dishonesty that Charlie uses. Fuad had many of the same problems. They just can't stand Nividia, at all. Anything that can be spun as an Nividia loss is done as such.

Reversing the situation with the 7950GX2, I'm wagering that digging through the archives would have found the ATI fanbois talking about how it was a mark of Nvidia going down, blah blah blah, because it took TWO of Nvidia's weaker chips to best ONE of ATI's best some of the time.

Let's not be intellectually dishonest about it, or the Inq's motives. The Inq is ATI friendly, and some of it's reporters fall into the fanboi rating. As I said earlier, you guys have some pretty diminished expectations. How old is the 8800GTX / Ultra??? Shouldn't kicking it's a$$ have been a farking requirement? As someone else stated: With the 3870X2 being 55nm already, what are you so happy about? That they finally have a bit of parity?

Meh...

ATI = Iceberg. I saw this coming a year ago. nVidia leaders have been sitting back in their chairs, smoking their success cigars, and handshaking with investors so much that they lost track of time. While dinking around trying to maximize profits with their idolized and overpriced 8800 GTX and with their not so innovative revisions of the 8800 series, ATI was sneaking up on them. nVidia basically got too comfortable and got caught with one hand in the money pot and one hand on their wankers. 

You got greedy nVidia and now you are reduced to sending out propaganda and lies. You got fat and lazy and now the competition is going to eat you for dinner! Ha ha.

whats this rubbish about 2 GPUs vs 1 GPU. If it works it works.... its 2 lower end GPUs that weren't meant to compete with the ultra (at least not with game developers programing for nvidia) put together on THE SAME BOARD to create a higher end product. A lot of work must have gone into creating the fusion and is a valid product till the release of their next GPU architecture. This is just a natural continuation of the r600 line. Nvidia has not done anything significant either except refreshes of the 8 series, and the 9 series might just be that as well. Nvidia will be doing the same dual GPU ... just less elegantly with their lame 2 Board gx2... so barbaric.

Lets not forget the wonderful TWIMTBP crap nvidia has on just about every game.

The email just seems so underhanded and desperate... the type of thing i'd expect from nvidia. 

The hd3870 does beat the ultra in the benches on the page linked. Just not with aa on. And any losses the hd x2 may have to the ultra might be fixed once the drivers come out.

All u guys saying nvidia has been ahead for a long time and the defeat of the ultra must be a requirement - Nvidia has not release a truly new product since the 8 series and right now... they have delayed their products. One would think that if they were so far ahead they'd be ready with a reply. I wonder if the gx2 was originally planned or just a freak out on the part of nvidia to what ATI was doing. Common trend now is nvidia releasing products after ATI... maybe they've mastered the last minute change.

Yeah uhh...

Why did you include the full list of people it was sent to?

Did you get permission from those people to have there email shown on the website? No, I didn't think so. That's some serious disrespect right there.

You really should remove that part. It's not needed.

I've commented already but there is one rather poignant comment to be made.

Its one thing Nvidia spreading malicious FUD in an internal or private email. 

Its quite another to pervert the results of a global benchmark suite through cheating with static clipping planes embedded into the driver code - lest we forget the 3DMark scandal with Nvidia just a few years back.

I recall there was some smoke and mirrors from Nvidia who "persuaded" Futuremark that it was all an unfortunate mistake and "encouraged" Futuremark to come clean.
How unfortunate that terrrible mistake and programming error in the Nvidia drivers and 3DMark was, that just happend to elevate their score above all the competition. I am sure they were all deeply shocked upset and embarrassed.

Oh yes - and bears don't poo in the woods either and we were all born yesterday.


