One thing I don't understand is at which point in time it became acceptable to assume that technology should be given away for free by the evil for profit corporations?Well nv do have a history of charging money for nothing (aka sli)
One thing I don't understand is at which point in time it became acceptable to assume that technology should be given away for free by the evil for profit corporations?
Take SLI: It provides higher frame rates than would otherwise be possible, which is important to some. It provides marketing benefits for GPU add-in card and motherboard vendors. And there is no question that it must have cost (and still costs) many man years of engineering time to make it work.
Yet here is somebody who just says all that is just 'nothing'. Where does that it come from that all good things must be given away free? Is it because it's just software? If so, then why is it acceptable for software companies to charge for software but not for system companies that sell a combination of hardware and software?
I think he refer to the SLI chipsets ( southbridge ) ,. who was absolutely not needed technically, but was only enable SLI, disabling the possibility to use ATI GPU's in crossfire ..... basically nvidia wanted to put their southbridges on motherboard who was only bring the posssibility to enable SLI, not CFX ... ( i remember have buy a lot of DFI SLI NF4 board...
If it's a feature that helps motherboard makers sell more of their wares, why shouldn't they as a small piece of the pie?@Silent guy you think mboard makers should pay for the features of add in boards?
They could do that. But there's only one Nvidia and many motherboard makers. Supply and demand.hell why shouldnt board makers join the party and say to nv "give us money or sli wont work on our boards, or and while your here its another £2 if you want your cards to run in pci-e 3.0 mode, and to save our monitor division a bit of time they want £5 or its no hdmi input or resolutions above svga for you"
What's the point of a discussion when you have to explain to a participant that jamming a cellphone after the fact isn't quite the same thing as the cellphone making having to pay a license fee to activate a certain piece of technology?
How much code did Microsoft write for Android? How many billions do they make per year from Android?
That's an irrelevant legal technicality. In both cases, the product maker pays to be able to use intellectual property. .Thats because of software patents, which is not what the Nvidia SLI matter was about.
That's an irrelevant legal technicality. In both cases, the product maker pays to be able to use intellectual property. .
In the case of Android, HTC & friends are paying Microsoft for a patent license. In the case of SLI, motherboard makers are paying Nvidia to activate the Nvidia driver IP. First difference here: there is actual code from Nvidia involved, which is not the case for Microsoft.Who their paying is entirely different and a finer detail that can not go overlooked. If you think that distinction doesnt matter then there is no point in discussing it with you.
The IP on the motherboard itself is the 'SLI' logo on the box. It has value otherwise motherboard makers wouldn't pay for it. Pencil box makers pay Disney to put Mickey Mouse on their wares because it makes them more attractive to customers. Same thing.There is no NVidia IP in contemporary mobos to provide SLI support.
The IP on the motherboard itself is the 'SLI' logo on the box. It has value otherwise motherboard makers wouldn't pay for it. Pencil box makers pay Disney to put Mickey Mouse on their wares because it makes them more attractive to customers. Same thing.
The technical IP is obviously in the driver.
Letting MB manufacturers make SLI-compatible products would have been mutually beneficial, since the former could have sold more high-margin products, and NVIDIA would have had more potential customers to whom they could sell a second GPU. They decided to try to squeeze extra money from the situation, at the risk of alienating a lot of people.
There was nothing "to keep alive" when they sold PCI Express -bridgechips just to enable SLI-support, even though they weren't actually requiredThey were trying to keep their chipset division alive by tying a marquis IP to a product and keep some sort of foothold in the motherboard market. The fact that Nvidia now no longer have any presence in that market would seem to validate their concerns at the time. What people are arguing for here (I guess?) is that Nvidia should have promptly axed their chipset division in response to the threat of being forced out of Intel and AMD's platforms, which is a silly thing to expect when you're talking about that large of a product division within a company. Was it messy for consumers for that couple year period? Of course, but it's perfectly understandable given how much the market had changed within such a short period of time. Within a matter of 5 years we went from a half dozen 3rd party chipset companies supporting 2 platforms, to just 2 companies and their own platforms. Nvidia just happened to be a 3rd party that was big enough for the messy battle to trickle down to consumers in a visible way. Nvidia didn't kick my dog, they were doing what they thought was best for the health of their company at the time.