[Mendel]

http://www.firingsquad.com/features/...05/default.asp

After the incredible success ATI earned with their RADEON DirectX 9 cards, most industry observers expected that to continue throughout 2004. But after running into retail supply issues with high-end X800 XT series cards, and the subsequent cancellation of ATI’s performance card for the mainstream market, the X700 XT, many began to wonder if these were signs of ATI’s unprecedented run beginning to come to and end.

Recently FiringSquad’s own Lyle Wagner was given the opportunity to speak over the phone with ATI’s Director of Corporate Marketing, Paul Ayscough on these topics, and many more.

[ChrisRay]

FiringSquad: NVIDIA’s SLI technology has drawn a lot of buzz from both end users and the media alike. Has ATI run any projections on how large this potential market may be?

Paul Ayscough: This is a very interesting area, one where 3DFX tried to capture.
I personally believe that there is a market for ultra high end PC gaming technology and these users are important to address as they influence buy decisions. We feel we currently have the right the right products with the RADEON X850 XT Platinum Edition. Watch this space for future announcements!

It's good to see ATI has stopped downtalking SLI. I never liked their earlier aproach to saying "Its useless". Kudos to them.

[Pete]

So we go from an interview with an engineer to a director of marketing. Let's just say I thought his answers were couched in fairer prose than poor, misunderstood Raja's, but there was less to misunderstand here.

Still, some props for some good answers. Lyle should've asked the obvious follow-up to his SLI questions and Paul's "majority of gamers" response: what about grabbing 3D developers' and engineers' and artists' mindshares (and pocketbooks) with SLI, thus, indirectly, targetting gamers? Then again, I suppose the obvious answer would be that if they kept their platforms stable and offered regularly increasing speed, it would be easy to estimate future performance.

The kicker with nV's SLI is that they offer SM3 and FP buffers to experiment with as well. The un-kicker is that the features may be more important than the extra speed, even to devs.

Um, what was I talking about?

[Richard]

Originally Posted by Pete

The kicker with nV's SLI is that they offer SM3 and FP buffers to experiment with as well. The un-kicker is that the features may be more important than the extra speed, even to devs.

I think they're both important for nVidia. When UE3 techdemo was shown on the NV40 it wasn't breaking any speed records. I think SLI just made Epic's development that much easier.

As for ATi, I also like their new attitute towards SLI but I think they need features more than raw speed. For instance, in the the latest Xbit Labs HL2 benchmarks a 850XT was giving SLI a run for its money, but they still lack fp blending which many next-gen engines will make use of so I can see your point there.

[Jawed]

Originally Posted by Mordenkainen

As for ATi, I also like their new attitute towards SLI but I think they need features more than raw speed. For instance, in the the latest Xbit Labs HL2 benchmarks a 850XT was giving SLI a run for its money, but they still lack fp blending which many next-gen engines will make use of so I can see your point there.

I found it more interesting that a 9800Pro was faster than the 6600GT in HL-2 at all resolutions with AA/AF off or on.

Jawed

[Geo]

Originally Posted by ChrisRay

It's good to see ATI has stopped downtalking SLI. I never liked their earlier aproach to saying "Its useless". Kudos to them.

Given that Jen-Hsun just called SLI "one of the big growth drivers" in their gpu business in the very nice quarter that just ended, "exceeding even our own expectations", maybe this area has interest to more than just the very hardcore. Tho I do wonder a bit about whether that can continue --maybe the people who ran out to buy SLI immediately are most if not all of the market for SLI and the market will start to dry up quickly. The thing is, there are a ton of enthusiast types who haven't switched to mobo's that will support SLI yet, so that would suggest that market still has some legs. . .

[Razor1]

Originally Posted by Jawed

I found it more interesting that a 9800Pro was faster than the 6600GT in HL-2 at all resolutions with AA/AF off or on.

Jawed

True also insteresting is when the nV cards ran the ATi path they ran faster then the nV path.

[Jawed]

Originally Posted by Razor1

True also insteresting is when the nV cards ran the ATi path they ran faster then the nV path.

I presume you're referring to the FX cards. Dog's breakfast or dog's dinner - what a great choice that is.

I suppose it's also like when the NVidia cards were running with better IQ (and performance?) in Far Cry, using the ATI path, until patch 1.2.

Jawed

[Razor1]

not just the fx cards

http://www.tcmagazine.info/articles....amp;pagenum=10

Valve did some funny stuff in their code to get these kinds of results.

[Jawed]

Originally Posted by Razor1

not just the fx cards

http://www.tcmagazine.info/articles....amp;pagenum=10

Valve did some funny stuff in their code to get these kinds of results.

Yeah 3-6% difference is quite shocking.

Do you think it's to do with texture filtering?

