Intel broadsides Nvidia with Powerpoint assault
C'EST LA GUERRE! Intel and Nvidia are now officially enemies, killing each other ‘not-so-softly' with Powerpoint.
A while back, we managed to get our hands on "the black presentation", an anonymous Powerpoint which went great lengths to diss Intel integrated graphics, in true Nvidia style.
"Can you trust your visual experience to Intel?" taunted one of the slides, with others cherry picking press clippings blasting Intel's G35.
A particularly brutal slide asked what Intel integrated graphics WAS good for. The answer according to the Green Pimpernel? A slide with a solitaire screen shot. Ouch.
To add salt to the wound, the masked goblin proclaimed "... when you ONLY make hammers ...... everything starts looking like a nail".
But, seemingly incapable of playing the grown up, Intel has countered, leaking a purportedly "confidential" presentation of its own to Bit-Tech.
The document, Nvidia Ion Competitive Positioning Guide attacks Nvidia's upcoming Ion platform, calling it nothing but "a SKU of the existing MCP79M/MCP7A chipset family (branded in part as GeForce 9400M, GeForce 9400, GeForce 9300, GeForce 9100M G or GeForce 8200M G."
Furthermore, Chipzilla sinks to the lowest of lows by picking at the scabs of Nvidia's recent chipset problems, writing, "despite Nvidia's continued execution and power problems with this chipset, Nvidia is partnering the same chipset with an Intel Atom processor and creating hype around what it calls the 'Ion Platform'."
Sounds like Intel is feeling a little HYPErsensitive.
Chipzilla then proceeds to do some cherry picking of, ehem, ‘select' media coverage of its own. Hint: If you want to know, check out our "Charlie vs Nvidia" tab!
"Don't buy the hype around Nvidia Ion-it offers no advantages that an Intel platform cannot provide relevant to the Netbook and Nettop market segments", childishly whines the Intel ‘insider' document.
Intel then accuses Nvidia of "attempting to re-use an integrated graphics chipset (MCP79M/MCP7A) designed for the notebook and desktop system price points into the netbook and nettop system price points. This in turn leads to higher costs as well as high power consumption". The Green Goblin is likewise exaggerating the interest in Ion from PC builders, says Intel.
"Nvidia claims that many OEMs are exploring the Ion, but as of this writing, no customer has publicly disclosed plans to design Ion-based products" reads another slide.
Dagger firmly wedged in teeth, Intel goes on to, er, graphically insult Nvidia, with a slide explaining how HD video decoding on Ion, just ain't all that (according to "Preliminary press reviews") and how Intel is offering "full Hi-Def video decode with HW acceleration with the off-roadmap Mobile Intel GN40 Express Chipset".
As for battery life, Chipzilla takes another cheap [chip?] shot saying its own Atom platform will have longer battery life with a comparative TDP of 8W against Ion's 15.5W.
"Neither gaming nor video transcoding are relevant to netbook and nettop users," proclaims the document.
We feel a bit bad for our friends at Bit-Tech, since, following our INQuiry into the origin and purpose of the presentation, an Intel spinner forced the site to take down slides it had posted.
He said: "Talked to Tim [Smalley] - he will take that foil down from the story. It is an Intel internal foil marked Intel confidential. Make sure you don't post it either, or the legal beagles will give me an enema".
How tempting is that! µ
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I am quite dissapointed that Charlie didn't write this article. Contrary to what others say, his articles make my day, very entertaining.
Intel are so bad when it comes to slide shows. They try to run everyone under the sun down. Anything they say is a lie.
I don't understand why do you want 1080p video playback in a 10 inch screen, or why would you even want "advanced 3D graphics" in a netbook... I guess there is some market for that. But to the best of my knowledge, the whole point of a netbook is that it's small and it lets you work (not play) when on the move, etc.
From that point of view ION only hurts a netbook, since it draws more power... but anyway. I guess it's good to have some competition. Otherwise Intel would just become lazy...
Santi, think outside the book for a moment... what if, instead of playing
the video on the 10" screen, it played out of the HDMI port....
intel's spec for early atom adopters forbid anything but a VGA-out port on netbooks, thank goodness that seems to be
changing.
People are missing the point of netbook,imo. The most important point with netbook was the size. Something small and light that we can carry around on the go. If I need to charge it, I can pretty much charge it anywhere... at the store, at work, in the car, at home, on the porch... Most people rather have the extra power (with the ION) for the same size and weight. They don't mind the extra energy usage...
/n
I am waiting on the sidelines for ION... Need 1 for htpc, 1 for a car pc and 1 to replace my wife's bulky 17 inch laptop. She does not game even though I got her one with a geforce 7800 GO inside. The ION (with dual Atom and Geforce GPU) would be perfect for her.. I got XP license.
Netbooks could use a little more graphics oompf, especially video decode. Even downsampled to the screen resolution 1024x600, video playback often stutters if the original source was encoded at 720p and 1080p you can pretty much forget about. Sure you can transcode, but that's a pain.
On topic, GN40 and Ion have the same TDP of about 16W, which is better I can't say but this powerpointery seems to indicate that they are actually similar enough to have Intel slightly worried.
There is no question about it, intel can wipe the floor with Nvidia. There is no need to panic people, remember back in the athlon 64 days? Who needed 64 bits back then? Well intel didnt, but when they decided they did. They blew AMD out of the water. Once Intel gets a heading for the netbook platform, maybe the next VIA idea. There is no doubt that Nvidia will have nothing to brag about.
@Santi
That's easy the reason for HD video decoding on Netbooks isn't to watch HD content on your 10inch screen but to connect your netbook to your HDTV set via HDMI (future Netbooks will definitely have one), so that we can play MKV 720p content to our TV and play Solitare at 60 inches :) Considerably cheaper then an HTPC I've dumped close to $800 into my HTPC. Cheers.
"Who needed 64 bits back then? Well intel didnt, but when they decided they did. They blew AMD out of the water"
Intel DID decide they needed 64 bits. They called it Itanium. It failed dismally. Intel were forced to copy AMD's 64-bit extensions. Without AMD/nVidia, Intel would still be shovelling Netburst crap down our throats and charing Apple-prices while doing it.