Interview with nVidia's Adam Foat

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Courtesy of DriverHeaven.

Fun game of the day is playing 'spot the difference' between the comments here and what Derek Perez said to Beyond3D. Anyway, I'll leave that to you, but in the meantime here's a couple of interesting soundbites:

Overall we have sold 17 million GeForce FX GPU’s in just three quarters, that’s 4 times more than our closest competitor so I’d say the product line is looking OK for the moment.
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It is now possible to get dramatic improvements out of our Detonator driver through what we classify as optimisation. All optimisation efforts are focused on improving application (game) performance. Games used as benchmarks will, of course, also benefit from this effort, and vice versa as in benchmarks designed to precisely emulate games will likely benefit from this effort as well (3DMark). Purely synthetic benchmarks designed to test single features are not a focus at NVIDIA and will likely not benefit from our optimisation efforts. NVIDIA has several guidelines in place just for this. An optimisation must produce the correct image; compared to Microsoft’s reference rasterizer (Refrast), we obviously compare that with our competitor’s image and we also compare it with a completely un-optimised version.
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I don't think I need to mention this guy is a PR manager, do I? ;)
 
I would have thought there would be some concern if their closest competitor was selling GeForce FX's...
 
DaveBaumann said:
I would have thought there would be some concern if their closest competitor was selling GeForce FX's...
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:LOL: Very good...

Of course, we know that Intel are the only competitor to nVidia, and I wouldn't put it past them to start selling GeForceFXs under their own name... ;)
 
DaveBaumann said:
I would have thought there would be some concern if their closest competitor was selling GeForce FX's...
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ROFL! :LOL: Nice find, Dave ;)

It's been a while since I've seen some of your legendary humor, sarcasm and spirit at work. Good to see you aren't losing any of it :)


Uttar
 
I love how we got yet another answer to the "do you optimize for benchmarks?" question. Apparently now, benchmarks designed to "precisely emulate games" will be optimized for, but not benchmarks that only test specific features(sounds like Shadermark, et al).

Also loved the subtle dig at ATI's accelerated Catalyst release schedule, "Most of the time a driver is there to fix bugs and if the newer drivers are posted very often it means that the previous generation had some issues." Of course, fixing bugs isn't a concern for Nvidia since the Dets are always bug-free. sheeesh.
 
I feel for you guys at times when it’s comes to testing 3D graphic cards because it’s certainly not as easy as it used to be.
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Mostly because of Nvidia's cheating, but that would be a bad thing to say, wouldn't it ?

I also just love how he reinstates the R&D cost of the GFFX line (something they should be ashamed of, but Nvidia seems to have little shame left anyway), and the "millions of users" WRT HL2 (get that Valve ?).
 
and vice versa as in benchmarks designed to precisely emulate games will likely benefit from this effort as well (3DMark).
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WHAT THE I thought in their public statement they said FAR from that back when the cheating allegations where made.
 
Too bad they didn't think to ask how a statement like 'The highest priority for NVIDIA is the improvement of the image quality whilst maintaining the enjoyment of playing the game itself. Our new driver 52.16 is a perfect example, demonstrating both optimization capabilities, whilst maintaining image quality and performance.' relates to pseudo-bilinear filtering and max 2xAF on higher texture stages. As one of the millions of GeForce owners he refers to, I would love to see an in depth answer from someone in Technical Marketing. :?
 
ET said:
DaveBaumann said:
I would have thought there would be some concern if their closest competitor was selling GeForce FX's...
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LOL!
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I'm putting that quote in my sig. :)

One question about the way this PR guy responded, is this the persons way of dodging the question?
 
Adam:"Overall we have sold 17 million GeForce FX GPU’s in just three quarters, that’s 4 times more than our closest competitor so I’d say the product line is looking OK for the moment."
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Sold them to Board Partners? yes, that's good I guess, But How many of those Boards are actually selling off the shelves? Nvidia selling it's chips is not the same as Retailers selling the boards that have those chips. It's amazing how a few numbers can be slanted to look much better than things probably are for Nv right now. Total Damage Control Mode.


Adam: 1 - "The optimisation must accelerate more than just the benchmark and finally an optimisation must not contain pre-computed state like pre-computed geometry, cached textures, movie playback, and must not rely on a particular order of state that is particular to a single application.

