AMD blasts Nvidia for R600 FUD document

SHENANIGANS ARE BACK to the fore in the graphics business. Those squabbling foes Nvidia and ATI are back at each others' throats and newcomers from AMD observing the casualty rate are shocked with the carnage.

In the old days, the two companies would be caught in a war of Powerpointless presentations and e-mails divulging very personal details about the people involved.

After AMD took over ATI, we have heard about cases where AMD folk were caught sending internal ATI documents to Nvidia, since they're now "partners". Seeing Nvidia's sales results and the downturn of graphics sales over at AMD, you can probably argue that the friendship turned into something for which Nvidia was very grateful.

But with the imminent launch of R600, Graphzilla got stuck into its old tricks. We were not surprised to see the firm calling up members of the press and piling on the smarm. During ATI's own Tech Day in Tunisia, Nvidian spinsters were buzzing mobile phones, promising trips to the USA in return for the chance of an ear-bending.

Some AMD people were shocked, to say the least. Old ATI survivors were in "we told you so" mode, so it was interesting to see how things were developing there. Spontaneously, e-mails started to fly around Satan Clara, featuring price comparisons - nothing weird here.

Eventually, an "Architectural Comparison" FAQ document, comparing R600 against G80 and showing how things look from perspective engineers and marketeers from Satan Clara, emerged.

AMD decided enough was enough and has sent an e-mail to journalists that had seen the document, blasting its "partner" in the process. We saw the document and were surprised by some parts of it. AMD points out not just architectural errors in the description of Nvidia's own DirectX 10 hardware, but also went on to explain where Nvidia missed the boat against the R600 GPU marchitecture.

Graphzilla, it suggested, had eaten too many mushrooms and saw some features inside the R600 GPU that were just plain wrong.

This return to form has heartened gossips on sites around the world. The bitchiness is back and most enjoyable it is, watching AMD get dragged into the whole slanging match. µ