Dave Baumann
26-Apr-2002, 22:05
Josh over at Penstarsys (http://www.penstarsys.com) has put up the latest in the ‘Today’ series, and under the spotlight this time is nVIDIA. In a period where nVIDIA’s hither to unassailable stock position has seen somewhat of a drop-off, in the light of lower than expected XBox sales and a lack of a P4 bus license, and increased competition from ATi as well numerous other vendors cropping up out the woodwork, with what sound to be fairly advanced 3D solutions, Josh looks at nVIDIA’s position and explores what nVIDIA possess to overcome any potential future challenges they may face.
However, although Josh makes note of the impact of ATi’s Radeon 8500 on nVIDIA’s roadmap, in my opinion this is not the most important thing as far as the battle between ATi and nVIDIA goes. For the past few years or so nVIDIA have operated at about a cycle or two further advanced than ATi; this allows nVIDIA the luxury of refining their drivers and later the architecture (GF3 to GF4) while the competition is catching up with the previous generation; this method has allowed nVIDIA to stay ahead of the speed race with only a short blip between Radeon 8500 and GeForce 4. However, I believe that the most telling state of ATi will be how close to NV30 ATi manages to release R300 – should R300 be within a few months of NV30 then this would represent quite a catch-up for ATi, and potentially enable them to also play the refinement game before a major overhaul in architectures.
Anyway, if you’re interested in the state of the business side of the 3D players then take a read of Josh’s article, which can be found here (http://www.penstarsys.com/editor/Today/nvidia2/index.html).
However, although Josh makes note of the impact of ATi’s Radeon 8500 on nVIDIA’s roadmap, in my opinion this is not the most important thing as far as the battle between ATi and nVIDIA goes. For the past few years or so nVIDIA have operated at about a cycle or two further advanced than ATi; this allows nVIDIA the luxury of refining their drivers and later the architecture (GF3 to GF4) while the competition is catching up with the previous generation; this method has allowed nVIDIA to stay ahead of the speed race with only a short blip between Radeon 8500 and GeForce 4. However, I believe that the most telling state of ATi will be how close to NV30 ATi manages to release R300 – should R300 be within a few months of NV30 then this would represent quite a catch-up for ATi, and potentially enable them to also play the refinement game before a major overhaul in architectures.
Anyway, if you’re interested in the state of the business side of the 3D players then take a read of Josh’s article, which can be found here (http://www.penstarsys.com/editor/Today/nvidia2/index.html).