2 - Optimisations must produce the correct image, and must accelerate the normal running of the application, not just the benchmark mode. In our view, if an optimisation produces the correct picture it is beneficial to the end user and is legitimate. If a change in the driver does not produce the correct picture, or functions only in the benchmark, it is either a bug and must be fixed, or a cheat.

3 - Optimisation for games is desirable since it improves the game and makes it more playable. On the other hand synthetic benchmarks don’t describe the “playability†and the gamer’s pleasure. The highest priority for NVIDIA is the improvement of the image quality whilst maintaining the enjoyment of playing the game itself. Our new driver 52.16 is a perfect example, demonstrating both optimization capabilities, whilst maintaining image quality and performance."
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Three Strikes! Your Out!!!


Adam: "Most of the time a driver is there to fix bugs and if the newer drivers are posted very often it means that the previous generation had some issues. In our philosophy a major shift in release, like from 4x.xx to 5x.xx takes about 6 months. Detonator 5X as an example provides a significant boost in performance because we have added our Unified Compiler."
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Right! Do you mean Your Unified Cheats Compiler? We just leak miriad sets of Beta drivers to favored review sites and let the chips fall where they may... :rolleyes:

Adam: This driver was a very early beta driver that was only meant to be released to certain individuals that wanted to see what kind of performance they would be seeing out of a final driver. It was explained the driver was still potentially buggy and the image quality was not representative of what a final Det 50 driver would be like. We hoped people would wait to make their final decision when 52.16 became WHQL’d and publicly available.
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Bull! No IHV wants to release a buggy Beta Driver. Rather than "Hoping" people wouldn't use it, just don't release it. If it is released in any form It will be (ab)used. (Certain Individuals, IE; Toms, and Anand) Lame, Lame , Lame!

Adam:Our recent Editor’s Day event saw key developers and publishers (including EA, Epic, Gearbox, Ubisoft and id Software) commend NVIDIA for the stability of our drivers – with regard to tech support calls, significantly less calls are made to these companies with GeForce related problems than they are for competitive solutions – this is simple fact and is a major reason for us having excellent working relationships with these leading gaming companies.
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Less problems? That's not a fact! It is an assertion by a Company that does it's best to twist info to suit the situation. More FuD! I don;t want to hear Nvidia say this. I want to Hear the Game Developers saying this. Otherwise It's hearsay.

Adam: All I can say is that we are committed to making our drivers the best with regards to CSR, a feature that forms the spine of our “The Way It’s Meant to be Played†... give a PC gamer the same peace of mind a console gamer has when they buy a game, and we have done our job. And it’s always worth remembering, ... if you have a TNT you can still download our latest Detonator 50 driver, see performance improvements and still benefit from the new features you get from Forceware.
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Really? They're still optimizing for the TnT line? Anybody with a TnT care to check this? I think it's Bullsnot. The only thing they're Committed to, is selling product no matter what they have to do or say.

Adam: NVIDIA take matters like this extremely seriously - it is very important to us that HL2 and all next generation games run well on our hardware. If the rumours are to be believed, the game appears to have been pushed out a few months from its original schedule, meaning that what has been seen in the media so far is potentially unrepresentative of the final game – changing hardware now before the game even ships is pre-emptive and may not mean the best solution at the end of the day. We continue to work extremely closely with Valve, despite the rumours, and we are fully committed to ensuring that the millions of GeForce owners out there have a great experience with this title when it arrives. We won’t let you down!
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Don't look now but you already have!!!


Zardon: Anything else you would like to say to the members and visitors on Driverheaven.net?

Adam. Keep it Green ! :¬)
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Sure Adam, When Hell Freezes Over. It's times like these I can only hope the Phrase "What goes around, Comes around" is true, and Nvidia is made to pay the Price for defrauding it's customers.


...End of Rant! ;)
 
beyondhelp said:
I don;t want to hear Nvidia say this. I want to Hear the Game Developers saying this. Otherwise It's hearsay.
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On the contrary: subjects like "nVidia drivers xx.xx and SomeThing" occur very often in D3D mailing list. "SomeThing" are various things (shadow mapping, pixel shader pecularities, strange slowdowns, etc.)
To quote one person (don't remember who) from DX mailing list: "a while ago, ATI driver bugs occupied most of my driverbug-list. Now nVidia seems to be taking over" :)
 
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