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For those of you who aren't exactly computer savvy, if you are using an operating system with a graphical interface (read: all of them), then you are currently using a graphics card.
A graphics card (also referred to as a VGA accelerator by some people, or just VGA card) is a piece of silicon with a single purpose: To display what you currently see on your screen. Their methods are widely varied, and in the DOS era, they were rarely standardized. Back in the days of the ISA system bus (the precursor to PCI, AGP, and PCI-E), graphics acclerators had pretty terrible performance and were really expensive. Not only that, but they were necessary. Anyone who wanted to play some DOOM or Turok had to have one, and so came the first big graphics companies.
More than 10 years ago, there was a graphics card company called 3dfx.
They were amazing and several years ahead of their time, developing technologies such as SLI (scan leave interface, a technology that allowed the use of multiple graphics cards per computer, thus improving 3d performance) and power saving features that weren't seen from the competition for years, most of their entries into the market blowing the competition out of the water. Keep in mind that they first rose to power when 2mb of on-board video memory was almost superfluous.
However, due to rampant mis-management, bad spending, competition from the then brand new Geforce 2 and Geforce 3 cards from the rising star Nvidia, 3dfx failed. Three days before they were slated to release what was supposed to be their live-saver, the Voodoo 5 series, the were sold by investors, ironically enough, to Nvidia. We don't see much of 3dfx anymore, unless you like to use multiple video cards in your computer, in which case only the faint echoes of the original SLI technology echo through your monitor.
Fast forward to today. We have two major graphic card companies, as well as two major processor manufacturers. ATI, and Nvidia. ATI was recently bought by processor manufacturer AMD when it was in dire financial straits, giving it the budget it needed to finally start to succeed again. With only one misstep, the fiasco that was the 2900xt, ATI has been relatively successful lately, outselling Nvidia in key market points.
Nvidia on the other hand has formed an informal alliance with Intel (aka Chipzilla), and with their dishonest marketing strategies, (Such as "The Way It's Mean To Be Played", where they pay game development companies large sums to make their games perform better on Nvidia systems) has caused a lot of PR damage.
In 2008, as is standard, Nvidia and ATI released their new graphics cards at roughly the same time. ATI shocked the PC-enthusiasts of the world with their "HD 4870", which was more than two times more powerful than their previous entry, the 3870. The 4xxx series gpu's by ATI outsold the Nvidia gt200 cards in that round, due to their higher price performance. Nvidia has slowly been losing market share over the past year to the AMD/ATI combination.
And now we have the current generation of graphics cards.
A couple months ago ATI launched their 5 series graphics cards. The flagship 5870 once again managed to double the performance of the last series of graphics cards, and was the first Direct X11 (A standard 3d coding API proliferated by Microsoft) supporting card ever released. ATI managed to strike a hard blow against Nvidia, releasing their new, suprisingly cheap cards right at the end of the lifecycle of the gt200 cards. Because of this, ATI has gained approximately 8% of the graphics card market share in just a few months. Nvidia's new offering, the gt300, codename "Fermi" is now nowhere to be seen.
Here's the problem:
Fermi has been delayed for nearly 6 months now. Originally scheduled to come out only a month after the 5xxx series cards, it's now been pushed back to March. While there have been a couple teasing screenshots, the problems encountered by Nvidia are really telling.
One of the problems stems, not from a failing of Nvidia, but from their new production process. They've moved to the 40nm production node (meaning the average width of a logic gate on the GPU die will be no greater than 40nm), which is buggy and untested. TSMC, the company responsible for manufacturing the cards, has managed to achieve only a 2% success rating. That isn't a typo. That means that out of every 100 pieces of blank silicon TSMC is given, only 2 of them will yield successful graphics cards. Blank silicon and hafnium wafers aren't cheap, and Nvidia has supposedly squandered millions of dollars on this technology. Not only that, but Nvidia has entirely switched the architecture of their GPU, literally rebuilding it from the ground up.
The second problem is that Nvidia refuses to admit that it's failed. As a matter of fact, Nvidia was even caught faking gt300 reference cards. There have been no benchmarks released, and other than the constant delays, absolutely no sign that the Fermi cards will ever be released.
Now go back to the beginning.
3dfx found itself in exactly the same position. Mismanagement, underhanded corporate tactics, and massive delays led to the death of the company even after it had been so successful. Only one failure can lead to the death of an industry giant in a market as volatile as that of the graphics card industry. And so that leaves us thinking: If nVidia fails, who will step up to fill their place?
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Nivida is nowhere near going out of business and they make WAayyAyaYAYyAy more money then 3dfx could have ever dreamed of.