What's AA6 mean? Did they mean AA4? Does NVidia support 6xAA in HL-2?

If they would run a benchmark that isn't so clearly CPU limited, perhaps we'd see a bigger difference. Someone should start a new thread.

Jawed

[Dave Baumann]

There is a text file that Valve use to turn on or off numerous features dependant on the device id - by default they turned on the fast reject (which essentially does a pre Z pass) for all NVIDIA boards because the FX series tested to be faster with it enabled. It has shown that in CPU limited levels this reduces performance a little whilst in Pixel limited levels it can help out - it would be interesting to look at these results just altering that flag.

[Razor1]

Originally Posted by Jawed

Yeah 3-6% difference is quite shocking.

Do you think it's to do with texture filtering?

What's AA6 mean? Did they mean AA4? Does NVidia support 6xAA in HL-2?

If they would run a benchmark that isn't so clearly CPU limited, perhaps we'd see a bigger difference. Someone should start a new thread.

Jawed

AA6 not sure maybe a typo

Wouldn't think its the texture filtering but its odd since they are getting different results.

There is a text file that Valve use to turn on or off numerous features dependant on the device id - by default they turned on the fast reject (which essentially does a pre Z pass) for all NVIDIA boards because the FX series tested to be faster with it enabled. It has shown that in CPU limited levels this reduces performance a little whilst in Pixel limited levels it can help out - it would be interesting to look at these results just altering that flag.

That might be the case Dave, I tried 3d analyze on HL 2 a while back but it kept crashing on me. Anyone else give it a go?

[Dave Baumann]

To test that particular thing you just need the fastreject string in the shortcut (or toggled as a console command).

[Tahir2]

Continuing on from the topic of this thread and that introduction by Firingsquad I was going to post something about the state of the retail market within the UK and how ATi is doing now in relation to NVIDIA - all I have is data from one reseller however but the source is trustworthy.

Some facts for you guys to chew on...

Percentage of NVIDIA cards sold compared to ATI cards:

56.9 Feb
63.5 Jan
28.3 Dec
39.1 Nov

Best selling cards for December:
ATI: Powercolor and Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro (by far)
NVIDIA: Gigabyte 6800GT (even spread)

Best selling cards for January:
ATI: X800XT Platinum AGP followed by 9800 Pro
NVIDIA: 6600GT AGP and 6800GT PCI-E


Problem ATI has is that it doesnt have a new £150 card on the market (the 6600GT beater).

[ZoinKs!]

Tahir, thanks for sharing that info. It's always nice to have numbers. I'm a bit surprised 9800pro was still ati's best seller as recently as December. But otoh, there weren't any other real options from ati. :P

From the interview:

Originally Posted by Paul Ayscough

Stay tuned over the coming weeks, as we will have some exciting new product announcements in AGP area.

Good news for me. I expect to stay with my mobile athlon for some time. My tentative plan is to hold on to my flashed 9800 until r520 and hope there's some sort of agp version. But that x800xl looks mighty tasty.

[Tweaker]

Originally Posted by Tahir

Percentage of NVIDIA cards sold compared to ATI cards:

56.9 Feb
63.5 Jan
28.3 Dec
39.1 Nov

Says nothing IMO b/c on Dec you can easily sell 10+ times more cards than on Jan. Overall numbers would be better...

[Sxotty]

Tahir you mean ATI sold twice as many as Nvidia? Or what with your percentages?

56.9 for example you mean that ati sold say 100 and nvidia 60? Or do you mean ati 40 and nvidia 60?

thx

[Tahir2]

Sorry I confused everyone...

In February for every 100 ATI and NVIDIA cards we sold, NVIDIA sold 56.9 and ATI the rest.
In December NVIDIA only sold 28.3 cards compared to ATI's 71.7...etc
As you can tell I am no good with numbers and stats.

As for Tweaker, in December retailers do not normally get 10x the business volume, maybe twice or thrice as much and as for actual numbers, there is no way you are going to get them from me buddy . If this info still doesnt tell you anything then we are on different wavelengths anyway.

So as I stated before ATI need to plug the golden £100-£150 market because at the moment they do not have a competitive product in that range.

[Sxotty]

Ok thanks I see what you are saying and it makes sense, sorry but percentages can be overly confusing I don't know why though :P

[Putas]

Originally Posted by Tahir

Best selling cards for December:
ATI: Powercolor and Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro (by far)
NVIDIA: Gigabyte 6800GT (even spread)

Best selling cards for January:
ATI: X800XT Platinum AGP followed by 9800 Pro
NVIDIA: 6600GT AGP and 6800GT PCI-E

I cant believe those expensive cards are bestsellers.

[Smurfie]

I'm more surprised they have the quantities to make it a best seller.

[Sxotty]

It obviously is not representative of the market as a whole. He was quoting what one specific site said...