Enjoy

Pete


What I care about is competition. Life would be very boring if all there was to wait for was the next Nvidia chip or the next intel chip with No one like AMD/ATI to provide the variety. Without pushing from competition we would still be using 486 powered PCs costing 1000s of pounds.
Companies like Nvidia, Intel and Microsoft always spread marketing nonsense in this way to try and create uncertainty in the market place about competing products. You only have to look at Microsoft vs Linux with their absurd articles about "cost of ownership models" which are about as water tight in argument as a colander.
Intel are guilty too, and Nvidia are guilty of this with a pious arrogance that often beggars belief. This article is not meerly to demonstrate how the marketing machines work as all you opposers to it seem to believe it is designed to demonstrate how a large corporate such as Nvidia can spoon feed corporate misinformation and have people lap it up as gospel truth. Some people here still believe that frame rate is the measure of graphics performance, I am not even going to explain why its not here, go and find out for yourself. 25 fps is all you need. Anything higher is wasted by your brain, or missed in many cases by the refresh of your monitor, higher framerates only serve to warm the planet. So of course you can argue with its high power that Nvidia products contribute to global warming (cue the green protesters into silicon valley). Its interesting to note that Nvidia are saying you must have 4x AA on and 8x AF on for a valid test in recent articles, just a couple of years ago they were saying the exact opposite - why? - because technically they couldn't manage it when the competition could.
In reality every reasonable card from Nvidia and ATI could play all titles well enough for considerable enjoyment and that's good enough for me. 
ATI is/was essentially a Canadian company. They have a different mindset to corporate America, an almost British dignity whereby they don't need to slag off the competition as their products work in their own right. Its traditional for Nvidia spout FUD, thanks very much to charlie for highlighting it such a graphic (sorry) manner.
Those of you who choose to decry the facts in this article should go back and buy more Nvidia cards on Intel platforms, I am sure you'll be very happy. 

Personally - I prefer the intelligent alternative.

I've asked you before, and I'll ask you again: How much advertising dollars do you get from ATI? Are you an expensive call girl, or just a cheap whore? It's been quite a long time since honest web sites found an ATI product superior to it's NVIDIA competitor, yet you continue to bandy about terms like nvidiot. To add insult to injury, to have the tiny cojones to complain about NVIDIA's refusal to have any contact with you. Grow the hell up!

umm tigerdirect doesnt count... they always have outrageous prices. check all their other items...oddly they price items based on a retail price such as you would find in best buy or now defunct (compusa)

The price tag of HD 3870 X2 is about 557USD.

Like the article, even in the dog-eat-dog world of PC hardware, Nvidia has always been one of the darker horses.

Remember the Geforce 5 driver "optimisation" scandal where it gave completely unrealistic 3DMark scores?

Remember Nvidia clearly stating that they were not going to go with a unified shader arch for the G80 and then they released just that?

Anything to get on top.

"...the vanilla 3870, a $250 card, spanks the Geforce 8800Ultra, a nearly $700 card, in several areas."

Can you specify? I'm not sure I quite see it. I almost liked the view held by the author till I read that. The only spanking going on there is price, and if that's all you can afford, sure beats the hell out of $700.

Charlie is a moron! From this article, two things are clear: 1) Charlie has no idea what he is talking about. 2) Charlie has so much bias against NVIDIA that he completely loses professionalism and credibility. 

Cherry picking? Well, Charlie quoted Toms Hardware article saying:
"The fastest card today, once again, carries the AMD signature, after a long domination by NVIDIA. Based on two RV670, the HD 3870 X2 suffers, however, in part from its conception and isn't as thrilling as a new chip, like a real R680, would have been."

But he stops just before the next paragraph which says:
"Even on the level of pure performance, the situation isn't exceptional: the 8800 Ultra, a card available for 8 months now, is only outperformed by 7% (in 1920x1200), the gap being tiny in the other resolutions or even going to the advantage of the 8800 Ultra."

Now who is cherry picking?! You can read Toms Hardware article here: http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/01/28/ati_r680_the_rage_fury_maxx_2/page19.html


Here are some facts:

1. 3870 X2 is based on 55nm technology. 8800 Ultra is based on 90nm technology. So, NVIDIA can easily DOUBLE the performance of the 8800 just by switching to the 55nm or 65nm technology.