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Wow that's interesting. I haven't followed the hardware scene for ages and last time I checked (i.e. years ago) nVidia was raping ATI (and Intel was raping AMD).
God I remember the good old voodoo and TNT cards. Was really leet stuff back then. :p
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On January 09 2010 17:25 Matoo- wrote:
Wow that's interesting. I haven't followed the hardware scene for ages and last time I checked (i.e. years ago) nVidia was raping ATI (and Intel was raping AMD).
God I remember the good old voodoo and TNT cards. Was really leet stuff back then. :p
voodoo!!! holy crap im old.
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MURICA15980 Posts
Even though ATI gained 8% last year, doesn't Nvidia still have the majority of the market share? I mean, sure the top of the line cards are cool and one side may outsell the other in that race, but the real money is made in the mid-level cards, aren't they? Don't Macs and Dell sell exclusively Nvidia? I'd say they're doing fine, but I honestly have no idea.
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It's very telling that NVIDIA hasn't released a new product since the GT200 series in mid-2008. Their previous cycle was a new product every six months, now they are just constantly rehashing the GT200. If their next card fails I think it will have a very serious impact on their ability to remain competitive with ATI finally becoming a serious contender.
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Nvidia has a lot of the market, but yes due to their fiasco with the 300 series they are coming up short.
Klogon: Apple now equips iMacs with 4850 (as a flagship gpu LOL), and Mac Pros with 4870s. Dell also uses AMD chips, like the HD 4650 in their desktops.
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T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
Even though Nvidia is losing marketshare, they still own a big part of the market. However, ATI's great lineup from the bottom to the top forced Nvidia to lower prices significantly and it's hurting Nvidia. It more expensive for Nvidia to manufacture GPUs compared to ATI. ATI's gpu die size is significantly smaller than Nvidia. ATI gpus still run faster than Nvidia gpus because of faster clock speeds and 2 gpus on a board technology. ATI is doing great because they sell gpus with a good profit margin. Nvidia sells gpus and loses money doing it.
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I believe this is a good thing, as far as i know AMD/ATI was struggling very hard a few years ago. Nvidia won't fail with 1 big blunder, at least from what my limited knowledge can tell (:. It will give ATI/AMD some breathing room to build a buffer hopefully. We really need these companies to keep compeeting successfully, anything else can only be bad for the consumer.
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T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
On January 09 2010 17:44 R1CH wrote:
It's very telling that NVIDIA hasn't released a new product since the GT200 series in mid-2008. Their previous cycle was a new product every six months, now they are just constantly rehashing the GT200. If their next card fails I think it will have a very serious impact on their ability to remain competitive with ATI finally becoming a serious contender.
Yes, 8600 GT = 9600 GT = GT 230. At least in the mobile market. They've been renaming gpus for the last few years.
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i don't think we can put the blame fully on nvidia. i believe both amd and nvidia get their chips supplied from the same manufacturer tsmc. yields on ati cards may be better but they are still unable to keep up with supply which brought up questions how well they would do during the holiday season and inflated prices
i don't think nvidia is in too bad shape as long as fermi kicks ass, which according to nvidia it does (lol obv).
i mean most people who can wait for fermi to come out will wait for it anyway.
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Think of it this way: The GT200 die, considering monolithic and expensive, was like 230mm/sq. Fermi is going to be like 300+mm/sq, increasing the prices that much more. (Hafnium isn't cheap y'know)
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On January 09 2010 17:47 T.O.P. wrote:
Even though Nvidia is losing marketshare, they still own a big part of the market. However, ATI's great lineup from the bottom to the top forced Nvidia to lower prices significantly and it's hurting Nvidia. It more expensive for Nvidia to manufacture GPUs compared to ATI. ATI's gpu die size is significantly smaller than Nvidia. ATI gpus still run faster than Nvidia gpus because of faster clock speeds and 2 gpus on a board technology. ATI is doing great because they sell gpus with a good profit margin. Nvidia sells gpus and loses money doing it.
i think you are in opposite land
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T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
On January 09 2010 17:55 FragKrag wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2010 17:47 T.O.P. wrote:
Even though Nvidia is losing marketshare, they still own a big part of the market. However, ATI's great lineup from the bottom to the top forced Nvidia to lower prices significantly and it's hurting Nvidia. It more expensive for Nvidia to manufacture GPUs compared to ATI. ATI's gpu die size is significantly smaller than Nvidia. ATI gpus still run faster than Nvidia gpus because of faster clock speeds and 2 gpus on a board technology. ATI is doing great because they sell gpus with a good profit margin. Nvidia sells gpus and loses money doing it. i think you are in opposite land
explain
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I don't really have an established opinion on the graphics card industry, but that was one hell of an awesome OP. I read every word (and even reread some stuff!!)
