The future of GPU's

Slide · 10-03-2009, 04:42 PM

I read a fascinating article a couple of weeks back, although it wasn't new The RV770 Story: Documenting ATI's Road to Success. It discusses with a lot of frankness the issues ATI had when NVIDIA put out the G80/G92 (8xxx/9xxx/250 to me and you). Until this point the GPU manufacturers had been trading blows, by designing high end GPU's and using the wina they got there to capture the midrange - which is where the volume and profit is. NVIDIA had basically beaten ATI into a bloody pulp this time round so ATI took a risk, they built a chip that they could scale across all segments the 4xxx series - but NVIDIA pursued the monolithic ever larger GPU and released the 2xx series.

The problem NVIDIA had, was it was an extremely capable chip - but it was massive and expensive, and they had no way to scale it down to the mid range, so we had a couple of years of dodgy rebranding exercises. ATI in the meantime had built a core chip they could add extra supporting pieces to increase the performance and basicallly had the entire market segment covered.

Fast forward to 2009/2010 and you can see these differing approaches in clearer contrast. The ATI 5xxx series is basically a core GPU with a number of supporting micro GPU's ringfencing it; high performance parts have all the micro GPU's - mainstream ones have less. ATI are perfectly placed to control the PC Graphics Card market top to bottom.

NVIDIA went another way. They've seen some writing on the wall and followed on from their huge monolithic 200 series GPU with the 300. They are betting that rasterisation on the PC is basically done, and have branched out. Their new GPU is really a parallel CPU - and they are hoping to create and dominate a new market based around massive computation, super computer on a card kind of thing. There's been a lot of interesting work around raytracing, and it's approaching visual fidelity in realtime that you get from rasterisation. Ray tracing is a highly parrallel, computationally intensive task - but the 3xx series has the promise to break the back of that in a very big way.The product road map from NVIDIA hints that they are betting the farm on this in a big way, and with their strong developer relations program they could just pull it off if it wasn't for....

Intel, the whole Nehelem architecture is focussed on setting up the conditions for one thing. Larabee. Whereas NVIDIA are putting out a massive number of general purpose number crunchers, Intel are building in a smaller number of far more flexible CPU's. Intel were the guys running raytraced Quake Wars on their chips - and while benchmarks for Larabee look poor in rasterisation, when everyone starts making the shift to raytracing it looks like it will be mighty.

ATI are delivering the horsepower you need now for the right price, NVIDIA are trying to redefine the market and Intel will not give this up without a fight. Interesting times.

MagicNumbers · 10-03-2009, 06:16 PM

Cool information Slide. Thanks.

Btw, what is raytracing?

Dragon-RD · 10-03-2009, 06:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MagicNumbers

Cool information Slide. Thanks.

Btw, what is raytracing?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_tracing_(graphics) Wiki would explain it far better than I.

It's pretty interesting there are some videos of Quake 3 & 4 being ray traced.

Btw very good read Slide thanks for that.

MagicNumbers · 10-03-2009, 10:13 PM

Looks like the Fermi board Nvidia showed was fake.

http://www.semiaccurate.com/2009/10/...mi-boards-gtc/

Slide · 10-04-2009, 05:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MagicNumbers

Looks like the Fermi board Nvidia showed was fake.

http://www.semiaccurate.com/2009/10/...mi-boards-gtc/

by Charlie Demerjian

rhagz · 10-04-2009, 05:23 PM

It's been confirmed. Nvidia admits it was a fake after he exposed them.

Slide · 10-05-2009, 04:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rhagz

It's been confirmed. Nvidia admits it was a fake after he exposed them.

Not massively surprised tbh, you have to take anything coming from Charlie Demerjian with a grain (sack) of salt. He does have good contacts and often is close to the mark, but NVIDIA must have killed his immediate family and kitten at some point.

I think we can draw the conclusion here that NVIDIA will not be hitting target launch dates, and ATI have a clear run at the Windows 7 launch and most likely the holiday season. This kind of news is not great for us gamers, as all the indications point towards NVIDIA having nothing to counter x5000 chips, just has they had little to counter the x4000 chips. The small loss they are selling NV2xx at will be a big loss with NV3xx.