2. 8800 is much more stable than 3870 X2 since it has a single chip rather than 2 chips as in the 3870 X2. Also, the 8800 consumes much less power.

3. Is it at all a win for AMD that TWO of their ships can barely beat ONE NVIDIA chip by 7% in the best case? According to Toms Hardware, the 8800 even wins in many tests!

You write -for free or maybe not- the AMD PR counter attack to the nvidia PR offensive and put the word credibility at the end of it....
I hope you are past the I like the red team better fanboyism era, cause there wouldn't be any dough in it....
Otherwise we can all undertsnad, you prefer the AMD vacation destinations em product launches I meant...

Sorry Charlie,
But you are as guilty as anyone of cherry picking prices, benchmarks, and reviews. As others have pointed out, the X2 has two chips and in most reviews it did not clearly win over the 8800GTX, much less the Ultra.

Your personal bias and grudge against NVIDIA has never been more obvious, and more embarrashing. You should have higher standards than this one-sided rant.

ummm.... using the link you gave, there are 8 GTS's for under 300$ after rebate. So you're artificially upping the price. 7 under 320$ w/o counting rebate, which isn't WAY OVER..

The 3870 spanks the 8800 Ultra in several areas... I think THAT is cherry picking. 

Nvidia's upcomming dual cards are going to be "likely worse" due to inferior construction and layout.. Got a source?

I saw 18 hits for the GTX, after rebates 11 of them are under 450, some under 400. 

1 of the ATI cards looked like it came with something other than a driver CD (DVD player software,) at least several of the GTS and GTX came with games bundled.

11 GTX at the suggested price v.s. 4 ohhh ATI must have some problem. See, we can all say silly things. I would expect someone from Nvidia to spin thier product. But when a 'non-biased' jounalist spins a product what does that mean? The 3870 x 2 is the fastest 'single' card out. It doesn't blow Nvidia out of the water, just another price point. Back on the horse... good job.

"any fool with half a brain can verify his claims, or as usual, shoot them down"

You should get a job in marketing for AMD if you don't already Charlie. However Nvidia has gotten fat and lazy mostly due to AMDs lack of competition for so long. Now that AMD is finally showing signs of life Nvidia is still acting arrogant which will ultimately be it's downfall. Somewhat like Intel in Pre athlon days.

TigerDirect has the X2 on sale for $499.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/search.asp?keywords=radeon+x2

It's pretty clear Charlie has a overly large dislike for NVIDIA. What NVIDIA has done is exactly what ATI/AMD do, they create a competitive reply when a competing product is released and send it to industry watchers and influencers. It happens in GPUs just like it happens in CPUs, and routers and hard drives, it's business as usual folks.

What is noteable is the contempt, which is palpable, in the writing. What happened Charlie, did NVIDIA snub your party or refuse to provide you with a free 8800Ultra? The INQ has, in recent memory, shown a negative bias towards NVIDIA, so this kind of schlok work isn't unexpected; an expose on a business as usual piece with so much bias is just par for the course for the muck-raking, underdog-loving INQ.

NVIDIA hasn't shown you quad-SLI in action, probably because they wouldn't show you GPU if it were plastered to their forehead, based on the vendetta you have against them. I find it interesting that even when NVIDIA is leading, you focus on everything besides that, proclaiming a video bug (one that was resolved) as irrefutable evidence of their cheating antics.

All it takes is two 7950GX2s to support Quad SLI, and there have been number of articles publishing results on that. I did a quick Google search and within the first three results there was an article on The Tech Report showing working tests.

Now that ATI is leading, do you take a stand against them? How they are unable to get competitive single-GPU performance into the market? How they are just as guilty of fud-slinging as NVIDIA? No, because they show you their tech stuff, since they know you're an unflinching asset against NVIDIA.

I guess in the future NVIDIA should take a moment to publicly criticize their own products! Wouldn't that be productive behavior?

Charlie Demerjian, you are the FANBOY, and a massive hypocrite.

I can find those cards at $499, and more, just by googling. Ditto for 8800GTX below 449. You cherrypicked by limiting your search to Newegg.