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On January 09 2010 17:57 Day[9] wrote:
I don't really have an established opinion on the graphics card industry, but that was one hell of an awesome OP. I read every word (and even reread some stuff!!)
Day[9] complimented my OP. My TL life is complete.
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On January 09 2010 17:56 T.O.P. wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2010 17:55 FragKrag wrote:On January 09 2010 17:47 T.O.P. wrote:
Even though Nvidia is losing marketshare, they still own a big part of the market. However, ATI's great lineup from the bottom to the top forced Nvidia to lower prices significantly and it's hurting Nvidia. It more expensive for Nvidia to manufacture GPUs compared to ATI. ATI's gpu die size is significantly smaller than Nvidia. ATI gpus still run faster than Nvidia gpus because of faster clock speeds and 2 gpus on a board technology. ATI is doing great because they sell gpus with a good profit margin. Nvidia sells gpus and loses money doing it. i think you are in opposite land explain
oh
I don't know. It's just that nvidia has been rebranding their cards for the last 4 years and making money off of them.
Have you ever heard of the 200 series TOP?
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On January 09 2010 17:56 T.O.P. wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2010 17:55 FragKrag wrote:On January 09 2010 17:47 T.O.P. wrote:
Even though Nvidia is losing marketshare, they still own a big part of the market. However, ATI's great lineup from the bottom to the top forced Nvidia to lower prices significantly and it's hurting Nvidia. It more expensive for Nvidia to manufacture GPUs compared to ATI. ATI's gpu die size is significantly smaller than Nvidia. ATI gpus still run faster than Nvidia gpus because of faster clock speeds and 2 gpus on a board technology. ATI is doing great because they sell gpus with a good profit margin. Nvidia sells gpus and loses money doing it. i think you are in opposite land explain
i don't know for sure, but if ATI is like AMD in this case they are the one selling with a low profit margin, and nvidia is still earning money even though their graphic cards are performing worse per dollar, and losing market shares. it does make sense giving their respective positions too.
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On January 09 2010 17:56 T.O.P. wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2010 17:55 FragKrag wrote:On January 09 2010 17:47 T.O.P. wrote:
Even though Nvidia is losing marketshare, they still own a big part of the market. However, ATI's great lineup from the bottom to the top forced Nvidia to lower prices significantly and it's hurting Nvidia. It more expensive for Nvidia to manufacture GPUs compared to ATI. ATI's gpu die size is significantly smaller than Nvidia. ATI gpus still run faster than Nvidia gpus because of faster clock speeds and 2 gpus on a board technology. ATI is doing great because they sell gpus with a good profit margin. Nvidia sells gpus and loses money doing it. i think you are in opposite land explain
Have you heard of the G92 GPU? It's basically Nvidia's workhorse. It first debuted with the 8800gtx, and was later carried on to the 8800gtx+, the 9800gtx, gtx+, and the gts250. That GPU was such a baller that they used it like 5 times. It had 128 of those unified "stream processors" Nvidia is so proud of. To create the gtx280, nvidia simply worked on the g92 gpu, creating the 384sp behemoth that we have today, and also the 192 and later 216sp gtx260's. The G92 has always had amazing performance (well over that of ATI's best cards) but is also fairly expensive to produce. If you want top of the line performance, go nvidia. If you want to be able to afford some games to play on your new computer, go ati.
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T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
On January 09 2010 17:59 FragKrag wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2010 17:56 T.O.P. wrote:On January 09 2010 17:55 FragKrag wrote:On January 09 2010 17:47 T.O.P. wrote:
Even though Nvidia is losing marketshare, they still own a big part of the market. However, ATI's great lineup from the bottom to the top forced Nvidia to lower prices significantly and it's hurting Nvidia. It more expensive for Nvidia to manufacture GPUs compared to ATI. ATI's gpu die size is significantly smaller than Nvidia. ATI gpus still run faster than Nvidia gpus because of faster clock speeds and 2 gpus on a board technology. ATI is doing great because they sell gpus with a good profit margin. Nvidia sells gpus and loses money doing it. i think you are in opposite land explain oh I don't know. It's just that nvidia has been rebranding their cards for the last 4 years and making money off of them. Have you ever heard of the 200 series TOP?
Yes, the 200 series is the reason why Nvidia is falling behind.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i48.tinypic.com/2ag5f8k.png)