NV3xx needs to be game changing like G80 was before it, otherwise AMD will gouge us.

rabb1t · 10-05-2009, 08:13 PM

It's been mentioned by others already that the series 3 isn't coming until Q1, 2010. If anything new from Nvidia is going to be there for Win 7's launch it would have to be tweaks on existing stuff. At this point I'd guess they are going to take their time with the series 3 and probably put it out even later than estimates in April.

meStevo · 10-06-2009, 10:45 PM

That makes me sad. I'm probably looking at building a new system (along with refurbing this e6600 w/ GTX260 216 w/ 4gb RAM and giving it to my wife) in December/January and I really don't want to buy an ATI. Have an 8800GTS 640 in a static bag in the closet, maybe I'll break that back out for a little bit.

rabb1t · 10-07-2009, 05:46 PM

You are forgetting the additional window you get with Evga and BFG with their 90-day and 100-day (respectively) upgrade windows. As long as the 3 series made your window you could upgrade to it with whatever you bought in Dec/Jan.

Slide · 10-12-2009, 11:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fudzilla

Nvidia partners discontinued GTX285 and GTX275
Written by Fuad Abazovic
Monday, 12 October 2009 11:32

And GTX260

Several Nvidia partners have confirmed that they had to decide to cancel GTX 285 and GTX 275 based products, as availability was simply disastrous.

We still don’t now if this is Nvidia's strategy to keep the market hungry for Fermi or they simply didn't order enough wafers, but availability of GTX260, GTX275 and GTX285 was so bad that many decided to drop these products and wait for Fermi.

The lucky ones can sell Radeon HD 5870 and 5850, as they are selling good, but the 5870 is mainly on allocation and that doesn’t really help a lot.

The GT200 generation is slowly but surely running towards its retirement and if you want one, simply grab it while you still can, or get RV870 or Fermi when it comes out.

http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/15919/1/

Can't see BFG / EVGA / XFX being very happy with NVIDIA at the moment. Especially bad for BFG, as their entire product line got discontinued for 3+ months.

rabb1t · 10-13-2009, 02:25 PM

I'm predicting we'll see a launch of something new to replace / retune the GTX 260 / GTX 260 Core 216 / GTX 275 / GTX 285 spots. I'm guessing what will be revealed is something like a GTX 270 that's a tweaked GTX 275 but at a lower price, and a GTX 290, which is a tweaked GTX 285 to compete with the ATi 5850/5870.

I could be wrong, in that this is total speculation on my part and we've heard no solid news (just rumors) about an Nvidia refresh before the series 3, but I suppose time will tell. If they are going to target the super high-end enthusaists and the entry level peeps and ignore mainstream... well, that would indeed be a very big mistake. (Even counting the fact that high-end stuff does eventually filter down.)

My heart still belongs to Nvidia for the moment - I like innovation. But it is true that lately said innovation really hasn't helped move things forward and that ATi's tweaks towards performance and price is becoming more and more attractive than innovation. Do things like PhysX, cuda, and 3d gaming matter if the majority of players and developers aren't embracing the tech? Not so much.

Slide · 10-13-2009, 03:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rabb1t

I'm predicting we'll see a launch of something new to replace / retune the GTX 260 / GTX 260 Core 216 / GTX 275 / GTX 285 spots. I'm guessing what will be revealed is something like a GTX 270 that's a tweaked GTX 275 but at a lower price, and a GTX 290, which is a tweaked GTX 285 to compete with the ATi 5850/5870.

I could be wrong, in that this is total speculation on my part and we've heard no solid news (just rumors) about an Nvidia refresh before the series 3, but I suppose time will tell. If they are going to target the super high-end enthusaists and the entry level peeps and ignore mainstream... well, that would indeed be a very big mistake. (Even counting the fact that high-end stuff does eventually filter down.)

