- Monday, 13 July 2009
- INQ Mobile
- RSS
Don't put an idea into Henry VIII's head. It's hard to get it out - Thomas Cromwell
Nvidia talks chops - again
NOT CONTENT WITH WAGING war with Chipzilla, Nvidia is back on the PR offensive against ATI, too.
Yes, it's the man with the plan, the inimitable Roy 'The Boy' Taylor who, not content with his job liaising with development houses to implement its TWIMTBP scheme, is piping up about ATI's market share. Or, rather, the perceived lack of it.
Talking to legendary hardware hack Jeremy 'Don't call me Lord' Laird, Taylor said that "The UK is the only place in the world where anyone talks about AMD or ATI, "referring to marketshare and mindshare statistics that put DAAMIT's graphics card share at around 12 per cent.
Taylor went on to suggest that ATI's 18 per cent share of the 366 million graphics chips shipped in 2007 meant that "No one cares" about the company or its grahics platforms.
But that's not all. The Boy also fired another salvo in the ongoing war of words (others may call it a pissing match) with Intel. He lampooned the current perceived imbalance of CPU and GPU in the system "obscene", and said that general purpose GPU applications are going to quickly show just how bad the CPU is at most tasks. "When you look at the question of whether you should transcode video on a GPU or CPU, when you consider it in performance-per-buck terms, it's currently obscenely the wrong way round," he reckons.
Oh, but not so. Intel has launched its own pre-emptive strike, pushing new Powerpoint slides to its partners showing how the GPU is basically a waste of money. When considering performance in 3D rendering, music and photo encoding as well as video playback, GPU upgrades offer 'No Benefit' according to Chipzilla, helpfully illustrated by a big red cross. Upgrading your processor is 'Clearly the best improvement for your money', says Intel's slide deck.
Of course, that begs the question: if the GPU is such a waste of time, why is Intel going to quite a lot of trouble to come up with its own version, Larrabbee? Taylor has an answer to this. “Why does Larrabee exist? Why is Intel coming for us? They're coming for us because they can see the performance advantage of our GPUs,” he said.
We suspect that Intel will pursue its normal strategy here - GPU is rubbish until Intel sorts it out, at which point it will be awesome. Cynical, us? µ
Share this:
Business Intelligence Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enterprise Accounting Software
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Systems Management
I don't think anyone can call themselves cynical when talking about Intel.
AMD is addressing similar concerns about balanced platforms, just without the rant. Check out Pat Morehead's blog. He is their VP Marketing.

http://blogs.amd.com/patmoorhead/default.aspx
"Chipzilla, helpfully illustrated by a big red cross. Upgrading your processor is 'Clearly the best improvement for your money', says Intel's slide deck."

It would be if they decided to keep a bloody chipset compatible with a range of chips over a longer period than a year. As it stands it's much better to buy the most expensive/reasonable performance CPU and mobo to go with it and wait a few years before upgrading both CPU and mobo.

So, it may, in theory, be cheaper to buy a CPU and get better performance but in reality upgrading an already decently mid-high CPU will not get you much of a performance bonus in the real world and could end up costing you double if you have to buy a new motherboard as well.
And that's why all games run so fast and beautiful with software renders :p

Let's take a look at the current situation for Intel. The Quad's / Duals are nice chips, very nice in fact, but you get more of a boost to your Aero/Games if you drop in a 100$-300$ ATI / Nvidia card than if you spend 1k dollars more on your CPU.

Is the CPU dead? No. Is the GPU dead? Absolutely not.
Meyba it were a mishtake to ever grant favoured graphics status to Graphzilla. Now they want to shove off us all and give us the SLIp. When will cowboy Roy learn that no man is an Island. Unless, of course, The Isle of Man. 
The UK, particularly, The INQUIRER, renders an accurate view of the state of Intel, Nvidia and DAAMIT (respectively: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe). To see everything as Roy paints it, would be sieving the world through the chronicles of Nvidia sunshades; "obscenely the wrong way round." SLIps, Snickers, and Petti-rants; Taylor stretches 'em all. He'd best get his head out of the wardrobe before the rubbish & refuse binmen excise curbing-law on his TWIMTBP. Great Laird Lion High King Peter! As soon as I can plug me kit in to a frigging Green-farce card, and suss all my world's pudding shares, then I'd aver not be needing a CPU, and "Hail, hail, the Nvidic OS!"
Yep, James, upgrading the gpu makes a massive difference. Just look at the hooge gaping difference between the 7600 and the 8600. oh, sorry, forgot, hould have cherry picked a better example lol.
"Feel the power of the Powerpoint slides!!"

Quote from every firm's PR in the business :P
Well both GPU and CPU upgrade deliver boost of performance, but not necesary in the same direction. U rather have a Server with a cra**y CPU and a good GPU??? i dont think so!!
Mr. Taylor should of course have been a politician come spin-doctor.

Of course the only disadvantage with that is that he would have to get elected by the populous en masse. 

And therein lies the problem, he would never get any votes. 

The image conjured in my mind by Nvidia's ranting is a child being held under water scrabbling for breath, and occassionally being allowed up for air, whereby the ranting and bitching starts over.

Of course the hands holding them under belong to Intel, while AMD/ATi just sit on the side lines cheering.

Market share is one thing however, hyundai have a bigger market share than rolls royce in the number of units sold. It doesn't mean a hyundai is better than a Roller...

this nvidia PR isn't talking logic like there amd competition dous. about actual products instead they talk cheap words insulting people like me who actualy would rather choose an amd graphics card over a nvida these days because nvidia gets to much money only for its name not preformance money wise. yes i think the man might be affraid nvidia will get some back fire soon. the 4870 promisses to be fast energy efficient might be a little slower then nvidias we dont know we didnt see benchmarks yet. but nvidias gtx280 might just be another 2900xt with 300 watts power consumption driving 65nm to the limit. i also read there failure rate of the sillicon with this chip is about 60% means its price wont drop much under 600 dollars while amds ati card is much cheaper about half the price. nvidias pr should realize they got a worthy competition right now. better then 2 years ago