Nvidia losing influence due to Ps3 involvement?

[radar1200gs]

I do some part time work with the local community Online Access Centre (a government funded/provided internet cafe, learning centre if you will). This together with selling systems lets me get a pretty good feel for how the general public feel about such things, and even beginners don't like microsoft as much as you would expect. Linux is suprisingly popular. The public tend not to be overly fond of monopolies even when it's tough to do much about the situation.

Secondly, Linux is popular with the techincally competent crowd who often advise those less competent than themselves PC wise what to consider/look for in a system.

 

[London Geezer]

I could certainly imagine nVidia putting "Not just for Windows" on the boxes, and given their history of strong alternative OS support it would be no idle boast either.

Too bad the 99.999% of paying customers who use windows won't care.

No, but those 0.001% are the geeks who post and make a lot of noise on internet boards...

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

People buy high end PC gaming cards to play PC games - and 99.9 percent of those games are either for Windows only, or ports from consoles. A *very few* are primarily developed for Windows with a quick port to another OS on the PC platform (Linux) or to the Mac.

Anyone who suggests that Nvidia can afford to abandon the ubiquitous Windows gaming platform (or is stupid enough to do so) for their gaming products is quite simply laughable.

Even with the NV30 debacle, Nvidia was trying to take over the platform, rather than abandon it. We saw how well that worked out when you go up against the company that controls the OS and the API. Nvidia has no choice but to follow MS if they want to get their products into the massive OEM market, because the alternative is to hand that whole market over to ATI.

 

[Drak]

Can you imaging Nvidia putting "Not Compatible With Windows" on all their boxes? I doubt it, because it would hurt Nvidia not just for aftermarket sales, but all the OEMs would dump Nvidia. You're not going to see Dell shipping PCs with anything other than MS Windows and a compatible graphics card.

Nvidia has to follow MS, as the NV30/NV35 debacle showed.

Is Longhorn going to force people to use a NV5x/R5xx class of graphics card ? So, longhorn must work with cards that do not even support PS/VS. NVIDIA only needs to support these calls for the GUI. Of course the next NV generation will be "windows compatible". But for the real 3D API for games, NVIDIA could drop total support for DXNext and go OpenGL only. Game devs will know that going the DXNext route will cut a significant portion off their markets while OpenGL will allow access to both ATI and NV cards. Does XGI provide OpenGL drivers?

Edit: Clarified one point.

 

[Drak]

Anyone who suggests that Nvidia can afford to abandon the ubiquitous Windows gaming platform (or is stupid enough to do so) for their gaming products is quite simply laughable.

Who's talking about abandonning the Windows gaming platform? NVIDIA can only support OpenGL and DirectX 9.x for backwards compatibility. How would the game devs react to this? Are the DXNext SDKs out and are game devs already working on games for DXNext???

 

[radar1200gs]

I doubt nVidia will be dropping windows support anytime soon.

But providing high quality windows support does not preclude active support of other computing OSes and platforms, and advertising that support (hint to ATi).

 

[Drak]

I'm just saying that NVIDIA do not have to suck to microsoft so much. When Microsoft is going to jump to DXNext, it needs the support of the only two main hardware players left.

 

[Nyo_S23]

Microsoft Xbox's are outselling everyone in Japan now. Xbox sales have picked up they want a new console now, everyone has sony and nintendo already. Nvidia complemented direct x with pixel shaders 3.0. Why isn't MS happy with them. In the beginning MS took a hit with Xbox but its all good now.

 

[_xxx_]

Microsoft Xbox's are outselling everyone in Japan now.

Just because of Halo2. It'll settle down soon.

 

[Mariner]

I doubt nVidia will be dropping windows support anytime soon.

I doubt NV will be dropping windows support anytime ever!

At least not until windows has been fully superceded by something newer.

I can't really understand where these arguments are coming from as regards NV not supporting the Microsoft WGF stuff in the future. Utterly nonsensical as it certainly doesn't look like MS and Windows is going to disappear any time in the near future. NV has made practically all their money through Microsoft software and XBox. Just because they have a potentially large chunk of cash coming in from their deal with Sony doesn't mean that they are going to turn their backs on their main income stream.

 

[Nyo_S23]

maybe for CellDows haahah

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

That was my point. Regardless of whether Nvidia lose influence at MS because of PS3, or decides to build a different architecture to use in PS3 and desktop PC products, if MS insists on something like unified PS/VS in the DXN or WGF APIs, then Nvidia will have no choice but to build products that comply in order to service the Windows market.

Simply supporting OGL or Linux and hoping the game development industry will follow is not an option. NV's "too high/too low" 32/16 precision architechture, and CG proved that even Nvidia isn't large enough to make developers or OEMs gravitate away from the Microsoft behmoth. If Carmack ever stops coding for OGL and switches to DirectX, or retires from making PC games, then even Nvidia's OGL preference and performance won't mean anything.

