Have we forgiven Nvidia?

<BB mode>Forgiven us? For what?!</BB mode>

 

For:

Screwing up the soundcard drivers by statisising Deus Ex 2's sound.

Making me go and download newer drivers from the manufacturer.

Making me uninstall their drivers.

Making me install Realtek's drivers. Not that the sound doesn't sound better from Realtek's sound than nVidia's. It's just the trouble nVidia have given me.

 

Their hardware doesn't suck now (whereas for the last generation, the only thing really worth considering was a 5900XT). I'm definitely thinking about a 6600GT, but time will tell how that works out (128-bit bus still makes me go eeeeeeh). Their business practices during the last generation (shader replacement and brilinear) were symptomatic of having crappy hardware. Now they don't, so now they won't cheat (much--but hey, look at ATI filtering). Simple as that.

 

Let me re-phrase that for you : "Now thay don't, so now I hope they won't cheat (much--but hey, look at ATI filtering)."



Personally, I think NVIDIA will continue to practice replacing shaders. Whether this will constitute cheating or genuine optimizations is a conclusion best left in the hands of those that are capable of making the distinction.

 

Voted "I was never pissed", but frankly, I was pissed yesterday. Oh, my head...

 

You are a bloody optimist Baron, the problems at nVidia go a lot deeper than one bad generation of hardware...one bad generation of hardware just brought nVidia's true nature into the spotlight for all to see.

 

I was never pissed in the least (though I may have rolled my eyes a few times ). They had a clearly 2nd class architecture last year and did what they thought they had too to try and remain competitive in a cutthroat market.

I would have bought a 6800 this round but as chance would have it I lucked out and was actually able to obtain a rare X800XT PE while the GT's were all back ordered. Go figure.

 

What I'm delighted about is that for the past two years nVidia's faced competition in its core business of a degree and type unknown to the company in its history. Slowly but surely nVidia seems to be grappling with the fact that it won't succeed today by continuing with the PR-centered tactics that allowed it to one-up 3dfx back in 2k, when the industry was much younger and far more naive. Unlike 3dfx, nVidia's present competition isn't going to implode or self-destruct, isn't going to mismanage itself into oblivion, and the market as a whole is far less malleable to PR fluff than it was just four years ago. I'm optimistic in hoping that at long last nVidia realizes the very best PR a company can have is its products.

I'm not "angry" with nVidia, but my ire over the last year was directed soley at the company's PR machine for constantly bombarding the community with idiotic propaganda that was entirely self-serving and profoundly insulting. I'm hoping that nVidia's realized all of that was for naught, and that it was counterproductive, and that their proper role in the industry is to provide its markets with what they want instead of trying to steer its markets like brainless sheep who haven't a clue as to what they want. I don't require nVidia to tell me what it is I should want simply to provoke me into buying what I don't want--I require them to make and sell what I want, instead.

The issue for me is not whether I forgive them, since I feel they sinned against themselves far more than they sinned against me (since I haven't bought a nVidia-based 3d-card in two years), but rather the issue for me is whether or not I can trust whatever claims they make about their products. At present, I would still have to say I do not trust them.

However, the recent absence of the kind of PR propaganda they've been spewing like raw sewage since the paper-launch of nV30 in '02 is very refreshing, and it appears as if the company is realizing that those kinds of tactics just don't work any more, and if that's true it's an encouraging sign. Perhaps nVidia has at long last realized that tactics like advertising and promoting 4-pixel-per-clock gpus as if they were 8-pixel-per-clock gpus, casting dispersion on benchmark companies and game publishers which fail to kneel and heel, ruminating that DX9 and OpenGL 2.0 are not "the future of 3d gaming," and all the rest of it, really will not and cannot work--ever. If so, I'm encouraged.

So if nVidia finds its center and reinvents itself as a 3d-technology company intent on serving its markets instead of dictating to them, and demonstrates this steadfastly for the next year, at least, I might be inclined to start trusting them again. But as this situation didn't unfold in a day it's going to take time to win my trust--probably about as much time as it took them to lose it.

 

WaltC, I dare you to keep all posts for the rest of the week to a maximum of 100 words

 

It's a business. If ATI was as royally screwed as NVIDIA for an entire generation, I would imagine that they would resort to similar tactics.

And, mathematically equivalent shader replacement does not bother me.

 

I never got mad at them <3.

 

That is just so melodramatic a statement. Diggie, in your drug-induced haze you lived in throughout the 80s, did you happen to write a few episodes of Beauty & the Beast? 8)

 

I'm not sure, what year was it on? From about '84-94' things were a bit fuzzy for me. :?

 

They'd still do that in an instant IMO if their current products were as POS as the NV30 line... Their tactics didn't change because they learned their lesson, they changed because they have a product that is worthy enough not to need outrageous lies to sell it.

 

OMG SINS1!1!1!

yeah i believe in corporate ethic...

 

Mmmm...
No.
Nvidia,IMO, is still the same dirty company they've always been.
Using dirty tricks, bad business practices etc.
It just happens with round, they made some good hardware, but their PR still is BS.
I have an abit NF7-S, but I havent been able to overclock much, cuz my PSU= teh suck, and I am limited by my 8500 anyway.
edit- B3D still seems to be more pro, and seems to want to insult NV whever they get caught doing something stupid or whatever.

 

I won't say you are anything but correct, even though I'd like to think otherwise. I hope the point they picked up (if they picked one up) is that all the propaganda in '03 didn't keep the market away from the better products, didn't improve their yields one iota, and did nothing but tarnish the company's rep in its markets. As a result, no matter how much improved nV4x may actually be over nV3x, it will take them much longer to convince a skeptical market with bad taste in its mouth over all of that. If they'd have simply played things close to the vest last year, accentuated their positives, left off the ridiculous propaganda and the heavy-handed tactics with publishers and benchmarks--I think they'd have fared much better then and would have started nV4x off with a far more positive note this year. IMO, of course...

 

Beyond 3D != Beyond 3D Forumers