My heart still belongs to Nvidia for the moment - I like innovation. But it is true that lately said innovation really hasn't helped move things forward and that ATi's tweaks towards performance and price is becoming more and more attractive than innovation. Do things like PhysX, cuda, and 3d gaming matter if the majority of players and developers aren't embracing the tech? Not so much.

Nvidia just released the 210/220 series. Haven't looked in depth at what these are other than respins of 9500/9600GT with DX 10.1 added. 56xx is due within a month or two and will curbstomp these at the same price point. I really want to see a competitive NVIDIA as we all benefit from this, but unless the 3xx series is the second coming of Christ at a reasonable price they are done.

I noticed MS just partnered with ATI again for XBox 3, and NVIDIA killed their chipset business.

Hatto · 10-14-2009, 09:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Slide

and NVIDIA killed their chipset business.

This is not really what they did though. They just stopped to make chipsets for those CPU that have integrated memory controllers. Which makes perfectly sense as with those CPU a chipset is really reduced to a Southbridge, if I am not mistaken. That makes that whole market segment pretty much not interesting at all.

rabb1t · 10-14-2009, 03:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Slide

Nvidia just released the 210/220 series. Haven't looked in depth at what these are other than respins of 9500/9600GT with DX 10.1 added.

They are actually a touch lower. They are entry-level stuff. Not really anything a gamer would really want to look at.

Quote:

56xx is due within a month or two and will curbstomp these at the same price point.

Doubt it. The 57xx just launched yesterday and don't really compete cross-wise. The 5770 is a touch more expensive than the GTX 260 Core 216 and performs around/lower than it, and the 5750 is a touch more than the GTS 250 and performs slightly lower.

Until the 57xx get a price drop they aren't priced well for what they can do. You are effectively paying a touch more to have a DX11 compatible card compared to Nvidia's offerings in their price range.

I do expect their prices to come down for the Hollidays though, but from the reviews I've seen ATi is offering something that's DX11 compatible for the mainstream gamers, but the price isn't as awesome for the performance as the 58xx cards.

Quote:

I really want to see a competitive NVIDIA as we all benefit from this, but unless the 3xx series is the second coming of Christ at a reasonable price they are done.

What they really need to do (and have for years) is follow ATi's lead and focus more on getting the mainstream gamers as their main forcus instead of the higher-end enthusaists and releasing a mainstream part like 6 months later. When series 3 hits we really need to see cards at the $350, $250, and $150 range all at the same time, not just the $350+ offering.

Quote:

and NVIDIA killed their chipset business.

Um... no.

Slide · 10-14-2009, 04:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rabb1t

Um... no.

http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3659&p=2

rabb1t · 10-15-2009, 10:29 PM

I don't see how that article supports your statement of "NVIDIA killed their chipset business".

Maybe we have different definitions of "killed x". To me backing out of the GPU industry would be "killing their chipset business" or saying they weren't going to produce anymore motherboard chipsets or something.

Bumpy rides and altering directions would be more akin to "gimped" or "stalled" by my vocabulary.

rabb1t · 10-21-2009, 02:07 PM

The future of graphics: Voxel Ray Casting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpEpAFGplnI

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ting,2423.html

mmorpeegee · 10-23-2009, 09:31 PM

Anyone ever remember that talk a couple of years back about Intel wanting to take over the graphics card market?

It was something about how they could get a card a similar size to a graphics card, and fit like 9 quad core CPU's on it and have them process graphics, and it would be many multiple times faster than anything nVidia or ATI have.

I remember thinking, "Mmm". But I haven't heard anything about it since, not that I've ever bothered looking.

Fozzik · 10-24-2009, 06:07 AM

It's coming next year. Called "Larabee". It remains to be seen whether it will catch on or really compete with AMD / NVIDIA.

Intel's going to try and push graphics programming in a different direction in order to move the competition onto a new playing field, we'll see whether the industry is willing to be drug along by the collar. I think Intel recognized that they would have an almost impossible time beating Nvidia and AMD at their own game.