be egregiously overestimating the 'love' they have for one another right now.

Interesting times ahead, that's for sure.


HEXUS Forums :: 7 Comments

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Posted by Hicks12 - Fri 11 Apr 2008 11:37
bah, no-one else cares because it hasnt been an improvement in graphic design etc, look i can slap too 8800gts in one box and give the same performance as sli but cost more, now the best graphics card in the world. That was just fail :P, and the 9800gtx is nothing special, perhaps new type of ram as it can clock a 100/200mhz higher then an 8800GTS but thats nothing when compared too this time its taken and nothing new.

Maybe nvidia should try and build a single gpu too actually beat itself (except for the new line comming in, be a flop right?)>
Posted by explicitlyrics - Fri 11 Apr 2008 13:12
Hicks12
bah, no-one else cares because it hasnt been an improvement in graphic design etc, look i can slap too 8800gts in one box and give the same performance as sli but cost more, now the best graphics card in the world. That was just fail :P, and the 9800gtx is nothing special, perhaps new type of ram as it can clock a 100/200mhz higher then an 8800GTS but thats nothing when compared too this time its taken and nothing new.

Maybe nvidia should try and build a single gpu too actually beat itself (except for the new line comming in, be a flop right?)>

Google doesn't seem to be able to translate this…?
Posted by Hicks12 - Fri 11 Apr 2008 13:18
what dont you understand? summary….. nvidia haven't released sufficient new technology for awhile and is now stagnant and confusing the market with all these new naming schemes, nvidia should be doing something as apposed too congratulating themselves, they haven't done anything new with 2 boards stuck together at least amd had 2 cores on 1 pcb.
Posted by kalniel - Fri 11 Apr 2008 13:32
If your products always beat out the opposition then what's wrong with appearing to be stagnant?
Posted by chrestomanci - Fri 11 Apr 2008 13:51
In my opinion, everyone would be better off if nVidia got out of the chipset business, and concentrated on what they do best: discreet graphics cards.

If they did that, they would not have to cosy up to their arch rivals (AMD), or soon to be rivals (Intel) for licenses to build chipsets that interface with their processors, so they would be able to concentrate their efforts on designing the best graphics cards possible.

I have never been that keen on nVidia chipsets. They are expensive, the performance benefit of the higher end stuff has not been that great, and the drivers are often flaky. Consider for example the recent news from Microsoft that nVidia are responsible for half of all crashes under Vista. If you have a longer memory you will remember similar problems with the integrated firewall on nForce 3 era chipsets. At one time nForce was good for low end boards with integrated everything, but now that both Intel and ATI have stepped up and are selling decent boards at low cost, I don’t think that it would be any great loss to see nVidia leave this part of the market as well.

Also because they would not be making chipsets, they would be able to get rid of the fiction that you need an nForce chipset in order to run SLI. It is fairly well know that SLI does not need any feature that is unique to nForce chipsets in order to work, it is just a bit of protectionism enforced by the driver. (The recent Intel skulltrail board has a pair of nVidia PCI express bridges on it for no reason other than to be recognized by the driver so that SLI works). If that protectionism was removed then consumers would benefit as they would be able to run SLI on a wider choice of boards with more stability. nVidia would probably profit in the long run from selling more graphics cards.

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