 

[trinibwoy]

I could certainly imagine nVidia putting "Not just for Windows" on the boxes, and given their history of strong alternative OS support it would be no idle boast either.

Too bad the 99.999% of paying customers who use windows won't care.

No, but those 0.001% are the geeks who post and make a lot of noise on internet boards...

Doubtful. Of the people that frequent online forums - at best 5% have even setup a linux installation or have any clue how to administer one. Of those maybe 0.001% would care about alternative OS support for games given that most developers don't.

OS ---> Games ---> Hardware. As long as Microsoft is the big dog in the consumer space everybody has to follow.

 

[nelg]

That was my point. Regardless of whether Nvidia lose influence at MS because of PS3, or decides to build a different architecture to use in PS3 and desktop PC products, if MS insists on something like unified PS/VS in the DXN or WGF APIs, then Nvidia will have no choice but to build products that comply in order to service the Windows market.

My thoughts as well. To add to this, if ATI's Nintendo GPU also has unified shaders then they will be able to leverage their R&D across three different platforms. Nvidia will have to produce two (significantly?) different architectures.

 

[hstewarth]

I actually surprise NVidia is doing this deal with PS3. Didn't they get a bad deal with Microsoft on the XBox with making a lot of chips for cheap. Also I believe Microsoft want to manufactor the chips and that was not in the best interest of NVidia. I would not doubt that ATI will have pain with XBox2 and the XBox3 will have a Microsoft chip in it.

For me I play PC Games like the latest LOTR: Battle for Middle Earth, I have a PS2 and XBox but they sit.

As for NVidia stating not compatible with Windows - only an ATI fanboy will wish that. NVidia is stronger than ever with 6 series. Also NVidia has leadership in 3d graphics applications..

 

[thatdude90210]

I actually surprise NVidia is doing this deal with PS3. Didn't they get a bad deal with Microsoft on the XBox with making a lot of chips for cheap...

Microsoft had the bad deal, they are paying a fixed price on a chip that got cheaper to make as time went on... Nvidia, on the other hand, is still getting $80-100 million per quarter revenue on a now outdated chip.

 

[russo121]

I'm just saying that NVIDIA do not have to suck to microsoft so much. When Microsoft is going to jump to DXNext, it needs the support of the only two main hardware players left.

I don't ask this for a long time, but here we go: "Have you been smoking some hallucinogens?"

Microsoft needs support from Ati, Nvidia? Or it's the contrary? I think Ati and Nvidia are licking all the time Microsoft... Do you know how many comps in the world have windows installed? As said before ~99%....
Just a personal question... Do you have linux installed and is it your principal OS?

 

[Drak]

Why do you all keep equating Windows==DXNext? Who's committed to using DXNext yet apart from microsoft? ATI? Any devs yet? Any games announced for DXNext yet?

Say if only ATI hardware supports DXNext, that mean it will be a vendor-specific API like GLIDE. Was GLIDE successful?

You can have Windows+OpenGL, you know? + DX 9.x for backwards compatibility.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

When you're talking about gaming on PCs, the overwhelming majority is on MS Windows and using the DX API. Sure, you could probably use fallback modes if you don't want to support DX and just want to move windows around, but more and more of the OS is integrating hardware acceleration using DX. First for multimedia, like sound and graphics, but eventually for almost everything you see on the screen.

Without DX-Next support you won't be able to play games on your MS Windows. After that you probably won't be able to run anything that opens windows or uses icons, such as the 3D desktop they've pulled from the initial Longhorn release.

You know this thread is about Nvidia possibly losing the ability to push future versions of DX towards their own hardware preferences, right?

 

[Docwiz]

Why do you all keep equating Windows==DXNext? Who's committed to using DXNext yet apart from microsoft? ATI? Any devs yet? Any games announced for DXNext yet?

Say if only ATI hardware supports DXNext, that mean it will be a vendor-specific API like GLIDE. Was GLIDE successful?

You can have Windows+OpenGL, you know? + DX 9.x for backwards compatibility.

If only ATI supported DXNext, another company would rise up and take Nvidia's place.

Any company that want's to be a major player in the computing market has to support Direct X.

Microsoft is going to leverage Direct X in Windows PC's, Xbox and Xbox 2 and mobile phones.

OpenGL has it's own problems on windows and off and the next version of Direct X will get more powerful, but also work better with graphic drivers and that is something that OpenGL can't boast about at the moment at least.

Not supporting Direct X / Direct X Next and trying to be a major player in the market is redneck dumb. I know you would love to play with this idea in your mind, but it's not going to happen. Nvidia isn't stupid.