The fact that a driver demos does not change that it is not released. There is no "polish and tuning" for drivers. If they work, you release them. No link to driver on the website = driver don't work. It's that simple.

Meanwhile, I can't find a 3870 X2 at $250 anywhere. Or do you mean a single-core 3870? You don't mention any "areas" in which it "spanks" the 8800 Ultra, so I'll just assume you failed to proofread the price typo, because it's flatly laughable to assert a single 3870 beats an ultra at anything.

Skip the viagra, Chuck, and get help for your kool-aid addiction.

Okay, if this were reversed, people would say that Nividia were stinking of desperation because they're comparing a dual card to a single card. In fact I bet if you back in the archives to the Nvidia GX2 that's what you'll see.

I mean, really, two of DAMMIT's latest chips (in most "defeats" the situation is Crossfire or X2, which are both to GPUs) need two of them to beat one 8800Ultra or GTS G92? You guys are being disingenuous here, just like Tom's. They've come a great deal closer to parity than they have been recently, but I think as much as Nvidia is trying to minimize (i.e. snow) in front of the market you guys are trying to maximize (i.e. snow) what is mediocrity into a major victory.

Is this an important step for DAAMMIT? Absolutely.
Is this damaging to Nvidia?
Well it's gets DAAMMIT's cards more than their Ultra-fanboi base, so you'd better believe it.
Is Nvidia unhappy?
Probably not, monopoly status would suck more than using what is currently being labeled as "losing" 

Sorry fanbois, this is a definite improvement but beating the 8800Ultra should have been seen as a farking requirement considering how old the card is, and the fact that it's 2v1!

Yay, it's great when a hack officialy points out what those of us with "half a brain" have been seeing for awhile now with nvidia trends.

Can't wait for the R700!

Great Article!


... ever since the Nvidia "ATI has sold out" missive of last year. 

Fact it, Nvidia is not some behemoth, the only independent still standing tall between AMD and Intel. They are in fact frozen out in the cold, about to have all their lunches eaten by AMD on one side and Intel on the other. With Larribee arriving soon, and ATI gobbled up by AMD, it won't be long before both Intel and AMD are producing their own chipsets, graphics chips and CPUs.

Where does that leave Nvidia? Frozen out in the cold to wither and die.

Nvidia is once again nervous. They always panic when that happens.

Intel's going to smack them around
AMD/ATI is beginning to come back
SLI doesn't work in a ton of cases too
AMD/ATI CF works on Intel chipsets! (big, big plus)

This is the return of a superb performing product for LESS than $500!! Nvidia gets beaten, and their price structure should be proof enough they don't give a #### about customers.

Agreed Charlie on all points, agreed.

Charlie hath the largest nads in hackdom ,,, now that Sir Mike is departing !!

Nvidia found out about the ATI R600 specs 90 days prior to the release date.

They responded by overclocking the 8800GT product beyond reasonable thermal limits for a single slot cooling product and released it in order to compete at a similar price point.

Whilst a good product, it is simply not appropriate for a cheap single slot cooler.

Interestingly ... these have been volume released in the Northern hemisphere first ... as there is little impact at present with the weather.

Those of us who are in the Southern Hemisphere (and in the middle of Summer) are finding these cards cannot sustain high loads and are crashing, and failing due to inadequate cooling.

I imagine it will be around 4 to 5 months before those of you up North will realise just how NVIDIA has ripped you off in order to pip the HD3870 in benchmarks.

Is perception everything?

How bout we just mention the image quality difference too??

Lowering the image quality makes the benchmark results go up ...

hahahahaha
Charlie Demerjian YOU ARE THE MAN!

for sure will get some offers for cheap viagra or penisenlargement, even they are girls , i think.
may be the sender too ?

Thank you for writing this and saying what others have been seeing for a while now. 
It is about time someone had the guts to write the truth. I have seen so many twisted write ups on the speed of the Nvidia cards that I can not even read them anymore.